Charles Clary ruined Frank Campeau, had him thrown in prison, and took everything he owned, including his estate in Westchester, now his home. Campeau has sworn revenge, and with the aid of Albert Norton, has escaped to wreak his revenge. The house is riddled with secret cellars and hidden passages. Norton has set bullets in the telephones, triggered from an exchange in the cellars.
Warned, Clary has hired private detective Scott Welsh and his two idiot investigators, Mack Swain and Arthur Housman, to guard them. But at the appointed hour, Clary picks up the telephone and is dead. And his niece, Anita Stewart, is to die an hour later.
The copy of this movie I looked at was in terrible condition, and its clear intention of terror and comedy was not supported by the fact that Housman and Swain are so very stupid, that Heinie Conklin is in blackface as a fearful, superstitious butler, nor that Miss Stewart's love interest, Edmund Burns, has nothing to do. Neither does Mayme Kelso as Clary's secretary, although she does look a comic fright. There is a decent sequence when a bloodhound is brought in to find the abducted Welsh, and instead torments Conklin.... or perhaps I was simply so annoyed with the blackface that I took my pleasure in this second-hand revenge where everyone is utterly incompetent, from the screenwriter setting things up so I knew what was going on from the get-go, to the 'competent' detective getting kidnapped, to the three -- count 'em, three! -- comic reliefs taking up most of the screen time without doing much that was funny. The Old Dark House genre is malleable, and terrified laughs a commonplace among them. This has neither terror, nor laughs.
Warned, Clary has hired private detective Scott Welsh and his two idiot investigators, Mack Swain and Arthur Housman, to guard them. But at the appointed hour, Clary picks up the telephone and is dead. And his niece, Anita Stewart, is to die an hour later.
The copy of this movie I looked at was in terrible condition, and its clear intention of terror and comedy was not supported by the fact that Housman and Swain are so very stupid, that Heinie Conklin is in blackface as a fearful, superstitious butler, nor that Miss Stewart's love interest, Edmund Burns, has nothing to do. Neither does Mayme Kelso as Clary's secretary, although she does look a comic fright. There is a decent sequence when a bloodhound is brought in to find the abducted Welsh, and instead torments Conklin.... or perhaps I was simply so annoyed with the blackface that I took my pleasure in this second-hand revenge where everyone is utterly incompetent, from the screenwriter setting things up so I knew what was going on from the get-go, to the 'competent' detective getting kidnapped, to the three -- count 'em, three! -- comic reliefs taking up most of the screen time without doing much that was funny. The Old Dark House genre is malleable, and terrified laughs a commonplace among them. This has neither terror, nor laughs.
