Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Bowery at Midnight / USA / 1942

Inexplicable wonders await you at the center of this quickie Monogram flick starring the immortal Béla Lugosi as both an urbane professor of criminology and a murderous soup kitchen proprietor. The story goes something like this: Lugosi spends his evenings in the Bowery serving piping hot victuals to the seedy underbelly of New York City, while casually observing his guests in hopes of spotting notorious criminals on the run from the fuzz. His plan is to take said illicit fellows into his confidence and use their abilities to help him unburden the greasy burg of cash, jewels, and anything else he can think of.

Meanwhile, Lugosi’s henchman, a man known only as Doc, spends his days puttering around the dingy cellar of the soup kitchen, employing a mysterious liquid substance to reanimate the numerous victims of Lugosi’s diabolical machinations; quietly, and unobservedly, creating an army of angry characters that may or may not be zombies. Though the unexpected ending featuring a hale and hearty young man in the throes of premarital bliss might lead you to suspect otherwise, the bulk of those who cross Lugosi, and end up as Doc’s creations, are souls long dead, a point of fact that Lugosi, to his horror, discovers upon venturing into Doc’s demented domain.

One of the shortest and strangest horror films I’ve yet to come across, Bowery at Midnight shows that you don’t need a long running time, gruesome special effects, or gratuitous nudity to craft effective, memorable, and intoxicating horror. All you need is the Bowery and Béla Lugosi.

by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Platinum Disc Corporation DVD
15 Aug 2005 8:12 PM | Submit Comment