Bowery at Midnight (1942)

Poverty Row cheapie starring Bela Lugosi as a professor running a soup kitchen as a front for his criminal activities. Slow, creaky, mostly boring B with only one person in the whole movie with any screen presence - Bela. And this is far from one of his better roles. The cast backing up Lugosi includes Vince Barnett, John Archer, J. Farrell MacDonald, Wanda McKay, and future murderer Tom Neal. Sadly the Bowery Boys do not appear. Similar plot to Lugosi's previous film, Dark Eyes of London/The Human Monster. Oh and there are zombies in this. Sort of. Not really.

Bowery at Midnight (1942) ** (out of 4) Professor Karl Wagner (Bela Lugosi) is a highly respected man who helps run a food kitchen that feeds homeless and poor people. At night he's taking advantage of the same people forcing them to do his illegal crimes including murder. BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT is yet another low-budget quickie from Monogram and while the story itself is pretty lacking, the film remains watchable thanks to a fast pace as well as the performance from Bela Lugosi. It's really a shame that the film doesn't feature a tad bit more life because it could have been something rather good had more time with the story been done. Lugosi is very good in the lead role and it's funny that during the opening credits his name appears twice for playing the two characters. One of the biggest reasons that the film works as well as it does is because Lugosi is very believable as both the good guy and the bad guy. I really liked the way Lugosi played the good professor because he made you believe that this guy couldn't be doing anything wrong. That cheerful glee from the bad guy also comes across flawlessly and especially when he gets to show how cold blooded the character is. Wanda McKay is good in her supporting role as the woman helping Lugosi not knowing exactly what he's up to. The rest of the supporting players fit their roles nicely and certainly help keep the film moving. The biggest problem is that the story just needed a little bit more work to make it something more than just a routine "B" picture.

Known as a Monogram quickie, the 'Jeckyll and Hyde' type premise, the story and cast had the potential for a very rich and interesting film-- if it had been given a bigger budget and a more deeply elaborated script. At barely more than 60 minutes we have an extremely fast paced movie with many of our favorite "B" movie icons -- Bela Lugosi, Tom Neal, Dave O'Brien, Wanda McKay, John Archer and Wheeler Oakman.Bela, whose English delivery is now excellent and natural, with that great hint of a Hungarian accent, plays Frederick Brenner, a professor of criminology by day and Karl Wagner, the philanthropic director of "The Friendly Mission," a soup kitchen and dormitory in New York's Bowery by night. He has a third identity as the head of a criminal ring of thieves and bank robbers.His modus operandi is to double cross and kill his henchmen (who frequently include Mission transients) after they have served his villainous purposes, and then to have a 'rum dumb' caretaker doctor bury them in the Mission's basement. Unbeknownst to him, the doctor has devised a way to revive the dead and keep them 'alive' as zombies, hidden below the basement in a cellar.The movie shows us scenes of his triple life including blissful tender moments at home with his wife; teaching about paranoid schizophrenics in his college class; doling out soup to Bowery bum denizens; and coldly throwing one of his henchmen off a roof as he stages a jewelry store robbery. In such a rapidly paced film, the inner tensions of his schizophrenic nature are barely touched on, except in a brief moment where he moans in his sleep experiencing nightmares. Oh what this film could have been if given the full "A" treatment! Here we're not going to get anything like Peter Lorre's anguished plea for tolerance and understanding regarding his own compulsive nature that he cannot control as in the great German film 'M' (1931).Wanda McKay, who plays Wagner's perky nurse assistant Judy Malvern, is betrothed to the rich playboy John Archer, who is, coincidentally, one of Professor Brenner's students, Richard Dennison. You can guess that Brenner/Wagner's double life is going to start to unravel. In this case, Dennison wanders into the Mission while doing research on how the indigent live, and meets Brenner as 'Wagner.' Tom Neal, meanwhile, puts in another cynical, tortured (and vicious) performance as a hired killer, used by Brenner / Wagner to rub out his henchmen, and Dennison as well. As a result of Dennsion's disappearance, the police finally discover Brenner's dual nature and raid the Mission. Seeking his own revenge, the caretaker doctor leads Brenner down to the cellar to the awaiting zombies ("You can escape this way...") In the final scene, Dennison is magically returned to normalcy where he joins Judy in his bedroom to live happily ever after.Wanda McKay is also in 'Voodoo Man' (1944) with Bela, and many other Poverty Row 'features' as well as the odd Universal serial 'Raiders of Ghost City' (1944). John Archer, besides starring in the great 'King of the Zombies' (1941) with Mantan Moreland, is in 'Destination Moon' (1950) and many 50s-60s TV shows including 'Perry Mason' and 'Bonanza'. Tom Neal plays the hero in the serial 'Jungle Girl' (1941), as well as in his classic noir film, 'Detour' (1945). Dave O'Brien, who had the most successful career, mostly as a cowboy star, plays the cop who tracks down Brenner. He's most famous as the 'hop-head' in 'Tell Your Children' (1936) which we all know and love as "Reefer Madness'. Wheeler Oakman, with over 280 film and TV credits as a villain, plays one of Brenner's henchmen. He was in countless serials and westerns, and played Tarnak in 'Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars' (1938).Wow! All these great familiar faces in one fast paced, weird little movie that sadly, was too cheaply made. Oh, what it could have been! Therefore, sadly, I can only give it a four and half.

