You'll Find Out (1940)

I'd never heard of this before I got it in a set of four movies featuring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, where it was also packaged with Frankenstein 1970 and The Walking Dead from 1936, for Christmas one year (either 2010 or 2011). What was particularly interesting is that you not only got the two of them but also Peter Lorre as a bonus, with all three of them acting as conspirators to commit murder. However, they're not the actual stars; instead, the main focus is Kay Kyser, a popular entertainer and bandleader from that era, his manager, and the most memorable members of his band, as they bungle around a spooky mansion, trying to uncover the truth behind the mysterious goings-on. It's another prototype for not only Scooby-Doo but also Abbot and Costello's horror comedies (it came out the same year as their film, Hold That Ghost), where you have comedic figures stuck in a creepy, seemingly haunted place and trying to survive the night. As such, it's... okay. It's not nearly as funny as those Abbot and Costello movies, or most of the horror-themed Three Stooges shorts, as Kyser and the other actors don't have that kind of comedic timing, the gags aren't hilarious by any means, and there are a handful of moments where the movie completely stops so the singers can show off their skills (though, trust me, it's not nearly as bad as another movie we'll see later on this month). But, at the same time, Kyser does make for a charismatic, likable, and occasionally goofy lead, there are some effective scenes sprinkled throughout, it's great seeing Karloff, Lugosi, and Lorre together (this would be the only time the latter two would ever share the screen), the film's production values are quite nice, and the setting is so cliched and yet classic at the same time that you can't help but like it.

After a recording of his radio show, Kay Kyser and His College of Musical Knowledge, Kay's manager, Chuck Deems, learns that his girlfriend, Janis Bellacrest, believes she's the target of a plot to murder her. While leaving the studio, a car nearly hits her with an open passenger door, and Chuck learns that lately, she's been carrying a gun on her person to protect herself. Regardless, Janis, who's returning home from college to Bellacrest Manor, where she lives with her Aunt Margo, is delighted that Chuck has arranged for Kay and his band to play for her and her guests on the night of her homecoming, which happens to be the eve of her 21st birthday. Upon arriving at the rather spooky mansion, Kay is introduced to Janis' very strange aunt, who claims she's become able to speak with the spirit of Janis' deceased father, Elmer, as well as the family attorney, Judge Mainwaring, and Prince Saliano, who proclaims to be a medium. Later, Kay believes he sees evidence of an attempted murder when the lights go out for a few seconds and he finds a poison dart stuck in the wall, although it disappears before he can show it to Chuck. Convinced there's a homicidal lunatic in the house, Kay decides to gather up the band and get out, suggesting Chuck bring Janis with them. But, before they can leave, the sole bridge that connects the manor to the outside suddenly explodes and the phone goes dead, trapping everyone there. After Kay and his band provide some entertainment to lift everyone's spirits, Janis tells Kay and Chuck that she thinks Prince Saliano is a charlatan but is unable to convince her aunt of that. Much to her delight, she learns that Professor Karl Fenninger, a man renowned for exposing fake mediums and psychics, managed to arrive before the bridge was destroyed and she hopes he'll be able to expose Saliano. Little does Janis, or anyone else, know that Fenninger, Saliano, and Mainwaring are the ones behind the attempts on her life and will stop at nothing to see to her demise, leaving it up to Kay and the boys to uncover their scheme.

You'll Find Out was directed, as well as partially written, by David Butler, the son of an acting couple who started out as an actor himself before switching to director in 1927 with a comedy called High School Hero. He went on to have a very long and successful directing career, working with stars like Shirley Temple, Bing Crosby, and especially Doris Day, and, notably, his 1938 film, Kentucky, won actor Walter Brennan an Oscar. Like a lot of directors of his generation, Butler worked mainly in television in the later part of his career, directing episodes of Wagon Train, Daniel Boone, The Patty Duke Show, The Twilight Zone, and Leave It to Beaver, altogether directing 58 episodes of that show. His last bit of work was a 1967 musical comedy called C'mon, Let's Live a Little, which ended his career on a very sour note, as he would later say, "I tried to do a favor for somebody, and we made it so fast that I don't know what happened... They ran short of money to finish the picture. I never got paid a quarter for it." Butler died in 1979 at the age of 84. 

Playing a fictional version of himself, Kay Kyser makes for quite a fun and likable lead. When you first meet him, he's in the middle of his radio show, Kay Kyser and His College of Musical Knowledge (a real show he was doing at the time), having fun with a couple of contestants, as well as the audience, as he quizzes them on trivia about music and entertainers. When a woman guesses the song played is Pop Goes the Weasel, he then asks, "Now, what's the difference between a weasel, an easel, and a measle? What's a measle? Go ahead, break out with it." She guesses that a measle is, "One of the measles," and he mentions how the word "measle" isn't really a word but, if it were, it would be the singular of "measles," before adding, "Or am I too rash?" And then, the man who's up there with them wrongly guesses that Heigh Ho is from Pinocchio rather than Snow White, but Kay gives him another chance to make up for it by naming three of the Seven Dwarfs, and when he says Dopey, Kay exclaims, "What are you lookin' at me for?!" Yeah, his humor is corny and very passe, but he's so energetic, fun-loving, and good-natured that it's hard to dislike him, and he's also nice enough to agree to play at Janis Bellacrest's homecoming. But, when he and his band arrive at Bellacrest Manor, he's spooked by how creepy and imposing the place is, as well as weirded out when he meets Janis' Aunt Margo and she sees the two of them as kindred spirits because they both "ask questions," only she says she asks them of the dead. On top of that, he meets Prince Saliano when he shows up in his room and tells him the spirit of Elmer Bellacrest is also in there, adding that he hopes he will find him friendly and mentioning that the spirits don't take kindly to skeptics. The last straw for Kay is when the lights go out for a few seconds and when they come back on, he sees a poison dart stuck in the wall, but is unable to show it to his manager, Chuck Deems, before it disappears. Knowing there's a killer on the loose, Kay decides to pack up and leave with the boys, and advises Chuck to bring Janis with them. But then, the bridge that serves as the only escape from the manor gets blown up, trapping everyone there. Later, after providing some entertainment for the guests, Kay, after learning of Janis' suspicions about Prince Saliano being a fake, begins to confide in Prof. Karl Fenninger, hoping he can help expose him, unaware that he, Saliano, and Judge Mainwaring are in collusion to murder Janis. This results in a seance that nearly ends in Janis' death.

