Cast overview: | |||
Bela Lugosi | ... | Professor Brenner aka Karl Wagner | |
John Archer | ... | Richard Dennison | |
Wanda McKay | ... | Judy Malvern | |
Tom Neal | ... | Frankie Mills | |
Vince Barnett | ... | Charley | |
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Anna Hope | ... | Mrs. Brenner |
John Berkes | ... | Fingers Dolan | |
J. Farrell MacDonald | ... | Capt. Mitchell | |
Dave O'Brien | ... | Pete Crawford | |
Lucille Vance | ... | Mrs. Malvern | |
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Lew Kelly | ... | Doc Brooks |
Wheeler Oakman | ... | Stratton | |
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Ray Miller | ... | Big Man |
Kindly soup kitchen operator and professor of criminology Karl Wagner uses his soup kitchen as a front for a criminal gang who commit a series of daring robberies and murders. When things get out of hand, Wagner kills his henchmen, who wind up as zombies in the cellar of the soup kitchen. Written by Wheeler Winston Dixon
Next to "Invisible Ghost" and "The Corpse Vanishes", this is probably the best of the old Monogram series. ("The Devil Bat", my number one favorite of the "Poverty Row" thrillers was not Monogram, but PRC). Bela Lugosi plays a mad psychologist who moonlights in the dark of night as a master criminal who uses a charity mission as a front. In this film, Lugosi demonstrates not one, but three different personalities. Moreover, the plot gets slightly convoluted compressed into a quick 62 minute running time. Some scenes such as the basement graveyard and the undead zombie attack during the film's climax are very hair-raising indeed.
7/10.
Dan Basinger