... and it really isn't a horror film. It is one of the Inner Sanctum Mysteries series of movies from Universal.
Artist Dave Stuart (Lon Chaney Jr.) is painting a portrait with Tanya (Acquanetta) as a model. Tanya is madly in love with Dave, although he has given her no encouragement and is in love with a woman he has known since childhood, Heather Hayden (Jean Parker). Dave is not the height of organization and keeps bottles of dangerous acid in the same cabinet as his bottle of eyewash. One day he reaches for the bottle of what should be his eyewash and instead puts acid on his eyes. He is blinded and can only have his sight restored by a cornea transplant. His future father in law has his will changed to say that upon his death his eyes will be used for the cornea transplant Dave needs if he has not found a donor and had the operation yet. And then said future father-in-law is found dead in his study, bludgeoned to death with Dave standing over the body and blood on his hands. Complications ensue, not the least of which is Dave's fiancee not feeling the same about Dave after having found her dad's body with Dave nearby and him having everything to gain from her dad's death.
I really enjoyed this atmospheric entry that is much more mystery than horror, but obviously lots of people didn't or they dozed off, with them saying that the model Tanya deliberately blinded Dave. She confesses to moving the bottles but said she was careless rather than trying to blind Dave as a woman scorned. She never recants this story. Just about everybody but the household pet has a motive to have killed Stanley Hayden, so the rest of the film is how that murderer is found out.
Acquanetta gives a lifeless performance as the model Tanya. It's like she is bored out of her mind and just reciting lines. This kind of performance worked for her in "Captive Wild Woman" where she is a woman produced by glandular experiments performed on an ape and was basically wandering around in shock, but here she just looks like the stand-in in a high school play.
Thomas Gomez is the bad cop in the bad cop/good cop routine who forgot to bring along a good cop. He likes to torment Dave Stuart because he believes him to be guilty. Will he ever be mortified if he is wrong.
The people who ran Universal after the Laemmles lost control, Standard Capital, really were up a creek since everybody on the lot who was loyal to the Laemmles - and that was lots of them - left when the Laemmles did. So think of it as though Mitt Romney, with tons of money but not an artistic bone in his body, now has to run a movie studio with no legacy personnel. Things are rough for a few years as you try to build up franchises, but by the 40s you are bringing in new talent and figuring out how to make Universal Horror work for you. This is where Universal was when this movie was made - trying to live off Universal horror as they got their other franchises and post Laemmle stars off the ground. When I look at the film through that lens it's pretty good.
Artist Dave Stuart (Lon Chaney Jr.) is painting a portrait with Tanya (Acquanetta) as a model. Tanya is madly in love with Dave, although he has given her no encouragement and is in love with a woman he has known since childhood, Heather Hayden (Jean Parker). Dave is not the height of organization and keeps bottles of dangerous acid in the same cabinet as his bottle of eyewash. One day he reaches for the bottle of what should be his eyewash and instead puts acid on his eyes. He is blinded and can only have his sight restored by a cornea transplant. His future father in law has his will changed to say that upon his death his eyes will be used for the cornea transplant Dave needs if he has not found a donor and had the operation yet. And then said future father-in-law is found dead in his study, bludgeoned to death with Dave standing over the body and blood on his hands. Complications ensue, not the least of which is Dave's fiancee not feeling the same about Dave after having found her dad's body with Dave nearby and him having everything to gain from her dad's death.
I really enjoyed this atmospheric entry that is much more mystery than horror, but obviously lots of people didn't or they dozed off, with them saying that the model Tanya deliberately blinded Dave. She confesses to moving the bottles but said she was careless rather than trying to blind Dave as a woman scorned. She never recants this story. Just about everybody but the household pet has a motive to have killed Stanley Hayden, so the rest of the film is how that murderer is found out.
Acquanetta gives a lifeless performance as the model Tanya. It's like she is bored out of her mind and just reciting lines. This kind of performance worked for her in "Captive Wild Woman" where she is a woman produced by glandular experiments performed on an ape and was basically wandering around in shock, but here she just looks like the stand-in in a high school play.
Thomas Gomez is the bad cop in the bad cop/good cop routine who forgot to bring along a good cop. He likes to torment Dave Stuart because he believes him to be guilty. Will he ever be mortified if he is wrong.
The people who ran Universal after the Laemmles lost control, Standard Capital, really were up a creek since everybody on the lot who was loyal to the Laemmles - and that was lots of them - left when the Laemmles did. So think of it as though Mitt Romney, with tons of money but not an artistic bone in his body, now has to run a movie studio with no legacy personnel. Things are rough for a few years as you try to build up franchises, but by the 40s you are bringing in new talent and figuring out how to make Universal Horror work for you. This is where Universal was when this movie was made - trying to live off Universal horror as they got their other franchises and post Laemmle stars off the ground. When I look at the film through that lens it's pretty good.