Wait a minute - that's how it ends? Where did all that water go? Then Kingsley (John Whitney) gives Gail (Sharon Douglas) the bum's rush out of the ex-pirate mansion and she's OK with leaving her step-father behind for the rest of her life without saying good bye? Yeah, I know, her step-father was dead, but she didn't know that. I have to say, the end of this picture felt like the film makers ran out their budget and they had to pull the plug on the last dime. Very disappointing.
What led up to the finale showed some promise, even if it was a bit far fetched. You had to accept the idea that the four former business associates of Leo Granger (George Zucco) would accept an invitation to his Fog Island home, knowing that he was out for revenge on the one or more who set him up for prison and killed his wife. Greed was supposed to be the motive but I'm not buying it. Would you accept that invitation?
The film had some of the same plot elements as Vincent Price's 1959 flick "House on Haunted Hill". There's the invitation for starters, and then you have the party favors Granger offers with his guests' first drink. That was curious though, as it seemed to me each person selected their own wrapped gift, and it turned out to be exactly the one that fit their particular circumstance. The basement even had a trap door, similar to Price's vat full of poison in the floor, and there was a skeleton down there! Was that supposed to be Karma? Yikes!
A lot of mystery films of the era seemed to rely heavily on characters spying on each other from just around the corner or from another room. In this one, everyone is doing it, and it got to the point where it was amusing because each character seemed to know the precise time he should be looking out for the next guy. Granger himself was all over the place, it's too bad he didn't make it to the end of the picture.
I wanted to like this one a lot more, just because you had George Zucco and Lionel Atwill in the same picture together, and as adversaries no less. That face to face moment between them was very sinister, but the payoff almost became a 'huh?' moment until you figured out Atwill just stabbed him. Zucco kept right on talking until he just stopped in mid sentence, and that was it!
I don't know, maybe they should have put a little more thought into this. It had some great potential with the great atmospherics and spooky subterranean cavern under the house. In the end, the thing that most impressed me was the title.
What led up to the finale showed some promise, even if it was a bit far fetched. You had to accept the idea that the four former business associates of Leo Granger (George Zucco) would accept an invitation to his Fog Island home, knowing that he was out for revenge on the one or more who set him up for prison and killed his wife. Greed was supposed to be the motive but I'm not buying it. Would you accept that invitation?
The film had some of the same plot elements as Vincent Price's 1959 flick "House on Haunted Hill". There's the invitation for starters, and then you have the party favors Granger offers with his guests' first drink. That was curious though, as it seemed to me each person selected their own wrapped gift, and it turned out to be exactly the one that fit their particular circumstance. The basement even had a trap door, similar to Price's vat full of poison in the floor, and there was a skeleton down there! Was that supposed to be Karma? Yikes!
A lot of mystery films of the era seemed to rely heavily on characters spying on each other from just around the corner or from another room. In this one, everyone is doing it, and it got to the point where it was amusing because each character seemed to know the precise time he should be looking out for the next guy. Granger himself was all over the place, it's too bad he didn't make it to the end of the picture.
I wanted to like this one a lot more, just because you had George Zucco and Lionel Atwill in the same picture together, and as adversaries no less. That face to face moment between them was very sinister, but the payoff almost became a 'huh?' moment until you figured out Atwill just stabbed him. Zucco kept right on talking until he just stopped in mid sentence, and that was it!
I don't know, maybe they should have put a little more thought into this. It had some great potential with the great atmospherics and spooky subterranean cavern under the house. In the end, the thing that most impressed me was the title.