Starring Lionel Atwill, Gloria Stuart, Paul Lukas, Edward Arnold, Onslow Stevens
Directed by Kurt Neumann
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
Three suitors for a young woman, to prove their courage to her, agree to each spend a night in the "Blue Room" in her father's castle, where three met death 20 years before.
Only recently released on home video, this Universal horror-mystery featuring an early directorial effort from Kurt Neumann (The Fly), is a really entertaining watch, with good performances from Atwill as the father with secrets to hide, Lukas as a military captain and one of Stuart's suitors, and especially Edward Arnold as the no-nonsense police commissioner who investigates new crimes at the castle. Modern audiences might guess the murderer early on, but there's enough red herrings and plot twists to make them second guess in an effective screenplay from William Hurlbut, based on a German film property. More importantly, the film flows well throughout, and concludes with an exciting and well-staged climax. It would have been even better with a music score, opening and closing with the familiar "Swan Lake" cues that accompanied Dracula and other Universal '30s fare, but lacking anything in between. Still, it's a fine production I'll look forward to revisiting.
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