A crazed scientist, Morder (Paul Wegener), driven even crazier by his nagging wife, murders her and walls her up in a basement, à la Poe's "The Black Cat".

Here, the patients have managed to free themselves, lock up the guards, and take charge (inspired by Poe's "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether").

After Morder's final escape, he turns up as president of a secret Suicide Club (based on the short story by Stevenson).

[2] In contemporary reviews, Variety declared in 1932 that Oswald had "succeeded in creating an effectively gruesome picture",[3] specifically praising the sound, acting and photography as "excellent".

[3] In 1940, Bosley Crowther reviewed The Living Dead for The New York Times, declaring it "a nightmare reminder of the old pre-Nazi macabre school of German films, which did all right by such things as M, but apparently had its bad moments, too.