Review – The Black Room

Boris Karloff plays twins in this clever thriller from 1935. The older (by a minute or two) brother inherits the family barony, but he turns out to be a killer, a rapist and a general, all-around jerk. Years earlier his younger brother fled in order to avoid a family curse that says he’ll kill his sibling by throwing him into a pit in a chamber in the family castle called the Black Room. But after younger sib is lured back, older sib appears to break the curse by murdering first. It’s a scheme with potential: win back the support of his rebellious people by pretending to be his kindly younger brother. Unfortunately he just can’t seem to give up his jackass ways, and he swiftly ends up right back in trouble again. This picture hits Karloff right at the perfect point in his career. The production doesn’t suffer from too many of the technical weaknesses of the early talkies, and he isn’t playing the mad scientist role into which he got typecast later in his career. Though nobody is likely to walk away from this thinking, “wow, what a brilliant movie,” it manages to be reasonably entertaining. Mildly amusing