Bela Lugosi in Bowery at Midnight
Bela Lugosi plays two roles in Bowery at Midnight (1942): psychology Professor Brenner and an operator of a soup kitchen in the Bowery, Karl Wagner. The film is not a Bowery Boys movie, though it rivals that series in absurdities.
Professor Brenner's dual identity, hidden even from his wife, has the purpose of carrying off crimes such as murders and robberies. He recruits down and out men at his soup kitchen, the Bowery Friendly Mission. He employs a pretty nurse, Judy (Wanda McKay), to provide free medical treatment to those who need it. She's oblivious to what's going on behind the Mission's secret doors.
Brenner/Wagner's modus operandi consists of recruiting, say, a safecracker to help him knock off a jewelry store. The safecracker is then knocked off, as in made dead, by another henchman who gets cold feet eventually about killing. The body gets buried in a back room, each grave marked thoughtfully by a white cross with the victim's surname.
The film's screenplay writer, Gerald Schnitzer, must've thought at some point, "What the hell? I'll try this." You'll see what I mean.
Brenner/Wagner employs a second gunman, Frankie (Tom Neal, so famous from Detour) who knocks off the first. Frankie likes to kill people. He murders without the slightest hesitation as soon as Brenner/Wagner gives him the order. Frankie's facial expression never changes. He looks like he might be bored, driving on a road trip from point A to point B, not putting lead into men's bodies just because Bela Lugosi tells him to do so.
A crazed physician, Doc Brooks (Lew Kelly), works at the Bowery Friendly Mission. He clearly hates Brenner/Wagner, but the Professor/Humanitarian hasn't decided yet to bump him off. Doc Brooks has been keeping a secret from Brenner/Wagner: in a sub-level under the Mission, with one of the graves as an entrance, are the resurrected victims who were shot and killed at the Professor's behest. Zombies, apparently, they mill around down there, joined late in the film by Nurse Judy's boyfriend, Richard (John Archer), who got too close to the truth, was plugged in the gut by Frankie, whose body count would stretch to infinity if he were never stopped. Frankie just enjoys killing people. He's the most bland psychopath I've ever seen in any movie. He chews gum, plays solitaire, follows Brenner/Wagner's orders to the letter, and kills people. Tom Neal seems like he's hungover in every scene, and also like he doesn't give a shit. It's possible, given the material he had to work with, that he really couldn't have cared less about his performance.
Brenner/Wagner finally gets pursued by the police. Doc Brooks takes his revenge, finally, and guides his boss to the sub-level, where he's attacked by his resurrected victims. One of these victims, Richard, sits up in bed at the end, attended to by his adorable blonde girlfriend, Judy. For some unexplained reason, he's okay, in spite of having recently been shot to death, resurrected by a mentally ill doctor, and quite probably participated in tearing Brenner/Wagner to pieces, eating him, maybe.
The cops stand around the opening to the sub-level, concluding there's nothing they can do to help Brenner/Wagner. They don't even try.
As for Frankie, I'm trying to remember his fate. I think a cop shoots him. That sounds right, but I'm not certain. In any case, it's less than he deserves.
How Doc Brooks manages to resurrect the dead isn't explained. It's such an unexpected and weird twist I wasn't even sure that's what he was doing. It's like five pages of the script got torn out to speed along the production.
Bela Lugosi was in a lot of crappy movies. He was in some good ones, too, but throughout his film career he always entered into his roles with serious professionalism, even when he was called upon to do utterly ridiculous activities, like fighting the inert-looking octopus-thing in Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Bride of the Monster.
He approached every role with a sense of gravity. He should've been given more significantly meaty roles throughout his career, but Hollywood then, as now, often lacks imagination, underestimating the abilities of performers who, like Lugosi early on in the 1930s, electrify audiences, only to be relegated to B movies or discarded completely. This callousness found in the American movie business contrasts with the moving gesture of Edward D. Wood, Jr. as he cast the ailing and long past his prime Lugosi in three of his 1950s films, treating the star with respect.
Wood may have made some silly pictures, but he was a decent person. He didn't direct Bowery at Midnight--that was Wallace Fox--but this film, like many others in Lugosi's filmography, exists now as an entertainment worth checking out. It's not long; it's also bizarre. I enjoyed it more than I did, let's say, Steven Spielberg's Always, reviewed elsewhere in this blog.