Thoroughly spooked and worried if he's going to escape with his life, Kay is happy when Chuck agrees to stay with him in his room. But, after failing to get to sleep, the two of them discover a secret passage in the room's fireplace that leads into the cellar and then out onto the grounds. Following it and having plenty of false scares along the way, Kay ends up finding another hidden chamber, one full of masks, makeup, electrical and musical equipment, and switches he learns were used to create the apparent ghostly phenomena that occurred during the seance. Looking through the file cabinets, he finds a piece of paper in a briefcase that he promptly stuffs in his

pocket, and then learns that Prince Saliano not only uses what's down in the room but he also has an accomplice elsewhere in the house. Making it back into the house, he warns Chuck and the boys about the plot to murder Janis and comes up with a plan to make Saliano hold another seance in order to expose them. Again, he takes Fenninger into his confidence and tells him to get Saliano to do the seance. When the seance does take place, Kay sneaks back down into the chamber and manages to knock Saliano out and warn the others of what's going on, forcing Mainwaring to reveal his part in the plot. Kay is confronted by him down in the chamber and is ordered to give back the

document he found earlier, though he manages to disarm Mainwaring and eventually defeat him after a struggle. That's when he heads back upstairs but tells Fenninger where the other two are, unknowingly giving him the opportunity to free them. Regardless, Kay shows Janis and Aunt Margo the document he found, which is a new addition to Elmer Bellacrest's will that states the family fortune is to be turned over to Janis on her 21st birthday. After the three criminals meet an explosive end thanks to one of the band-members' dog, Kay comes up with an idea to make use of the Sonovox Saliano used in his fake seances as part of his show.

Going along with the Scooby-Doo parallel, Chuck Deems (Dennis O'Keefe), Kay Kyser's manager, is the Fred to Kay's Shaggy, playing the straight man. As Janis Bellacrest's boyfriend, he arranges for Kay and his band to play at her homecoming at Bellacrest Manor, but while spending time with her at one of Kay's shows, he discovers she's carrying a pistol in her coat. Later, when a car nearly hits her as they're leaving the studio, Chuck believes the driver was drunk but Janis tells him it was the latest in several apparent attempts on her life. Because she has no idea who would want to kill her or what the motive would be, Chuck believes it was just a bunch of coincidences and manages to convince Janis of it. The following evening, at Bellacrest Manor, Chuck misses seeing a poison dart that Kay spots in the wall following the lights going out and, since he's so freaked out by how creepy the manor is, believes he just imagined it. When Kay then intends to leave, Chuck tries to convince him otherwise but Kay merely suggests he get Janis out as well, when the bridge is destroyed and they're all trapped there. For most of the movie, Chuck is little more than a bystander, although he does get on some excitement following the seance when he and Kay are staying in the former's room and they get a bizarre visitor in the form of a white, glowing form that moves about the room. It turns out to be Prince, a dog who belongs to one of the band-members and who's managed to get some phosphorous paint on his tail, as well as entered their room through a secret panel in the fireplace. The two of them investigate and bumble around the cellar, with Chuck getting some comical moments, like when he hits a switch that he believes is for the lights but instead flattens the steps on a stairway they're standing on and, when a stuffed ape falls on top of Kay, Chuck, thinking it's real, beats on it repeatedly, even after Kay manages to crawl out from under it. But, after that, Chuck is, again, just a bystander during the seance meant to expose those out to kill Janis and gets a locked in the room with everyone else by Judge Mainwaring. But, when Kay reveals the document that bequeaths the family fortune to Janis on her 21st birthday, Chuck explains to her and Aunt Margo that it would mean Mainwaring and Prince Saliano, who've been draining her of money, wouldn't get another cent.

