BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT (1942) Bela Lugosi Thiller - Public Domain Film - Restored

9 months ago
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Bowery at Midnight is a 1942 American thriller directed by Wallace Fox and starring Bela Lugosi, John Archer and Wanda McKay.

Lugosi plays a psychology professor by day who, secretly and under an assumed name, runs a Bowery soup kitchen by night called the Bowery Friendly Mission. Lugosi's character uses his soup kitchen as a means to recruit members of a criminal gang, of which he is also secretly the head. Throughout the film, one of Lugosi's henchmen, a doctor who seems to be an alcoholic drug addict, alludes to having plans for the corpses of henchmen Lugosi has had killed. Then, at the end of the film, these corpses are revealed to have been restored to life by the doctor. Lugosi's character meets his demise when the doctor leads the unwitting Lugosi into a basement room where the reanimated corpses attack him. Towards the end of the film, the male lead, played by John Archer, appears to be killed and mysteriously reanimated, in which state his girlfriend sees him. Then, in the film's final scene, he appears restored to his former health, and not like a zombie at all, and is about to (or already has) marry his girlfriend.

Cast:
* Bela Lugosi as Professor Brenner, also known as Karl Wagner
* John Archer as Richard Dennison
* Wanda McKay as Judy Malvern
* Tom Neal as Frankie Mills
* Vince Barnett as Charley
* Anna Hope as Mrs. Brenner
* John Berkes as Fingers Dolan
* J. Farrell MacDonald as Capt. Mitchell
* Dave O'Brien as Peter Crawford
* Lucille Vance as Mrs. Malvern
* Lew Kelly as Doc Brooks
* Wheeler Oakman as Stratton
* Ray Miller as Big Man
* Bernard Gorcey as the used clothing shop proprietor

The film opened on October 1, 1942, and was released by Monogram Pictures. It was later re-released by Astor Pictures in 1949.

Fun Facts [From Wikipedia]:

* In one scene, with two policemen talking outside a cinema, a movie poster outside the cinema entrance behind them advertises Bela Lugosi in The Corpse Vanishes, another Lugosi horror film also released in 1942.

* The very first broadcast of Late Night with David Letterman ended with Steve Fessler, a young comedian and performance artist from Brooklyn, reciting from memory all the dialogue from Bowery at Midnight onstage over the show's closing credits.

This film has fallen into the public domain and is being presented in a remastered and restored version for entertainment and historical purposes.

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