Bowery at Midnight

Bowery at Midnight
theatrical release poster
Directed by	Wallace Fox
Produced by	Sam Katzman Jack Dietz
Written by	Gerald Schnitzer
Starring	Bela Lugosi John Archer
Music by	Edward J. Kay
Cinematography	Mack Stengler
Edited by	Carl Pierson
Production company	Banner Productions
Distributed by	Monogram Pictures
Release dates	1942 (1942)
Running time	60 or 63 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Bowery at Midnight (1942) is a horror film starring Bela Lugosi. 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.

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.

Cast

• Bela Lugosi as Professor Brenner, also known as Karl Wagner
• John Archer as Richard Dennison
• Vince Barnett as Charley
• Tom Neal as Frankie Mills
• 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

See also

• List of films in the public domain
• Bela Lugosi filmography

External links

• Bowery at Midnight at IMDb
• Bowery at Midnight is available for free download at the Internet Archive
• Bowery at Midnight at AllMovie
• Bowery at Midnight on YouTube