This drama is an updated version of Ulmer’s 1944 film Bluebeard. It is set in New York and follows the exploits of an eccentric Parisian painter who has come to New York to escape a controversy surrounding his work. The trouble stems when the model he has used in all his work is found floating dead in the Seine.
Wealthy New York banker Daniel Van Dyke summons his wild family to announce that he is ill and plans to plead guilty to charges of income tax evasion in order to go to prison and get a rest from their antics.
Stupid football player is kidnapped by gangsters. Lunatics abound: former footballer now dancer, professor interested in magic, gangster who makes horse noises when excited.
Merl Kramer works as a stenographer for a psychiatrist. She is casually dating Karl Benson, a private eye and former cop. Merl mentions in passing that one of her boss’s patients is an author with recurring dreams of murdering his wife, and she includes the fact that the wife owns valuable jewels. When the wife is found murdered in a manner identical to that of her husband’s dream, the husband is naturally the prime suspect.
Joan Fry, a society woman, falls in love with Chuck Riley, the white-leader of a powerful gang in Chinatown, and he quickly drags her down into the depths with him. But seeing her so much in love with him causes him to realize he isl in love with her, and he determines to lift her up again. “Boston” Charley, the rival gang-leader, has other plans.
