Bowery at Midnight? (1942) in Poverty Row Forum

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Bowery at Midnight? (1942)

Author	Comment
atkalu		#61	[-]
Feb 7 12 2:42 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Actually I correct myself - Lugosi had the temerity to have a triple life in this one. The writers at Monogram must have felt ambitious with this. You have to wonder how the hell Lugosi had any spare time. Start out the day as a professor all day then go dish out soup after work and then get to the real business of crime late at night. THEN he went home to his wife and had nightmares!!! Lugosi- the Hardest working man in the horror biz! You'll never see a guy with more angles.
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MYST0		#62	[-]
Feb 15 12 1:40 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Lugosi is very scary in this if you think about how schizophrenic and cold-blooded he is. He changes from kindly to psychotic in the twinkling of an eye. The scene where Archer is “killed”, for example, is very creepy. He has his favorite student suddenly and gleefully wiped out. He even taunts him by throwing up the poor kid’s (he certainly doesn’t look it, but Archer is supposed to be a young college student) thesis when he asks him “what are the last thoughts before you die”. Also startling is Vince Barnett’s nosedive and especially the way he kills his wife and stuffs her body in the closet after seeming so devoted to her earlier in the film. Unlike his character in THE DEVIL BAT, for example, where the victims had wronged him, he is really blood thirsty in this one. This character is right up there with Charlie Manson or any of the real life serial killers if you think about it. It’s not my favorite M9 by a long shot, but it may be the best acting he did in the cannon. I seriously got the creeps from him when watching it this time.
atkalu		#63	[-]
Feb 16 12 8:34 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	"it may be the best acting he did in the cannon. I seriously got the creeps from him when watching it this time." I agree. I tend to watch Lugosi movies for fun and it's like seeing an old friend. In this one, he's just flat-out evil. He has an edge in this one that gives it much more of a punch. I've seen all but about 10 Lugosi films from his 1931-56 period and this ranks right around the top for evil.
Shadow Chaser		#64	[-]
Feb 17 12 12:34 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Speaking of which, have you see the current FilmFax issue? Gary Rhodes interviews someone who worked with Bela at Monogram. This film is mentioned.
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MYST0		#65	[-]
Feb 21 12 4:57 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	OOH! I need to find a copy of that. I will read anything coming from the Rhodes scholar!
Frankensteinhead		#66	[-]
Apr 28 12 8:25 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Just watched this for the first and time was duly knocked out. Nobody plays unrepentant evil better than Bela and his character is one shifty dude in this one. Actually liked everything about this one but Bela just soars in a terrific, unhammy performance. Very cool!
bela lugosi		#67	[-]
Apr 28 12 11:49 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Glad you've joined the ranks of fans of this one. It's very, very good.
Sky Boy.movieserialmess...		#68	[-]
Sep 4 12 3:55 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I just started watching Lugosi's Poverty Row films for the first time. I started with Bowery at Midnight and The Devil Bat, and want to see Mysterious Mr. Wong tonight. My Bowery is the Lugosi Enterprises DVD, and I wanted to ask about what seems to be a short bit of missing footage. After the Atlas Jewelry heist, Stratton and Doc are talking in the basement while Lugosi observes them on closed circuit TV. Stratton says "You know, Doc, that Fingers was a good man." Then we hear a syllable, possibly the word "what", there's a little static, and Doc replies "You know it ain't healthy to talk like that." It certainly seems there's something missing. Can anyone confirm, and do any other DVD's have the missing footage? As for Bowery itself, the script is certainly ambitious, maybe too ambitious for the 1-hour run time. There are lots of characters and a lot going on. I need to watch it again, but it seems to spend too much time introducing the characters, developing mood, and for some unnecessary comedy. If this was a Universal (etc.) picture, I think it would have an additional 10+ minutes and the script would have gone through a few more revisions. For example, we don't realize the boyfriend (John Archer) will have a greater hand in the plot until literally halfway through the film! And who is Doc? Why is he there (besides to facilitate the ending)? What is his relationship to Lugosi? I also think an extra scene or two with the wife would have helped drive home the schism between Lugosi as upstanding husband and criminal mastermind. But I did enjoy it, much more than the pedestrian Devil Bat. One goof: the mounds of dirt over the basement graves represent the volume of earth displaced by each body. But as Doc unearths and resurrects the victims, the dirt mounds remain untouched.
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