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Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Wow, Atwill and Zucco together at last. I was expecting crackling transformers, electrical arcs, and monsters galore. No such luck. They do have one minor face-off, but I don't think the producers knew what sinister potential they had in these two veteran madmen.It's a typical PRC cheap budget— a big drawing room, some secret passages, and an underground room that becomes a swimming pool at inconvenient times. And that's about it. The plot's supposed to be about an island host (Zucco) using a ruse to get people who wronged him onto his island as guests so he can get revenge. Maybe the premise is not very original, but it does have potential. Trouble is there's very little development producing either suspense or mystery. Mostly, it's scattered dialog and playing hide and seek in semi-darkness. In short, the narrative's a series of individual occurrences that fail to build beyond themselves. Thus, we're left with a few interesting set-ups but little more. Too bad. Oh yes, mustn't forget not just one spider woman, but two—Borg and DeWit. Both are tall, forceful, and attractive. Like Zucco & Atwill, they do have one minor face-off, but I guess I was hoping for an all-out catfight, or more aptly a lioness fight. Now that would have been memorable. Anyway, the film does have its moments, but fails to cohere into anything more.

Poverty Row often featured actors and filmmakers with ambitious visions and funding that was not up to the task. This movie is no exception.Featuring Horror "also-rans" George Zucco and Lionel Atwill, the story is that a financier who was convicted of fraud when his investments failed lures those who worked for his conviction to the mansion where his wife was murdered during his imprisonment.There are a whole lot of machinations going on in the story, but none of them work because they never really develop the characters beyond just sketches. You aren't really sure who is trying to kill who and why after a certain point. Add in bad sound and the fact that there are chunks of the film that are possibly missing, and you get a mess of a film that rehashes older ideas.

This does not have much of a reputation, despite a number of interesting/reliable presences – George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Ian Keith and Jerome Cowan – and, having watched it now, I can see why! Of the quartet, Zucco (the nominal protagonist, despite expiring well before the end!) and Keith (who, at one point, engages in a vigorous and amusingly speeded-up scuffle with the hero) come off best: on the other hand, Atwill is wasted in one of his last roles, whereas Cowan barely even registers! Anyway, the film is not really horror, more a thriller on the lines of Agatha Christie's AND THEN THERE WERE NONE – whose best screen rendition actually came out the same year as this! The narrative, in fact, deals with framed ex-con Zucco inviting those responsible for his going 'up the river' to the titular abode in order to exact revenge: as bait, he uses the fact that the island is supposed to hide a fortune, while another motive has to do with his beloved wife (called Karma!)'s death. However, the plot details are so sketchy (the muffled audio and occasional splices do not help in this regard) as to make for a thoroughly dreary ride...especially in view of the fact that Zucco has arranged things so that the majority of the characters are eliminated en masse (by way of that standard device, the water-logged room) when, in this type of fare, one looks forward to as many ingenious murder methods as possible! There is also the inevitable romance (which runs hot and cold this time around) between the young folk: one is Zucco's stepdaughter, naturally, and the other the likewise innocent son of a deceased guest (it comes as no surprise at all, then, that they emerge the sole survivors). For the rest, we get such clichéd 'old dark house' trappings as a secret passage (activated by a button on the no-less-obligatory pipe-organ and which virtually the entire cast contrives to try out – again, a distinct sign of laziness!) and a seance (held at Atwill's behest but which he then fails to attend!). Though not particularly remarkable, atmosphere is serviceably rendered throughout yet, all things considered, the film is certainly no great shakes.

First time of watching: entertaining low budget spooky house mystery with Zucco and Atwill at their eye-popping peaks. Terrible print - the negative must look transparent, so I would definitely recommend switching the lights off (or a cinema) for optimum viewing.It's a PRC stagey mix of And Then There Were None (in this case, Two) and The Cat And The Canary, with a few extra twists, but with only nine characters. The butler was a short-lived oddball however, quickly dispatched with gusto from the plot to the cynical amusement of Zucco. To my cynical amusement it's at that moment that Zucco is reminded that he "blew his top" when he was in prison - not hard to imagine!The male romantic lead was even more wooden, impetuous and prescient than the rest of the cast (Jerome Cowan was wasted yet again), but overall I enjoyed the film, nice atmosphere when the print allowed and an almost believable nasty-revenge storyline.