In Mystery of the Wax Museum, bodies are mysteriously disappearing all over the town, and a new wax museum has just opened. Is there a connection? But of course! In this horror classic, Fay Wray (King Kong) stars as the intended victim of a mad wax sculptor obsessed by her resemblance to one of his prior creations.
Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon (1942) starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Lionel Atwill
In Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon, Sherlock Holmes battles his nemesis Professor Moriarty. This time, to keep him away from a newly developed bomb sight the English hope to use on Hitler.
Night Monster (1942), starring Ralph Morgan, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill
In Night Monster, Kurt Ingston is a rich recluse. He invites the doctors who left him a hopeless cripple to his desolate mansion in the swamps. And one by one, they meet horrible deaths. But who can be killing them? Is the answer supernatural?
The Vampire Bat (1933) starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas, Dwight Frye, Robert Frazer
Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas, and Lionel Atwill in The Vampire Bat
In The Vampire Bat, people are dying in the small German town of Kleinschloss. They are found dead in bed and drained of blood. So, Burgermeister Gustave Schoen (Lionel Belmore) and Dr Otto von Niemann (Lionel Atwill ) think that vampires are at large. But Detective Karl Brettschneider (Melvyn Douglas) thinks otherwise. Suspicion falls on village idiot Herman Gleib (Dwight Frye), known for befriending bats. When the townsfolk attempt to capture him, Herman panics and falls off into a deep well. He is killed, and the townspeople finish the job by driving a stake through his heart. Still, the vampire attacks don’t stop.
Captain Blood (1935), starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill, Basil Rathbone, directed by Michael Curtiz
Synopsis of Captain Blood
“Aye, me Buckos!” Errol Flynn (“The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “The Dawn Patrol“) made his swashbuckling debut as a dashing young Irish physician who is exiled into slavery by a tyrannical governor.Read More »Captain Blood
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Richard Greene, Lionel Atwill
Product review of The Hound of the Baskervilles
The most famous of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles canon is The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was originally released by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1939. It’s the first of fourteen Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.
House of Frankenstein (1944), starring Boris Karloff, John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr., J. Carrol Naish, Glenn Strange, Lionel Atwill, Anne Gwynne, Peter Coe
Synopsis of House of Frankenstein
House of Frankenstein is the first of the Universal Studios monster mashes. In short, mad scientist Niemann and “friend Daniel” his hunchback assistant escape prison and enact a series of revenges on the people who had him imprisoned. They murder a proprietor of a travelling show of horrors, impersonate him and revive his corpse of Dracula. Dracula succeeds in the first part of the revenge scheme, but Niemann abandons him to be destroyed in the sunlight. Niemann then travels to the ruins of Frankenstein’s castle. He hopes to recover the dead doctor’s secrets, but instead recovers both the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster. He revives them both, but a romantic triangle unravels the plot.