The thriller features three leading players from the previous year's Dracula (Lugosi, Manners, and Edward Van Sloan), and was the first film directed by Edwin L. Marin.

The studio wants to pass it off as a simple accident, but screenwriter Franklyn Drew (Manners) digs a bullet out of a wall and tells Homicide Detective Lieutenant Sheehan that it is a .38 caliber, while the guns used in the film are all .45s.

Sheehan finds a letter in the dead man's pocket, in which Brent wrote to his lawyer that Marcia Lane (Ames), his co-star and ex-wife, would not sign a release as beneficiary of his $200,000 life insurance policy.

While snooping around on the set, Drew finds a derringer mounted inside a lamp and electrically wired to be fired remotely, but he is knocked out and the gun taken.

The studio decides to finish the film (only the last, fatal scene needs to be shot), using a double for Brent and arranging for Lane's temporary release.

[1] (Though technically, the scenes weren't tinted in the traditional sense, but by hand-coloring each frame a la the early method used by such pioneers as Georges Melies.)