Vic Neptune
Bela Lugosi plays two roles in Bowery at Midnight (1942): psychology Professor Brenner and an operator of a soup kitchen in the Bowery, Karl Wagner. The film is not a Bowery Boys movie, though it rivals that series in absurdities.
Professor Brenner's dual identity, hidden even from his wife, has the purpose of carrying off crimes such as murders and robberies. He recruits down and out men at his soup kitchen, the Bowery Friendly Mission. He employs a pretty nurse, Judy (Wanda McKay), to provide free medical treatment to those who need it. She's oblivious to what's going on behind the Mission's secret doors.
Brenner/Wagner's modus operandi consists of recruiting, say, a safecracker to help him knock off a jewelry store. The safecracker is then knocked off, as in made dead, by another henchman who gets cold feet eventually about killing. The body gets buried in a back room, each grave marked thoughtfully by a white cross with the victim's surname.
The film's screenplay writer, Gerald Schnitzer, must've thought at some point, "What the hell? I'll try this." You'll see what I mean.
Brenner/Wagner employs a second gunman, Frankie (Tom Neal, so famous from Detour) who knocks off the first. Frankie likes to kill people. He murders without the slightest hesitation as soon as Brenner/Wagner gives him the order. Frankie's facial expression never changes. He looks like he might be bored, driving on a road trip from point A to point B, not putting lead into men's bodies just because Bela Lugosi tells him to do so.
A crazed physician, Doc Brooks (Lew Kelly), works at the Bowery Friendly Mission. He clearly hates Brenner/Wagner, but the Professor/Humanitarian hasn't decided yet to bump him off. Doc Brooks has been keeping a secret from Brenner/Wagner: in a sub-level under the Mission, with one of the graves as an entrance, are the resurrected victims who were shot and killed at the Professor's behest. Zombies, apparently, they mill around down there, joined late in the film by Nurse Judy's boyfriend, Richard (John Archer), who got too close to the truth, was plugged in the gut by Frankie, whose body count would stretch to infinity if he were never stopped. Frankie just enjoys killing people. He's the most bland psychopath I've ever seen in any movie. He chews gum, plays solitaire, follows Brenner/Wagner's orders to the letter, and kills people. Tom Neal seems like he's hungover in every scene, and also like he doesn't give a shit. It's possible, given the material he had to work with, that he really couldn't have cared less about his performance.
Brenner/Wagner finally gets pursued by the police. Doc Brooks takes his revenge, finally, and guides his boss to the sub-level, where he's attacked by his resurrected victims. One of these victims, Richard, sits up in bed at the end, attended to by his adorable blonde girlfriend, Judy. For some unexplained reason, he's okay, in spite of having recently been shot to death, resurrected by a mentally ill doctor, and quite probably participated in tearing Brenner/Wagner to pieces, eating him, maybe.
The cops stand around the opening to the sub-level, concluding there's nothing they can do to help Brenner/Wagner. They don't even try.
As for Frankie, I'm trying to remember his fate. I think a cop shoots him. That sounds right, but I'm not certain. In any case, it's less than he deserves.
How Doc Brooks manages to resurrect the dead isn't explained. It's such an unexpected and weird twist I wasn't even sure that's what he was doing. It's like five pages of the script got torn out to speed along the production.
Bela Lugosi was in a lot of crappy movies. He was in some good ones, too, but throughout his film career he always entered into his roles with serious professionalism, even when he was called upon to do utterly ridiculous activities, like fighting the inert-looking octopus-thing in Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Bride of the Monster.
He approached every role with a sense of gravity. He should've been given more significantly meaty roles throughout his career, but Hollywood then, as now, often lacks imagination, underestimating the abilities of performers who, like Lugosi early on in the 1930s, electrify audiences, only to be relegated to B movies or discarded completely. This callousness found in the American movie business contrasts with the moving gesture of Edward D. Wood, Jr. as he cast the ailing and long past his prime Lugosi in three of his 1950s films, treating the star with respect.
Wood may have made some silly pictures, but he was a decent person. He didn't direct Bowery at Midnight--that was Wallace Fox--but this film, like many others in Lugosi's filmography, exists now as an entertainment worth checking out. It's not long; it's also bizarre. I enjoyed it more than I did, let's say, Steven Spielberg's Always, reviewed elsewhere in this blog.
Vic Neptune
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