Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Sanjeev Waters A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Rainey Dawn This is one of John Carradine's best performances and movies. This is a very dark and eerie crime horror-thriller. Worth watching! Gaston Morel (Carradine) is a starving artist (painter and puppeteer) who kills the women he paints. This killer is only known as Bluebeard until the police solve the mystery. The question is why does he kill? This is one of those type of films that would be great to watch one dark & stormy night! There are no terrifying monsters to see but there is a murderous human killing young innocent women.If you like horror crime-thrillers you might want to make "Bluebeard" a double feature with a movie like "Invisible Ghost (1941)". 8.5/10

Martin Teller Atmospheric period noir, not unlike Brahm's pair of Laird Cregar pictures, with John Carradine doing a fantastic job in the mysterious and haunted Cregar role. Ulmer brings his German expressionist roots with him, crafting some wonderfully off-kilter sequences and areas rich with sharp, deep shadows. The story is tight but not rushed, and the piece as a whole has a creepy mood to it, with a compelling central character. There are two problems, one small and one large. The smaller one is Teala Loring, not the lead female role (which is done quite nicely by Jean Parker) but a fairly significant one, and her delivery is godawful. The larger problem is the score by Leo Erdody. It's not a particularly bad score, but it's layered over single second of the film and mixed very high in the soundtrack. It's far too distracting and overwhelming. I kept waiting for the orchestra to take a break, just for a goddamn minute. Otherwise it's a good film, but once you realize the music is continually going it's hard not to keep thinking about it.

Robert J. Maxwell PRC wasn't a studio that produced lavish films with expensive stars and sets, "based on a best seller," or musicals with talented performers singing their hearts out in OverwhelmiColor. Like many studios on poverty row it ground out cheap black-and-white B features, mostly mysteries and detective stories, with B list actors and hurried craftsmen behind the camera.This "Bluebeard" is set in Paris in the late 1800s, this is pretty typical except for a few points. As for the title, forget it. It's called "Bluebeard" because the potential audience might have recognized the name, but that's all. It has nothing to do with historical reality. It's a serial killer movie, rather more like a Jack-the-Ripper tale. A painter develops a habit of killing all his models and dumping them in the Seine. He falls in love with the sister of his last victim, is pursued by the police, and falls from a rooftop into the river.John Carradine is the painter, Gaston Morel. (They didn't even bother with the historical name of the real murderer.) Carradine has a face that seems made for the camera. Well, either the camera or the horse track. You have never seen such a drooping splanchnocranium. Carradine was commonly used as a bit or supporting player in Hollywood movies, sometimes fairly good ones like "The Grapes of Wrath," in which he appears prominently. He's less convincing as a passionate ghoul than as a disillusioned preacher.Few people will recognize the rest of the faces in the cast. Ludwig Stossel was busy enough as an actor but he's hidden behind a beard here. (Bluebeard himself has no beard, blue or otherwise.) However, in its last half hour or so the film becomes visually more interesting. Throughout, the director, Edgar G. Ulmer, uses that baby spot on people's eyes that he was so fond of in "Detour." But as the drama intensifies, Ulmer begins to tilt his camera and otherwise disjoint our line of sight, using shadows and pillars. The exteriors borrow heavily from German expressionism. The production design was the work of Ulmer and his photographer, Eugen Schufftan, who's name is famous and who worked on some outstanding productions. Schufftan did "Menschen am Sonntag" before having to flee Germany and he won an Academy Award for "The Hustler." The original music is pedestrian -- generic thriller or romantic -- but Leo Erdody at least had the good sense to graft onto this story of a mad artist a lot of music from Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition." It's not just highbrow or a grinning nod towards Mussorgsky's ghost. It saves a lot of time and trouble for the guy writing the score if he can just rip off someone else, so it's practical too. You want highbrow? There's that bust of Socrates in the artist's garret, the bust with the chipped nose. At least I think it's Socrates. It may be Charles Laughton with the beard that rightly belonged to Landru.Mostly, this is a routine and often boring murder story with some original touches sprinkled through the tale that lift it slightly above average in entertainment value. Of course, for black-and-white movie buffs and Ulmer fans, it's required viewing.

dougdoepke A PRC poverty row production that makes the most of its limited budget. A lot of credit should go to production designers Eugene Shufftan and Edgar Ulmer who collaborated on the movie's sumptuous look. Even when the middle part drags, the visuals remain arresting. Note too how the meagre exterior sets are stylized to make up for the limitations. Of course, cult director Ulmer was no stranger to transforming army surplus material into artistic effects. The overall result is an atmospheric recreation of 19th century Paris. Making Carradine's Bluebeard a puppeteer is a novel and interesting wrinkle. Then too, I can't help thinking there is more plot potential in continuing with Bluebeard the puppet master than in shifting the story line over to Bluebeard the painter, as the screenplay does. Nonetheless, those early scenes in the park are good ones. However, the cadaverous actor who can be as florid and intense as anyone seems a little too understated here. While physically he looks the part of the grim reaper, Carradine is simply no good as a simpering lover, while too many of his scenes lack the menace the role calls for. Unfortunately, the result compares unfavorably, for example, with Laird Cregar's riveting Jack the Ripper in that Gothic thriller The Lodger of the same year. It appears Ulmer is much more the visual artist than the thespic coach.Nonetheless, the movie remains an interesting curiosity. Consider the sheer wackiness of presenting Iris Adrian whose cheap Brooklyn accent can barely be disguised as a Parisian. Still, it does amount to an amusing turn. Also, note the off-angle camera staging of Carradine's flashback sequence, which is both effective in identifying the sequence and artfully composed. Such camera effects were hardly a Hollywood staple at a time when producers generally felt they would confuse the audience.Of course, there's the question that always arises for fans of Ulmer. What would he have done with an A-budget and A-material in a career spent in the lower depths of Hollywood production. Hard to say-- perhaps he needed the challenge of PRC-type constraints. However, I think it's fair to say that none of his poverty row productions are without genuine points of interest and entertainment, and-- as is the case with Bluebeard-- may even rise at times to artistic levels.