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War-torn Greece, 1912: General Pherides (Boris Karloff), otherwise
known as the watchdog for his uncompromising attitude, uses a lull in
combat to make a trip with his reporter friend Oliver (Marc Cramer) to a
nearby cemetery island to visit the grave of his wife. To his utter
surprise, her coffin is empty, and the uninhabited island is all of a
sudden inhabited - by a Swiss archeologist, Albrecht (Jason Robards sr),
who lives in a mansion where he entertains a circle of illustruous guests
... and he insists for the general and Oliver to stay overnight, just for
a bit of change. Then though, one of the other guests (Skelton Knaggs)
dies from plague. Pherides immediately seizes command of the situation,
forbids everyone to leave, has a doctor (Ernst Dorian) from the mainland
come over, and figures this way he will have the plague contained in no
time - no such luck, only a day or two later, the doctor is one of the
first to die from the plague. This is made all the worst for Pherides
because he blames himself for the doctor's death ... and now he makes the
mistake to listen to a local woman, Madame Kyra (Helene Thimig), who tells
him this is all the work of a local wolf spirit, the Vorvolaka, which has
found a host in young and pretty Thea (Ellen Drew), incidently the girl
Oliver has fallen for. Pherides now leaves no opportunity unused to bully
Thea around, threaten her, and sabotage any and all attempts of her and
Oliver to leave the island. Everything comes to a head when Mrs St.Aubin
(Katherine Emery), Thea's employer, dies, and she's quickly locked away in
the crypt. But she's not really dead but only in a state of catalepsy, and
eventually, she comes to finding herself nailed into a box ... In the
meantime, the wind has turned, which means the end of the plague (at least
according to the film's logic), but Pherides has already been hit by the
illness and knows he has to die soon. However, also driven by Madame Kyra,
he has made it his mission to kill Thea before dying. Then though, Mrs
St.Aubin manages to free herself from her box, and now she's mad as a
hatter and kills both Pherides and Kyra before taking her own life. This
film starts out quite wonderfully, as a psychodrama with horror and old
dark house overtones, carried by some really nice performances. But once
everything is set up as well as can be, the whole thing goes to hell,
plotwise: The whole supernatural (or should we say superstitious)
undercurrents come along as nothing short of silly, Boris Karloff's
character is pretty much devoid of interesting motivation, something not
even an actor of his caliber is able to butter over, and quite a few major
clues (like Mrs St.Aubin's catalepsy) are given away way too soon to
properly work. And the finale including happy ending seems to be merely
pulled out of a hat rather than worked towards. That said, the film is
still plenty atmospheric, but damn, the script could have done with a
workover!
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