The Face at the Window (George King, 1939)

The Face at the Window is an enormously entertaining British murder mystery heavy on the melodrama and horror, with a sprinkling of mad scientist sci-fi mumbo jumbo, though the mad scientist is surprisingly a morally upstanding fellow and not the villain. The whole thing is ridiculous in the right way, and George King gives it a pleasing visual richness.

Opening in the most bone-chilling of locations, a bank for wealthy people in 1880s Paris, The Face at the Window begins with a bank employee seeing a horrible face at, you guessed it, the window, hearing a crazy howl, and taking a knife to the back. A clerk named Lucien Cortier (John Warwick) rushes to his aid, and the knifed man reveals the culprit's identity as The Wolf (a possibly beast-like serial criminal tormenting Paris) before promptly dying. The Wolf has also robbed a significant chunk of the bank's holdings during this attack, putting the financial institution in serious danger of closing.

Lucien explains what he saw to the wildly side-burned police inspector Gouffert (Robert Adair), though Lucien's proximity to the crime puts him on Gouffert's suspect list. Lucien and bank owner Monsieur de Brisson (Aubrey Mallalieu) both agree that the police are incompetent, and de Brisson tells Lucien he can have whatever he wants if he solves the crime before the police. This promise excites the young man and de Brisson's daughter Cecile (Marjorie Taylor), who have been carrying on a secret relationship since old man de Brisson won't let his daughter marry a guy like Lucien, no matter how much he likes the young man, because Lucien ain't got no loot. No status either. I tell you, he gets no respect (adjusts tie).

Enter the incredibly named Chevalier del Gardo, portrayed by the incredibly named Tod Slaughter. Del Gardo is a rich old snob who is about to place a large piece of his fortune in de Brisson's bank. De Brisson is worried that del Gardo will back out because of the robbery, but del Gardo has his sights set on marrying Cecile (whether she wants it or not) and getting Lucien out of his way, so he happily puts his dough in de Brisson's bank, saving it from closure. He asks for the old man's blessing, which disturbs de Brisson because of the age difference (are we sure this guy's supposed to be French?), but since the Chevalier just saved his bank, he tells the man he'll have his blessing if Cecile agrees to the marriage.

Meanwhile, people continue getting knives in the back after seeing a crazy face at the window and hearing a wolf howl, and del Gardo does everything he can to make sure the cops think it's Lucien, with the help of some unsavory associates. Speaking of associates, Lucien's mad scientist buddy Professor LeBlanc (Wallace Evennett) is achieving excellent results in his bizarre attempts to electrically stimulate recently deceased animals in order for the animals to complete the tasks they were in the middle of at the time of death. LeBlanc's plan, so crazy that it just might work, is to run the experiment on the next victim of The Wolf in hopes that the newly dead person will reveal the master criminal's identity. It's a good thing for all of us that our falsely accused bank clerk's best friend is a mad scientist with a heart of gold.

This is my first encounter with master thespian Tod Slaughter, and I hope it won't be my last. The Tod man has a devoted cult following, and I may soon be joining that group. Slaughter is a delightful ham who clearly takes great pleasure in playing terrible people. I enjoyed what he was delivering from his first scene, but the moment where he asks to pay his last respects to a recently killed character, contemptuously pokes at the body with his boot, and launches into a deep-throated maniacal laugh made me enthusiastically hop on board the Tod train. Primarily a theater actor in the late Victorian era, Slaughter's film work is mostly in collaboration with director George King. According to the Tod freaks, The Face at the Window is supposedly one of his more subdued performances. If this is the case, I can't wait to see Slaughter fully unleashed.

King makes the whole silly business look great, his actors all have expressive faces and know how to use them, and the film proceeds at an excellent pace that neither rushes things nor drags them on interminably. There are so many great little visual and character details, but I especially love the look and design of the pub The Blind Rat, a dank but sprawling dive bar where del Gardo hatches his dirty plans and finds willing criminals to carry them out. It's one of the great movie locations. Sure, the science experiment part of the plot is goofy as hell, but somehow King and his cast make it work by playing things just serious enough but not too serious. This is a fun movie, and I've been in need of fun lately.