“When stars are bright on a frosty night. Beware thy bane on the rocky lane.”
The Hammond family has been cursed for centuries. The legend goes that an old ancestor sold his soul to the devil and is confined to the old estate, emerging only to take a human life to prolong his. The last of the Hammonds are living at the estate, just brother Oliver (John Howard) and sister Helga (Heather Angel).
Oliver is on his way home from a doctor friend (Bramwell Fletcher) one night and he, along his the doctor’s nurse is attacked by a creature. Oliver is injured but fine. The nurse is badly hurt and has fallen into a coma. Helga gets Scotland Yard to investigate. They send Bob Curtis (James Ellison) and his assistant Christy (Heather Thatcher). The nurse dies and now it’s a case of murder.
It appears that the good doctor is hiding something as well as the servants but before Bob can get to the bottom of things, Helga is attacked. This 1942 movie was one of the few 20th Century Fox horror movies at that time. Fox didn’t really bother with horror back then, they generally made dramas, westerns and mysteries. This film was clearly made in an attempt to cash in on Universal’s success the previous year with The Wolf Man but it was based on a 1922 book of the same name. The Undying Monster is pretty entertaining, it’s kind of different take on The Hound of the Baskervilles and the moody camera work and direction helps the sparse story.