Innkeeper Lionel Barrymore can't manage his money, and when the man he is indebted to threatens to take his daughter as payment, he murders a wealthy traveler. Boris Karloff shows up in a Caligari-esque outfit (cape and circular framed specs) as a hypnotist who threatens to assist the local police root out the murderer. Loooooooosely based on the Edgar Allen Poe poem (Lionel hears bells ring a couple times) according to some. Was apparently a hit stage production back in the day but doesn't really hold up today. I grew tired of the young couple and their primping and fussing. Young couples always ruin the fun (see any Marx bros film). Also could not sympathize much with Barrymore: strange protagonist who, in unsatisfying ending, reveals his crime but only in a dream sequence, which seems to nullify the confession. In his biography, All My Yesterdays, Edward G Robinson tells how he and school friend Joseph (Pepe) Schildkraut stayed up all night, dramatizing the story (which he claims comes from Henry James), "giving myself, of course, the juicy part of the burgomaster." Robinson pitched the idea and soon starred in the lead role for four weeks, opening at the Plaza Theatre on Lexington Ave, and this performance marked the first time Emmanuel Goldenberg appeared as Edward G Robinson.
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