Janis Bellacrest (Helen Parrish) is both very easy on the eyes and is smart enough to know that someone is out to get her, as she carries a gun with her in her coat pocket, but she hasn't the faintest idea who it is or why they want her dead. Because of this, Chuck Deems is able to convince her that the supposed attempts on her life could be a bunch of coincidences and tells her to forget about it during her homecoming party at Bellacrest Manor. Janis does have other concerns, though, as she feels her Aunt Margo is being conned and bled dry of money by Prince Saliano, and had arranged for psychic debunker Prof. Karl Fenninger to arrive at the party and expose Saliano. Thinking Fenninger won't show up following the destruction of the bridge (which she really takes in stride, I might add), she's happy to learn he did make it beforehand, unaware that he, Judge Mainwaring, and Saliano are conspiring to murder her. She gets Kay's help in "convincing" Fenninger to go along with a plot to get Saliano to conduct a seance so he can be exposed, playing right into another of their attempts to murder her. Fortunately for her, she faints at the sight of the apparent spirit of her father and misses being impaled by a falling chandelier with a long, metal spike on its underside. After that, she stays locked up in her room for most of the movie, and when Kay and the boys arrange for another seance to expose the conspirators, they intend for Janis to stay right where she is, but another attempt on her life up there forces her downstairs. Hoping for safety in numbers, Janis is, again, unaware that the conspirators are plotting to kill her during the seance. Kay foils this plan, exposing Mainwaring as one of the conspirators in the process, and after he scuffles with Saliano and Mainwaring, he shows Janis the document that bequeaths everything to her when she turns 21, which is the next day, revealing their motive for wanting her dead.

Janis' Aunt Margo (Alma Kruger) proves to be rather out there when she's first introduced, as she totally ignores Chuck Deems when Janis attempts to introduce him and instead goes straight for Kay, talking about how they're kindred spirits as they both ask questions, only she asks them of the dead. She claims to be able to speak with the spirit of her deceased brother, Elmer, and that he speaks with her through the piccolo, his favorite instrument in life. She profoundly creeps Kay out when she says she hopes he will get to meet and become friends with Elmer that night, but because of her total faith in Prince Saliano, she turns on Kay when he and Prof. Fenninger question his abilities. So irked is she that she demands Saliano perform a seance to prove the doubters wrong, unknowingly giving him and his accomplices a new opportunity to kill Janis. Aunt Margo is so convinced she's really seeing and speaking with Elmer that, when Saliano, late in the night, speaks to her as Elmer, using his Sonovox to make his voice sound ghostly, and tells her to arrange another seance, she does so without question. This seance, of course, allows Kay and the others to expose Saliano as a fake and Judge Mainwaring as one of the conspirators, with Aunt Margo feeling like an utter fool for having been taken in by them. Moreover, she then learns why he and Mainwaring were trying to kill Janis, realizing they're nothing more than dangerous swindlers. After it's all over and the villains have been vanquished, Aunt Margo thanks Kay for what he did but he, in turn, thanks her, as he plans to use the Sonovox as part of his radio show.

Most of Kay Kyser's bandmates are little more than bystanders, including fairly prominent ones like Sully Mason and Harry Babbitt, with the latter's most memorable moments being when he sings, while the former gets one or two okay lines and moments. Ginny Simms, besides giving a performance of I'd Know You Anywhere (which was actually nominated for an Oscar), has a scene where she accidentally tears her dress and Janis gives her one she wore at her senior prom as a replacement. Unbeknownst to her, it makes her a target for the villains, and when the lights then go out for a few seconds, Saliano attempts to shoot her with a poison dart but misses. The most memorable

member of the band, though, is Ish Kabibble, due to his Moe Howard haircut, his somewhat dopey persona, and his corny jokes, both during and outside his musical routines. Significantly, his little dog, Prince, proves to be a full-on hero at the end of the movie. He grabs a small bundle of dynamite the villains leave in the ballroom with everyone and, after chasing them around the room with it, Kay gets it away from him and throws it out one of the barred windows. But, Prince climbs out the window, grabs the dynamite again, and actually chases after the villains with it when they try to escape. As a result, he blows them up and seemingly gets blown up with them, only to return and be hailed as a hero by everyone.

Okay, now let's get to the reasons why this movie would appeal to horror film fans, as it serves as the only instance where Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre all appeared onscreen together. Even though they're not the main focus, only have a passable amount of screentime between them, and play pretty one-note villains, they give it their all, as they always did. Karloff's Judge Mainwaring is sort of the mastermind of the conspiracy to kill Janis Bellacrest, which is especially despicable because he's the family attorney, as well as an old friend of Elmer Bellacrest. Though it's never mentioned or suggested, since he's said to have been with Elmer when he

was killed by African savages, you can't help but wonder if he killed Elmer himself in order to get at Aunt Margo's money. He's the one who arranges for the attempts on Janis' life, coming up with the exact methods of killing her during both of the seances, wherein he wears a mask to look like the spirit of Elmer. He's also the one who destroys the bridge to keep Janis from escaping (apparently, he had the bridge wired to explode for just such an occasion). The one who often actually attempts to kill Janis, though, is Lugosi's Prince Saliano, a bogus medium who's managed to convince Aunt Margo of his ability to communicate with the dead and uses a Sonovox in conjunction with a phonograph of creepy sounds down in a hidden chamber beneath the ballroom to make her think Elmer's spirit is speaking. He often goes on about his supposed ability, acting offended when others question it and makes warnings about how spirits don't take kindly to skeptics. You also learn from Janis that he's sucking money out of Aunt Margo, getting her to spend it on ridiculous causes, such as the "relief of unemployed spirits." It's probably because of her skepticism towards him that Saliano tries to take her out himself. He's the one who attempts to run Janis over while she and Chuck are leaving the studio and he tries to shoot Ginny Simms with a poison dart when he mistakes her for Janis.

