The Return of Peter Grimm

Uncle Peter (Lionel Barrymore) is a rich old man who takes care of his niece and sickly nephew. When the story begins, Uncle Peter is at a seance...and thinks it's all a lot of nonsense. Little does Peter know that soon he'll be dead...and he's desperate to contact these two, as it turns out he made a mess of things...asking the niece to promise to marry his ne'er do well nephew who just came to town. But Peter's ghost is able to see how horrid this nephew is...and how little regard he has for the sickly nephew and the niece. And so, he finds himself fighting to somehow let her know that she does NOT need to honor her agreement and should marry the man of her own choosing.

While the film has a neat idea, its execution could have been MUCH better. First, the film lacks energy and becomes dull when it never should have been. Second, while Barrymore is good, the rest of the cast are at best adequate. And finally, the technique they used to make Peter look ghosty (by blurring part of the lens with Vaseline) just didn't look very good nor convincing. Overall, an interesting concept but a film that really didn't work all that well...unlike a similar and far superior film Barrymore made soon after...the great "On Borrowed Time" (1939).