If there was ever an award for "worst ensemble", this film would have won that prize for 1932. Everybody speaks as if they are reciting a dictionary filled with words they can't pronounce, as if the director was timing each of their lines to reach a certain point When the fastest speaker is "Sleep n' Eat" (aka Willie Best), you know that the film is moving along slower than a snail in a swamp. Had everybody spoken their lines at a normal speed, the film would have been 20 minutes shorter than its hour long running time.
This "old dark house" movie utilizes elements already old hat in talkie horror films (an invalid patriarch, a heroine in peril, sinister servants, even a gorilla living in the basement), and you just know that a hair-covered hand is going to pop out of a wall to grab the heroine as she sleeps. A violin playing shadow will instantly make you think of Cloris Leachman in Frau Brucher in "Young Frankenstein".
Mischa Auer can't make up his mind whether his character is a slow-witted servant or sinister red herring. He takes the wacko that Dwight Frye played in "Dracula" to a new level of ridiculousness. Vera Reynolds' heroine is so dull and the dialog so non-campy and the identity of the perpetrator so obvious that you will figure it all out within the first 10 minutes of the film.
This "old dark house" movie utilizes elements already old hat in talkie horror films (an invalid patriarch, a heroine in peril, sinister servants, even a gorilla living in the basement), and you just know that a hair-covered hand is going to pop out of a wall to grab the heroine as she sleeps. A violin playing shadow will instantly make you think of Cloris Leachman in Frau Brucher in "Young Frankenstein".
Mischa Auer can't make up his mind whether his character is a slow-witted servant or sinister red herring. He takes the wacko that Dwight Frye played in "Dracula" to a new level of ridiculousness. Vera Reynolds' heroine is so dull and the dialog so non-campy and the identity of the perpetrator so obvious that you will figure it all out within the first 10 minutes of the film.