Director – R. [Roy] William Neill, Screenplay – Henry Myers & Arthur Strawn, Story – Arthur Strawn, Photography (b&w) – Allen G. Siegler, Art Direction – Stephen Goosson. Production Company – Columbia.
Boris Karloff (Baron Gregor de Berghman/Anton de Berghman), Marian Marsh (Thea Hassel), Thurston Hall (Colonel Hassel), Robert Allen (Lieutenant Lussan), Katherine de Mille (Mashka), Henry Kolker (Baron de Berghman)
Europe, around the turn of the 18th Century. The Baron de Berghman is fearful after his wife gives birth to two twin boys. A prophecy says that the one twin will kill the other in the castle’s black room. To prevent this, The Baron orders the black room bricked up. 1836. The older brother Gregor has become the Baron following the death of his father. He now recalls his twin brother Anton from his studies. Anton hears rumours of Gregor’s cruelty and how he takes the women of the area, but refuses to believe them. Facing a peasant uprising against him, Gregor agrees to abdicate in favour of Anton. Gregor then reveals to Anton that he has opened up the black room. He pushes Anton down the well in the room, revealing that he brought Anton back for the purpose of disposing of and then masquerading as him.
Boris Karloff became a major horror icon after his role as the monster in Frankenstein (1931). He and Bela Lugosi quickly became the leading names in the films of the so-called Golden Age of Horror. The Black Room was one of the films that quickly made use of Karloff – Karloff’s second turn as the Frankenstein monster in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) came out in April 1935, while The Black Room was released a mere three months later in July of that year.
The Black Room is an evil twin film. As far as I am aware, it is the first film on the theme of the good and evil twin and of the latter masquerading as the former. There has been quite a body of other films on the subject since with the likes of Among the Living (1941), The Dark Mirror (1946) and Dead Ringer (1964). The evil twin theme faded away after the 1970s about the point of The Other (1972). I suspect the reason for this was that psychology on screen became more nuanced and less seen in good vs evil divides. (For a more detailed listing see my essay Twins in Fantastic Cinema).
Boris Karloff may not be the best actor to be play good and evil twins but he is not too bad in the role. As Anton, he plays the usual decent, soft-hearted, even slightly simplistic character that Karloff trotted out for his good guy roles. As Gregor, Karloff has fun relishing the cruelties and gives quite a good performance. The film merely hints at what these cruelties are, including what must have been boundary-pushing for the just introduced Hays Code, where it is suggested that he takes other men’s women. Of course we see nothing of this and the film more mundanely contrives a plot where Karloff merely becomes obsessed with having Marian Marsh, who has just become engaged to his lieutenant Robert Allen.
That said, The Black Room works well. The dvd restoration gives it a beautiful crispness that makes the sets – town streets, and the interior of the castle built on two levels – look great and brings out the exquisite detail of the set dressings. It is a film that makes the black-and-white work for it and director Roy William Neill uses some precision framing. This is none the more so than the scene where Thurston Hall goes to make a drink only to see Karloff’s Anton use his supposedly useless arm in the mirror.
The film is made as an historical work, which edges over into an Historical Fantasy. The date is 1836. The setting is an unspecified European country where Karloff’s Baron is the ruler of the province, although apparently not of the rest of the land. This makes the film into a work about an Imaginary Country, not unlike Ruritania in The Prisoner of Zenda (1894). Another work you could point to is Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper (1881) in which royalty and commoners get intertwined with their lookalikes, albeit given more of a horror movie spin here.
Roy William Neill (1887-1946) had been directing since the silent era. He was mostly known for directing eleven of Universal’s Sherlock Holmes films featuring Basil Rathbone. His one other genre entry was the Universal monster bash Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), which also featured Boris Karloff.
Trailer here