Edgar G. Ulmer's directorial career started impressively enough, as one of several directors of the classic semi-documentary Menschen am Sonntag (1930), which launched the careers of Curt and Robert Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann and Billy Wilder. Prior to that, he was the set designer (often uncredited) for a number of notable Fritz Lang films, including Metropolis (1927), and also served as an assistant to F.W. Murnau. His Hollywood career showed early promise with the Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi vehicle The Black Cat (1934), often considered one of the best of Universal's horror cycle. But Ulmer was not cut out to be a team player in the studio system. He soon found himself on "Poverty Row" where, working with almost no budgets, no time, and often starting with nothing more than a title, he found the kind of freedom he preferred. With little or no recognition and resources, he managed to stamp a personal artistic signature on his work, noticed by the French auteurist critics of the 1950s and 60s. Since then, he has come to be regarded as an artist of a unique, if offbeat, vision, and has helmed several influential films including the minimalist noir thriller Detour (1945).

Bluebeard (1944) is considered one of Ulmer's best pictures. Originally intended as a follow-up to his macabre classic The Black Cat, Ulmer had to wait a decade and work with John Carradine instead of Boris Karloff as planned. Carradine, however, came through with probably his best performance as a painter and puppeteer who has the nasty habit of killing his models.

Ulmer was his own set designer for this movie, recreating his beloved Paris on the lot of Poverty Row studio PRC. Although shot in only six days, it displays a high level of acting and camera work and contains a particularly notable and effective sequence, a puppet show version of the Faust legend. Although he said PRC was unhappy with the finished product, Ulmer was proud of his "lovely picture," which, he later told admirer Peter Bogdanovich, "earned tremendous money in France."

The legend of the murderous Bluebeard had already been a folktale by the time it was written down by Charles Perrault in 1697. The cautionary tale of the dangerous husband/lover, purportedly based on a real-life serial killer of the 15th century, took many forms over the years. In films, the character has been everything from a deranged World War I pilot (Richard Burton in a 1972 version) to a loving Parisian father who seduces and kills women in order to feed his brood (Charles Denner in Claude Chabrol's Landru, 1963). Charles Chaplin directed and played in a version of the legend in Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Ernst Lubitsch spoofed it in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), starring Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert.

His role in this film is reportedly John Carradine's personal favorite. A prolific player whose career spanned hundreds of films over about 60 years, Carradine rarely got the chance to carry a film as he does here, although he received praise for a number of classical stage roles, such as Hamlet and Malvolio. On screen, he was always a quirky, often unconventional character lurking in the background of many fine films. Part of John Ford's stock company, he appeared in 11 of that director's pictures, as well as a large number of other Westerns, enough to earn him induction into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 2003. But despite his range and talents, he is most often - and rather unfairly - associated with the horror genre, mostly because of his gaunt looks and distinctive voice. He is the father of actors Keith, David and Robert Carradine.

Much of the cast will be familiar to connoisseurs of character actors and supporting players. Nils Asther (LeFevre), a Dane often cast in more ethnically "exotic" roles, was the title character in the Frank Capra-directed Barbara Stanwyck film The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) and in the 1920s and early 30s also played leading man to Garbo, Crawford, Pola Negri and others. Early in her career, Jean Parker (Lucille) had a promising start as Beth, the doomed sister in Little Women (1933) opposite Katharine Hepburn. While she never achieved top stardom, she worked in film and on stage into the 1970s and was also an accomplished clothes designer. Iris Adrian (Mimi) was one of Hollywood's busiest character actors and bit players. The year before this movie she played one of the smart-talking strippers in the Stanwyck mystery-comedy Lady of Burlesque (1943). Late in her career, she turned up in a string of Disney hits, including The Love Bug (1968) and Freaky Friday (1976). Austrian-born Ludwig Stossel (Lamarte) had a 30-plus-year career in film and television playing a range of Germanic characters for everyone from Fritz Lang to George Cukor and turning up in such films as Casablanca (1942), The Merry Widow (1952) and Elvis Presley's G.I. Blues (1960), Stossel's last picture.

Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Producer: Leon Fromkess
Screenplay: Pierre Gendron, based on a story by Werner H. Furst and Arnold Phillips
Cinematography: Jockey Arthur Feindel
Editing: Carl Pierson
Art Direction: Paul Palmentola. Angelo Scibetta
Original Music: Leo Erdody
Cast: John Carradine (Gaston Morrell), Jean Parker (Lucille), Nils Asther (Inspector LeFevre), Ludwig Stossel (Jean Lamarte), Iris Adrian (Mimi), Henry Kolker (Deschamps).
BW-70m.

by Rob Nixon