Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

simeon_flake Well--as big a fan as I am of Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre--this was one of their few features that I had never seen, until getting Karloff's "Icons of Horror Collection." Anything featuring Karloff and Lorre together has promise, so this was the first feature I viewed & I can say despite the mixed reviews here, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I see many have brought up "Arsenic and Old Lace" & I guess I can see some similarities between the two.I think this works best if you view it as a wild farce--which it is, sending up what had to be many of Karloff's "mad doctor" roles & Peter Lorre is quite the hoot as the town sheriff/coroner/justice of the peace/mayor, hell, whatever title you can think, Lorre is all of them.Maxie Rosenbloom provides some great laughs as well as one of the unwitting subjects of Mad Boris' experiments in trying to create a race of "Super Soldiers." And if you're a longtime Three Stooges fan like myself, you may get a kick out of seeing James C. Morton and Frank Sully appearing as 2 fumbling policemen late in the movie.Overall, I enjoyed it immensely.9 stars

Neil Doyle Only afterward did I realize this must have been inspired by the screwball farce ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, but the script, unfortunately, lacks the comic finesse and wit of that film. This might have looked good on paper--take an old, crumbling Colonial inn, have a woman purchase it, fill it with odd characters and a mysterious doctor who keeps his secrets in a cellar, and lo and behold you've got another hit.Alas, none of the humor is even remotely adult. You almost expect the Three Stooges to show up at any moment. Instead, we have Larry Parks show up to play the only slightly sane character in the cast. The sprightly Jeff Donnell is his ditsy ex-wife and she manages to keep her poise while playing the comedy with a few deft touches of her own.Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre do what they can to inject some vitality and humor into a witless script but everything is so overdone that by the time Maxie Rosenbloom shows up I had to throw in the towel. Too much for me.Summing up: Unless you don't mind the sophomoric humor, watch it at your own peril.

MARIO GAUCI Obviously inspired by (but certainly no match for) the theatrical success of the legendary black farce, ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (co-starring Boris Karloff) - whose film version, featuring Peter Lorre(!), had been shot but not yet released - the film can also be seen as a spoof on Karloff's "Mad Doctor" cycle of films (which, unfortunately, I've yet to sample myself!) he had just finished for the same studio, Columbia; the film also touches upon the wartime situation by having Karloff's mysterious experiments emerge as a crackpot attempt to aid the war effort! At first I wasn't particularly enthused with it, but gradually the film settled into being a pleasant diversion, with the two stars making a truly wonderful team (a surprisingly bemused Karloff still manages to retain his dignity while Lorre, typically shady and nervy at the same time, gives it his all as the jack-of-all-trades of a remote small town); Lorre has a tiny but intuitive Siamese cat for an assistant, which he carries along in the inside pocket of his coat!Still, the film is more silly than funny: there is, of course, a bland romantic couple (the male half of which is Larry Parks, later to achieve short-lived fame portraying Al Jolson in the two Columbia biopics of the great entertainer!) and the rest of the cast play either goofy or eccentric characters but, alas, none is all that engaging!! Besides, given the low-budget which must have been afforded the production, the laboratory design and the special effects are pretty shoddy!

dellascott2004 This film was quite enjoyable for what it was. A cockeyed optimist(Miss Jeff Daniels) buys a rundown colonial era inn with high hopes and decides to allow the current inhabitants, among them a scientist working on a device that will help the Allies win the war(Boris Karloff)and an old woman who obsesses about chickens, to stay on. Her bumbling ex-husband has followed her. The scientist is soon joined by the sheriff/coroner/justice of the peace (and purveyor of baldness cures),played by Peter Lorre. The big question is: Is there are or aren't there a room full of corpses in a secret room off the wine cellar? They have been experimenting on travelling salesmen who happen by the house,using the standard bulb- and- helmet type of contraption that should be familiar to moviegoers. Lorre's character packs a huge pistol and keeps a Siamese kitten in his pocket, claiming that "she has a incredible sense for crime and corruption." Good thing.