Bowery at Midnight (1942)
“By day a kindly professor, by night the master of murder!”
Streamed free from the Internet Archive · no signup, no cost — this film is in the public domain.
Synopsis
One of the Poverty Row horror programmers that kept Bela Lugosi working through the 1940s, Bowery at Midnight gives the star a juicy triple life: upstanding professor by day, charitable mission keeper by evening, and homicidal crime boss by night. Lugosi's Professor Brenner uses the Bowery Friendly Mission to scout desperate men for his criminal schemes, casually disposing of henchmen who outlive their usefulness. What he doesn't fully grasp is that his alcoholic, drug-addicted assistant has been reviving those corpses in the basement, a debt that comes due in a deliriously grim finale when the reanimated dead turn on their maker. Directed by Wallace Fox for Monogram, it is a brisk, cheap, surprisingly nasty little melodrama that mixes gangster picture and zombie horror, with Lugosi anchoring the lunacy in his typically committed, restrained register.
Cast
About the Director
Wallace Fox — Wallace Fox was a workmanlike Monogram contract director who turned out westerns, East Side Kids comedies and Lugosi chillers on punishing schedules. Filming began August 3, 1942, and Fox keeps the cheap melodrama moving at a clip, letting Lugosi carry the picture while the macabre cellar of revived corpses supplies the horror payoff.
Why It’s Free: The Public-Domain Story
Bowery at Midnight is in the public domain in the United States. Monogram registered the film in 1942 but never renewed the copyright after its initial 28-year term as the 1909 Copyright Act required, so the copyright lapsed and the film fell into the public domain.
Behind the Scenes
Made by Sam Katzman and Jack Dietz's Banner Productions unit and released by Monogram Pictures on October 1, 1942, the film was re-released by Astor Pictures in 1949. An in-joke has policemen standing outside a cinema advertising Lugosi in The Corpse Vanishes, another 1942 Katzman production.
Did You Know?
- In one shot a marquee promotes Lugosi's own The Corpse Vanishes and the East Side Kids picture Mr. Wise Guy, both fellow Katzman productions.
- Co-star Tom Neal, later famous as the doomed lead of the noir classic Detour, was himself imprisoned years afterward for killing his wife.
- The very first episode of Late Night with David Letterman closed with a performer reciting the film's entire dialogue from memory over the credits.
Reception & Legacy
The Los Angeles Times called it maybe the farthest fetched of the Bela Lugosi films while noting how much the young matinee crowd squealed at it. Today fans rate it among the better Monogram Lugosi programmers, praising its large cast and creepy Freaks-flavored climax.
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