THE GHOUL (1934)
Article #50 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-5-2001
Posting date: 9-18-2001

An Egyptologist has a scarab jewel wrapped onto his hand when he is dying, because with it he hopes to attain eternal life. When the jewel is stolen after his death, he rises from his tomb to seek for the jewel.

This British horror movie has an impressive cast: Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Ralph Richardson are all on hand; unfortunately, the movie is a bit of a disappointment. There are too many characters, which serve to clutter up and confuse the storyline. It finally picks up in the second half of the movie when Karloff starts hunting for the jewel, and gets fairly exciting (and even a bit gory) from this point onwards. The print I saw was none too good, but I’ve heard that this was from the only print in existence; the film had been considered lost for years until a print was unearthed in Prague. This may be untrue; I’ve heard claims from people that there are other prints, but I suspect that a really good print of this movie does not exist.