Boris Karloff and Lugosi together again, and this time, despite Karloff's top billing, it's Lugosi's film (according this film is beloved by Lugosi cultists, who saw their man usually come off second best against Karloff). He plays a brilliant doctor so enthusiastic about the works of Edgar Allan Poe that he's installed a torture chamber in his basement. Rejected in love by a girl whose life he saves, he sets about a bit of torture. The script for this film is "bitsy" - a bit of Poe, bit of ballet, bit of mad doctor - but it is enormous fun, with Lugosi in fine form, as is Karloff as his assistant, a killer-with-a-conscience (a person convinced he does ugly things because he is ugly). See how that pendulum wobbles at the end? The female ingenue is pretty but the male really annoying - I kind of wish he had been killed.
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