Behind the Mask *** (1932, Jack Holt, Boris Karloff, Edward Van Sloan, Constance Cummings) – 5641

‘A Slinking Fiend – Skulking Terror – Mad Murder! Who is the murdering monster?’ Director John Francis Dillon’s eerie and involving 1932 crime/mystery horror thriller re-teams both Boris Karloff and Edward Van Sloan from Frankenstein (1931).

Jack Holt stars as an undercover US Federal Secret Service agent who is trying to unmask a crazy doctor, the mysterious Mr X (Van Sloan), who is fatally operating on those who know too much about his drug smuggling ring. At Mr X’s bogus hospital, folk are being killed on the operating table, put in coffins filled with narcotics, and buried in a cemetery.

Director Dillon atmospherically uses graveyards, stormy nights and creepy laboratories to conjure up the right chilling horror mood. Karloff plays the menacing Jim Henderson and Constance Cummings also stars as Julie Arnold.

Jo Swerling’s screenplay is based on Swerling’s story In the Secret Service.

Also in the cast are Thomas E Jackson as Agent Burke, Claude King as Arnold, Bertha Mann as Nurse Edwards and Willard Robertson as Captain E J Hawkes.

It is shot in black and white by Ted Tetzlaff and produced by Harry Cohn for Columbia Pictures.

Karloff and Van Sloan are also in Before I Hang (1940) together.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5641

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