Voodoo Man (1944)

Remember the " Mad Scientist" series of films Boris Karloff did for Columbia studios in the 1930's and 40's? Bela Lugosi did a batch of them for low budget studio Monogram in the 40's.This one is a hokey old melodrama that gets some laughs that are not always intended, and film seems to run much longer than it's just over an hour running time.Poor Bela tries, and Wanda Mckay is pretty,George Zucco spouts mumbo jumbo for most of his time on screen. As for John Carradine,he realises he is in a poor potboiler and gives the performance to accompany it. it does occasionally poke fun at itself. Fair at best and that's being generous.

The last of nine films that horror icon Bela Lugosi made for the ultra-cheap Monogram studio. It's certainly one of the more intriguing in this series, thanks to a twisted story and a cast of vintage old reliable scare men.Sneaky gas station owner Nicholas (George Zucco) steers young women down the wrong road whenever they get lost in their automobiles and require directions at his place. After sending them off on their gullible way, he hot tails it to the telephone to alert Dr. Marlowe (Lugosi) that another victim will soon arrive. The doc utilizes his dimwitted henchman Toby (John Carradine) to help kidnap the girls and take them to his basement, so Bela can place them into a trance and use them to restore life to his lovely but brain dead wife. The method is for Lugosi and Zucco to don voodoo garb and chant bizarre rites while Carradine bangs maniacally on a drum, in an effort to transfer the life spirit out of the hypnotized victims and into the doc's unresponsive spouse.Sounds like a hoot, does it not? This film got an extra boost around the time of this writing due to a wonderful newly restored Blu-ray release from Olive Films. Looking way better than ever before or than it probably deserves, this is a slight hour of absurd fun. Lugosi is restrained and has some emotional moments when caring for his wife's well being, and it is such a laugh to see Shakespearean veteran Carradine making an utter buffoon out of himself. How did he do it? Lord knows they couldn't afford to pay him enough. **1/2 out of ****.

The movie kind of just drags on for a while. Stella Saunders (Louise Currie) is a passerby on a remote road when she is led to the house of Dr. Richard Marlowe (Bela Lugosi) who is using young women to reanimate his young, but dead wife. That's really abut it in the way of story. Other characters include sleepy policemen, a screenwriter, a creepy gas station attendant, and John Carradine. The big problem with the movie is that it just drags on, and it never really goes anywhere. Nothing gets done, the story is never really picked up upon, it's just really dull. As with most Lugosi movies, every now and then we get an extreme close up of his eyes. As with a lot of films like this, I can't really recommend it in any other way then the Rifftrax.

"Dr. Richard Marlowe" (Bela Lugosi) is intent upon bringing his dead wife "Evelyn" (Ellen Hall) back to life. In order to do that he resorts to voodoo which requires a young woman with similar attributes to transfer her life forces into Evelyn. Those who aren't a perfect match become zombies. At any rate, the loss of several young women in a small country area begins to trigger suspicions which flare up when one of the zombies "Stella Saunders" (Louise Currie) accidentally escapes from the house and is found wandering on the side of the road by the local sheriff. When Dr. Marlowe comes to examine her, he realizes that her best friend, "Betty Benton" (Wanda McKay) is a perfect candidate and decides that he must have her. At any rate, rather than give away any secrets I will just say that lovers of old horror movies will probably really enjoy this one as well. Granted it is clearly dated and the zombies of this era are totally dissimilar to those we typically see today. As such, it doesn't have the action or the gore that most people these days might expect. But I still found it entertaining enough and I recommend it to anyone who might be interested in an old-style zombie film.