 Decemberdike # 8
The Climax (1944)
Boris Karloff plays a theatre physician who on hearing a new singer (Susanna Foster) is reminded of the fiancee he murdered ten years earlier out of obsession and jealousy, so he sets about seducing her to sing only for him and if she refuses...eek!
A nice atmosphere even if there's a little too much singing and aimless chatter in this riff on The Phantom of the Opera. (Seriously following Argento's Opera with another opera set film was bad planning by me). There's a reasonable amount of tension in Curt Siodmak's script but on the whole this is minor Karloff fayre when you consider the rest of the great man's output. He is however always a reason to watch films of this ilk.
Nice to see Turhan Bey in a slightly heroic leading man role rather than typecast as an Egyptian. The sets were the same ones as the 1943 Universal Phantom film so as you can imagine they look splendid.
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