'The Corpse Vanishes' will make you appreciate your family

The Corpse Vanishes (aka "The Case of the Missing Brides") (1942)
Starring: Luana Walters, Bela Lugosi, Elizabeth Russell and Angelo
Director: Wallace Fox
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Certifiable madman and scientific genius Prof. Lorenz (Lugosi) is placing beautiful, virgin brides into deathlike states at the altar with specially created orchids. He then steals the bodies and drains glandular fluids from them to create a concoction that keeps is even crazier wife looking youthful. His scientific fountain of youth is threatened when society columnist and wanna-be hardnosed reporter Patricia Hunter (Walters) grows suspicious and pays him a visit at his isolated home. Will she bring in the scoop of the year, or will she herself become a victim?


"The Corpse Vanishes" is a pretty standard mad scientist vs. plucky girl reporter lightweight horror movie... except for the bizarre group of characters that make up Lorenz's household.

From Lorenz's wife (who sleeps in a coffin for no apparent reason) to the house-keeper (a doomsaying withered old hag), her bestial son (who likes fondling the comotose brides Lorenz brings home, not to mention our heroine when she stays the night at the house), to her midget son (who serves as valet, butler, and Lorenz's chief henchman), to Lorenz himself (who at one moment refers to them as his "strange family" and the next moment is threatening to kill them... not to mention the whole abducting of brides thing), this is the weirdest household this side of the Manson Family.

No matter how freaky your family is, if you watch this film before going to celebrate a holiday with them, you will be able to say to yourself, "Eh... they could be worse."

Aside from the Lorenz household, everything else is pretty much stock here--including our heroine and the bland love interest she picks up--but the fast-paced story keeps things lively and moving.

Lugosi gives a standard performance. Although he has quite a bit of screen time, he doesn't have alot do to, except to be a centerpiece around which other, stranger characters orbit.

'Black Dragons' lost all value on when WW2 ended

Black Dragons (aka "The Yellow Menace") (1942)
Starring: Bela Lugosi and Joan Barclay
Director: William Nigh
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

As America gears up to fight the Japanese during WWII, a group of wealthy Fifth Columnists finalize their plans to sabotage the war effort from the top down. However, they share a secret far deeper and more sinister than just being traitors--and that secret is why the mysterious Mr. Cologne (Lugosi) is murdering them, one by one. Is Cologne an American patriot, or is he a threat more sinister than even the enemy agents?


There isn't much in this 1942 spy movie that recommends it to the modern viewer. "Black Dragons" is terribly dated due to its WWII message of "loose lips sink ships" and while it shows some glimmers of perhaps having risen to the level of an interesting thriller, the rushed, exposition-heavy wrap-up during the film's final ten minutes dispels what little supense had been built up, and the fact that the mysterious powers displayed by Lugosi's character (who, literally, vanishes into thin air several times) remain unexplained, confine this film to the massive scrapheap of Z-grade pictures.

A monkey is made of Lugosi in 'The Ape Man'

The Ape Man (aka "Lock Your Doors") (1943)
Starring: Bela Lugosi, Wallace Ford, Minerva Urecal, Louise Currie, and Henry Hall
Director: William Beaudine
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Dr. Brewster (Lugosi) decides to prove his evolutionary theory of by using a serum to turn himself into a "missing link." He soon regrets his state and goes about developing a cure. Unfortunately, his cure requires lots of fresh spinal fluid, so he takes to prowling the streets with his pet gorilla looking for people to kill.


"The Ape Man" is an embarrassing affair all around. From the guy in the cheap gorilla suit; to Lugosi's "ape man" costume; to the lame reporter trio of comic relief characters; to the tepid climax of the unfocused, messy script, just about everything here should stand as an embarrassment to all those involved in created it. I'm sure everyone could hold their heads high while cashing their paychecks, but I hope they slinked by any theater screening this disaster back in the day. It must have been clear during filming what an awful film this would be; whether viewed as a horror film, or a horror film spoof (and I think they were trying to make the latter) this is a movie that just doesn't work.

In fairness, the actors, by the way, do a passable job, given what they're working with... but even if they'd given Oscar-worthy performances, "The Ape Man" would still be a steaming pile of primate droppings.

Running just under 70 minutes, "The Ape Man" is okay for the first 10-15 of them, but then it takes a sharp nose-dive into The Suck. It remains watchable, but only if you're interested in seeing if it can get any worse (and in seeing an actor in a terribly gorilla suit make a monkey out of himself).

