- Director: Nathan Juran
- Writers: Jerry Sackheim
- Stars: Richard Greene, Boris Karloff, Stephen McNally
- Run Time: 1 Hour 22 Minutes
- Streaming Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu-XSooL9iE
Synopsis
It was a dark and stormy night in the old cemetery. We can hear the corpse’s thoughts that he’s not really dead. He screams internally, but the two men cannot hear him. They cover over the not-so-dead-man and get ready to bury him.
We flash back several weeks. Sir Ronald has been invited to go hunting on the estate of Count Karl von Bruno under the pseudonym of “Richard Beckett.” He wants to learn the truth about the mysterious deaths of his two friends, Sterling and Brown, and he believes von Bruno was behind it. He has no proof. It’s a long trip by coach out in the European mountains.
They stop for a break at the Green Man Inn. Some upper-class snobs come in, and before long, Beckett is dueling with swords and getting the best of them. The troublemakers are Counts Steiken and Melcher, friends of the Count von Bruno. The next morning, they arrive at the Count’s castle.
The Count and his doctor, Dr. Meissen, are torturing, or maybe treating, Count Steiken, the man that Beckett cut the night before. The Count wears an evil eyepatch, so you know he’s bad. They’ve gotten an African leopard to be the quarry in the hunt tomorrow. The servant, Gargan, shows Beckett to his room. Did Gargan recognize Beckett for some reason? Could Sterling and Brown be locked in the dungeon? Beckett wants to know.
He meets up with the Countess Bruno, and they all go to look at the leopard. Gargan likes to torment the big cat. The two of them explore the dungeon, and the Count has a pit crawling with carnivorous crocodiles.
The next day, the big hunt begins. Beckett and von Bruno get paired off and wind up hunting together as partners. They hear the leopard. Beckett falls into a pit with the leopard and is attacked, but the Count manages to shoot it.
Beckett notices the locket that the Countess wears, and it matches the ring he has. There’s a sort of budding romance between Beckett and the Countess, but neither of them can act on it. Beckett tells her everything, and it comes out that Beckett’s men cost the Count his eye in a previous battle. The Countess’s locket had to have come from either Sterling or Brown. They don’t see Count Steiken snooping around outside the room. Steiken is about to tell von Bruno everything, but dies first. It seems likely that Meissen poisoned him.
Beckett plans to leave the next morning. Bruno lets him go, knowing that keeping “enticing” him to stay would leave too many questions to be answered. They leave and head back to the Green Man Inn, where they run into Dr. Meissen, who explains things to him. He begs Beckett to return to the castle and rescue the Countess like he did his first wife. The innkeeper overhears this and tells all to the Count, who figures out everything as well.
The Count locks Beckett in the cell with the Countess, planning to kill them both. Romley, Beckett’s servant, lets them out. The only way out is through crocodile pit. They stay close to the wall on the ledge and inch their way over to the other side. The Count is waiting for them on the other side. There’s a scuffle, and Gargan becomes croc food before the heroes are recaptured.
Dr. Meissen says he can make them both appear to be dead. They would be sent out as corpses and buried, thereby getting out of the castle. The drug would last about ten hours. If all goes well, Meissen will come to the mausoleum and release them. They drink the medicine and appear to die. Then Meissen tells the Count the truth of what he’s done, and the Count decides to hurry up and bury them alive. Then the Count kills Meissen.
We then return to the opening scene where the two are being sealed in their coffins. The men are nailing the coffin shut and hear a moaning from inside. They open the coffin. Meanwhile, the Count comes in, opens the coffin, and is shot by Beckett; Meissen put his dueling pistols in the coffin before he was killed. Beckett and Elga, the former Countess, ride off in his carriage.
Commentary
This takes place in a vague country run by an Emperor, and has a bunch of subjects that speak with real American accents, and then there’s Karloff, who speaks in an actual British accent.
Karloff and Cheney both have pitifully small roles here, and neither is really the main villain of the film. Both were a little past their prime by this point in their careers, and Universal wasn’t doing them any favors with these roles. Actually, this was Cheney’s last film with Universal.
There’s not really a lot of horror here. It’s an old dark castle with the requisite dungeon and giant hunchback servant. There’s a room full of alligators. Other than that, it’s basically just a thriller where Beckett must solve the mystery before the Count finds out his identity. It drags a lot toward the end, but the first half was pretty entertaining.