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Colonel March (Boris Karloff) of Scotland Yard's Department of Weird
Complaints receives a visit of industrialist John Cusby (Robert Adair),
claiming his wife Evelyn (Eileen Erskine) is under the spell of her
psychiatrist Dr. Patten (Gerard Heinz) and even makes a threat to kill him
in front of March and Inspector Ames (Ewan Roberts). March takes Cusby's
statement with a certain grain of salt, but still visits the doctor and
meets him, his wife (Lily Kann) and his talkative assistant Dr. Hayes
(Phil Brown), this way getting a good picture of things concerned. Thing
is, during his next session with Evelyn, Dr. Patton actually dies, killed
with her own hairpin - so Ames is quick to arrest her. But for March, the
case seems much too simple if Evelyn was the culprit - after all, if she
wanted to kill him she could have chosen a much subtler approach with not
everything pointing squarely at her. So March does some digging, and
eventually comes to the realisation that it must have been somebody who
knew about Patten's fear of fire, as during the session apparently Patten
smelt fire, opened a door for a moment, and got stabbed with Evelyn's
hatpin then without her even noticing. But who knew about Patten's fear of
fire? His wife, naturally, and his assistand Hayes, who in the finale
turns out to be quite the lunatic, but gets his just desserts. As
with many "locked room" mysteries, the premise of this one is
much more interesting than its solution, and the finale doesn't do the
build-up justice, instead just over-convolutes a straight story with
far-fetched logistical and psychological explanations without actually
giving the culprit a good motive. That said, giving the mystery a
psychoanalytical underscoring is at least a good idea on paper, and
acting-wise Karloff brings this across quite convincingly, supported by a
solid ensemble, but as a whole this just doesn't catch on, as too much of
its story seems to just been pulled out of the head rather than worked
towards logically.
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