Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

utgard14 Poverty Row cheapie starring Bela Lugosi as a professor running a soup kitchen as a front for his criminal activities. Slow, creaky, mostly boring B with only one person in the whole movie with any screen presence - Bela. And this is far from one of his better roles. The cast backing up Lugosi includes Vince Barnett, John Archer, J. Farrell MacDonald, Wanda McKay, and future murderer Tom Neal. Sadly the Bowery Boys do not appear. Similar plot to Lugosi's previous film, Dark Eyes of London/The Human Monster. Oh and there are zombies in this. Sort of. Not really.

zardoz-13 Monogram director Wallace Fox's brisk, B-movie "Bowery at Midnight" intertwines elements of a crime thriller with a horror chiller. This uneven but above-average epic casts Bela Lugosi as a man with dual identities who kills without a qualm. He looks like a gentlemen, but he is the epitome of evil. Not only does he masquerade as a congenial college professor of psychology but also a soup kitchen operator. Professor Frederick Brenner teaches psychology at a New York City University behind a pince-nez when he isn't running a Bowery soup kitchen for the underprivileged. He looks and dresses like an academician during the day and as a humble social worker after dark. Brenner's wife knows nothing about these shenanigans but she is impressed when he loads her down with jewelry. She really doesn't crave the baubles as much as his companionship.Actually, the soup kitchen serves as a front for Brenner who uses the alias Karl Wagner. He has everybody duped, including his soup server, pretty young Judy Malvern (Wanda McKay of "Voodoo Man"), while she plays hard-to-get with wealthy young suitor, Richard Dennison (John Archer of "Police Bullets") who is more accustomed to sailing on his yacht than navigating the Bowery. Bowery was essentially a slum afflicted with crime. Richard wants Judy to give up her life and join him, but she refuses. Meantime, Detective Sgt. Pete Crawford (Dave O'Brien of "The Singing Cowgirl") dreams of having a family, weeding a garden, and a promotion like his mentor Police Capt. Mac Mitchell who is about to retire. Currently, a crime wave is sweeping the Bowery, and the sagacious Dr. Brenner is the one who has orchestrated. He likes to recruit criminals and then kill them after they have helped him with his crimes.Naturally, Bela delivers another sterling performance. George O'Brien doesn't garner enough screen time to make an effective impression, but John Archer is impressive as a John F. Kennedy type student who knows nothing about the plight of the unprivileged. Mercifully, Fox holds comic relief to a minimum. One amusing scene has Dennison quizzing a bum about life in the Bowery. The bum asks for a cigarette, which Dennsion gives him, and then appropriates the entire pack along with a match. Vince Barrett puts in a brief appearance as another criminal in Wagner's payroll. He spouts one line that is rather funny that marks his destiny. Ultimately, "Bowery at Midnight" proves too ambitious for its own good. The subplot about the zombies is never adequately fleshed out. The tacked on ending about Dennison is problematic. Presumably, the producers had second thoughts about leaving him as a corpse. Meanwhile, it is the zombie subplot that sets "Bowery at Midnight" aside from most zombie movies of its day because voodoo is not used and these zombies are of the flesh-devouring variety.

gavin6942 Kindly soup kitchen operator and professor of criminology Bela Lugosi uses his soup kitchen as a front for a criminal gang who commit a series of daring robberies and murders.The biggest problem with this film, at least for me, is that it has fallen into public domain and nobody has come along to clean it up. I understand the process might be costly, and it would be a labor of love because this film will never be a big seller. But that is what it needs. The acting is solid, the plot is strong... it just looks like a 1920s rather than 1940s film, and that is a travesty.Bela Lugosi made some stinkers in his day, but this is not one of them. Although I only gave the film an "average" score, I could bump it up a bit if the film was properly restored to full glory. Have a film historian or Lugosi biographer do a commentary track on top of it, and you would have a decent disc. Just saying.

bensonmum2 Bowery at Midnight is quite the ambitious little Poverty Row thriller. It's has enough plot threads for three movies. Bela Lugosi plays a man living a double (or should that be triple) life. As one of the characters says to Lugosi, "I've never seen a guy with more angles." By day, he's a college psychology professor. By night, he runs a soup kitchen that he uses as a base to recruit criminals into his organization. You see, he's got a thing for knocking over jewelry stores. If that weren't enough, he has an old, washed-up doctor in the basement who, unbeknownst to Lugosi, is doing experiments on reanimating dead bodies. With all of this going on, there are really very few dull moments in the movie's short runtime. I suppose that's also part of the movie's biggest problem – there are too many loose ends and too many plot threads that go nowhere. For example, why and how is the Doc creating the zombies? And how is the process seemingly reversed at the end of the movie? It's probably best not to think too much about it and just enjoy the movie for what it is. Lugosi actually looks like he's having the time of his life. The smile on his face in many of the scenes looks genuine. And why not? For a Monogram film, Bowery at Midnight is about as good as they come.