Bowery at Midnight (1942)

Excellent but underrated film

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This movie begins with an escaped convict named "Fingers Dolan" (John Berkes) finding refuge at a soup kitchen in the Bowery run by a man by the name of "Karl Wagner" (Bela Lugosi). As luck would have it Karl recognizes Fingers right away but decides not to turn him in to the police. The reason for this is because Karl is not the kind-hearted soul he pretends to be. Instead he's a respected teacher at the local college who goes by the name of "Professor Brenner" during the day and uses the soup kitchen as a front for his crimes which include robbery and murder. And Fingers just happens to be someone he needs at the time to help rob the local jewelry store down the street. Once Fingers opens the safe Karl has him killed by another member of his gang. "Dead men tell no tales" and the police are totally baffled as to the identity of those behind the recent spate of crimes in their precinct. But that isn't all there is to this story because it also involves--zombies. Now, rather than disclosing the entire story and risk spoiling the movie for those who haven't seen it I will just say that it has a number of different subplots yet it only lasts 61 minutes. And that's the main problem. With so much going on the various scenarios don't seem to blend in very well at all. The ending was especially difficult to comprehend. In essence, this could have been an excellent movie if there was more time allocated for the story to resolve itself. It's just too short for everything going on! That said, because of its abrupt nature it left me somewhat unsatisfied and I rate it as slightly below average.

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.

This horror film from Monogram has Bela Lugosi turning double duty. Well respected Prof. Frederick Brenner of psychology by day and by night Lugosi operates a soup kitchen on the Bowery using the alias Karl Wagner. He uses his charitable work on the Bowery as a cover for recruiting a criminal gang made up of ex-cons, addicts and other malcontents. His wife(Anna Hope)has no idea of how he can afford the expensive gifts he brings home. Karl is totally in control as a wholesaler of robbery and murder and is not afraid to eliminate his minions for by movies end they are reanimated as zombies. Others in the cast: John Archer, J. Farrell MacDonald, Wheeler Oakman and John Berkes.

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.