bela-lugosi – Arkham TV

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957)

⭐⭐ 79min Aliens use Plan 9 to scare mankind. Written and directed by Ed Wood. With Tor Johnson and (in a way) Bela Lugosi.

Recap

So there are these sightings of flying saucers from outer space. As we find out, the aliens have been trying to warn mankind for months now, but to no avail. So the aliens try plan 9, which means that they raise zombies from their graves.

In the year 1980, the Medved Brothers published the book The Golden Turkey Awards to celebrate trash cinema. The most important trophy, The Worst Film Of All Time, was awarded to Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Ed Wood was awarded worst director. Oh how I wish that they had been right, but I have seen so many movies that were so much worse. Sure, the story is brainless, the acting is bad, and Wood himself didn’t even know just how unskilled he was. But maybe that is what makes him special. People like Bret Kelly or companies like Asylum are just brazen when they make trash movies for profit, while everybody seems to love Ed Wood for being the pure fool.

While this is far from being the worst movie ever, it sure is pretty bad, and it sure is fun to watch for those who love so-bad-that-it’s-good movies. And while it is bad I give it a mediocre rating including a bonus for being a historical document.

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Bowery At Midnight (1942)

Bela Lugosi leads a double life as a professor and a gangster. 61min imdb

Movie 61min

Trailer

Recap:

Bela Lugosi runs a soup kitchen in the Bowery. Wut? Wait! Bela Lugosi is a professor by day and a gangleader by night, and he uses a soup kitchen as his headquarters and recruitment office. He is an extremely friendly and well-mannered man, smiling at people even when he has them killed. Trouble is that the unsuspecting young woman that helps him is the girlfriend of one of his students.

Of course it’s always a pleasure to see Bela Lugosi, and this is a nice old fashioned crime flick, but it’s really nothing special. What bothers me most is that I found it in a list of zombie movies. So should you watch this you better not blink, or you will miss them. I don’t even tag this as a zombie movie and I recommend it only to friends of old fashioned crime movies or fans o Bela Lugosi.

Black Friday (1940)

Old-fashioned brain transplant thriller with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. 70min imdb

(VPN:D)

Review:

So there is this professor wo suffers serious brain damage in an accident. His best friend, a doctor, performs a brain transplantation, using a criminal as organ donor. Indeed, the professor recovers, and it takes a while until the criminal’s personality takes over more and more often. Good thing too, the doctor thinks, because he wants to get the gangster’s lost money.

Makes you wonder: why is the doctor surprised when the man with the criminal’s brain starts acting like the criminal? Everybody who watches the movie must be surprised that the professor remained pretty much himself at first. Another thing that I don’t understand is the casting. In the first place it was planned that Karloff would be the professor and Lugosi the doctor. But then Karloff was the doctor and Lugosi played a gangster with precious little screen time.

Pity. While I do appreciate the old-fashioned b&w screen gems I must say that this is not one of them. It’s a wasted chance.

⭐⭐

White Zombie (1932)

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 66min Bela Lugosi in the first zombie movie ever.

Recap

So there is that couple and they want to marry in the Caribbean. However their host wants the bride for himself, so he talks to the local voodoo priest who turns her into a zombie.

This is definitively a “should see”. Of course the movie is, well, old, for example the running gag is a man who smokes but never has matches on him. Yes, about 90 years ago people were still smoking on the screen, and a man without matches was an incredibly funny screwball. And yet this movie is a classic that you may not want to miss, and I give you three good reasons:

The music is super, one of the best horror scores ever.

Bela Lugosi is in it.

This is the first zombie movie ever. Zombies back then were voodoolated slaves and it took more than 35 years until George Romero invented the modern zombie, so this is a priceless historic document.

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