Creaky, old fashioned gothic melodrama loosely based on an early short story by Robert Louis Stephenson. The plot is slight and outré and implausible, but still functional, augmented by the rich period set design, with the shadowy secret passages, devious torture devises and the dark, dangerous dungeons.
The ripe dialogue is effective in the context. But best of all are the theatrical, scenery chewing performances. And that’s mostly Charles Laughton as an insidious ham… who plays a decadent, malign French aristocrat intending to punish his imprisoned brother by making his lovely daughter (Sally Foster) marry a dissolute waster.
Richard Stapely is charismatic as the latter, enough to suggest he might have developed into a B-picture Errol Flynn. Except this kind of film was in decline and Universal horror production about to be turned over to sci-fi. Boris Karloff has a minor role, but brings some old school class, and memorably takes a full 10 minutes to die from bullet and stab wounds!
Everyone enters into the spirit… It was made in a co-production with The Black Castle (1952) which is similar, but not as good. My hunch is this was intended for the teenage horror crowd, which no longer exists for this sort of period melodrama. But it’s still fine entertainment for aficionados of the virtues of the classic studio era.