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| Genre: | Thriller |
| Year: | 1942 |
| Rating: | NR |
| Cast: | Wallace W. Fox, Bela Lugosi, John Archer, Wanda McKay |
Better than the average Bela Lugosi Monogram opus, Bowery at Midnight casts Lugosi as Professor Brenner, a psychology instructor at New York University (which looks a lot like Berkeley in the exterior shots!). When not enlightening his students -- most of them buxom Monogram starlets -- Brenner is engaged in charitable work, running a mission in the Bowery. In truth, however, the kindly professor is a fiend in human form, who uses his mission as a front for a vast criminal empire. When Judy (Wanda McKay), one of Brenner's students, stumbles onto the truth, she's targeted for extermination by the Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde prof (who, as film historian William K. Everson once noted, comes off more like Dr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde). As always, the saving grace of Bowery at Midnight is Bela Lugosi's ripe dialogue, samples of which include "Once he was a great scientist? Now he's a human derelict," and the deathless "Yesss, each day brings its little sur-pri-ses." Hal Erickson
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