Depressed, jealous, opium-addicted choirmaster John Jasper (Claude Rains) is obsessed by Rosa Bud (Heather Angel), who is the fiancée of his nephew, Edwin Drood’s (David Manners). She finds Jasper’s attentions creepy, though she keeps it to herself. Neville Landless (Douglass Montgomery) and his sister Helena (Valerie Hobson), of mixed racial heritage, come to town with Neville falling immediately for Rosa and Helena becoming Rosa’s roommate. Neville and Edwin come to blows over Rosa, but Neville’s sensitivity has an unexpected source: he doesn’t want to marry Rosa. And luckily for Neville, she doesn’t want to marry Edwin, and the two call off their engagement. Unfortunately, they don’t tell anyone, and when Jasper sees them in a goodbye embrace, he becomes murderous. Soon after, Edwin disappears and Neville is blamed. But who really killed Edwin… OK, we know. It’s really, really obvious. Really, as in they should of changed the title to Not a Mystery of Edwin Drood.
The 1930s are filled with non-horror films in horror clothing. Mystery of Edwin Drood is the most notorious of those. Made at Universal by their horror team, its stars, as well as bit players, also appeared in classic monster films: Rains in the Invisible Man, Manners in Dracula, Hobson in Bride of Frankenstein and Werewolf of London. Director Stuart Walker was also at the helm of Werewolf of London, and writer John L. Balderston had his pen in Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, and Dracula’s Daughter. Its sets were shared by horror films, including the crypt now more famous from Bride of Frankenstein. There’s a storm, an opium nightmare, and gothic touches throughout, and Universal sold it to TV as a horror film. All of that sets expectations, which was the intention. But it isn’t horror. It’s a stodgy costume drama with a few tense moments. It lacks the thrills of a horror picture and the depth and complexity it would need as pure drama.
Despite the title, there’s no mystery, though the source material has a kind of mystery. The Mystery of Edwin Drood was the final novel of Charles Dickens, unfinished at the time of his death. We’ll never know if Dickens planned the story to be a mystery; the film decides that is isn’t, naming the killer before there is a killing. Many Dickens fans believe that he intended Edwin to be secretly alive, but I don’t object to Universal choosing to go a different way, only that they didn’t do anything interesting.
While there’s little that is horribly wrong in Mystery of Edwin Drood, I find little that’s right. The sets are nice and it’s shot professionally, but Walker has no flair. It looks pretty, but the way the camera is used doesn’t say anything special, which would be fine if the plot or characters were stronger. Thus I call it professional, or even skilled, but not artistic. The actors all are a bit confused. The supporting cast camp it up. That’s not surprisingly based on what they are used to doing in Universal horror pictures and what is easy to fall into with Dickens’s dialog, but Walker can’t make use of it the way James Whale did in The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein. They need to release built up tension or show the quirky nature of humanity. Instead, when set next to the more serious performances, they seem silly. Rains is one who takes his part seriously—too seriously; I rate him as one of the greatest film actors, so his being off the mark I lay at Walker’s feet. Manners was not a good actor, and based on this, I’d say the same of Montgomery, but Hobson was solid, though not here. Again, I look to Walker, though poor Hobson and Montgomery were forced to perform in ridiculous brown-face makeup that couldn’t have helped.
Though that leads to my confusion on if this is a progressive or regressive film. The makeup is atrocious, and Neville is violent and uncontrolled. But he’s also the hero, which makes me wonder how this got past the censors. The Breen office didn’t allow interracial relationships. Did half-Indian not count? But then the film also got away with opium use, so I’ll change my earlier statement: the film did something right in getting around the Production Code.
I think their mistake with Mystery of Edwin Drood was trying to play it both ways. Universal should have made a straight, Dickens, period piece, or they should have gone full in with horror. What they ended up with isn’t much good as either.