Say any two or more words together enough times and they mutate into something else. Just try this with the title of 1937’s Night Key, which inevitably, and quickly, becomes “Nike”. That’s what all the characters seem to be saying in the film, and it never stopped amusing me. And this is a quirky film. Made two years after the Production Code’s implementation, it seems like they were still trying to figure out what to do with Boris Karloff if they could no longer make horror films of the kind he excelled in.
This is more of a crime picture, with quite a bit of comedy in the mix. Karloff is an inventor of electronic security systems, and he is deceived off by his own lawyer (Edwin Maxwell) to unwittingly surrender his patents to the owner (Samuel S. Hinds) of the company which installs and monitors these devices.
Outraged, Karloff seeks revenge, but in a rather amusing way. Together with low-level thief Hobart Cavanaugh, he enters various businesses without tripping the alarm, only to stage various bizarre scenes for the police to find. In a clock store, they set all of them to go off at the same time and gather them altogether near the front door. In an umbrella store, they fill with the floor with those wares wide open, which makes for a strange visual.
Eventually, a gangster played by Alan Baxter forces Karloff to use his talents for actual theft. At this point, the film becomes more of a straight-forward drama, and loses a great deal of its charm. The death of Cavanaugh’s comic relief character is a particularly odd misstep.
Oh, and there’s a side plot with a clunky romance between Karloff’s daughter (Jean Rogers) and one of the security company’s employees (Warren Hull). It is appropriate that the latter’s surname rhymes with “dull”.
This film is quirky enough in its first act that I found myself disappointed when it decides to become more conventional. A new system the inventor is working on triggers an alarm when anything passes between two sensors, and I wondered if that was pure science fiction at the time. The process is not described as an electric eye here, which seems like a missed opportunity, as Karloff’s character is going blind.
The quirks in the film begin in the opening credits, as there are a lot of scare quotes around character names, presumably designating the aliases for the criminals. I can understand doing that for “Fingers”, but the one for “Mike” had me baffled, as if a guy would use “Mike” as an alias. I was hoping his real name was something like “Knuckles”. Cavanaugh’s character is named Petty Louie, and that’s likely because he is a petty thief. Still, I was hoping it was instead meant to imply he’s a catty bitch.
The initial arrest of Cavanaugh stands out in my mind, as it actually creeped me out somewhat. Instead of taking him to the police, security company goons bring him to their headquarters and put him in their own private cell. They’re doing this as part of a publicity campaign because he is their “ten thousandth customer”. But why would an office have a jail cell in it? Was that common for other businesses at the time? I am imagining an accounting firm where the employees are forever nervously side-eyeing their office’s prison cell, in fear of incarceration for forgetting to carry the one.
Night Key is a slight entertainment, but a quirky one, nonetheless. Karloff gives it his all, as always. The central idea which drives the plot is interesting until the picture resorts to nothing but gangster film cliches. My one major complaint with it is what happens to Cavanaugh. In the same way you don’t kill a dog in a picture, you’d be squandering a great deal of good will if you knock off the benign comic relief.
Dir: Lloyd Corrigan
Starring Boris Karloff, Jean Rogers, Hobart Cavanaugh
Watched as part of Shout Factor’s blu-ray boxed set Universal Horror Collection: Volume 4