Night Key (1937)

I'm finally digging into my Universal Boris Karloff Collection, starting with this 68 minute programmer that has just a bit of science fiction in it. This is the "Black Friday" (from the Bela Lugosi Universal set) of the Boris Karloff set, adding just a bit of the sci-fi to go with a mostly crime drama plot. This is basically cops and robbers except Sam Hinds, usually a kindhearted, morally righteous character in the movies, is a treacherous, scheming, cutthroat businessman who screws over Karloff (not once but twice), a crafty, brilliant inventor losing his sight and wanting his perfected light-censor detection system to be implemented so he can use the financial profit to set up his daughter well before going completely blind. Hinds currently uses a 20 year old system that Karloff had also invented, thwarting him by way of patent theft, using cunning to also get it away, now also using dirty tactics through a garbage lawyer and contract chicanery.

Basically Karloff gets even by working together with a lousy but innocuous burglar (he's basically a goofy, harmless oaf), using a device to override Hinds' system. Hinds doesn't plan to use Karloff's new system out of spite. Hinds is just a sonofabitch. Anyway, eventually Cavanaugh's Petty Louis (great name) drags Karloff into a forced association with kingpin, The Kid (Alan Baxter) and Kid's "muscle", a young Ward Bond (as "Fingers"). Seeing Karloff rig an electric seat to give Bond quite a jolt is hilarious.

Don't expect anything Universal horror. This is almost entirely a crime thriller with devices used to undermine anti-robbery systems. Hinds' company can actually send guards to grab robbers and contain them for the police...I'm not sure how the company gets away with that! Karloff's daughter is played by Jean Rogers, and she wants to find her father; plus, she's no fan, obviously, of Hinds. Hinds is just a real piece of work. One of those guys with way too much power. Look, folks, they have always been around. Anyway, Warren Hull is the guard working for Hinds who takes a shine to Rogers and vice versa.