“On the one hand, I was absolutely concerned with box office, and on the other I was trying to create art and decency, with a style.” Ulmer weds exploitation to capital-A Art in this Poverty Row costume drama, set against the blatantly painted backdrop of a romantic, nocturnal nineteenth-century Paris. Stalking down the dim foggy street in his stovepipe hat or peering through a peephole while performing a puppet opera of Faust, John Carradine brings a cadaverous sensitivity to the role of painter-puppeteer Gaston Morel. This worshipper of ideal feminine beauty is driven to serial murder by his disappointment in the real women he paints; in his bizarrely anachronistic canvases, artistic style becomes synonymous with criminal evidence. The film itself has style to burn, evidenced in the delirious camera angles mirroring the state of Morel's mind, or the shadows of puppets haunting his studio like ghosts.