A simple murder mystery—and I do mean simple; you’ll probably figure it out halfway through—in a horror film’s clothing. In an unspecified German village, people keep dying off with all of their blood drained and two conspicuous holes in their neck. Sounds like a vampire to me, as well as to the superstitious locals, but police inspector Melvyn Douglas ain’t buying that malarky. Across this film’s hour-long landscape of shadows, cobblestone, gothic drawing rooms and charming character-actors, Douglas puzzles out the case. It’s a low-budget rush job, but the cast saves it. All of the principle actors play to type. Lionel Atwill is a scientist whom you never trust. Fay Wray is a lovely damsel ripe for distress. Dwight Frye nearly reprises his Renfield role from Dracula, except that here he’s merely the village idiot who creeps people out. Maude Eburne is a clone of the comically frightened maid that she played in The Bat Whispers. And Melvyn Douglas is the same almost boring hunk of solid, stoic rock that he was in The Old Dark House.
It’s no big deal, but it’s an entertaining product of Hollywood’s old Poverty Row if you dig the atmosphere, which is partly provided by sets reused from Universal’s Frankenstein and The Old Dark House.