Night of Terror (1933)

By CinemaSerf

Well if you're ever going to tell a story of a bunch of money-grabbing relatives gathered in a creaky old stately pile, then you could do a lot worse than get Bela Lugosi to hold it all together. Sadly, though, the formula is just a little too predicable as we go from a doom-laden seance to a gradual increase in the entirely deserving body count. It's the darkly lit scenario that does most of the heavy lifting here as the script adds little, the supporting ensemble is distinctly wooden and what menace there is comes from Lugosi in his best pantomime villain vein. I think this might have been better had it been a silent film, but it's still quite a fun hour of duplicity and back-stabbing that shows us that the venality of the human spirit is alive and kicking. Well kicking, anyway.