Back to glorious black and white for this one. This finishes off Eureka’s “Maniacal Mayhem” set, which also gave us Karloff in The Invisible Ray and Black Friday; this time, though, the maniac is actually Charles Laughton… Karloff was second-billed for advertising purposes but he’s actually pretty secondary as a character; Laughton is the real star, playing the Sire Alain de Maletroit, a not especially nice man about to carry out the last part of a rather extended revenge plot against his brother, who married the woman he loved and, well, Alain is not the forgiving type… Taken from an early R.L. Stevenson story, with how much fidelity I don’t know (I see one critic calling it more a remake of the 1935 Raven, and the climax definitely seems to have been “inspired” by that), this is about as implausible as Victorian melodrama gets, and the film just leans into that, especially Laughton who is quite ripe here; Richard Stapley provides enough ham of his own as the male hero, an insufferable boor who turns out to be a shithead with a heart of gold. Karloff is quite restrained as the sorely beset servant Voltan who must save the Nice Young Couple from Alain’s dastardly scheme. And if it is frankly all a bit unlikely, it’s mightily good-looking in that unlikeliness, with some pretty decent shadows dressing up those period sets. Surprisingly violent, too; obviously not hugely explicit thanks to the Production Code still being a thing in 1951, but there’s one particular bit of implied nastiness near the end that’s a bit yikes-inducing considering the period. Enjoyed this a fair bit. Incidentally, just a week before production began there was actually a TV version of the original short story; wonder if that still exists somewhere, cos I’d be interested to compare and contrast…
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