A series of ludicrously grisly murders—one involves a portable guillotine!—plagues the city and Scotland Yard hasn’t got a clue. Meanwhile, a gloating yellow journalist weeniehead has himself a grand old time writing popular books about unsolved cases that make the police look like they can barely find butter for their toast. There’s something fishy about him though, and not just because he’s played by English horror stalwart Michael Gough. There’s also his creepy private collection of stolen evidence and sundry murder souvenirs. It’s a crime story with a sadistic horror edge, the kind of movie that was probably a real bone-chiller in its time, but is about as scary today as the spring weather report in Las Palmas. The resolution bends logic until it breaks just to get the film over with, but this is too quick and snappy to be truly bad. It kills a little over seventy minutes of your time just fine.
This was a transatlantic co-production between Britain’s Anglo-Amalgamated and the US’s American-International Pictures, B-movie factories both. It was AIP’s first color Cinemascope release. The ninety-five minute run time that you see in some places is for the AIP cut that tacked on a hypnosis demonstration prologue as an added gimmick for American audiences. Best I can tell, that version of the film has yet to hit home video.