Lorre's Prof. Fenninger is the most menacing and yet mysterious of the three (you learn at the end of the movie that he's not even really Fenninger but someone who took the real professor's identity, a reveal that's horribly contrived and pointless, as I'll talk about later). How exactly he figures into Mainwaring and Saliano's conspiracy is unclear, as they're the ones who are directly sponging money out of Aunt Margo and need to get Janis out of the way before she takes control of the family's wealth, while Fenninger is just some guy who's in on it to get a cut. Regardless, Lorre is his usual creepy self here, almost always talking in his soft, Hungarian voice and often smoking a cigarette through a holder. Upon arriving at Bellacrest Manor before the bridge is destroyed, he's seen as a creepy prowler who spies on Janis and the girls through their room's window, and after he's introduced, plays the part of the skeptical professor who wishes to expose Saliano. He acts like he's on Kay's side when he starts taking him into his confidence about what's going on, not knowing he's playing right into the conspirators' hands, but clearly has a major disdain for him and everyone else there, at one point sneering, "Why do I have to waste my time outwitting morons?" Kay's trust in Fenninger nearly gets him and everyone else killed when, after he manages to subdue both Saliano and Mainwaring in the chamber below the ballroom, he tells Fenninger how to get down there and he, in turn, revives his accomplices. The three of them make their escape, throwing a bundle of dynamite into the room to kill everyone, but unfortunately for them, Prince chases after them while carrying the dynamite in his mouth and ends up blowing them all up.

Like I said in the introduction, the setting of Bellacrest Manor is about as classic as it gets: a creepy-looking mansion sitting on a small isle that's connected to the mainland by a single bridge that's eventually destroyed, trapping everyone. While it doesn't count as an "old, dark house," as the inside is quite lovely and elegant, at least when the lights are on, there are some menacing aspects to it, as Elmer Bellacrest collected a lot of items during his travels in exotic, far off lands, like ancient armor, tribal masks and weapons, Egyptian sarcophagi, and, in the foyer, a tribal blowgun with poison darts which is later used to try to kill Janis. In fact, Kay has the

misfortune of staying in what was Elmer's bedroom, which is also full of such items, as well as various animal trophies. Aunt Margo doesn't help with the atmosphere when she talks about being able to hear ghostly voices and seeing their faces in the darkness, nor does the fact that it's a typical dark and stormy night, with constant lightning, thunder, and howling wind throughout much of the second act. Also, the place is full of hidden panels that allow the villains to try to attack Janis while she's in her room, spaces between the walls that give Saliano a means to shoot a poison dart at who he thinks is Janis, a panel in the

fireplace of Kay's room that leads down into the cellar, which itself has a staircase with a switch that slants the steps, and an eventual exit out into the garden that can be covered up to look like a fountain. Out in the garden is another spot where a panel can be opened in a section of wall behind a bench by turning a sundial, leading down into the chamber where Saliano keeps the equipment and props he uses to make his seances look real. (Among these props are a couple of unused miniatures of a Styracosaurus and a big spider, which are actually Willis O'Brien's models from the King Kong movies, with the spider being from

the original's infamous lost spider pit scene.) The chamber leads up into the actual manor in a couple of other spots, including a small lift that rises up into the ballroom through the floor, allowing Saliano to enter the chamber while he's supposedly in a state of trance inside his tent. Said ballroom where the seances take place is, unbeknownst to the guests, turned into a deathtrap by the villains, with barred windows, a chandelier with a long spike on its underside that's used in one of the murder attempts, and electric spheres Saliano uses that project an invisible electric current between them that proves deadly to anyone or anything caught up in them.

The film's art direction is quite exquisite, helping to make the interior of Bellacrest Manor look big and elegant, as well as spooky, with a fantastic foyer that has a big chandelier and a winding staircase leading up to the second level; a library with a bearskin rug, fancy furniture, a big fireplace, weapons on the wall, along with more of the stuff Elmer Bellacrest collected, and even a raven that the boys intentionally think is stuffed but turns out to be real; a study with a posh couch and portraits on the wall, including one of Elmer himself; and the big, fancy ballroom where Saliano conducts his seances.

Upstairs is where the bedrooms are, such as Elmer's bedroom that's full of more of his collection and the nice-looking one Janis and Ginny stay in, as well as big hallways and landings that look especially spooky when the lights go out. Speaking of which, cinematographer Frank Redman does a good job at making the place look creepy when it needs to be, with lots of flashes of lightning through the windows and a black, murky look to the scenes set in almost total darkness, such as the exterior courtyard in the scene where Prof. Fenninger is shown arriving and the seances. It's when Kay and

Chuck find the secret panel leading into the cellar that Redman is really able to get spooky with his lighting, highlighting how creepy the place already is, as it's filled with stuff like skulls, the trick staircase, more stuff from Elmer's travels, including a suit of samurai armor that nearly brings its sword down on Kay, and a stuffed gorilla on a rolling cart that plays a part in a very familiar gag. And finally, there's the room where Saliano performs his trickery during the seances, which sits in the midst of some tight catacombs beneath the manor. Among other things, it's full of masks, phosphorous paint, a control box for the floating objects during the seance, a record to play the eerie sounds heard, and the Sonovox for him to speak in Elmer's ghostly voice.

