The Black Abbot

A rather silly British comedy-mystery that takes place in an old mansion & an adjoining monastery which is supposedly haunted by the Black Abbot. There is too much talk (often in the form of isolated, stagy vignettes, & too little plot. Some of the smaller roles are juicier than the major roles. For example, the parts of Aunt Mary (played by Drusilla Wills) & the maid (played by an unknown actress who keeps wiping her nose) are well done.

This is one of those British quota quickies in which the only name I recognize is cinematographer Ernest Palmer. It starts out with John Stuart getting engaged to Judy Kelly, some talk about the household ghost, the Black Abbot, then Miss Kelly's father is kidnapped.

It's a lesser variety of the British Locked Room mystery, with silly-ass humor and servants canoodling each other. Palmer's camera-work is wonderful -- lots of moving shots --but the performances are all over the shop, indicating that director George Cooper either couldn't afford to hire decent actors for the smaller roles, or couldn't direct actors for beans. At 54 minutes it's bearable, but I won't be revisiting.

John Stuart doesn't really have much to do in this rather routine, gently comedic, haunted house mystery. His "Brooks" character finds himself trying to identify a phantom that inhabits an old monastery and who has an habit of terrifying - or worse - the other occupants. Those range from the upper class nitwits to the loved-up servants - and he has to get a move on before there is no-one left to help discover who's up to all of this mischief and why? It's all a bit too verbal, and at just under the hour, there is still quite a fair degree of padding too. It's still watchable enough if you like an early example of a British-made thriller that uses the gloominess of the scenario and a minimum of wattage to help present the thinnest of stories in quite an eerie style.

"The Black Abbot" (1934) is a minor British quota quickie made by Real Art Productions (54 quota quickies made between 1931-1935), and this one was released through Radio Pictures (RKO in Britain at that time) in Britain. I watched this several years ago, remembered that it was something I liked somewhat because Judy Kelly was in it, but I'd forgotten its premise. Well, this is - as I said - a minor "Locked-Door Mystery" (as called by another reviewer), a take-off of the Old Dark House style mystery, where a man in black (supposedly the ghost of an old abbot who was in the monastery that's being restored for living quarters) traipses about doing...well...it's a mystery, isn't it? And, in mysteries, there's usually either a murder or an attempted one.

This one stars John Stuart, Richard Cooper, Judy Kelly, Ben Welden, Edgar Norfolk, and others whose names are basically unknown today. It's rather simple, rather straightforward, and is interrupted often with dribble between two of the liveried servant people who are in love. I'd say 'madly-in-love', but the one, the male, is more interested in his rare species of flower that looks on screen like a cactus plant, while the female has an unchanging cold which makes her talk, not only through her nose, but through her sniffles.

Fun for 56 minutes if you're a fan of the early 30s stuff of this ilk. If you've never encountered it, be aware of English silly-asses and humor where suspense probably should be and suspense that can be figured out from behind the corner a mile away. You may not be able to guess whodunit, but you'll do it fine just sittingthroughit. If you don't think you can make it all the way - don't watch it.

This is a comedy of its day that isn't what I'd call as funny today. It's got its gags that would have caused a titter or two but it's mainly the individual characters that help it along, not that it really did move along. I don't want to criticise it as there were a few things that were uttered that made me laugh. For one, I like the maid in it; there's one scene she's telling her fella about her last master who came to the kitchen & offered to 'butter me parsnips!' It made me laugh.

There's a very pretty lady, Judy Kelly, her eyebrows are so thin, I thought that she must've painted them on. I don't see women today, with similar brows although the shapes have changed in nearly a hundred years.