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Laura Van Ee (Molly Lamont) lies dead in the morgue, but from here she
recounts how she was put into this unhealthy state ...
There is something not quite right in the Van Ee household, both
Laura's husband Ward (Roland Varno) and his father Josef (George Zucco)
think little of Laura, in fact they seem to be conspiring to get rid of
her ... or is this just in her mind. Then there's also the maid Lilibeth
(Gladys Blake) who treats Laura with disrespect and Bill Raymond (Nat
Pendleton), a private cop so incompetent he wouldn't know a crime if he
stumbled over one.
But as if that wasn't enough yet, the weird Doctor Leonide (Bela
Lugosi) and his dwarf Indigo (Angelo Rossito) show up too, to ... well,
attract suspicion. And then there's also the much too nosey reporter Terry
Lee (Douglas Fowley) and his utterly naive girlfriend Jane (Joyce Compton)
... and soon things start happening, like Lilibeth walking around in a
state of trance, and Laura overreacting everytime she sees a blindfold,
she acts as if she was really scared of them. And then a weird mask keeps
flying around, and everybody acts mighty suspicious ...
Only in the end is the whole mystery revealed: Laura was a part of a
stage act in Germany, where she, blindfolded, would look into the future
and answer questions of her masked partner Rene (Lee Bennett). But
eventually, during the war, she sold her partner to the Nazis and left for
the US ... she thought her partner would be killed in a concentration
camp, but he survived and had since tracked her down, and now, with the
help of Doc Leonide and his dwarf (who essentially does nothing,
actually), he scares Laura to death ... and in the end, everyone is asking
was it murder ?
This film is mainly known at all due to the fact that it is Bela
Lugosi's only colour film (even though in my opinion it would have worked
much better in black and white).
The film itself starts out great, with the dead woman remembering the
events that led to her death ... but it's downhill from here on: suspects
seem to be thrown into the proceedings rather at random, plottwists most
of the time lead to nowhere and the final solution of the case is more
than silly.
Not even genre faves Bela Lugosi and George Zucco can save much here
despite their valiant attempts.
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