While the film is a comedy, it does manage to have some genuinely spooky scenes and moments. In the midst of Kay Kyser being spooked by Aunt Margo, Judge Mainwaring, and the place itself, as well as Ish Kabibble discovering that the "stuffed" raven he was criticizing is actually real when it caws at him, those moments where Aunt Margo talks about hearing the voices of spirits and seeing apparitions' faces in the dead of night, as well as when Prince Saliano tells Kay that Elmer Bellacrest's spirit is present in the very room he's staying in, have an eeriness to them. The moment where Prof. Fenninger arrives on the property, climbs up to the window outside the girls' room,

and peers inside is right out of a true horror film, as his eyes are hidden by the rim of his hat and he's illuminated by the constant lightning. In fact, the villains themselves are never played for laughs, with Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre instead bringing that air of menace they were masters of by that point. Lugosi doesn't have that many moments to be truly creepy other than his first one with Kay, but in the scenes where Mainwaring and Fenninger are by themselves, quietly plotting their next attempt to kill Janis, Karloff and Lorre come off as truly evil. In their first such conference after Fenninger has been formally introduced to Janis, Mainwaring

tells him about his plan to do her in during one of Saliano's seances, calmly and softly saying, "I've planned to make it look like an accident when the room is in darkness." Kay then comes in to get something he left in the study, casually mentioning how he's always leaving it around, but Mainwaring and Fenninger say nothing and just glower at him, waiting for him to leave. After he does, Mainwaring assures Fenninger they have nothing to fear from Kay, as a bolt of lightning flashes outside, along with a crash of thunder. Later in the movie, when Kay tells Fenninger that they need Saliano to conduct another seance and he tells both

him and Mainwaring about it, the latter coolly decides his suggestion serves their purposes nicely, saying, "It's much easier to arrange an accidental death downstairs than in Janis' bedroom," and has Saliano speak to Aunt Margo as Elmer's spirit to make her insist on another seance. Mainwaring also tells Fenninger to keep an eye on Kay, saying, "Should he attempt to leave the ballroom," and holds up a gun for emphasis. As for the accident, he says, "If she should happen to step between the electrical spheres in the darkness, it'd be tragic, obviously accidental," to which Fenninger responds by smiling evilly and singing a tune to himself.

Speaking of the seance, the first one that Saliano conducts is rather creepy in how it plays out. Knowing that Mainwaring has arranged for Janis to die once the room is in darkness, even more danger is added when Saliano demonstrates how potentially deadly the pairs of electrical spheres he sets up in the room in order to "protect" everyone are when he sticks something between them and a bright, crackling arc of electricity zaps through. Everyone is then told to sit down in the seats lined up in front of the tent Saliano goes into, and Janis is asked to sit at the semi-circle's right end, saying contact would work best if she and her aunt were at opposite ends. As Saliano talks about

how he's about to enter a trance in order to contact the spirit of Elmer Bellacrest, we see the reason for Janis' change of seating: she's now sitting right under a long spike protruding from the underside of a chandelier. Everyone joins hands and the lights are dimmed, with Saliano speaking in another language before disappearing into his tent. A couple of flowers float up into the air, one floating over towards Ish, landing on his head, and then floating around in front of his face, before the spheres suddenly crackle, which, according to Saliano, is a sign that evil spirits are trying to get in. After that, an instrument comes floating in,

appearing to speak through its musical notes, and the figure of an African savage appears in the dark, intoning in a bizarre, musical voice that he killed Elmer Bellacrest. When he disappears, the creepiest part happens when the apparent spirit of Elmer himself emerges from the darkness, speaking in a similarly strange, high-pitched, melodic voice, "I am Elmer. I am Elmer. I am so lonely." He speaks directly Janis, telling her to believe, while nearby, Fenninger waits for the chandelier to drop. The combination of the darkness, the glowing face, and the weird voice manages to make the scene come off as very eerie, and it's all too much for Janis, as she faints out of her chair, nearly missing being impaled when the chandelier does crash down.

When Kay and Chuck bed down for the night in the former's room, there's a moment that seems to indicate that there are actually ghosts in the house, as a little glowing, wagging form suddenly appears in the dark (the image is created through animation, giving it a very ghostly look). Kay, putting on his glasses and realizing it is there, becomes thoroughly freaked out and wakes up Chuck. But, as happened earlier with the poison dart in the wall, the form disappears when Chuck looks. It's not gone for long, though, as they both see it and let out panicked yells as it comes right at them and then gets under the covers with them. Chuck exclaims that whatever it is bit him,

and he jumps out of bed, telling Kay to hold it still, while he grabs something to hit it. When he turns on the lights, he sees Prince licking the face of an unconscious Kay. Realizing he was what got under the covers with them, Kay then figures that the glowing thing they saw in the dark was the tip of Prince's tail, as it was wagging in that very manner. He proves his point by turning out the light and calling to Prince, who wags his tail in the dark, and finds that the tip of his tail has phosphorous paint on it. Realizing that could explain the glowing faces at the seance, they then wonder how

Prince got in the room when the door was locked, leading them to discover the hidden panel in the fireplace, which Kay unknowingly opened when he closed the window. And later, although you know that it's just Saliano committing another hoax, the scene where Aunt Margo hears his voice in her bedroom, again proclaiming to be Elmer and asking to be brought back with Janis, is still spooky with the sound of his bizarre, disembodied voice and the added effect of a portrait of Elmer lighting up as he speaks.

