Night of Terror ** (1933, Bela Lugosi, Sally Blane, Wallace Ford, Tully Marshall) – Classic Movie Review 10,453

‘A mad murdering midnight menace! ‘

Director Benjamin Stoloff’s quaintly entertaining 1933 Bryan Foy Productions/ Columbia Pictures Old Dark House murder mystery horror film Night of Terror [He Lived to Kill] [Terror in the Night] stars Bela Lugosi, Sally Blane, Wallace Ford, and Tully Marshall.

Despite top billing, Bela Lugosi unfortunately has a relatively small role as the mystic butler Degar at the spooky old family mansion where the heirs to a family fortune are required to attend a séance and being killed off one by one by a mad killer in a Night of Terror as the inheritance is split among the remaining survivors.

The cast are Bela Lugosi as Degar, Sally Blane as Mary Rinehart, Wallace Ford as Tom Hartley, Tully Marshall as Richard Rinehart, George Meeker as Professor Arthur Hornsby, Edwin Maxwell as The Maniac (end sequence only, with most the role played by an uncredited unknown actor), Gertrude Michael as Sarah Rinehart Mary Frey as Sika, Matt McHugh as Detective Bailey, and Bryant Washburn as John Rinehart.

Lugosi was filming International House by day and Night of Terror by night to try to extricate himself out of debt.

It returned to currency when it was part of the popular Son of Shock package of 20 titles released to US TV in 1958, which followed the original Shock Theater release of 52 films a year earlier, mostly Universal but some from Columbia.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,453

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