House of Mystery

Sheriff Wilfred Lucas and a friend are hunting at night when they come across the corpse of Geneva Mitchell. Everyone in the house starts acting suspiciously.

It's a decent little murder mystery, the fourth in a series of shorts produced to spotlight the narrator, The Shadow. If people recall him, they may remember that he was played by Orson Welles on the radio, and had lots of weird powers. Actually, he arose by accident. In 1930, Street & Smith sponsored a radio show to boost circulation of their DETECTIVE STORY pulp magazine. The had a narrator, called The Shadow, voiced by James LaCurto, read stories from the magazine. People started asking for the magazine featuring the character, so William Gibson created him, and the magazine went on sale in April of 1931. Over the next 20 years, Gibson wrote 282 of the 325 cover stories for THE SHADOW.

Two guys are out hunting and happen upon a cabin. They're tired and decide to stay the night in this supposedly unoccupied place. But to their surprise, they find a dead woman inside....and since one of them is the sheriff he naturally investigates. The cabin is owned by a rich guy and so they start there...but soon the trail heads to the butler, Higgins, and her lover, Truesdale.

This short Shadow film from Universal is very creepy and atmospheric...but the solution to the mystery is bizarre and unsatisfying and involves a weird trap door. It's mildly interesting but isn't a film I'd especially recommend.