“It is the kind of picture any company, or any producer, would like to release. It is a class product from start to finish, with every opportunity to entertain, regardless of expense, utilized to the fullest. In comparison with other movies with the same premise, it is head and shoulders a superior.
The average horror picture is usually an inept and low-budgeted conglomeration of corpses falling out of coat closets, screams in the fog and miscellaneous gunfire motivated by mad scientists, daring constables and incredibly beautiful female journalists. However, Bluebeard, though of the horror variety, raises this type of entertainment to a new high by combining an intelligent story with psycological overtones and a beautifully-mounted production.
Producer Leon Fromkess and his associate, Martin Mooney, have taken pains to see that no detail – in whatever department – was overlooked in making this film a sombre, gripping melodrama, which moves toward its conclusion relentlessly.
With Paris in 1855 as the setting, the story deals with a talented but unrecognized artist-puppeteer, played by John Carradine, who strangles lovely women out of a sadistic desire not to have his dream of them destroyed. Carradine has never been seen to better advantage. Gone are the familiar, hammish chin-stoking and the leering eye. He gives a sensitive, yet virile portrayal of the mad painter that will be marked as one of the finest pieces of acting in a long time.
Jean Parker is lovely and underplays intelligently the leading feminine role, with Nils Asther welcome back in a supporting role that he makes strong. Other highlights of an unusually fine cast are contributed by Ludwig Stossel, Sonia Sorel, Patti McCarty – excellent – and a newcomer seen in a few brief scenes, Anne Sterling. All give much to the quality of the finished product.
Edgar G. Ulmer’s direction is studied and exact. There is a gentleness and an understanding permeating the entire film that can be attributed to him. Jockey Feindel’s photography is always good and, at times, superbly different. The sets by Paul Palmentola are artistic creations, every one – and would do justice to any production. The music, under the direction of Leo Erdody, is excellent”. (Hollywood Reporter, October 9, 1944)