The Bowery at Midnight ~ 1942 -BW

QUICKIE: Bela is a sweet, kind hearted professor who helps the homeless.... psych! He's the same old villain that we love so much.

PLOT: A kindly university professor (Bela Lugosi) operates a soup kitchen with his daughter Judy (Wanda McKay) down in the Bowery, helping those less fortunate than most. This persona is a cover for the professor's true activities, heading a criminal operation out of the basement of the soup kitchen with his gang (Tom Neal, Vince Barnett, Dave O'Brien) who commit a series of daring robberies. When things get out of hand, Lugosi kills his henchmen, who wind up as zombies in the cellar of the soup kitchen. When one of the professor's students (John Archer) accidentally uncovers the truth, he is targeted for death to protect the Professor's secrets.

SUMMARY: Well, I'll give him this, the Professor has the perfect set up going. A college professor by day, he also runs a soup kitchen where a steady stream of criminals come through his mission door and he "hires them" on the spot. The gang does "a job" together and the recent recruit is killed off during the crime. Well, that's the smartest way to keep your nefarious dealings a secret and take a bigger cut at the same time. There's no one left to squeal on you. Of course the police are stumped about who is committing all these crimes. That is until one of the Professor's high society students goes under cover as a homeless person so he can gain some insight into "how the other half lives" as research for his term paper. Of course he too must be killed because he uncovers the Professor's secret identity.

The Professor has an assistant who manages to bring the dead back to life and he keeps the resurrected gang members in a hidden room in the cellar. This part of the movie is never fleshed out and it left me more confused than adding anything to the film. The movie ends with Richard (the student made zombie, yet who is now perfectly normal) making wedding plans with Judy. Yes I KNOW, every film made before 1960 ends with people getting married, but how has Richard become un-zombified? How did he become a zombie to begin with? It's like they took a plot from another zombie making movie and tried to stick it in here. Best not to think too hard about the plot in these films.

Also keep an eye out for the stereotypical "evil black cat" who likes to hang out with the dead . He adds a particularly scary element with his 6 month old baby meows. awwwww. Then Bela retorts: "How often have I told you to keep that cat from desecrating my graves!"

Horror Collection: Disc 36- side A

Watch for free online: http://www.archive.org/details/Bowery_at_Midnight

Part One at Youtube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSOUjY-R5Bw

The Devil Bat ~ 1940 -BW

QUICKIE: Bela Lugosi stars in a (kinda vampirish) bat movie! Can you believe it?!!!

PLOT: (from IMDB): Dr. Carruthers (Bela Lugosi) feels bitter at being betrayed by his employers, Heath and Morton, when they became rich as a result of a product he devised. He gains revenge by electrically enlarging bats and sending them out to kill his employers' family members by instilling in the bats a hatred for a particular perfume he has discovered, which he gets his victims to apply before going outdoors. Johnny Layton (Dave O'Brien), a reporter, finally figures out Carruthers is the killer and, after putting the perfume on himself, douses it on Carruthers in the hopes it will get him to give himself away. One of the two is attacked as the giant bat makes one of its screaming, swooping power dives.

SUMMARY: Wow! Bela Lugosi plays a mad scientist/Dr. (again!) who is doing secret experiments (again!) on bats to make them grow gigantically big. He also trains his monster bats to be killers (again!) when they smell a certain scent. He tricks certain members of the Heath family into wearing the new cologne which has the scent that attracts the killer bat.

Even though the story is so similar to so many other mad scientist plots, this is still a good film and worth a watch. Bela movies are always enjoyable, he's a good actor and really plays it up. I love the scenes where he throws the switch and the electricity makes the bat grow. It's like a tribute to Frakenstein, and it made me laugh and cackle "It's A-live!". Of course, it never made a fried bat.

There's also the boy/girl love story, the rich uncle/father, the newspaper man and the dumb police. This movie has it all folks! But because the plot is such a repeater the movie is just good and not great. Still enjoyable though, Bela movies always are.

Suzanne Kaaren plays Mary Heath the niece/love interest, and Donald Kerr provides most of the comedic relief playing 'One-Shot' McGuire, the newspapers' photographer. Who trys to get a picture of the devil bat while also romancing the Heaths' French maid (Yolande Donlan). Did I forget to mention the French maid?