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Bowery at Midnight

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Bowery at Midnight
theatrical release poster
Directed byWallace Fox
Written byGerald Schnitzer
Produced bySam Katzman
Jack Dietz
StarringBela Lugosi
John Archer
CinematographyMack Stengler
Edited byCarl Pierson
Music byEdward J. Kay
Production
company
Banner Productions
Distributed byMonogram Pictures
Release date
  • October 1, 1942 (1942-10-01)
[1]
Running time
60 or 63 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Bowery at Midnight

Bowery at Midnight is a 1942 American Monogram Pictures horror film directed by Wallace Fox and starring Bela Lugosi and John Archer.[2] The film was re-released by Astor Pictures in 1949.

Plot

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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

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Production

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Following The Corpse Vanishes, Monogram Pictures announced it would make two more Bela Lugosi films, Night of Horror and Torment. These projects ended up being replaced by Bowery at Midnight and The Gorilla Strikes (which became The Ape Man).[3]

Filming started on 3 August 1942.[4]

Reception

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The Los Angeles Times called it "maybe the farthest fetched of the Bela Lugosi films", adding "but judging from the squeals of the youngsters who made up most of the audience in the afternoon such tales can't simply be brought from too great a distance to please them."[5]

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.[6]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "New Films". The Boston Globe. October 1, 1942. p. 20.
  2. ^ Tom Weaver, Poverty Row Horrors, p 85
  3. ^ "MONOGRAM TO MAKE 48 FILMS IN 1942-43: 16 Westerns Among Feature Pictures Listed by Corporation" New York Times 16 May 1942: 10
  4. ^ Tom Weaver, Poverty Row Horrors, p 85
  5. ^ "Novel Gang Film Opens" Los Angeles Times 13 Nov 1942: 17.
  6. ^ "Revisiting the 'Late Night' Debuts of Letterman, Conan, and Fallon". 24 February 2014.
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