JUGGERNAUT

UK, 1936, 64 minutes, Black and white.
Boris Karloff, Joan Wyndham, Arthur Margetson, Mona Goya, Antony Ireland, Morton Selten.
Directed by Henry Edwards.

A star vehicle for Boris Karloff in the UK in the mid-1930s. Once again, he plays a mad scientist, a mad doctor.

However, this is a somewhat low-key drama for Boris Karloff completists.

He is seen working on Morocco, his research grant being taken from him, his moving to Monte Carlo. He we see casino scenes of the idle and gambling rich. One of them, in an overwrought performance by Mona Goya, is married to an elderly man in ill-health, is carrying on an affair with a gigolo. She approaches the doctor and offers to give him a grant if he will care for her husband – and get rid of him. In the meantime, the husband writes a new will making his son the custodian of his estate, thwarting his wife. There is also a servant who was with the doctor in Morocco as well as a young woman who admires the doctor and comes as a nurse. She falls foul of the doctor and, at the last minute, exposes him as he tries to kill the son after killing the father.

Familiar material and not particularly well done – but the chance to see another Karloff film. The name does not quite fit the title or the treatment.