(There are Spoilers) In a duel role as both professor Frederick Brenner and philanthropist Karl Wagner Bela Lugosi mixes business with profits by using the criminal element of the city, many who get free meals at his Bowery soup kitchen, for his own evil purposes.Brenner plays both ends against the middle in using hoodlums like "Fingers" Doland, John Berkes, and "Trigger" Stratton, Wheeler Oakman, to do his dirty work and then has them eliminated in order to keep them from talking to the police if their ever caught. It's when one of Prof. One of Brenners students psychology major Richard Dennison, John Archer, shows up at his soup kitchen, disguised as a bum, in order to get information for his thesis on the human condition that Prof.Brenner, as Karl Wagner, cover is suddenly in danger of getting blown.Dennison's girlfriend Judy Malvern, Wanda McKay, just happens to be a volunteer at the "Friendly Mission", Brenner's Bowery soup kitchen, and recognizes him which makes things a bit complicated for Brenner in his efforts to get rid of the pesky Dennison, by having him murdered, in that she can place him there! Despite all that Brenner still has Dennison gunned down, as he's invited into Brenner's private office, by one of Brenner's gang members homicidal maniac and on the lamb hit-man Frankie Mills, Tom Neal.The one thing that Brenner completely overlooked was that his assistant the disbarred and disgraced physician "Doc" Brooks, Lew Kelly, who has a serious drinking problem has been secretly experimenting behind his back with the people, like Dennison, who are buried in his basement. Turning Brenner's victims into Zombies "Doc" is waiting just for the right moment to unleash them against the hated Brenner, who treats "Doc" like one of the bums at his soup kitchen or even worse, when the time is right. Far too confusing to get a handle on it the film "Bowery at Midnight" has too many subplots in it that makes the movie almost impossible to follow. Bela Lugosi seems as comfortable playing a gangster as does playing a vampire or mad scientist and in his role as both Prof Frederick Brenner / Karl Wagner Lugosi more then makes up for the films many deficiencies. Lugosi as usual puts everything into his part, or parts, that you almost forget just how disjointed and uncoordinated he movie really is.There's also Tom Neal, of "Detour" fame, doing his best as the psycho killer Frankie Mills. Mills despite his cold-blooded personality and disregard for human life does have a soft spot in not being able to bring himself to gun down a woman; Dennison's girlfriend Judy Malvern. It's that deficiency in his character, as a mindless killer, that in the end brings the curtains down on both Mills and his boss Prof. Frederick Benner. ***SPOILER ALERT***In fact the good professor has a big surprise coming to him when, with the police about to break into his office and arrest him, "Doc" shows Brenner an exist strategy that leads him right into the hands of the Zombies, or Brenner's many murder victims, that he secretly created!