British horror really didn't take off until the 1950's. Prior to that, the British Board of Film Censors ruled with an iron fist. Basically anything of the supernatural was a huge red flag, so monsters wouldn't be a thing until the rise of Hammer a few decades later.
With Karloff earning rave reviews and box office gold, even the British film industry took notice and managed to lure their native born son back for his first British film.
Antique dealer Aga Ben Dragore (Harold Huth) is dealing with a rather insistent visitor. Mahmoud (D.A. Clarke-Smith) has come all the way from Egypt and he wants an item he knows the dealer stole from a tomb some time ago. He wants the gem called the Eternal Light, and he wants it now. There's just one issue-Dragore sold that item some time ago to Professor Morlant (Karloff).
Morlant isn't interested in selling it though, as the man is presently on his deathbed. Mahmoud forces the dealer to take him to Morlant's sprawling mansion and get the gem back. They're going to have to get in line though, as the mansion is crawling with people.
There's Laing (Ernest Thatcher), Morlant's abused butler. Lawyer Broughton (Cedric Hardwicke) is on hand and trying to wring as much money as he can before the old scholar snuffs it, and then there's parson Hartley (Ralph Richardson), who seems insistent that Morlant be given last rites and buried in a Christian manner, despite the dying man's protests that he worships the gods of Egypt.
That last one is a major detail, as Morlant has constructed a tomb on the estate. He's also rather keen that the Eternal Light be buried him, even going so far as to have Laing wrap the gem in his hand so he can present it to Anubis in the afterlife; because if he doesn't have the gem he'll rise from the grave and unleash a terrible vengeance...
There's also the matter of Morlant's heirs. Ralph Morlant (Anthony Bushell) and Betty Harlon (Dorthey Hyson) are distant cousins, and from feuding sides of the family at that. Ralph figures that Broughton is out to swindle them, so he convinces Betty to put aside the family feud aside and accompany him to the estate. Betty insists on taking her roommate Kaney (Kathleen Harrison) along, because what we needed was comic relief.
After everyone gets assembled, it seems Morlant's body vanished from the tomb. Remember what he said about the Eternal Light? It seems Laing thought it would be a terrible waste to let a 75 thousand pound gem rot away in the tomb, so he took the trouble of removing it. After all, Morlant's talk of a curse was just the ramblings of a dying man...right?
The atmosphere helps overcome the shortcomings, and there are quite a few shortcomings. The comic relief slows things down to a crawl, and explanation at the end is a cheap and was growing hair on it even by '33, but Karloff manages to make his brief time on screen count.
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