Lew Ayres is always an interesting actor, while Basil Rathbone always is superior to anyone, but the remarkable thing with this film is the ingenious story. Someone wálks about in the streets in the dark axing people to death, and each time the murderer gets caught but is totally bewildered and has no idea why he has done what - there gradully grows an assembly of demented axe murderers completely lost to reality.
Gradually you are notified that they have all been hypnotized to commit these murders, but why would anyone want to hypnotize simple citizens to lose their minds in committing senseless murders? Especially one girl, Laraine Day, seems to be persecuted by one insistent murderer, who constantly fails in the intendded murder, because Lew Ayres steps out of his theatre. He gets it on his mind to solve these mysterious senseless murders and almost ends up a victim himself, as his activities are objected against by a professor Moriarty-kind of villain, a psychiatrist played by Basil Rathbone. Actually ther intrigue here is very close to the standards of Sherlock Holmes, while there is no Doctor Watson here (although numerous other doctors) but only the inquisitive Lew Ayres.
There is nothing very special about the film besides the verý inrtriguing plot, it is a rather casual entertainment, but you are bound to think a lot of the story afterwards, as you will never be able to get away from the impression of that fearfully indomtable villain.