Boozy, spouse-bashing Vincent Price and Peter Lorre run an undertaking firm, but business is slow so when Shakespeare-quoting landlord Basil ‘The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo marks and have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes’ scales of a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the matter becomes even more simple’ Rathbone comes to call for the rent, they decide to drum up business the obvious way. Boris Karloff turns up as Price’s deranged father-in-law, making this similar in feel to the wonderfully bonkers The Raven, which also starred the ‘triumvirate of terror’ gathered here.
