The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste (aka 'Phantom Ship') (1935)

The And Then There Were None explanation postulated in this 1935 horror thriller with Bela Lugosi is based, says an opening credit titlecard, on the findings of the Attorney-General in Gibraltar and though history has deemed him, Frederick Solly-Flood, an imbecile, the appeal of this movie is that Flood's account of the unexplained abandonment of The Mary Celeste in 1872, though certainly not presented here convincingly, came not far removed in time from the actual events, unlike so many other fanciful and outlandish theories that have sprung up and combined and morphed over the one hundred and fifty years since, blurring Mary Celeste fact and fiction.

★★★☆☆

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The Black Cat (1941)

The not very funny jokes come thick and fast in this madcapped romp - a The Cat And The Canary variation more CarryOn comedy than Hammer horror - starring Basil "He thinks he's Sherlock Holmes" Rathbone, Hugh Herbert and Bela Lugosi as just some of the beneficiaries of widow Henrietta Winslow's will, gathered in her gothic mansion full of cats, antiques, secret passages and a growing number of dead bodies (murders committed by a shadowy someone whose identity you don't really have a chance of guessing given everyone appears to be making the plot up as they go).

★★★☆☆

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