The Ghost Walks (1934)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour 9 minutes runtime, rated 5.8 by 378 cinematizens.
Genre: ODH ( = Old Dark House)
Verdict: Curve balls two.
A playwright and his producer with a comic irritant assistant are driving through a storm when they come to downed tree blocking the road while behind them flood waters are rising. They seek shelter in a conveniently located nearby Old Dark House.
The owner reluctantly bids them enter and offers a meagre hospitality to these strangers. They join a tuxedoed party of five or six, the fraternity brothers were in charge of counting. The travellers change out of their wet clothes into tuxedoes, what else.
One of the resident ladies appears walking in a trance, and there is talk of a ghost. Doors open and close by themselves. Furniture moves. Creaks and bumps are heard. Producer and assistant get shivery.
Then Madame Trance turns up dead. Dead!
Spoiler One.
It turns out all the ODH residents are actors hired by motoring playwright to put on this show to convince the accompanying producer to fund a new play. He arranged for the tree to be down (tough cookies for other drivers) while the storm was a lucky coincidence.
However, the death of Madame Trance was NOT in the script! The charade is revealed.
The tables now turn themselves. Producer and Assistant, once tricked, now stubbornly persistent in supposing the death is faked as part of the play, while the players and writer are alarmed at this ad libbing.
Get it? If not go back over the previous two paragraphs with your finger and read it again word-by-word to yourself.
Then after much loud knocking a uniformed guard from the inconveniently located nearby booby-hatch appears to announce that a homicidal maniac has been returned to the care of the community. He proceeds to search the house. Meanwhile, alert observers have noticed the eyes of painting above the fireplace moving and fingers on door handles. Get it? If not, repeat as above.
More members of the house party fall down dead, and in the ensuing consternation their cadavers disappear. The body count of missing bodies increases. Needless to say the telephone line was cut. The automobiles disabled.
Spoiler Two.
More pounding at the front door yields two more booby-hatch guards who say that the escaped maniac dressed as a guard. Gulp! Get it?
First Guard (FG) is the nut job and he has been roaming around the house for hours, during which he found the hidden chambers, sliding panels, concealed passageways, torture chamber, and cobwebs. Behind the eyes on the painting they find secret passages and rooms. At last!
We cut away to FG with an audience of the disappeared all trussed up. None were killed but drugged to simulate death to the others upstairs. Now FG proclaims his genius and prepares to operate on the host with his many knives, scalpels, and wire cutters that he carried off from the loony bin. Sure.
In the nick (get it?) of time the other two guards with playwright et al. arrive and dis-knife him.
The End.
I liked the double twist but I wanted more spooky ODH stuff. It lacks atmosphere and tension. Some of the dialogue is sharp but these quips do not propel the story. Madame Trance was convincing in her limited screen time but the insipid female lead was…. Just about absent.