The Scotland Yard Mystery (1934)
Lovely Gothic proto Noir about a mad doctor (are there any other kind?) who operates insurance scams by giving his victims a drug which suspends life by putting the recipient into a state of catalepsy, turning them into the living dead.
The Scotland Yard Mystery isn't really a mystery as we know who the villain is in the first act, what it is though is a superior and beautifully macabre thriller with strong Poe influences.
All that lets it down are one or two performances, mainly women, who are too stagy especially in their clipped delivery of dialogue, although i soon got used to it and it didn't really prove too distracting.
Considering it's era and it being British, this is a match for Hollywood of the time.
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