On a stormy night in a haunted house, an heiress must prove her sanity while a masked killer roams the halls. This is the true founding film of the “Old Dark House” genre at Universal. Carl Laemmle brought German director Paul Leni (Waxworks) to Hollywood specifically for this project; Leni’s expressionist use of camerawork and lighting visibly influenced James Whale’s later works (Frankenstein, The Old Dark House). Without this film, there would be no visual grammar for Universal’s horror films of the 1930s.