The Black Abbot (1934)

Load of rubbish!!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is one of those British quota quickies in which the only name I recognize is cinematographer Ernest Palmer. It starts out with John Stuart getting engaged to Judy Kelly, some talk about the household ghost, the Black Abbot, then Miss Kelly's father is kidnapped.It's a lesser variety of the British Locked Room mystery, with silly-ass humor and servants canoodling each other. Palmer's camera-work is wonderful -- lots of moving shots --but the performances are all over the shop, indicating that director George Cooper either couldn't afford to hire decent actors for the smaller roles, or couldn't direct actors for beans. At 54 minutes it's bearable, but I won't be revisiting.

This 'old dark house' movie misses the mark by quite a wide berth, given that it goes for the comic approach throughout but just isn't very funny. Much of the humour here is rather broad and laboured, and some characters - like the maid with the runny nose - are intensely irritating rather than amusing.THE BLACK ABBOT follows your usual template of having assorted characters holed up in a mansion and assailed by a mysterious figure. The usual round of disappearances and criminality ensues, with some characters acting suspiciously and others adopting the mantle of amateur sleuth.I was intrigued by the horror-sounding aspects of the title, half expecting this to be an Edgar Wallace adaptation, but the titular figure is a red herring and barely appears and the rest of it is barely adequate.

Long winded tale that is not based upon, but similar to an Edgar Wallace or Bryan Edgar Wallace tale about the events in a house that was once a monastery. Not long after the daughter of the owner gets engaged to the owner of the home said owner goes missing and its believed that perhaps he was taken by the spectral Black Abbott said to haunt the grounds. Its the sort of fancy tale where everyone is dressed in tuxes no matter what is going on. An okay thriller the film suffers from padding and in all likelihood you could probably chop out 15 minutes of pointless talk with out ever touching the story. Not bad once it gets going, and recommended with the caveat that it picks up once it gets going.

A rather silly British comedy-mystery that takes place in an old mansion & an adjoining monastery which is supposedly haunted by the Black Abbot. There is too much talk (often in the form of isolated, stagy vignettes, & too little plot. Some of the smaller roles are juicier than the major roles. For example, the parts of Aunt Mary (played by Drusilla Wills) & the maid (played by an unknown actress who keeps wiping her nose) are well done.