Boris Karloff gets to play a saner than usual scientist in Lloyd Corrigan’s Night Key, a film included by Screen Gems in their influential Shock Theater package of 52 Universal horror films sold to television in October 1957. It helped to create the “monster kid” generation of young fans but mixed in with the classics like Frankenstein (1931), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), The Black Cat (1934) and many others were a smattering non-genre films, things like Reported Missing! (1937), The Witness Vanishes (1939) and Sealed Lips (1942). Night Key, despite the title and Karloff’s presence, isn’t a horror film at all, though it has a minor science fiction element that earns it a place here. And as low budget programmers go, it’s rather good fun, enlivened by a cracking pace, some silly gadgets and of course Karloff.

He plays Dave Mallory, an aging engineer and inventor whose eyesight is fading. He’s invented a revolutionary burglar alarm system while his loving daughter Joan (Jean Rogers) helps out by waiting on tables. Mallory is in need finance to finish off the new alarm system and approaches his former friend Steve Ranger (Samuel S. Hinds), who now runs his own security firm, despite the fact that Ranger has already stolen the rights to one of Mallory’s earlier inventions. Ranger hasn’t changed one bit and promptly dupes Mallory into signing away his invention, leaving his desperate – so desperate that he invents a portable device he calls The Key which he can use to disable the new system and teams up with small time hood “Petty Louie” (Hobart Cavanaugh). They stage a series of break-ins in an attempt to discredit Ranger’s company (though much to Louie’s dismay, they never actually steal anything) until they come to the attention of mobster The Kid (Alan Baxter) who has much more lucrative plans for The Key. When his gang kidnap Joan, Mallory uses his knowledge to build electrical gizmos to kill the hoodlums and rescue his daughter.

Universal were struggling around this time and the trade papers were smelling blood after getting their hands on some pretty disastrous financial results and eventually, 14 March 1936, Carl Laemmle Sr, had to admit defeat and sold the company to the Standard Capital Corporation, known for bailing out struggling studios. Budget cuts were the order of the day, and the new owners were quick to notice that that public appetite for horror had seemingly been sated – they couldn’t rely on the once profitable monster films any more. They seemed to be banking on Deanna Durbin musicals and screwball comedies to save their corporate bacon and that of course was a problem for Karloff who was still under contract with Universal at the time and had become their go-to horror star.

Karloff had just returned from a three month break after making Charlie Chan at the Opera when he was originally slated to appear in something called The Man in the Cab (aka The Electric Monster, not the same as the film that became Man Made Monster (1941)) but because the new management at Universal thought that the horror boom that the studio had created was over , they offered him a crime thriller instead albeit one with lashings of science fiction trappings. As early as January 1937, with the film only just going into production, the Daily Film Renter were already telling readers that “drama and thrills are promised, but – no horror!” Karloff didn’t seem to mind this as he told the New York Times in November 1936: “I’ve always wanted to portray a role in which I did not have to resort to grotesque make-up.”

It’s a likable enough film, very lightweight but Karloff is having a ball, there are some arresting visual effects (the “zapping” of one of the gangsters with an electric charge is particularly good) and former actor Corrigan (who inherited the film from Arthur Lubin) directs with some brio. It’s never dull, but it’s certainly not a horror film. Mallory’s gadgets give it a degree of science fiction interest but for the most part it’s a crime thriller with a few technological trappings. It’s the kind of thing that Karloff could have done in his sleep but he’s still the best thing about the film which would probably have been completely forgotten by now had he not been in it.

The film’s consignment to the Shock Theater package has possibly raised expectations that the film should never have had to meet but if you go into it aware that you’re not getting the mad scientist film that it might first appear to be, then a good time is pretty much guaranteed. It wastes very little time – even a romantic subplot doesn’t outstay its welcome – and although Mallory often comes across as a gullible idiot, it’s a good fun programmer. Two years later, Universal would return to horror production with the successful Son of Frankenstein (1939) which would itself lead to a string of mostly inferior films in the 1940s, while Karloff would go on to play several more properly mad scientists in films like The Man They Could Not Hang (1939), The Devil Commands (1941) and House of Frankenstein (1944).