Director: Benjamin Stoloff
Writers: Beatrice Van, William Jacobs
Stars: Bela Lugosi, Wallace Ford, Sally Blane
Run Time: 1 Hour, 5 Minutes
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/39tD6cN
Synopsis
We begin with an old woman with a crystal ball, on the crystal ball, we see the character’s faces and names. We then cut to a deformed man watching two lovers making out in a convertible, then he kills them both.
We’re told that the killer always leaves newspaper clippings on the body, and he only kills after sundown. Twelve have died so far. We see the maniac climbing the walls over at Pinehurst Manor. He crawls in through a window and spots Professor Arthur Hornsby working. There’s a knock at the door and the maniac leaves through a window.
Arthur is planning to allow himself to be buried alive as a publicity stunt for his new experiment. He can live without breathing. Degar comes to the door, warning that the newspaper says the Maniac has killed again, close to the house.
Tom and Mary drive home from the movie, but Mary is engaged to Arthur. The maniac kills the gravedigger. Mary comes in, and Degar warns her as well. That night, Mary wakes up and sees the maniac staring into her window. Richard sneaks into the professor’s laboratory and starts snooping around, but someone comes in and kills him. As the police investigate, they find still another victim.
We learn that Richard left the kind of will that transfers all the assets to the survivors. Very soon, there are fewer and fewer survivors. Arthur plans to go ahead with his buried-alive experiment. Degar gets the injection ready and before long, Arthur is buried, apparently dead– but only for eight hours. Meanwhile, Sika is meditating and prophecies bad things.
Naturally, Sika convinces all the scientists to sit down for a seance. She dies in the middle of the ritual. The police arrest Degar. Degar gives the cop a funny cigarette and sneaks out while the cop sleeps it off.
The Maniac grabs Mary from a secret door. They follow the screams and shoot the maniac. They dig up Arthur and find nothing in the coffin. Degar comes up with Arthur in tow. Arthur set the whole thing up to commit murder with ihmself buried in the ground as an alibi.
The maniac gets up and threatens to climb into the bedroom of anyone who tells how this film ended and haunt them.
Commentary
This one’s got 1930s racist stereotypes galore. Degar and Sika are supposed to be from India, and Martin, the African-American Chauffeur, does the classic “scared black man” routine so common in old films. Tom’s pursuit of Mary is obnoxious and goes on way too long.
It moves fast, it’s not clear what’s going on until the end, although I had a suspicion, and overall it’s pretty good, but very dated.