Not a horror film (though you’d be forgiven for thinking it was with that poster) so much as a crime film with a vaguely SF twist, this film kind of found the recently restructured Universal wondering what to do with its great horror star Boris Karloff now that the horror genre was considered dead in the water… the answer, evidently, was this comparatively light little number. I don’t know much about director Lloyd Corrigan, other than that he seems to have been a lot better known as an actor and only directed a small number of films (this being his second last; blu commentary suggests the pre-production was kind of unhappy thanks to script issues and Corrigan was far from first choice). Karloff plays an inventor, Mallory, who was screwed out of a fortune by the man, Ranger, he designed a famous security system for; when the latter tries to screw him again out of his new system, Mallory uses the latter against him… which draws the interest of a gang of crooks looking to employ it themselves. This is all fairly mild stuff, with most of the interest in it coming from Karloff himself; there’s something slightly hapless about Mallory, his “revenge” against Ranger is really more to irritate him than really damage him, and it’s quite a charming performance (Karloff seems to have been happy to do something different for him). Similar goes for Hobart Cavanaugh as the small-time crook Mallory starts out saving from Ranger and then becomes his partner in “crime”, he’s quite delightful too. Otherwise the cast doesn’t blow me away, I felt like the gang boss in particular felt more like the character was playing a Warners-type gangster rather than being a real one. It’s a light film, like I said, only 67 minutes long and basically a B film with not a lot in the way of excitement. But Karloff’s the star of it, and that’s not a bad thing at all.
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