The Ghost Walks (1934) - Video On Demand

The Ghost Walks - Movie Review

The Ghost Walks, is a mystery-horror tale that is just short of being a good burlesque. A playwright lures a producer to an eerie mansion in the wilds and, without letting him in on the secret, proceeds to stage the murder play he is trying to sell. A homicidal maniac gets into the house and literally steals the show.

While driving from New York to the vacation home of playwright Prescott Ames on a stormy night, the car carrying Ames, theatrical producer Herman Wood, and his effeminate secretary, Homer Erskine, breaks down. They walk toward the nearest lighted building, the home of Dr. Kent, where Ames's fiancée, Gloria Shaw, happens to be staying along with Terry Gray, who refuses to take Gloria's engagement seriously, and his sister Beatrice, a psychic. Beatrice, who is being treated by Dr. Kent, walks through the house in a trance because her husband John was murdered exactly three years before. Dr. Kent hopes to expose the culprit during the evening, and, when a blood stain mysteriously appears on the dinner tablecloth, Beatrice insists that John has joined them at the table. After the candles blow out and a ghostly face appears in the darkness, Wood and Erskine flee in terror upstairs, where they find the script of Ames's latest play, "The Ghost Walks," and realize that they have just seen its first act.

But then an escaped lunatic enters the house, and starts rewriting the play, while Wood and Erskine think that the madman's attempts at murdering various cast members is just part of the play. In a great line, one of the other characters exclaims "These fools think we are putting on a play for their benefit!"

By 1934 director Frank R. Strayer was already an experienced craftsman in the Poverty row side of the film industry, but his partnership with writer Charles Belden would give him a couple of his most interesting movies, and "The Ghost Walks" was one of them. While obviously done on a shoestring budget and the typical production values of independent films of its time, Strayer manages to take advantage of his set and makes an atmospheric movie that fits nicely the mood and tone of the story.

One could say that Charles Belden is an unsung hero of the murder mystery genre, as among the many horror and mystery films that came out the B movie studios nicknamed as "the Poverty Row", "The Ghost Walks" is easily among the best (alongisde Strayer's previous film, "The Vampire Bat") despite its shortcomings. And even when it's definitely not a masterpiece of the genre, it's a nice way to spend a night enjoying the way it pokes fun at its own origin as a murder mystery play. A very recommended film if you like the genre.

The Ghost Walks - Cast & Crew

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