IMDb meta-data runtime is 56 minutes, rated 6.2 by 103 cinemitizens.
Genre: Old Dark House
Verdict: Sly fun.
Perry White and Mrs live in an Old Dark House at the end of a very long causeway. Otranto mansion comes equipped with a black stereotype, the ever ready Will Best, and a vast garage.
Then one dark and stormy night a party of relatives knock on the door! Perry is a perfect host, and why not when one of the guests is the first Superman disguised behind a pencil moustache. The guests all have letters of invitation:
But neither Perry nor Mrs Perry sent any such invitations. That puts arrowroot into the plot.
Guess what! No sooner are they assembled than the lights go out, the telephone goes dead, the cars are immobilised, the weather turns violent, and then it gets worse. They are alone! They are cut-off! They are in an Old Dark House movie! [Gasp!]
Among the guests is the redoubtable Veda Ann Borg who plays a double role. That sounded good to the fraternity brothers since Veda is one live wire. Regrettably, one of the twin sisters she plays is snuffed at get-go, while the other reacts by locking herself in a room. Not even Veda can do much in those circumstances.
Also invited (by someone unknown, and it stays that way) is the ever thuggish Grant Withers who was the short-priced favourite as villain from the start. Mr Smooth insinuates himself in the party. Now and again faces appear at the window.
Smooth knows something the others don’t. Some dastardly cur has stolen the radium from the watches of the doctors at a nearby hospital and that thief is amongst the denizens of the Old Dark House, though how and why are never explained. How could it be stolen? Why come to the island with it? Who did invite all these people? To quote Ludwig Wittgenstein, and how many times does that happen in a movie review, ‘whereof one does not know, one must not speak.’ In plain English that is ‘Dunno.’
Winsome Girl does not live up the the billing but how could she: ‘OUT OF THE FOGS OF FEAR! STORMS OF TERROR!…came this amazing person…to thrill you!’ However, she was cool-headed, resourceful, and capable of surprising even Mr Smooth. No screaming. No fainting. No tripping. None of the usual tropes for women to make snowflake men feel superior. She and Smooth combine in a neat deception at the end to reveal the conspicuous villain. The screen play breezes along. The direction is crisp.
Believe it or not the spindly Kirk Alyn played Superman in the first film in 1948. He must have gotten the job after posing as the 98-pound weakling in Charles Atlas advertisements and the casting director called the wrong guy.
As this picture travelled across the United States the yellow telegrams from D-Day started to arrive. Three thousand were sent in one day.
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