The Climax [DVD] [1944]

The Climax was hurriedly and economically filmed on leftover sets from Universal's super-production The Phantom of the Opera. In his Technicolor debut, Boris Karloff plays Dr. Hohner, a brilliant but unstable theatrical physician who murders a beautiful opera star when she rejects him. Ten year later, a beautiful young opera singer named Angela (Susannah Foster) makes her debut at the Royal Opera House. Convinced that Angela is the reincarnation of his murdered sweetheart, Dr. Hohner fiendishly hypnotizes the girl so that she will be unable to sing. The spell is broken by the combined efforts of Angela's boyfriend Franz (Turhan Bey) and an opera-loving "boy king" (Scotty Beckett). As for Hohner, well, what usually happens to Boris Karloff in films of this nature?~Hal Erickson