Janis Bellacrest (Helen Parrish) has just finished school. She is having a birthday and will be turning 21. Her aunt Margo (Alma Kruger) lives in a spooky old mansion on an island in the middle of two rivers. There is one bridge to the estate. As a birthday present for Janis, Margo hires Kay Kyser (Kay Kyser) and his orchestra to play at her birthday party, at the estate. Janis’s boyfriend Chuck Deems (Dennis O’Keefe) is Kay’s manager.
Chuck, Kay and the orchestra arrive at the mansion as a thunderstorm is starting to whip up. The house is creepy, but only half as creepy as Aunt Margo. Even creepier is Prince Saliano (Bela Lugosi). He is a fake medium who has wormed his way into Margo’s bankbook. Kay and Chuck are also introduced to Margo’s attorney, Judge Spencer Mainwaring (Boris Karloff). Among the guests is Professor Karl Fenninger (Peter Lorre). His specialty is rooting out fake mediums. Leary of Saliano, Janis has invited Fenninger to the mansion to reveal Saliano as a fraud.
The house is old and full of antiques and strange collections of weapons and taxidermy. Kay gets spooked when the lights flicker and a woman screams. Then he sees a blow gun dart sticking out of the wall near where his singer, Ginny Simms (Ginny Simms), had been standing. He decides that, party or no party, he’s leaving. Before he can do anything about it, the bridge between the island and the mainland blows up.
Now everyone is trapped and someone is out to kill Janis. More attempts are made on her life. Finding out who is responsible and why is up to Kay and Chuck. Is it Saliano? If so, is he acting alone or does he have help?
“You’ll Find Out” was released in 1940 and was directed by David Butler. It is a horror/comedy/musical film. Horror comedies in the forties, for the most part, weren’t very funny. A lot of it was slapstick and word play, or puns. Adding music to a comedy/horror film doesn’t make it all that much better.
Kay Kyser was an orchestra leader very popular in the forties. He had a radio program called “Kay Kyser and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge”. A sample of which opens the movie. If you are patient, and can live through the musical interludes, you will be rewarded with a pretty good Old Dark House film. There’s not a lot of mystery, but the plot is decent and the effects are good. With Lugosi, Karloff and Lorre on board you have some great acting as well. The house itself is a character with the appropriate hidden passages and secret rooms.
Altogether it was an enjoyable film. It just would have been better without Kay Kyser. Although his performance got better as the film went along. There are also scenes with Ish Kabibble (M.A. Bogue) that would have made the film better if left on the cutting room floor as well. In between the bad is a decent movie. Unless you like Kay Kyser the draw here is Lugosi, Karloff and Lorre. All of which play their roles straight. I just wish it had a better title. I have no idea what it means.
Reference is made in the movie to The Four Hundred. The Four Hundred refers to a list of New York society families during what was known as The Gilded Age. These families were the wealthiest in New York and pretty much ran everything. They were politicians, bankers, railroad magnets, captains of industry and represented “old money”. In a sense they were the “in” crowd and they determined who sat at the popular kid’s lunch table.
As a historical film it is quite significant. This is the only on-screen team up of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre. Both Karloff and Lugosi have limited screen time but they make the most of it, and quite well. Lorre doesn’t have all that much more but he is a joy to watch.