Breakout at the insane asylum: No one knows how the dangerous inmate escaped, but while the sheriff and warden stand discussing it, the escapee sneaks into the sheriff's rumble seat and waits to be driven off the grounds.
The dim sheriff heads over to the mansion where the escaped killer's sister lives. He tells Aunt Lorinda to watch out for her crazy brother but she says she's not afraid of him--and we soon discover that it was she who actually arranged the escape. She needs her brother's help: All their greedy relatives are coming over and she is going to test them to decide if she should leave them her money. She assigns the crazy brother to pose as a butler and they wait for visitors.
Milton Parsons is a little creepy but mostly just goofy as the insane brother. Cecil Cunningham is enthusiastically unbalanced as rich old Aunt Lorinda. Her scheme to test the relatives seems promising and includes an odd sequence in which she takes a sleeping potion to convince everyone that she is already dead. Unfortunately the relatives are generally a bit bland, as are the handsome young lawyer and secretary (Craig Stevens and Elizabeth Fraser) who strike up a romance while also trying to investigate. Willie Best is stuck as usual playing the timid servant who is scared of everything.
It's a passable plot even if there's nothing real original about it. Overall, unfortunately, it just doesn't quite work....It's not really funny enough to be a comedy or scary enough to be a thriller. This Warner Bros. B production looks polished but it might have worked better as one of those unabashedly amateurish bargain basement PRC productions.
The dim sheriff heads over to the mansion where the escaped killer's sister lives. He tells Aunt Lorinda to watch out for her crazy brother but she says she's not afraid of him--and we soon discover that it was she who actually arranged the escape. She needs her brother's help: All their greedy relatives are coming over and she is going to test them to decide if she should leave them her money. She assigns the crazy brother to pose as a butler and they wait for visitors.
Milton Parsons is a little creepy but mostly just goofy as the insane brother. Cecil Cunningham is enthusiastically unbalanced as rich old Aunt Lorinda. Her scheme to test the relatives seems promising and includes an odd sequence in which she takes a sleeping potion to convince everyone that she is already dead. Unfortunately the relatives are generally a bit bland, as are the handsome young lawyer and secretary (Craig Stevens and Elizabeth Fraser) who strike up a romance while also trying to investigate. Willie Best is stuck as usual playing the timid servant who is scared of everything.
It's a passable plot even if there's nothing real original about it. Overall, unfortunately, it just doesn't quite work....It's not really funny enough to be a comedy or scary enough to be a thriller. This Warner Bros. B production looks polished but it might have worked better as one of those unabashedly amateurish bargain basement PRC productions.