After seeing six previous films in Powerhouse/Indicator’s Tod Slaughter box set, I didn’t think there was anything in 1939’s The Face at the Window which could surprise me.  And yet, a moment near the end caught me completely unaware.  It isn’t a big twist but that it had any surprises made me smile.  It was like having somebody tell you a joke you have no expectations of enjoying, and then it subverts your preconceptions and makes you laugh despite yourself.

The picture is set in France in 1880, and there is a murderous thief on the lose dubbed The Wolf.  A typical encounter has the victim see a grotesque face at a window, and the alleged half-wolf man with that countenance howls like a wild dog.  I was wondering how any knows the victims first see that face at the window when the people who saw it will be dead shortly after.

Maybe the press got a description from the corpse of the most recent victim, a bank night watchman.  That might not be possible in real-life, but this picture has a scientist played by Wallace Evennett who can use electricity to briefly reanimate a corpse.  In that time, he can supposedly retrieve the final thoughts of the deceased.  How this works is the surge of power will make the body complete the final instruction that was sent to the brain.  Seems to me he has mistaken human corpses for frogs in a high school biology class.

Evennett friend and apparent co-conspirator in those experiments is John Warwick. This man is a bank clerk, which makes it even more peculiar he spends his free time hanging out with the scientist.  Given Warwick is the typical blank hero of such films, it seems unlikely he would be doing anything involving corpses.  Also, given how bodies are usually retrieved for such Frankenstein experiments (think Burke and Hare), I doubt he would be involved in that.

Similar to his role in a previous Slaughter film, The Ticket of Leave Man, Warwick will end up falsely accused of being The Wolf.  The real villain (played, as always, by Slaughter) will fan the flames of suspicion, as he wants the hand of Warwick’s fiancée (Marjorie Taylor).  She just happens to be the daughter of the head of the bank (Aubrey Mallalieu) who was Warwick’s employer.  And this institution is on the verge of collapse following that theft of gold at the start of the film.  Slaughter is, of course, all too happy to provide funds, if Mallalieu will arrange a marriage to his daughter, etc.

You know the story of The Face at the Window, even if you haven’t seen a Slaughter film yet.  And, if you have the box set I watched this on, you’ll have seen slight variations on it a few times already, and many of those even had some of the same cast members.  If you like this kind of thing like I do, you’ll enjoy this.  Those who aren’t used to movies of this vintage, or rather tired story tropes, should probably look elsewhere. 

Dir: George King

Starring Tod Slaughter, John Warwick

Watched on Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray box set The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter: Eight Blood-and-Thunder Entertainments, 1935-1940