Of course, the humor also comes from scenes like this, with Kay and other characters, particularly Ish, getting freaked out by and reacting to the weird things they see and are told. Kay's wide-eyed, brow-raised expressions tend to be pretty amusing, but I find Ish's "okay" sorts of expressions, like when the flower floats in his face during the first seance, to be a bit funnier. Speaking of the seance, Sully has some okay lines during the preparations. When he sees how lethal the electric spheres are, he tells Harry Babbitt, "Boy, we're in trouble. I wish I was back at the Palace Theater," and, when Kay has him and some of the other band-members sit in the semi-circle, he tells him,

"If I don't come back, call me up on the ouija board." The really classic, slapsticky stuff starts when Kay and Chuck get scared out of their wits by the sight of Prince's glowing tail in the dark and continues when they investigate the secret panel in the fireplace. This is also where Chuck becomes about as bumbling as Kay, as he flips what he thinks is a light switch, only for it to flatten the steps of the staircase they're standing on, sending them tumbling down. When they hit bottom, they look back up and Chuck says, "I thought it was a light switch," to which Kay says, "You also thought it was a good idea to come out here." Chuck then

comments, "If you ever catch me near a secret panel again, don't argue with me; slug me," and Kay answers, "With pleasure." They head on down the tunnel, Chuck telling Kay to shield his flashlight and Kay adding they should be nice and quiet, only to trip over something and bang into a gong hanging on the wall. In the next room, they come upon a dummy dressed in a suit of samurai armor that's holding a raised, large sword, the sight of which scares the crap out of Kay and makes him jump up against Chuck. After he calms down, Chuck asks him, "Don't you know a dummy when you see one?", to which Kay asks, "You don't really want me to answer that, do you, Chuck?" He tries to pass by the armor, when the sword comes down and nearly gets him, making him let out a high-pitched yell. They then walk past it, with Chuck waving his hand in front of its head to make sure it's actually a dummy, and continue following Prince.

After something flies in Chuck's eye (Kay says, "I wish it was the plane to Los Angeles,") he lags behind Kay, rubbing his eye, and when he calls to Kay, he tells him to give him his hand. Unbeknownst to him, Kay grabs the hand of a stuffed ape on a little, rolling cart and starts walking with it. Like I said before, this is a classic spooky comedy gag, with Kay commenting on how weird "Chuck's" hand feels, when he realizes his voice is coming from far back in the tunnel. Turning around, he sees the stuffed ape and yells for Chuck, when its feet break loose of the platform and it falls on top of him, pinning him to the ground. Chuck comes running and, seeing

what's happening, starts smacking the ape, yelling for it to get off him, while Kay struggles underneath it and manages to slip out. He stands up next to Chuck, who continues beating on the ape, and says, "I'm alright," with Chuck saying, "You're alright, but how about Kay?!", before going on whipping the ape before it hits him that Kay's standing right next to him. Kay says, "Don't get so excited! What's wrong with you?!", and walks on, with Chuck making an, "I try," face and following him. Prince leads them outside into the garden, where they hear some whistling and then see a figure in what appears to be a white robe and hood

sneaking around the bushes. Thinking it's some ne'er-do-well giving off signals, they get ahead of him and Kay cracks a flowerpot over his head. Chuck orders the guy to his feet, only for him to look up and reveal himself to be Ish looking for Prince. Kay and Chuck keep looking around the garden, while Ish asks Chuck questions about what they're looking for and how they came out into the garden, and when he receives the answers of "phosphorous" and "through the fountain," his reactions to both are little more than a bemused "oh." At one point, Kay sits down at a bench to get something out of his shoe, when Ish comes upon a

sundial and, seeing that it's wrong, turns it. He opens up another secret panel directly behind where Kay is sitting, causing him to tumble through and then find Saliano's secret control room, as well as the document that cracks the case wide open. He just barely avoids being spotted by Saliano when he walks down into the chamber, only to then get a message to meet up with someone in their room. (Up until Kay finds this chamber, that entire sequence was pointless, as nothing else they come across plays a significant part in the story.)

The climax begins when Saliano speaks to Aunt Margo in her room as Elmer and tells her to arrange another seance so he can speak to Janis. Almost everyone comes downstairs for it, but Mainwaring and Fenninger hit a hitch in their plan when Kay tells them they've locked Janis and Ginny Simms in their room, with two of the band-members watching them. Although Fenninger is frustrated with this, Mainwaring assures him Janis will come down and take part in the seance. Up in their bedroom, Janis and Ginny are asleep, while Sully and Ish, the two who are supposed to be watching over them, are totally asleep and dozing off respectively. A long, exotic blade

emerges from the nightstand on Janis' side, threatening to come down on her, and Ish, after stopping himself from falling asleep, gradually comprehends what's happening. His hair stands on end and he grabs and tosses a flower pot at the blade. The loud smash awakens the girls and everyone else with a start, with Sully crashing through his chair and Prince bark frantically, while the blade and the hand wielding it retreat back. Everyone panics and rushes out the door and downstairs, where the seance is about to begin. When they tell Kay and Chuck what happened, Kay figures Janis will be alright as long as Fenninger keeps an eye on her during the seance.

Like before, everyone else sits in a semi-circle, while Saliano enacts the seance and Mainwaring activates the electric spheres and dims the lights, as Kay conducts the other members of the band to play some appropriate music. We then see exactly how the hoax works, as Mainwaring presses a hidden button that allows Saliano to descend down into his chamber through the floor inside the tent, where he prepares the equipment, pushing a button that sends a tambourine floating through the air upstairs. Unbeknownst to Fenninger, who's been told to keep an eye on Kay, he has someone switch places with him in the dark.

Down in his chamber, Saliano plays the record of the eerie sounds they heard before and the figure of Elmer's spirit appears again. As he speaks about needing help, Kay crawls past him in the dark and sneaks down into the chamber through a secret panel in a settee, which Kay knows about because it's how he got back inside the house before. Fenninger places one of the electric spheres directly behind Janis, attempting to kill her by lining it up with another right in front of her, while Kay discovers how Saliano creates the ghostly voice through the use of a Sonovox.

