Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

(Some Spoilers) Very probably the very first psycho or psychological murder mystery movie released in 1937 23 years before the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Psycho" with the person in question, the psycho, revealed almost as soon as he made his appearance in the film. We get to meet the cute and lovable Danny Boy, Robert Montgomery, when his girlfriend Dora, Merle Tottenham, tried to get her boss Mrs. Bramson, Dame May Ghitty, to act as a matchmaker for her and Danny who's been ignoring her, after promising to marry Dora, of late. Soon Mrs. Barmson forgets about Dora's love life and turns her attention to Danny Boy who's secretly turning the screws or his boyish charms on her. Just before Danny showed up a local woman Mrs.Shellbrook ended up missing in the woods and was feared to have been murdered by a escaped psycho from a nearby mental institution. It seemed that the only person who suspected Danny of being the murderer was Mrs. Barmson's niece Olivia Grayne, Rosaland Russell, who like her aunt and boss Mrs. Bramson fell under Danny's spell.Danny for his part kept on pushing his luck in his relationship with Mrs. Bramson is getting in real tight with the wheelchair ridden old lady where she soon looked upon him as her new found friend sweet Danny the Sailor Boy. Even though it later turned out that Danny's wasn't a sailor at all but in fact a butcher in how he treated his victim, Mrs. Shellbrook, or later victims. He decapitates them! It's when Mrs. Shellbrook's headless body is discovered that Olivia finally comes to the conclusion that it was non other then the sweet and lovable Danny Boy who murdered her. In fact Olivia was so stuck up on Danny that she even helped him cover up his crime by claiming the hat box where he kept Mrs. Shellbrook's severed head was in fact her's when Inspector Belsize,Matthew Boulton, asked Danny if he could examine it!****SPOILERS*** It was Danny's feeling of indestructibly that in the end did him in. Going so far as murdering his boss and benefactor Mrs.Bramson for no other reason then stealing her money, that amounted to about as little as 200 pound shilling, he turned his guns or meat cleaver on Olivia who just happened to come on the murder scene. The fatal mistake Danny made on his part was soon picked up by Olivia's boyfriend and the late Mrs. Bramson's family lawyer Justin Laurie, Alan Marshal, who got in touch with Inspector Belsize and the local police before Danny could go, kitchen knives and meat cleaver in hand, into action!

Olivia Grayne (Rosalind Russell), a prim-looking, bespectacled young woman in tweed skirts, twinsets, and sensible shoes, lives in a country house with her crabby aunt Mrs. Bramson (Dame May Witty) and suffers the indignity of being treated like a servant while employed as her aunt's companion. She is ardently pursued by her aunt's lawyer Justin Laurie (Alan Marshal, a ringer for Laurence Olivier), who is handsome and good. Frankly, I would have left with him long ago. He asks her to marry him and says, "Even if you don't love me, aren't I better than the old lady?" Indeed!! Olivia longs for some adventure or excitement in her life of drab monotony, but doesn't think it's ever going to happen.That changes when Dora, one of the maids, confesses tearfully to being "in trouble" by a messenger from another house. Mrs. Bramson agrees to see him to make him do right by the girl. Into their lives comes Danny (Robert Montgomery), a strutting Irish charmer whose silver tongue so enchants the old lady, she offers him a job. He nonchalantly agrees to marry the maid, like many sociopaths who toss off the answer they know needs to be said without any intention of actually doing so. Indeed, soon enough Danny is taking dinner with the ladies of the house and being served by the maid presumably carrying his baby.Olivia sees right through Danny from the start. She becomes interested in him, though, because he's good-looking, different, and has that dangerous bad-boy vibe going on. But she's also repulsed my his servile attitude to the old cantankerous battle-axe and his facile way with the truth. Nonetheless, after he tells her she would be prettier "without them glasses on," we don't see her wearing them much.When the lady of the house from his previous employment turns up dead, nude, and decapitated in the woods, Danny seems to know her far too intimately to have been just her servant. Olivia twigs onto this immediately, and has her suspicions. Olivia wonders what is in the hatbox under the bed that is much too heavy for a hat and why he's never unpacked his things. Nonetheless, Olivia saves his bacon when the police inspector wants to look through his things and she claims his hatbox as her own. She feels a little sorry for him and we guess that even she doesn't know quite why she did this.There's a lot of sexual tension between Danny and Olivia. This is played out in quite a charged fashion in the kitchen scene. Olivia goes to make tea because she can't sleep. Danny is also awake, troubled by something. He hears someone in the kitchen, goes to investigate, and scares the bejesus out of Olivia. He pegs her spot on, telling her, "You want adventure, don't you? It's right here in this house, right here in this kitchen, with the two of us, alone here, at this time of night. It's exciting, isn't it?" He tells her, as she is breathing hard and blushing, that she's never been alone with a chap like him but she likes it, and it's a secret part of her she never knew existed. He comes closer to her, close enough to kiss…It's true, she is excited. But it's dangerous too, and she knows it. I won't spoil the scene for you; you'll have to see it for yourself.This was the first performance I had seen Montgomery give. I went back and saw his romantic comedies and then saw this again. He is wonderful in it, and indeed was nominated for an Academy Award. His Irish accent is very good. His demeanor as the insouciant servant who starts out mouthing platitudes to all and sundry and by the end of the story is displaying his contempt of them is very well-played. His good looks worked for him in this role, as who would believe someone so handsome would be a killer? Indeed, would many women have cuddled up with Ted Bundy had he looked creepy and frightening? That's just how sociopaths work; and Montgomery pretty much nails it. Russell is good as well in the kind of role that would be left in the dust as she moved on the screwball comedies in just a few years. Dame May Witty, as the malingering old biddy, is too perfect with her complaints of palpitations, bosom-clutching, and rattling around in a wheelchair she clearly doesn't need. Her hysterics late in the film, when everyone has left her alone and she has the "jitters," is classically comical.The story holds up but some of the film's flaws include staginess and talkiness (over two hours long). You can tell it started life as a play because most of the action takes place in one room from which all others open off. I also found heavy-handed the device of using threatening music when Danny enters the room. Also, mention is made that the body has not been found yet and promptly there is a scream from offstage and a policeman rushes in to use the phone to report that the body has indeed been found. Stagy! It doesn't quite hold up to thriller standards by today's viewpoint but still atmospheric, and the set design is beautiful and the performances, especially Montgomery's, are well worth seeing. In fact, this role was not given to Montgomery as some sort of punishment by MGM, as suggested by another post. Louis B. Mayer was astounded Montgomery wanted to play this type of role at all, and Bob had to fight for it. If all you know of him is the fluffy romantic movies where he waltzed around pretty women and said things like, "I love you, and you love me too, admit it," do see him acting quite differently in this film.

