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Tower of London (Universal) solves the problem of what to do next with a popular monster (Boris Karloff), who has already been deranged (The Lost Patrol), mummified (The Mummy), roasted alive (Frankenstein), resurrected (The Son of Frankenstein). Horror-man Karloff is now introduced to one of Hollywood's most accomplished villains (Basil Rathbone) in the cellars of the Tower of London circa 1480. There, amidst moaning victims, clanking chains and chopping blocks, Villain Rathbone (the crookbacked Richard, Duke of Gloucester) shows Monster Karloff (Mord, the club-footed constable of the Tower) how to satisfy an active homicidal mania by murdering the four candidates who are preventing Duke Richard from becoming King Richard III of England. By the time Mord and Richard have killed Henry VI, the Duke of Clarence, Edward V and his brother, they are killed themselves at the battle of Bosworth.
For this chronicle of wasted crime, Producer-Director Rowland Lee and his Scripter-Brother Robert N. Lee claim they boned through 350 volumes of British history. The picture suggests that they might have achieved the same result with less labor by referring to Charles Dickens' A Child's History of England, since, as history, this period thriller is considerably less authentic than its elaborately spooky reproductions of London's Tower. But the battles of Tewkesbury and Bosworth with nickering horses and the knightly clang of iron against iron set a new high for realistic racket that should deafen the most demanding.
Best shot: Richard and Mord drowning the Duke of Clarence, Richard's brother, in a vast butt of malmsey—bibulous Clarence's favorite tipple—with beautifully bubblous sound effects.
*Second and hardest working: After the Thin Man.