Night Monster (1942)

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Blistering performances.

This creep-fest from Universal allegedly stars Bela Lugosi & Lionel Atwill, but Atwill gets bumped off early on and Bela as the butler has little to do but lurk around suspiciously.The plot, such as it is, involves a series of mysterious stranglings in and about the requisite spooky old house owned by a crippled bitter old man.There's an Indian mystic, a wise-ass writer (Don Porter), a creepy housekeeper, obnoxious chauffeur, an idiot sheriff, and various other characters milling about.Although I never saw or read about this movie before seeing it Saturday night on Svengoolie's TV show, I figured out the plot by the end of the first reel and you will too, if you chance to see it.But it was fun to watch and a not unpleasant way to pass an idle hour or so..

It starts off fine, then five minutes into the film, it lapses into predictability. There are a few surprise suspenseful moments here and there, and then, once again, bits and pieces of everything you've seen in every "Old Dark House" movie from "The Cat and the Canary" to "Rebecca". Not much cleverness was put into making this programmer where a bunch of eccentrics in a mystery house are all suspects in murder. There's the crippled patriarch (Ralph Morgan), a Mrs. Danvers type housekeeper (Doris Lloyd), a sinister doctor (Lionel Atwill), a dour butler (Bela Lugosi, repeating the role he had already done in "The Gorilla" and would later repeat in "One Body Too Many"), the heroine (Irene Hervey, taking on the role usually given to Evelyn Ankers), hero (Leif Erickson) and gloomy spinster (Fay Helm). How many are red herrings or victims, there's of course, one killer, and it is very easy to figure out.This one lacks the humor given to the dozen films of the same era, whether starring Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope, Hugh Herbert, Joe E. Brown or Olsen and Johnson, so the result is an unsurprising mystery that Universal can't really disguise as being merely a step above similar who-done-its being done over at PRC and Monogram.

Universal horror with Bela Lugosi playing a butler. He was always random to me, but I think I'm starting to like him. Mysterious murders are happening in a castle, the people get strangled, but there's a pool of blood near them. The big castlehouse is in a swamp. Best mist effect ever, pretty creepy. In the house live: paralyzed rich owner, his daughter who is treated by everyone like she's nuts but she might not be, always suspicious servants, while their guests are the tree doctors who saved and paralyzed the owner, the female psychiatrist invited by the daughter, horror story writer and later on a very charismatic and dryly humorous detective. But the most important guest is a mysterious Indian mystic played by the very handsome and charismatic actor Nils Asther, who can control matter on a cosmic particle level and materialize stuff like that. Supernatural whodunit. One maybe knows toward the end who did it, but not how. Alfred Hitchcock liked this movie a lot supposedly. The actors are all good, the atmosphere is good, never boring, shadow play is sometimes very good, always good and effective. the house interior is cool as it is. Of the actors I especially liked Ralph Morgan as the owner, Don Porter as the writer Dick Baldwin (it's funny because all Baldwins are dicks) i Nils Asther as Agor Singh. The latter is cool as he is, handsome, Porter is not really likable at first hand, but he's charming. Great film to watch at 2 am slightly drunk.

Frail rich recluse Kurt Ingston (well played by Ralph Morgan) invites the three doctors who turned him into a hopeless cripple to his remote desolate mansion in the swamps so they can get their just desserts. Naturally, said doctors are start getting bumped off left and right. Director Ford Beebe, working from an absorbing script by Clarence Upson Young, relates the compelling story at a steady pace, develops a good deal of tension, and does a stellar job of creating and sustaining a strong sense of dread and gloom, with especially inspired use of the secluded fog-shrouded marshland location. This film further benefits from sound acting by a sturdy cast, with stand-out contributions by the always great Bela Lugosi as stern and sinister butler Rolf, Lionel Atwill as the pompous Dr. King, Leif Erikson as smarmy cad chauffeur Laurie, Irene Hervey as charming psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Harper, Don Porter as dashing writer Dick Baldwin, Nils Asther as exotic mentalist Agor Singh, Fay Helm as Ingston's neurotic sister Margaret, and Doris Lloyd as snippy housekeeper Ms. Judd. Charles Van Enger's sharp black and white cinematography offers plenty of memorably eerie images (you gotta love those huge creepy shadows cast on walls!). The robust film library score likewise hits the shuddery spot. But it's the extremely spooky ooga-booga atmosphere with the ever-present pervasive thick mist and ominous chorus of croaking frogs that suddenly become silent which in turn makes this movie so much fun to watch. Well worth seeing.