Note: I am unsure as to whether my comments about Mongomery here are a spoiler, so rather than be blacklisted, I submitted it as "spoiler," although one would have to be a bit dense not to see where the film is going.Now to what I gave to say: If you don't think Robert Mongomery can act, see this film. If you do think he can act, see this film. This is very close to being a classic, low key thriller with even an unusual twist about the dark side of one of the "upright" characters thrown in as highly believable depiction of the complex nature of the psyche. The other members of the cast, Rosalind and the rest, are just great. It seems to be in the Hitchock vein and to really outdo the "master," at least in my opinion. For me, this was an entirely different Robert Mongomery than any of the characters I've seen him play. He is simultaneously credibly charming and sinister. And I do mean "credible." He most certainly deserves kudos for his role.

I have seen this film a couple of times, if only for the sinister, multi-faceted performance of Robert Montgomery (Elizabeth's father), but, as someone previously noted, it is an old play and it certainly creaks from time to time. A horrible crime is committed in a small English town; a local woman has been found dead, her head missing. There are no suspects, and the police are alerted for a maniac roaming the area. Rosalind Russell is a prim, bookish young woman staying with Dame May Witty, her petulant, wheelchair-bound aunt. The aunt makes demands of her niece, and tends to be full of unctuous self-pity. Robert Montgomery appears on the scene as Danny, an Irish dandy who is dating one of the old lady's maids. He soon charms Dame May, who hires him on as her helper and general syncophant - flattering her, and giving in to all her petty whims with a smile and a smooth air. Rosalind Russell does not trust him, and lets her dislike of him show, but there seems to be an undercurrent of attraction to him at the same time. Despite her distrust, she leaves her aunt alone with him to visit her lover in town, and the horribly inevitable occurs. I found several holes in this so-called "thriller". One is: if she did not trust him, and wondered about his past, and noted some instability in his personality -- why leave a defenseless old lady alone with him? Why were the police not more suspicious of a newcomer in town, and not more strident in their investigation of him? And, a most unpleasant truth, if indeed he had that missing body part in the infamous hatbox, why didn't the scent of decay (let's be realistic here) permeate that small cottage? That alone would have sent him to the gallows much sooner, as it would have been immediately noticed. So there was a little too much dramatic license here. If you've seen the later remake with Albert Finney - another fine actor who also imbued Danny's character with a very sinister psychosis - you'll find the same stretches of credibility here that detracted from the finale of this drama. It's good watching for the fine character actors in the cast, but not something that I'd think would scare the tar out of you if you examine it closely.