Tastes change, and things that were popular decades ago may not be so popular today. I think a good example of that would be bandleader Kay Kyser, who hosted a radio show calle the Kollege of Musical Knowledge that involved Kyser dressing like a professor among other this. It was popular enough that he was brought to Hollywood and made several movies. One that happens to be on my DVR is You'll Find Out, and you'll find out indeed if you watch the movie.
The movie opens up with a fictionalized version of Kyser doing his radio show. Chuck Deems (Dennis O'Keefe) is the band's manager, and he's got a girlfriend in socialite Janis Bellacrest (Helen Parrish). She's about to turn 21, and is living with her aunt Margo (Alma Kruger) at the family estate on an island with only one bridge (which means some obvious foreshadowing). But before everyone can get to the mansion, somebody tries to bump off Janis as she's exiting the auditorium where Kay Kyser does his show.
Kay and the band go to the mansion because they've been hired to perform for Janis' 21st birthday party, which gives Kay the chance to meet a bunch of offbeat characters. That's because Aunt Margo is one of those people that populated movies back in the day who believed in spiritualism. She's hired Prince Saliano (Bela Lugosi), who is a medium, to hold séances at which he can supposedly speak to the dead and which will allow Margo to hear from her dearly departed brother (ie. Janis' father). Kay doesn't believe in this stuff and wants to disprove it, while Janis and Chuck are worried that Aunt Margo is being scammed financially.
Kay would like to leave, but of course the storm that's been going on outside destroys the bridge. So Kay has to stay for the séance, which is a good thing because there's another attempt on Janis' life at the séance and Kay basically saves Janis. But who's trying to kill Janis, and why? Perhaps Prof. Fenninger (Peter Lorre), or Margo's lawyer, Judge Mainwaring (Boris Karloff), can answer those questions. More likely, it's going to be up to Kay and his band members to solve the mystery themselves.
As I mentioned above, the movie starts off with Kay doing his show, and frankly, it's full of the sort of cornball humor that may have worked in the days before World War II (the movie was released in 1940) but today is worse than groan-inducing. And some of Kay's band members are even worse, notably the cornetist with terrible hair who was given the stage name Ish Kabibble. One positive is that Kay is pretty much only playing himself, since I don't get any impression that he had much acting ability.
The story isn't exactly bad, although it's unoriginal, being part of a genre of haunted house movies that had started in the early 1930s and began to include comedy in the late 1930s with movies like The Cat and the Canary. Fans of the genre will probably enjoy seeing Karloff, Lugosi, and Lorre together, but the film isn't that great.
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