Boris Karloff stars in the rare US film THE UNHOLY NIGHT.
1929. Black & White.
London is experiencing one of the worst and longest lasting fogs in its history; and an epidemic of violence has broken out: murder, robbery, rape....and the attempted garrotting of the Earl of Montague; an attempt thwarted when the fog parts just long enough for a woman nearby to catch a glimpse of the attack, and ¿ quite literally ¿ to scream bloody murder.
The shaken and breathless Montague finds himself at Scotland Yard where detective Sir James Rumsey tells him that the attack upon him was the fifth of the kind that day ¿ and that the other four victims are dead. Upon seeing the victims¿ names, Montague cries in horror that they were all officers in his regiment. Rumsey decides that the rest of the officers must be gathered together for their own protection, and agrees to have them assembled at Montague¿s London house.
A stranger arrives: Abdul Mohammed Bey (Boris Karloff), a lawyer, who brings with him a copy of the will of the late Marquis of Cavendar (who years earlier was drummed out of the regiment in disgrace). The officers learn that under this will, half of Cavendar¿s enormous fortune is to be divided amongst the regiment... and consequently, that all of them have a motive for murder....
The Unholy Night was Boris Karloff's second talkie following 1929's Behind That Curtain and is sound cinema¿s earliest surviving attempt at a true horror movie. (A silent version was shot simultaneously, as was often the case during this transitional period, as well as, more unusually, a French language version, 'Le Spectre Vert' both are presumed lost.)
Barrymore had first cast Karloff as a sideshow mesmerist in 1926 in The Bells, Karloff's first film containing horror elements, however Barrymore offered Karloff a slightly larger role here. But such parts, although performed well, were not the needed career-boost for Karloff. Already in his 40s, Karloff said he had stopped writing home because 'I had nothing to write about. Nevertheless, Karloff enjoyed working with Barrymore and in the biography The Barrymores: The Royal Family in Hollywood, recalled that "In those days, it took several hours to light a set and Lionel would use this time to help me and other players improve our scenes... When I played my big scene, finding my dead wife, I realised Lionel had analyzed the scene inside out and given me hints that enhanced my own interpretation.
Despite an inability to break through with larger roles and film fame, Karloff was encouraged by a meeting with Lon Chaney after The Bells in which the actor told Karloff not to be discouraged and to stick with playing unusual roles. Karloff, who was generally cast in small parts as "heavies" finally achieved his first starring role and film immortality when he appeared in James Whale's 'Frankenstein' (1931) at age 44; the seventy-ninth of Karloff's 163 film roles.
Though born to a respectable middle-class British family and groomed for some respectable career as a civil servant, Karloff's name became forever tied to that influential movie monster with his characteristically Karloff mix of menace and vulnerability. After years and years of struggle, Karloff may have been one of the few actors, unlike Peter Lorre or Bela Lugosi, who welcomed his horror typecasting, and audiences, surprisingly, warmed to him too, detecting the kindly actor beneath monster make-up.
Co-incidently, in the same year, Bela Lugosi prefigured his later horror stardom by turning up in a murder mystery akin to this one, again produced by MGM and this movie provides an excellent companion to Lugosi in Tod Browning¿s The Thirteenth Chair.
Audio/Video Quality: B
DVD is NTSC format, Region 0 (region free) and playable world wide.
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