THE PHANTOM OF CRESTWOOD. RKO Radio Pictures, 1932. Ricardo Cortez, Karen Morley, Anita Louise, Pauline Frederick, H. B. Warner, Mary Duncan, Sam Hardy, Tom Douglas, Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher, Aileen Pringle. Director: J. Walter Ruben.

   There have been old “dark and stormy night” movies before and since, complete with spooky mansions with a group of assorted people trapped inside with an unknown killer, but Crestwood, I believe, is a benchmark for others to compare with, if not an out and out classic.

   This film has the added cachet of providing the solution to a series of radio programs that told the same story as dramatized here, but leaving the listeners to provide their own endings. There are plenty of suspects to choose from. The leading lady of the film is Jenny Wren, played by Karen Morley, beautiful and appropriately slinky. She is also a blackmailer, with the real goods on a number of gentlemen (married or about to be) with whom she has had brief but now profitable affairs, or so she hopes.

   She calls them all together, as well as their wives, to give them her demands. Planning on retiring from the gold digger business, she instead ends up dead. I don’t imagine that this will come as any surprise to anyone watching this film. Adding to the mystery, there are luminescent faces in the dark, passageways behind walls, plus plenty of thunder and lightning, a cliff at the edge of land behind the mansion, and of course at the appropriate time, the lights go out.

   Besides having plenty of suspects with obvious motives, there are those on hand with motives yet to come to light. Doing the detective work — and this is different — is Ricardo Cortez, a gangster who along with members of his gang knows full well they will be blamed for the killing if caught at the scene. (He is on hand to retrieve some letters in Jenny’s possession.)

   It’s difficult to go wrong in watching this type of movie, and when it’s done with a decent budget and some pizzazz, as this one is, it makes it a lot of fun to watch.