Bluebeard (1944)

This is quite a tightly knit, intricate, little murder mystery that centres around the murder of young women in Paris. Meantime, an enigmatic puppet master "Gaston" (John Carradine) encounters the young "Lucille" (Jean Parker). His interest in this young lady prompts a good old dose of jealousy from his sometime gal "Renee" (Sonia Sorel) whilst the third in their little gang "Francine" (Teala Loring) is dating investigating policeman "Lefebre" (Nils Asther). Money was clearly no object here - there wasn't any - but Edgar Ulmer has still managed to get a decent performance from Carradine as this mystery builds in a slightly predictable, but nonetheless engaging fashion. There are a few twists along the way to distract us, and the three ladies deliver quite efficiently when they are given decent dialogue. Sadly, that doesn't happen often enough - but the overall look and feel of this semi-gothic horror film is quite watchable and though i can't think I will ever remember having seen it in two weeks, I did still quite enjoy it for 70 minutes.