There are three main creeps in this shadowy adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of grave-robbing in 18th century medical research. There’s Henry Daniell as a doctor with a major stick up his ass and the bedside manner of a python. Then there’s Boris Karloff as a slimy profiteering grave robber who’s perfectly willing to kill when there are no fresh corpses to sell. Lastly, there’s Bela Lugosi, who doesn’t have much to do as a lowly caretaker at the medical school, but he’s Bela Lugosi and, thus, automatically creepy.
This is a more conventional brew than the best horror films from producer Val Lewton in the 1940s, but it’s still entertaining. Lewton co-writes the script under the name Carlos Keith. A young Robert Wise directs, following up on his work in Lewton’s Curse of the Cat People.