The Invisible Ray (1936)

A gothic, science fictional, monster, murder mystery which starts in a lab in the Carpathian Mountains, travels not only to outer space but into the far into the past, spends some time exploring Africa and then concludes in Paris.

A scientist (Boris Karloff) with a young wife (Frances Drake) and a persecution complex discovers a cosmic ray-based time machine which allows him to view past events and thus locate the site of an ancient meteor containing radium X, a radioactive element which can be used for evil, but also for good.

When he is poisoned by meteoric radiation, he leaves his wife to devote the rest of his life to medical research, but an adversarial colleague (Béla Lugosi) works in parallel to get the same results.

Maddened in part because of the radiation; in part because of his wife’s betrayal; but additionally, because he feels his discovery was stolen; he uses six statues on top of a church to inspire his murders; (though only six, Michael Wheldon mistakenly writes they stand for the seven deadly sins.)

There are odd elements which not only point the way to Karloff’s later Corridors of Blood (1958) with its well-intentioned medical scientist gone bad; but also, to The Wolf Man, (1941) with a silver tipped cane-equipped mother (Violet Kemble Cooper) being instrumental to his downfall.

Though there are certainly earlier films with the premise, this is also an early Horror featuring a madman with a checklist of people to kill (The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), Theater of Blood (1973), etc. all the way to Se7en (1995) and beyond.)

This material might have worked quite well in serial form (there are many disparate genre elements and locations, each well-worthy of their own chapter,) but here they are condensed into a single feature film.

(SPOILER) Strangely for a post-Code film, the adulterous wife and her lover (Frank Lawton) get away with it at the end.

It would have been much more tragically satisfying to have the insipid fop killed instead of Lugosi.