THE CORPSE VANISHES
US, 1942, 64 minutes, Black and white.
Bela Lugosi, Luana Walters, Tristram Coffin, Elizabeth Russell, Minerva Urecal.
Directed by Wallace Fox.
The Corpse Vanishes is a below B-grade programmer. However, it is an opportunity to see Bela Lugosi. This time he plays a count (what else) with a countess who is ageing – which necessitates their abducting virgin brides, stealing their gland fluids to keep his wife alive and young. As with Frankenstein, there is a servant, this time a brutish moron, a dwarf and an old hag who is their mother.
The film creaks along – although it becomes quite lively with Luana Walters as a reporter, on the beat with weddings, but discovering the truth, going to the house of the professor who is an expert in orchid-growing (with poison on the bouquet to knock out the brides for their abduction).
Bela Lugosi really does a caricature of his Dracula performance. Director Wallace Fox directed quite a number of this kind of small-budget supporting feature film.
1.Interest in this kind of horror? Fluids to keep old women alive? Eternal youth? Bela Lugosi?
2.The production values, small-budget, small running time, inadequate performances, sets? Musical score and atmosphere?
3.The title and expectations? Bela Lugosi and his reputation?
4.The plausibility and implausibility of the plot? The weddings, the collapses of the brides? The preparations for the wedding? Patricia Hunter and her work as a reporter, suspicions, relationship with her editor?
5.Doctor Lorenz, sinister, taking the brides, the vehicles? His house, mansion, dungeons? Secret passages? His mortuary? His character, smooth talking? His relationship with his wife, her desperation? Patricia Hunter’s arrival, Doctor Foster and his collaboration? Inviting them to stay the night? The sinister goings-on? The brides?
6.The set-up, Patricia and her friend, the performance? The irony of Doctor Lorenz taking Patricia? The confrontation in the dungeon?
7.Doctor Foster, genial, hypnotised, romantic lead?
8.Fagah, sinister old woman, her two sons, their brutish actions, malice, their deaths? Lorenz and his arrogance? Fagah killing him?
9.The resolution – Patricia, the rescue, marrying Doctor Foster, the articles and her job? The defeat of evil?
