A scientist (Boris Karloff) picks up a girl from the gutter, gives her
a home, to eat, a job even, and marries her out of pity more than anything
else, but he requests two things, she's never to go out of the house on
her own, and she's never to go into his laboratory. And how does the
girl show her gratitude? She complains and complains (rather naturally,
actually), and starts a romance with a missionary worker (also naturally,
since she doesn't love her husband, and neither does he love her).
Eventually, the missionary worker giver her a yellow scarf, but when the
professor sees that, he takes the scarf from her and puts it into some
light acid to make it die slowly. Later, the professor goes out, and the
girl thinks this is the perfect opportunity to invite her lover and get
her scarf back (from the laboratory she's not allowed to enter). However,
the whole thing was just a trap set up by her husband, who wanted to catch
her red-handed and wanted an opportunity to stab his rival. In the ensuing
fight though he only cuts the missionary worker's hand, and the girl tries
to dress up the wound using her scarf - but the acid that's still on the
scarf kills the missionary worker almost instantly. The professor now
gloats, since he has gotten rid of his rival without actually killing him
... but then the girl cuts the professor and dresses up his wound too
using the acid-soaked scarf, killing him the same way. And in the end,
fate tosses the girl out onto the streets, just where she was found at the
beginning of the story. Ok early television drama with quite a
few atmospheric spots and fine performances by the always dependable Boris
Karloff as well as of the rest of the cast - but at the same time, the
whole show seems to be lacking in the story department: The professor's
motivations and evil experiments never become perfectly clear, which makes
the whole situation the girl has been tossed into a bit unexplainable,
which in turn keeps the viewer from fully getting into the story. That all
said, it's still an ok half hour to spend, it's just definitely less than perfect.
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