The act of scooping other pictures isn't new now and wasn't back in the old days either. If studio A has a flick due out about an asteroid, you can bet studio B will get one out a week before. So, when A-list studio Warner Bros. has a film in the can featuring Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, you can bet solid B-list studio Majestic would scoop them first with a film using the same leads.
In a quaint vaguely Eastern European village, murders are being committed. There is also an infestation of bats. Burgermeister Schoen (Lionel Belmore) has called a meeting of the village fathers to try and calm them. He wants answers and Inspector Brettschneider (Melvyn Douglas) had better find them.
The inspector is stumped, but unlike the rest of the town he isn't writing the deaths of as a work of vampires. He complains to his sweetheart Ruth (Wray) who lives with her aunt Gussie (Maude Eburn) and her aunt's border, Dr. von Niemann (Atwill). The doc is treating the sick villagers, including local spinster Martha (Rita Carlyle). Martha is bad off, but she still makes it a point to entertain town nut and bat enthusiast Herman (Dwight Frye).
When Martha dies, all eyes look to Herman. By this point the inspector is running out of options and suspects. When Kringen (George E. Stone), who has been pushing for a noose party for Herman, is found dead of blood loss it doesn't look good for the town kook.
Of course, the actual killer is closer than anyone else knows and his reasons are not what you would think...
Shockingly effective. Using the sets from Frankenstein and the Old Dark House, the film looks like a million bucks, plus the cast and the surprise twist marks this as a surprise gem of pre-code horror.
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