Plot
Mary Kirk Logan is led from her cell to the electric chair, to be "killed by the hand of the man I love."
A psychologist and criminologist, Charles Finch, tells her story. They first meet in a bar when Mary's dress catches fire. Dr. Bradford, having drinks with Finch, helps extinguish the fire. He takes Mary home and they fall in love.
Bradford is a scientist who hopes to develop a way to revive dead tissue. He works as an executioner for the state. Mary won't marry him unless he quits this profession.
A blackmailer is killed in Mary's apartment and she is arrested and tried. Her teenaged sister Suzy is the key to the case. Finch gets her to identify the real killer, but a race against time begins to find the governor so he can stop the execution. Bradford holds off the warden and guards until Finch can save the day.
Heneage Finch, 3rd Earl of Winchilsea was an English peer and diplomat who served as the English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1660 to 1669.
Lionel Alfred William Atwill was an English and American stage and screen actor. He began his acting career at the Garrick Theatre. After coming to the United States, he appeared in Broadway plays and Hollywood films. Some of his more significant roles were in Captain Blood (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939) and To Be or Not to Be (1942).
Night Monster is a 1942 American black-and-white horror film featuring Bela Lugosi and produced and distributed by Universal Pictures Company. The movie uses an original story and screenplay by Clarence Upson Young and was produced and directed by Ford Beebe. For box office value, star billing was given to Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill, but the lead roles were played by Ralph Morgan, Irene Hervey and Don Porter, with Atwill in a character role as a pompous doctor who becomes a victim to the title character, and Lugosi in a small part as a butler.
John Ker, 1st Duke of Roxburghe, KG, PC, FRS was a Scottish nobleman.
The Vampire Bat is a 1933 American Pre-Code horror film directed by Frank R. Strayer and starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas, and Dwight Frye.
Samuel Southey Hinds was an American actor and former lawyer. He was often cast as kindly authority figures and appeared in more than 200 films in a career lasting 22 years.
Marcia Mae Jones was an American film and television actress whose prolific career spanned 57 years.
Holmes Herbert was an English character actor who appeared in Hollywood films from 1915 to 1952, often as a British gentleman.
Three Strangers is a 1946 American film noir crime drama directed by Jean Negulesco and starring Sydney Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Peter Lorre, and featuring Joan Lorring and Alan Napier. The screenplay was written by John Huston and Howard Koch. It was produced and distributed by Warner Brothers.
The Best of Everything is a 1959 American drama film directed by Jean Negulesco from a screenplay by Edith Sommer and Mann Rubin, based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Rona Jaffe. It stars Hope Lange, Stephen Boyd, Suzy Parker, Martha Hyer, Diane Baker, Brian Aherne, Robert Evans, Louis Jourdan, and Joan Crawford. The film follows the professional careers and private lives of three women who share a small apartment in New York City and work together at a paperback publishing firm. Alfred Newman wrote the musical score, the last under his longtime contract as 20th Century-Fox's musical director.
Charlie Chan in Panama is a 1940 mystery film starring Sidney Toler. It is an unaccredited remake of Jacques Deval's novel "Marie Galante", produced by 20th Century Fox in 1934, directed by Henry King.
The Secret of the Blue Room is a 1933 American pre-Code mystery film directed by Kurt Neumann and starring Lionel Atwill, Gloria Stuart, Paul Lukas, and Edward Arnold. A remake of the German film Geheimnis des blauen Zimmers (1932), it concerns a group of wealthy people who stay at a European mansion that features a blue room that is said to be cursed, as everyone who has stayed there has died shortly after. Three people suggest a wager that each can survive a night in the blue room.
The Secret of Dr. Kildare is a 1939 American film directed by Harold S. Bucquet and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This was the fourth of a total of ten Dr. Kildare pictures, Lew Ayres starred all but the first.
The Thirteenth Chair is a 1937 American mystery film directed by George B. Seitz and starring Dame May Whitty, Lewis Stone, Madge Evans, and Elissa Landi. It is based on the 1916 stage play of the same title by Bayard Veiller. This was the third film adaptation of the play. There was an earlier version by director Tod Browning in 1929, with Bela Lugosi in a supporting role, and an even earlier 1919 silent film adaptation that starred Creighton Hale.
The Solitaire Man is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Jack Conway and starring Herbert Marshall and Mary Boland.
Penitentiary is a 1938 American crime film directed by John Brahm starring Walter Connolly, John Howard, Jean Parker and Robert Barrat. It was the second Columbia Pictures film adaptation of the 1929 stage play The Criminal Code by Martin Flavin, after Howard Hawk's The Criminal Code (1930) and followed by Henry Levin's Convicted (1950).
The Secret of Madame Blanche is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Charles Brabin and written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. The film stars Irene Dunne, Lionel Atwill, Phillips Holmes, Una Merkel and Douglas Walton. The film was released on February 3, 1933, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Robert Smith Todd was an American lawyer, soldier, banker, businessman and politician. He was the father of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.
