Bowery at Midnight (1942)
By day a mild criminology professor, by night the ruthless boss of a Bowery soup kitchen that fronts for a burglary ring, Bela Lugosi's double-lived villain murders his own accomplices as they outlive their usefulness. He does not know that the drug-addled doctor in his basement has been reviving the men he discards.
A Poverty Row quickie from Monogram, one of the nine films Lugosi made for the studio in the early 1940s. Bowery at Midnight is usually dismissed as threadbare, but its zombie-filled climax and Lugosi’s triple game as professor, gangster, and family man have kept it alive among his admirers; it has long been in the public domain.
Background
Bowery at Midnight is a 1942 horror-crime film directed by Wallace Fox for Monogram Pictures, one of the studio’s low-budget productions. Bela Lugosi stars in a double role as a criminology professor who runs a Bowery soup kitchen as a front for a burglary ring. The film was one of several Monogram pictures Lugosi made in the early 1940s, a period when he worked steadily in B-movies. John Archer and J. Farrell MacDonald are among the supporting cast.
What to watch for
Lugosi’s double life is the film’s main attraction. By day he is a mild academic, and by night he is the ruthless boss who kills his own accomplices when they become a liability. The horror elements emerge in the basement, where a drug-addled doctor has been reviving the men the villain discards, and the climactic zombie sequence follows from that setup. Watch how Lugosi shifts between the professor’s restraint and the gangster’s menace. The film’s compact running time keeps the plot moving quickly through its crime and horror elements, and its threadbare production is part of its poverty-row character.
