A village is in terror. Its townsfolk are being murdered, one by one, and drained of their blood by an unseen, silent force. Are vampires on the loose? Could it be an epidemic of flying, blood-sucking bats? Or perhaps it’s some other mysterious, demonic creature? No to all of these: it’s Lionel Atwill, at his maniacal best as Dr. Otto Von Niemann, the town’s respected physician. The good doctor is actually quite mad: he’s obsessed with creating life in his laboratory, which is crammed with elaborate, bizarre-looking paraphernalia, and he orders his assistant to commit murder and procure for him the raw materials that will further his evil plans. Fay Wray is on hand in a sole she was repeatedly required to play in the early 1930s: the damsel-in-distress. Melvyn Douglas is fine as the hero, who ever-so-rightly senses that neither bats nor vampires are the culprit. He’s convinced that a human being is behind the crimes – but which human being? 63 minutes