Rainey Dawn This movie is slow & corny. It's not a good film but does have enough strangeness to be slightly entertaining in a boring sort of way. Overall the film is, well, boring. There are moments of slightly weird entertainment.Some of the film posters for the movie shows what appears to be a gorilla but it is not a gorilla - it is a chimpanzee named Yogi that is screeching and escapes into the rest of the house.The acting is stiff - very wooden, the plot & story are weak and the overall scariness is zero. This movie I can say is easy to pass up because you are not missing anything if you do decide to pass over this film. If you do decide to watch this movie - don't expect much out of it because there is very little entertainment to get out of this film.2/10

mark.waltz If there was ever an award for "worst ensemble", this film would have won that prize for 1932. Everybody speaks as if they are reciting a dictionary filled with words they can't pronounce, as if the director was timing each of their lines to reach a certain point When the fastest speaker is "Sleep n' Eat" (aka Willie Best), you know that the film is moving along slower than a snail in a swamp. Had everybody spoken their lines at a normal speed, the film would have been 20 minutes shorter than its hour long running time.This "old dark house" movie utilizes elements already old hat in talkie horror films (an invalid patriarch, a heroine in peril, sinister servants, even a gorilla living in the basement), and you just know that a hair-covered hand is going to pop out of a wall to grab the heroine as she sleeps. A violin playing shadow will instantly make you think of Cloris Leachman in Frau Brucher in "Young Frankenstein".Mischa Auer can't make up his mind whether his character is a slow-witted servant or sinister red herring. He takes the wacko that Dwight Frye played in "Dracula" to a new level of ridiculousness. Vera Reynolds' heroine is so dull and the dialog so non-campy and the identity of the perpetrator so obvious that you will figure it all out within the first 10 minutes of the film.

Michael_Elliott The Monster Walks (1932) ** (out of 4) It's rather amazing at how many films would follow after The Bat was released in 1926 and kicked off the "old dark house" genre. This time a daughter returns to her father's house after his death so that she can hear the will being read. Everything starts off okay but soon a killer is stalking everyone with the help of a gorilla. I'm still rather curious why every "old dark house" from this period featured a gorilla. I'm going to guess that movie crowds back then were scared of them as I don't see why they should play such an important part in these films. Nothing really stands out in this film, although the running time is just over 60-minutes. The performances are decent but nothing special and the story itself doesn't offer enough twists to be entertaining. God knows there are far worse than this out there but then again there are much better ones. The racial humor from a servant (named Sleep 'N Eat) is off base and doesn't really help matters.

mrush This is an old black and white film from the early 1930's.The setting is an old house and at night with a storm brewing outside.It has some good elements but in the end it's ruined by just not being very exciting.You get all the elements of a horror film from that time---stormy night,old gloomy house ,skulky characters and ,of course,the reading of a will from a dead man and the ensuing darting eyes after each learns of what he got ,or didn't get, as the case may be.A young women returns to her childhood home after her father dies.She ,along with her doctor boyfriend,arrive on a stormy night for the reading of the father's will at the old darkly lit home.The young woman's crippled uncle,her dad's bother,still lives there along with a tall weird bony old housekeeper/nanny and her equally creepy bony son.Also in the mix is the dead man's lawyer who is there to read the will.And the doctor's driver is also there.One of the unfortunate things about this film is the driver is a typical black character of that era.....slow shuffling bug-eyed fellow with the horrid name of Sleep N' Eat ,altho he is also called Exodus.To top it all off the weird dark old house consists of a nasty dirty looking chimp locked in a cage in the basement.So after the will is read and they all learn the daughter gets everything they all are forced to stay there since the storm is so bad.The nanny and the weird son are peeved cause they got pretty much screwed in the will after many years of drudgery in this old house taking care of two old sick men. During the night murder and mayhem ensues and they suspect the ape in the basement but each time they run downstairs he seems to be locked in his cage cage,or is he? Then they start to suspect each other of the attacks but then next time something happens they suspect the ape again.The doctor and lawyer naturally lead the investigation into the choking attacks and murders.I'm not sure why but it seems always in these old horror films a doctor ,lawyer or newspaper reporter is always doing the crime solving.Altho it's creepy looking and not an absolute waste this film doesn't make much sense.Why would the family keep a pet ape? The young woman is terribly scared of the ape and says it would surely kill her if it escaped it's cage.And how did this young woman grow up normal after being raised in this dark gloomy old house by a gloomy old nanny with the constant fear of being killed by some screaming howling ape locked up in the basement?Why wasn't the police called? All in all this wasn't a complete waste but it doesn't have much to recommend it either.It's totally a period piece,implausible and silly, and the last few unfortunate scenes involving Sleep N' Eat will make your skin crawl more than the rest of the film does put together.The horrible racism in this film was a normal and accepted part of films from that era and that is the really scary thing.The usual bad acting and bad script is here, and I was prepared for those things, but to see a human being degraded for the amusement of the movie goer isn't something you get used to.It ruined what otherwise would have been just a silly little schlocky movie turning it into a sad reminder of how far we've come but how so very far we have yet to go.