Fans of Boris Karloff are in for double the pleasure with this early Columbia film. He portrays twin brothers, and though the good versus evil twin concept has been done before and since, Karloff gives it a neat twist based on legend and prophesy. With the titled 'Black Room' lending the picture a mysterious and frightful backdrop, an ancient curse proclaims that a younger brother will one day rise to slay the older. I thought it fairly clever that Gregor de Berghman would renounce his barony only to turn around and victimize poor Anton to remain in power and win over the lovely Thea Hassle (Marian Marsh). Gregor's dispatching of Anton lent new meaning to giving his brother the shaft, and for a while there, I was holding out hope that Anton would have survived his ordeal and found a way out of his predicament. But dead is dead as they say, and Gregor would soon enough get his. The fun was in trying to figure out how the younger Anton would eventually fulfill the ancient curse. There was nothing in the rule book that said he had to be alive to do it, which gave the picture an ironic and fitting conclusion.
Review of The Black Room