Kay creeps up behind Saliano, knocks him out with a blow from a flashlight, and, just as Fenninger is about to activate the sphere he placed behind Janis, Kay uses Saliano's microphone to warn those up in the ballroom that there's a murderer among them. The figure of Elmer disappears into the darkness and everyone starts panicking and trying to escape. Chuck runs to the spot where the figure was standing, when he appears in front of him, holding a gun and telling him to get back. He removes his mask and reveals himself to be Mainwaring. He skirts around them, keeping his gun trained on them, warning Aunt Margo that he'll shoot her too if she does anything,

causing her to faint, and he slips out the door, locking everyone else in. While Fenninger continues to act benevolent, pretending to discover that Saliano has disappeared from his tent, Kay warns him over the microphone to look out for Saliano's conspirator. That's when Mainwaring shows up and tells Kay to give him back the document he took earlier. Kay manages to knock the gun out of his hand by distracting him and the two of them get into a fight. They struggle with each other on the floor, both of them going for the gun, and though Mainwaring reclaims it, Kay is able to kick him off of him, slam him onto the table, roll off it, and disarm him again. In their

struggle, Mainwaring forces Kay onto the controls, causing various objects suspended on wires to float wildly about those upstairs, as they continue trying to find a way out after discovering the windows are barred. After they knock everything off the table in their fight, with Mainwaring managing to get an advantage over Kay, slamming him against the wall and attempting to strangle him, Kay hits the lever for the lift, which comes down and knocks Mainwaring out. He then binds his hands to those of the still unconscious Saliano and uses the lift to get back up into the ballroom. When he comes up in the tent, it

collapses on him and everyone, seeing his figure beneath it, believes him to be Saliano and they attack him. It's only when he sticks his hand out from under the tent that Sully recognizes him and they stop the assault. Fenninger asks Kay where Saliano is and he tells him of the panel in the settee, giving him a club to use to break his way down into it. Kay then shows Janis and Aunt Margo the document that reveals Elmer had made a change in his will that would turn everything over to Janis when she turned 21, disclosing the motivation behind the plot to kill her.

A rock suddenly smashes through window and everyone runs to it and opens the shutters to see a bedraggled, badly beaten man standing outside, who reveals himself to be Prof. Karl Fenninger. As I mentioned earlier, this reveal is as arbitrary as it gets, as you never see this guy again after this brief moment, and it begs the question if he was also lucky enough to get there before the bridge was destroyed and has just been lying around unconscious all this time after having been attacked. It would have been much simpler to have Lorre's character just actually be the professor. Regardless, all three of the villains burst through the main door, with Fenninger and Mainwaring

holding them at gunpoint and ordering them to raise their hands, while Saliano has a little bundle of dynamite in his hand. Though they're told they won't get away with it, Fenninger says it will be difficult for their bodies to be identified when they're blown to bits and that the police will assume the three of them are among them. Saliano lights the fuse, tosses it at the crowd, and the villains rush out the door, while everyone else runs to the nearest corner away from the explosive. Everyone, that is, except Prince, who picks the dynamite up in his mouth and starts chasing them around the room with it. They try to shoo him away and Kay tries to pull the dynamite out of his

mouth. While he manages to do so, throwing the dynamite out the barred window, Prince chases after it and picks it back up. Everyone yells at him to put it down, when Fenninger, Mainwaring, and Saliano rush out the door and into the bushes. Prince chases after them and, when they're out of sight, there's a loud boom. Though relieved that the villains have been defeated, everyone, especially Ish, is sad that Prince apparently went out with them, when they hear him barking and look outside to see he has Saliano's turban in his mouth. Prince rejoins everyone through the bars and Kay makes the joke that they'll be able to go home once someone

figures out how to build a bridge. (The fact that they're supposedly still locked in the ballroom is never brought up.) The movie ends with them back home, with Kay hosting another episode of his radio show, using Saliano's Sonovox to make their instruments sing themselves. At the very end, Kay breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen of the motion picture audience, we've had a lot of fun making our picture and we certainly hope you've enjoyed it. But there's one thing I want to get clear in your minds. Remember Boris Karloff? Peter Lorre? Bela Lugosi? Well, they aren't really murderers at all. In

fact, they're nice fellas and good friends of mine. You know, things like this don't actually happen. It's all in fun. And so, we'll be on the air, as usual, next Wednesday night. And until then, we'll be thinking of you. So long, everybody." While he was talking, two of those spheres were set up behind him and he's immediately blasted into nothing when he steps back into them.

The crackling animation of THE END that appears afterward is an example of a handful of instances of unexpected and well done effects work in this film. Another example is the miniature of Bellacrest Manor in the exterior shots of it early on, complete with the little isle it sits on, lapping waves at the base of the cliffs, and the bridge that joins it to the mainland, as well as a little toy bus for the quick shot of it crossing over. Speaking of the bridge, the shot of it blowing up looks quite good too. There appears to have been matting and/or cinematography effects used for the glowing instrument that floats through the air during the first seance, and, going back to the subject of animation, as I

said earlier, the way they used it depict the tip of Prince's phosphorous-covered tail glowing in the dark comes off as effectively ghostly. In the shot where he heads towards Kay and Chuck's bed and slips under the covers with them, the tradeoff from the animation to the physical effect is almost seamless (save for Kay Kyser and Dennis O'Keefe's reactions initially coming off as delayed), with the black and white and the darkness aiding the matting.

