Bela Lugosi stars as a psychology professor who moonlights by running a soup kitchen at night. This seemingly charitible endeavor is actually a front for his criminal activities.
He recruits criminals and then has one knock the other off after the crime is done. His victims get buried in the basement of the soup kitchen he runs, where unbeknownst to him, his disgruntled assistant Doc has been zombiefying the corpses. Bela gets his in the end.
All in all it's pretty pedestrian, but the plot is really packed for film that only lasts 62 minute.
It was worth the $1 I paid for it. The film was kind of crackly in some parts, but hey you get what you pay for.
I'm going to try to find the $1 DVD of BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT. They also said good things about it at imdb.com. Trying to see all of Bela Lugosi's material.
I have another one that is called The Brooklyn Gorilla I haven't watched yet. I haven't watched it yet, but my brother lent me The Phantom Creeps, a movie serial with Lugosi as a mad scientist type.
The whole THE PHANTOM CREEPS serial is very good and I believe you'll enjoy it, but BELA LUGOSI MEETS THE BROOKLYN GORILLA is not a good Lugosi film.
These are the 22 films that I've seen of Bela Lugosi:
Plan 9 From Outer Space
Bride of the Monster
Glen or Glenda
Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
The Ape Man
Frankenstein Meets the Werewolf
The Corpse Vanishes
The Ghost of Frankenstein
The Wolf Man
Spooks on the Run (East Side Kids)
The Invisible Ghost
The Devil Bat
The Human Monster (a.k.a. The Dark Eyes of London)
The Gorilla
Son of Frankenstein
The Phantom Creeps (serials)
The Raven
The Phantom Ship (a.k.a. The Mystery of the Marie Celeste)
Island of Lost Souls
White Zombie
Dracula
Would like to see The Black Cat (both), Chandu, S.O.S., The Invisible Ray, and Murder by Television some day.
Murder by Television is actually pretty good, for Poverty Row B-material. Lugosi comports himself very well & comes off as quite scary.
He and Karloff make a very good team in The Black Cat -- the scene where he threatens to flay Karloff has real tension.
I think he's in The Body Snatchers (Val Lewton) along with Karloff again as well --
Do catch him in a comedy role, along with W.C. Fields in "International House" -- a terrificly surreal and very funny comedy from 1933 -- trust me on this: You'll laugh your arse off, and quite a surprise seeing Lugosi in a comedic part.
peter johnson/denny crane