"And I've had vould have gotten avay vith it, too, if it veren't for you meddling Ritzes! Blah, blah!" <br /><br />No, not really. Poor Bela was continuing his spiraling descent from the triumph of Dracula to working for Ed Wood. He actually has a half comedic, half heroic role in this movie, but mostly he spends the movie being a distraction from what could laughably be called a plot.<br /><br />One has to wonder if the Scooby-Doo cartoons were inspired by movies like this. YOu had everything you see in your average Scooby cartoon- secret passages, some guy in a costume, ulterior motives (which, unlike a Scooby cartoon, don't actually make sense here.) <br /><br />Okay, the Ritz Brothers. They were a very popular vaudeville act back in the day, but no one remembers them much today. Watching this film, you can see why. They didn't have the comic timing, distinct personalities or perfect slapstick of the Three Stooges or Marx Brothers. They were pretty much interchangeable, with Jimmy and Al mugging while Harry got most of the dialog.<br /><br />There is a bit of interesting Hollywood history that the Ritzes staged a "walkout" on this film, to protest the quality of the script. 20th Century Fox should have let them walk and reworked the script. Instead, they finished the movie, and Fox kicked them to the curb.<br /><br />I don't understand the plot. I guess that Atwill was supposed to be the villain, but really the guy who was pretending to be SEC agent was the actual killer, but it was never clear why he was killing people or why he would walk into the trap that Atwill and Lugosi had set for him. The ending makes absolutely no sense.<br /><br />You almost get the impression that there were a lot of b-listers (The Ritzes, Lugosi, Atwill, Patsy Kelly) who were insisting that THEY get more screen time than the others. Other characters, like the "seaman" who is found in the closet, are introduced and no explanation is given as to what they were doing there.