'Shadow of Chinatown' is ghost of a good movie

The Shadow of Chinatown (1936)
Starring: Herman Brix, Joan Barclay, Luana Walters, Maurice Lui, and Bela Lugosi
Director: Robert F. Hill
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A pair of self-loathing "Eurasians" (Walters and Lugosi) team up to use their business saavy and scientific know-how to enrich themselves and take their revenge on both the White and Oriental peoples. But they haven't counted on interference from a San Francisco society page reporter wanting to graduate to investigative reporting (Barclay), her Chinese culture-loving private detective friend (Brix), nor the assortment of superfluous secondary characters and bumbling henchmen.


"The Shadow of Chinatown" that I watched is the feature-film version, which is a condensing of a 15-part serial. That explains for some of the disjointedness of the story, but it doesn't account for the atrociously wooden acting on the part of the actors--except Luana Walters, the only performer who gives a decent accounting of herself--the erratic and contradictory abilities and powers of Lugosi's character, and the lame, anti-climax of the movie's end.

This 70-minute version was so dull I almost didn't make it to end. It starts out strong enough with Walters and Lugosi's minions fanning out through Chinatown and terrorizing business patrons while disguised as Chinese gangsters, and providing Barclay's character an opportunity to get captured by the villains and then escape... but then it starts to sink into a mess of bad acting and even worse plotting. Walters remains a bright spot throughout, but she's really the only thing worth watching here.

'The Human Monster' is a humongous bore

The Dark Eyes of London (aka "The Human Monster" and "The Dead Eyes of London") (1940)
Starring: Bela Lugosi, Hugh Williams and Greta Gynt
Director: Walter Summers
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Orloff, a physician turned insurance broker who is issuing life insurance policies to disabled men with himself as the beneficiary and then murdering them. His scheme goes awry when one of his victims failed to mention that he has a daugther... and she has just happened to return to England after living for many years in the United States (played by Greta Gynt). Orloff needs to act fast and subtely, or this meddling relative and the dashing Scotland Yard inspector (Hugh Williams) who is her would-be love interest will unmask him as a multi-murderer for sure.

"The Dark Eyes of London" is a dreary, dreadfully boring movie with too much wooden dialogue and too little forward movement in the story as the film unfolds. To make matters even worse, the story relies too much on coincidence to get the story going and to keep it moving. (I can live with the daughter returning just after her father has died, but it's too much for me that she happens to run into the inspector who will work her father's murder-case, or that... I could continue, but I might spoil what little suspense that "The Dark Eyes of London" actually manages to build for the viewer.)


It's too bad the director didn't have a better sense of pacing, and the writers didn't have a better talent for dialogue, because the actors all deliver good performances, there is some nice very nice photography and effective staging of scenes, and the brutal picture painted of the everyday world is also interesting for a movie of this vintage.

Of particular note is Bela Lugosi. Like so many other movies he was featured in, he transcends the awfulness of the material and delivers a fantastic performance. He is in rare form in this picture, projecting a degree of evil that matches the villain he played in "The Raven." The movie isn't all that good, but Lugosi is terrific.

I know there are some reviewers who praise "The Dark Eyes of London" as a brooding masterpiece with a sinister and evil villain. I found it boring, with Lugosi being great but not enough to make the film worthwhile.

Maybe someone out there can tell me what I missed while watching "The Dark Eyes of London"?

Trivia: "The Dark Eyes of London" was the last film to be produced and released before the outbreak of WW2. Then, the British film industry turned its attention to doing its part to battle the Axis Powers.

Lugosi mostly wasted in this comedy muted by passage of time

Zombies on Broadway (aka "Loonies on Broadway") (1945)
Starring: Wally Brown, Alan Carney, Sheldon Leonard, Bela Lugosi, Anne Jeffreys and Darby Jones
Director: Douglas Gordon
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A pair of bumbling promoters (Brown and Carney) travel to the voodoo-haunted San Sebastian island to find a real zombie for the opening night of a racketeer's new night club, the Zombie Hut.


There aren't many comedies that remain relevant and funny beyond the decade in which they were made, let alone five decades after they were made. This is even more true if a comedy full of pop culture references that the people of the day would understand, but that grow evermore obscure and meaningless to viewers who come later. "Zombies on Broadway" is a comedy that has been sapped of all its punch in the interveening years.

Much of the humor in this film is derived from the fact that it is to a large extent a direct spoof of "I Walked With a Zombie", a stylish horror film that had been a hit for RKO in 1943 and which the audiences watching this film in 1945 would almost certainly have seen. The setting for the two films are the same, the same wandering muscian sings the same tune in both flicks--although here the lyrics are goofy instead of haunting--and the spoofing of the trek to the secret voodoo ceremony is unmistakable and funny... if you're familiar with "I Walked With a Zombie." If not, the film will seem even more insipid than it is.

