Some years back, this film had been scheduled for broadcast on TCM UK as part of a Tod Browning retrospective – but what they actually showed was the 1937 remake!; my brother had watched it (and, in hindsight, it followed the original pretty much scene-for-scene, even down to the set design) – though no classic, he said it was a far more satisfying viewing experience than the incredibly creaky earlier version… <br /><br />This being the first collaboration between Browning and Bela Lugosi, I had high hopes for it – but these were quashed when it became evident after the first reel of tedious conversation that the film's main concern was to appease the still-novel sound technique, and consequently the result is stagey and extremely static. The thriller plot isn't exactly exciting either; even less appetizing is the ostensible British-Indian setting (with the characters' affected accents and upper-class demeanor – not to mention the over-use of corny idiosyncratic idioms such as "I say", "rather" and "now look here" – rendering the whole risible more than anything else)! <br /><br />Apart from this, there are a few unintended howlers: Margaret Wycherly (as a fake medium) pleads with Police Inspector Lugosi (if anything, his undeniable screen presence is already evident) to give her some time to 'work out' who the culprit of the double-murder really is (the evidence points to her own daughter, played by Leila Hyams!) – she hears a tapping and is deluded into thinking that the spirit world has genuinely made contact with her…but then Lugosi enters the room and, in his unmistakable accent, straight-facedly tells her "I knocked twice – you didn't hear me!", at which my brother and I almost fell to the floor in convulsions of laughter!!; the editing is really sloppy, too: during one high-angle shot of the main set, a mike is seen being rapidly pulled up out of camera range – and even worse are a couple of instances where a person walks off-screen, ostensibly into the next shot, to another part of the set…but each shot is held on the other actors for an absurdly long time, so that it appears to take forever for this person to walk just a few paces!! <br /><br />THE THIRTEENTH CHAIR marks the third non-horror Browning Talkie that I've watched – even if both this and MIRACLES FOR SALE (1939) deal with murder and occultism and could, therefore, still be linked to the genre. Much has been said about the director's apparent slackening with the coming of Sound: however, flawed though they may be, the 4 straight horror films he did throughout the 30s are infinitely better than the rest – which I've always found stylish and bizarre enough to suggest that Browning wasn't as much at sea during this period as has been suggested…