As corny as some of the movie's jokes can get and outdated as it may feel, what I really think might not sit well with modern audiences are the times where the movie stops for a few minutes to have a song and/or dance routine. It even opens on such a scene, with the episode of Kay Kyser's College of Musical Knowledge. The two contestants are asked questions pertaining to the songs Pop Goes the Weasel and Heigh Ho, the male contestant has to sing My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean while taking occasional bites of cake, and then, Kay and all the major members of the group sing and perform an old-fashioned breakup song called Like the Fella Once Said,

during which Ish Kabbible cuts in to do some of his bad jokes with Kay, such as, "You know what the short chair said to the tall chair? Hi, chair." You may think it'll end there when the film moves away from the show, but no, there are three moments in the middle of the movie where everything stops so they can perform a song for everyone at Bellacrest Manor. First, you have Harry Babbitt crooning the love song, You've Got Me This Way, to the ladies, which isn't that bad and Babbitt has a really nice singing voice. But then, they immediately launch into another one, this one a

full-on skit called The Bad Humor Man, with a really long and ridiculous build-up that includes them singing snippets of old songs like London Bridge is Falling Down, Three Blind Mice, and Old McDonald Had a Farm, only to segue into Ish riding around on an ice cream cart, coming off as a grouchy guy with a nasty disposition. The rest of the routine is about the others, some of whom are acting like schoolchildren (there's even one guy wearing a curled wig, a black hat, and glasses, while speaking in a high-pitched, girly voice; there is a funny moment with him where he randomly sings in a very deep baritone), trying to cheer him up with their happy music. It goes on for well over three minutes, as Ish, once he's no longer bad-humored, pedals around and passes out ice cream to the girls, and by this point, you'll probably be wondering if the movie's forgotten it's supposed to be a horror-comedy.

Not too long afterward, before the first seance, there's yet another performance, this time with Ginny Simms singing I'd Know You Anywhere, the song that was nominated for an Oscar. Like You've Got Me This Way, it's fair enough (I don't see what it was that merited an Oscar nomination) and Simms was another person with a beautiful voice, but, while it's not as long as The Bad Humor Man, it feels like an excuse to pad the movie out a little more. In fact, during her performance, you see reaction shots of Saliano and Prof. Fenninger, who appear to be enjoying it, while Judge Mainwaring shifts in the seat he's sitting in with a nasty disposition, as if Boris Karloff is getting

impatient with the movie's structure. After that, it finally gets on with it and you don't get another performance until the very end, when Kay's band uses the Sonovox to sing bits of various songs through the diction of various instruments: Harry Babbitt uses it for reprises of I'd Know You Anywhere and You've Got Me This Way, and finally, Ginny sings a new song called I've Got a One Track Mind, with Babbitt adding support while using the Sonovox, before Kay finishes it all off by dancing to an instrumental version of The Bad Humor Man. Except for The Bad Humor Man, which I think is really cringe, I don't mind these songs that much but they do stop the movie cold (I guarantee that, without them, a good ten or so minutes could have been removed from the running time, which can feel sluggish, even at just 96 minutes). Also, if you're not a fan of this era of music, you'll probably find it all the more irksome.

The music of Kay Kyser and his band so dominates the movie that there's not much to be said about the actual music score by Roy Webb. In fact, any actual score is used very sparingly, and I don't know if Webb is to be credited with the instrumental versions of the songs you hear over the opening credits, including Kyser's own theme song, (I've Grown So Lonely) Thinking of You, or the music heard during the recordings of his show and at the very end. When you do hear the score, there are some noteworthy pieces, like an eerie, ethereal theme you hear when Kay first meets Prince Saliano in his room, it goes into full blown, orchestral horror music for Fenninger's arrival on the grounds, and when Fenninger and Mainwaring discuss their next plan to kill Janis, you can hear a very faint, creepy bit of music highlighting just how utterly diabolical they are. During the seance, when the flowers are floating around in mid-air, a tinkling piece of music gives it a magical tone, only to add in low trumpets and mischievous-sounding bits when one of them flies at Ish Kabbible and appears to play with him. A combination of ghostly, other-worldly music and humorous pieces are used for when Kay sees the glowing form in his room, transitioning into chaotic, chase music when it gets into bed with him and Chuck, and then cuts off abruptly when Chuck turns the lights on. Similarly, the scene down in the cellar is scored to sound spooky at some points and silly at others, but when Janis is nearly killed in her bedroom later on, it's scored seriously and tensely, even when Ish's hair is standing on end. That's about all there is to say about the score itself, which is actually a lot more than I expected.

You'll Find Out was a very successful movie when it was released in 1940 but now, it's very obscure, known only to the most diehard of old film fans. While it's not at all an overlooked classic, it does have some merit, chief among them the novelty of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre being in the same movie together, along with a charismatic and likable lead in Kay Kyser, some surprisingly spooky scenes, superlative production values, cinematography, and visual effects work, good use of the tried and true setting of a creepy mansion, and a fair music score. However, you must keep in mind that the three main attractions to horror fans are not the main focus, many of the supporting characters, including some of Kyser's band-members, are just kind of there, the humor and gags are pretty dated and never laugh out loud funny, the scenario has been done much better by tried and true comedians, and the song and dance routines that are peppered throughout the movie may try some viewers' patience, especially if they don't care for this era of music and also because of how corny said routines can get. If you think the good will outweigh the bad for you, then give the movie a chance, but don't expect something on the level of Abbot and Costello's horror comedies and the like.