Night Key [Lloyd Corrigan, 1937]:
An engaging if slightly wooden crime thriller, where Boris Karloff’s aggrieved inventor and security expert David Mallory is kidnapped by a band of high class gangsters and forced to help them commit a wave of crime. Karloff’s avenger, billing himself to the cops as “Night Key,” has something very comic book about it - as if this were the prelude to a Batman villain origin story - but the film does have more serious themes about class exploitation and the perils of revenge. Poverty-row limitations are obvious throughout the production, but director Lloyd Corrigan does a lot with what’s available. Karloff, always a great onscreen presence (if slightly broad here), is well supported by Warren Hull and Jean Rogers in a vaguely romantic subplot, as well as Hobart Cavanaugh providing some sympathetic comic relief.
