CinemaSerf

This is quite an entertaining little cooky mystery set in an archetypal old dark house during a stormy night. Playwright "Prescott Ames" (John Miljan) and a couple of his friends have a car accident near the home of his friend "Dr. Kent" (Henry Kolker). On seeking shelter there, they discover that the residents already have a mystery of their own involving a previous murder that seems to continue to haunt the house. The storm rages, tempers rise, the lights go out... It's not what you might expect, and for the most part the red herring is remarkably effective at misleading us. When dead bodies start cropping up, it falls to "Ames", his secretary "Erskine" (Johnny Arthur) and the delightful June Collyer ("Gloria") to get to the bottom of things whilst they are still drawing breath. It's quite well paced and the eery lighting is also quite potent; the writing and the acting maybe not quite so much, but given the number of these join-the-dot murder mysteries made in the thirties, this is one of the more engaging. Not brilliant, but better than average.