Cast:
Bela Lugosi (Dr. Lorenz), Luana Walters (Patricia Hunter), Tristram Coffin (Dr. Foster), Elizabeth Russell (Countess Lorenz), Minerva Urecal (Fagah), Angelo Rossitto (Toby), Frank Moran (Angel), Vince Barnett (Sandy), and Kenneth Harlan (Editor Keenan) Directed by Wallace Fox.
Review:
Okay, sure, the 1940s had a few oddball movies that can be called "horror", at least the ones that aren't part of Universal (such as, in part, The Inner Sanctum Mysteries). But fret not, you have Monogram Pictures here to distribute a cheapie movie mystery horror, complete with finding the one actor they could corral for appearing when not busy with other things: Bela Lugosi. When Lugosi wasn't busy doing stuff like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), he did a handful of movies for Monogram with Sam Katzman as a producer. Lugosi wanted to do movies that weren't horror (ironically his popularity had received a boost in 1938 because one man did a double feature involving Lugosi's Dracula) and yet here he was, complete with doing opiates to treat his chronic sciatica and doing stage appearances. The film was written three-fold: the screenplay was done by Harvey Gates (a veteran writer who apparently wrote around 200 movies before he died in 1948), while the story was done by Sam Robins and Gerald Schnitzer. The movie was directed by Wallace Fox, who did over 50 movies that started at the tail-end of the silent era to 1951.
Okay, let's just say the plot of the movie straight out: a mad doctor aims to target the gland fluid of virgins to help his vain wife from straight up dying of old age. But, well, what's the "corpse"? Uh, well, when the doctor gets his orchid to unwitting brides on their wedding day, the flower knocks the lady out in a way that makes people think they are dead and therefore make the body a sitting duck to finagle out to his totally normal lab. Naturally the one investigative force that moves the plot is a reporter that gets directed to an orchid expert: the doctor, who happens to have a few folks in his cellar in a crazy woman and two sons in a dwarf and a strong half-wit. Needless to say, the movie isn't exactly good, but if you did films such as The Death Kiss (1932) with Lugosi around, you might find something curious in its lurid ideas, mainly because it is just 64 minutes long. Lugosi lumbers around a bit with the usual routine that he does with basically being aloof in saying or leering whatever he has to do, most notably when he talks about finding a coffin more comfortable than a bed. Otherwise the movie is mostly by-the-book in monotone nature, as if just showing a dwarf, a lumbering brute and saying a few weird things is going to be enough. It is ridiculous (particularly the fact that it is an orchid of all things), but you are basically chuckling at the film rather than being all into it such as say, Plan 9. The body count isn't even that lurid, since the only people that are shown to get it are just some of the villains (it occurs to me I didn't bother to think about if the brides were okay). The fake-out for the climax is at least funny because even the villain thought it was a goofy idea to try and do a bride-trap (seriously they try to lure the villain with a "bride" but then it goes to a quick climax because the bad guy takes out the reverend). The movie is too silly to really do anything too morbid about old people wanting to stay young, but so it goes. As a whole, The Corpse Vanishes is nothing particularly special, but it may have a strange lurid taste for those who like the plumb the depths of old movies from the way way back that has a few odd little moments to go along with the general Lugosi performance that comes with movies like this. It's a creaky movie but you can't blame the movie for being what it is.
Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.
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