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A Waste Of Strickfaden's Electronic Equipment For An Inferio

rsoonsa | Lake Isabella, California | 03/12/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"The second recorded deployment of Kenneth Strickfaden's fabulous fantasy lab equipment (following the original Frankenstein), is the sole element apt to please viewers of this wearisome essay at creating an Old Dark House mystery, wherein stabs taken toward comedy and suspense are less than persuasive, and production values in this low-budget affair are anaemic. Danny (Jack Mulhall) and Doris (Josephine Dunn), in order to avoid a stall in their marriage plans, entrain with married chums Freddie (Eddie Boland) and Gertrude (Marjorie Beebe) to the mountain hermitage of Dr. Farrington, inventor father of Doris, to gain his consent for their wedding, and on a dark and stormy night (as can be noted from repeated footage of identical flashes of lightning), with the film striving for a general atmosphere of malevolence, the quartet arrives at Farrington's aerie. Meanwhile, the doctor is seen demonstrating his latest brainchild, a "VXO Accumulator", to a visiting colleague, Judge Folger, a contrivance that will purportedly mine the sun's rays for the development of free power that will benefit mankind, but as the device might also be utilized for evil, the stage is set for harrowing proceedings. These include Folger's murder, along with the kidnapping of Farrington, all while the bewildered young couples try to stay out of harm's way from such as secret passages and trap doors, disappearing corpses, a sinister caretaker played by Mischa Auer (complete with maniacal cackling laughter), in addition to two other men who skulk about the grounds (one of whom is dropped, unidentified as to name or purpose, by the script); notwithstanding these melodramatic events, the film is bare of moments that may be interesting to a sensate viewer. In truth, from its very beginning, this is a poor film, and even with the surfeit of ominous occurrences tossed at us, the work is so substandard that a viewer eventually is resigned to merely studying the sequences to wonder at examples of what are not only distinctly tedious goings-on but risible as well, the script, direction, acting, and editing being as atrocious as can be imagined."