IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 5 minutes, rated 5.7 by 307 cinemitizens.
Genre: Horror, Mystery
Verdict: Not enough Bela!
At the Rinehart estate, upstart Beau is a scientist who is about to experiment on himself by slowing his bodily processes to nearly nothing to be buried alive, and then dug up later. Nutso, right? Right! On the other hand think of the market for a drug that could do that. Before every McKinsey management training session with a twelve-year-old trainer the victims, the old salts, could deaden themselves to the nonsense and revive at the end. Hmm, sounds good, but back to the film at hand which does not sound so good.
Outside a Maniac is murdering so many people that the fraternity brothers ran out of fingers.
Meanwhile, the faithful servant Bela Lugosi peers around corners, creeps down hallways, probes into recesses. Is he the Maniac? No, we know he is not from the opening scene and that steals much thunder from the get-go.
Because they are wealthy and beautiful the Rineharts suppose they are safe. Just before being murdered they say ‘I’ll be all right.’ They aren’t. Did Hillary do it? Who insured their lives? Fired!
Yes, Maniac finds rich pickings in the Rinehart mansion on the Rinehart estate on Rinehart Drive in Rinehartville. Dad Rinehart is murdered and his will divides his fortune equally among the surviving relatives. That is not enough for any of them, and they fall to bickering, and cheer Maniac on when he murders again.
Bela continues to peer. His mystic wife goes into trances at the drop of a knife. Yet the proceedings are lugubrious. Then the comic cop shows up in the pre-code film where the police were often the comic distress. After the Hayes Code police had to be portrayed positively in works of fiction.
There are some fine players like Wallace Ford as the cynical newsman who injects energy, and Sally Blane, aka Loretta Young’s little sister. Even Beau is well played by George Meeker who is just too oily to be true.
Turns out Beau had a plan of his own, and it did not involve lying quietly waiting to be disinterred but how he managed to combine that with Maniac is anyone’s guess. The screenwriter did not even try to cover that. Bela was but a red herring. What a waste of this master of menace.
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