Monday, July 13, 2020

Bowery at Midnight (1942)

A fun crime/horror romp. Wagner (Bela Lugosi) runs a soup kitchen for guys down on their luck assisted by Judy (Wanda McKay), a front for his murderous criminal organisation (not that Judy knows about this). He takes escaped criminals to help him commit crimes and then kills them afterwards. The bodies are given to the sinister hunchback Doc (Lew Kelly) who turns them into zombies!

If that's not enough, Wagner lives a double life. By day he is a respected professor of psychology, one of his students (and Judy's beau) Richard (John Archer) falls foul of the prof when he does some research at the soup kitchen...

A fast moving film with plenty of horror and crime movie tropes of the time thrown in. Lots of hidden rooms and passageways of course! Quick firing shoot outs and police chases are also packed in. Lugosi was churning the films out in the 1940s but this is one of the best.