Aside from the muted references to a popular movie that has now fallen into obscurity, the film is further hampered by the fact that it centers around a pair of comedians whose routines will remind viewers of Abbott & Costello. Unfortunately, Brown & Carney are no Abbott & Costello, so with vaudeville and this style of comedy no longer in vougue, viewers will find themselves wondering why they aren't watching the real Abbott & Costello instead of a studio-manufactured knock-off. (The only bits that remain chuckle-worthy are some of the activity when Mike gets turned into a zombie.)

Even Bela Lugosi fans will be disappointed with this one. While he had an absolutely fabulous role in "The Body Snatcher" (also from RKO the following year), the role he plays here is on the level of some of his worst Poverty Row flicks and a foreshadowing of what is to come for him in "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" toward the end of his career. Lugosi doesn't even get to show his talent for comedy, something that at let him do every so often.

Finally, this film pre-dates the flesh-eating zombies that have become the cinematic norm since George Romero made "Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead". It centers around voodoo and the kind of zombie that entered into the public imagination with White Zombie, one of the many genre-defining horror films that Bela Lugosi appeared in (and which is also referenced obliquely in "Zombies on Broadway").

If you're interested in seeing what a satire like "Team America: World Police" will look like to viewers in 50 years (or "Disaster Movie" or "Silver City" in five years), this film is worth checking out. Otherwise, it should just be ignored. My advice is to spend the time you might have wasted watching this film is to seek out a copy of "I Walked With a Zombie", one of the greatest zombie movies ever made. (And, as of this writing, freshly available on DVD alone with the eight other groundbreaking and vionary horror movies that he produced for RKO during the 1940s. They are films that anyone who enjoys horror movies must see... and that goes double if you fancy yourself a filmmaker. (The set even includes the aforementioned "The Body Snatcher.")

Three horror greats and a novelty band in a time capsule

You'll Find Out (aka "Wild Wild Spookhouse") (1940)
Starring: Kay Kyser and His Orchestra, Dennis O'Keefe, Peter Lorre, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, M.A. Bogue, Helen Parrish and Ginny Simms
Director: David Butler
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Kay Kyser (Keyser) and the wacky musicians and singers that make up his orchestra are booked to play at the 21st birthday party of their manager's heiress girlfriend (Parrish). Swing music, high-jinx, and attempted murder follow as Keyser must team with a renowned debunker of psychics also invited to the party (Lorre) who has also been invited to the event in order to reveal the true nature of a phoney spiritualist (Lugosi), who has been bleeding money from the young lady's gullable guardian.


"You'll Find Out" is interesting viewing for two reasons.

First of all, it's the only film where Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre appear together. The three actors don't have alot of screen time, but their parts are meaty and they get to show their best sides; even Lugosi has a decent part, something that was becoming increasingly rare for him at this point. (In a meta-critical sense, their appearance is an almost Three Fates and/or The Stages of Man sort of affair--Lorre is on the verge of acheiving super-stardom, Karloff is at the pinnacle of his career, and Lugosi is slipping from twilight and into darkness.)

Second, it's an example of the fleeting nature of fame. While Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre have some presence in the minds of virtually every movie fan--even if their names might be a bit vague--how many know who Kay Kyser is? And this despite the fact that Kay Kyser was every bit as big a star as Karloff and Lugosi in his time, the leader of a very popular novelty band that had numerous Billboard-charting hit records, was the centerpiece of their own weekly network radio show, and starred in seven movies, including this one. Some 65 years after retiring from show business during World War II, Kyser and his band are completely forgotten by all. You can watch this movie to see what place Slim Shadey will hold in the public conciousness in sixty years... not to mention what "8 Miles" will look and sound like.

As for the film itself, it's more corny than suspenseful, which is fitting given that it was not a vehicle for the three horror actors but for Kyser's orchestra. Some viewers might be dissapointed at this, but I've always enjoyed Bela Lugosi's comedic turns. Lorre also has some very funny scenes with Kyser, sometimes being the straight man, sometimes being the deliverer of the jokes... and doing an equally good job in either role. (You may notice by now that I've not said much about Karloff. That's because there isn't much to say. He plays a dignified, slightly sinister lawyer and he delivers his lines on cue. It's a decent part and it's key to the story, but there's not much else to say other than, "Look... Boris Karloff!"

Is "You'll Find Out" a classic? No, "Ghostbreakers" this is not. However, it holds up a little better than many other pieces of disposable cinema made for no purpose other than to cash in on a cross-marketing opportunity of a musician.