Wally Brown and Alan Carney were RKO's answer to Abbott and Costello, but they had little of Bud and Lou's comedic talent. Watching them trying to mimic their Universal Studios contemporaries is painful.
In this film the pair play radio actors on a weekly crime show, their scripts written by pretty Ellen Brent (Anne Jeffreys), with criminologist Latimer Marsh (Lionel Atwill) as advisor. In reality, Marsh is the sadistic criminal known as The Cobra, and his advice has led to Ellen getting close to discovering his secret identity. Together with his loyal henchman Stone (Bela Lugosi), Marsh tries to ensure no-one finds out that he is The Cobra.
The last five minutes of Genius At Work, which take place on a precarious ledge several stories up, is fairly entertaining nonsense, but to get there one has to sit through an awful lot of really bad comedy, Brown and Carney failing to tickle the ribs. Atwill is truly loathesome as Marsh and Lugosi is suitably menacing, but one has to feel sorry for these icons of horror appearing in such low-grade tosh. The really sad thing is that this was to be Atwill's swan song -- not a very illustrious way to end a career.
In this film the pair play radio actors on a weekly crime show, their scripts written by pretty Ellen Brent (Anne Jeffreys), with criminologist Latimer Marsh (Lionel Atwill) as advisor. In reality, Marsh is the sadistic criminal known as The Cobra, and his advice has led to Ellen getting close to discovering his secret identity. Together with his loyal henchman Stone (Bela Lugosi), Marsh tries to ensure no-one finds out that he is The Cobra.
The last five minutes of Genius At Work, which take place on a precarious ledge several stories up, is fairly entertaining nonsense, but to get there one has to sit through an awful lot of really bad comedy, Brown and Carney failing to tickle the ribs. Atwill is truly loathesome as Marsh and Lugosi is suitably menacing, but one has to feel sorry for these icons of horror appearing in such low-grade tosh. The really sad thing is that this was to be Atwill's swan song -- not a very illustrious way to end a career.