Black Friday (1940 film)
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Black Friday is a 1940 science fiction film starring Boris Karloff.
Karloff plays a famous doctor, Dr. Ernest Sovac, whose best friend, a bookish college professor (played by Stanley Ridges), is run down while crossing a street. In order to save his friend's life, Sovac implants part of another man's brain into the professor's. Unfortunately, the other man was a gangster who was involved in the accident. The professor recovers but at times behaves like the gangster, and his whole personality changes. Sovac is horrified but also intrigued, because the gangster has hidden $500,000 USD somewhere in the city. The doctor continues to treat his friend and, when the professor is under the influence of the gangster's brain, Karloff attempts to have the man lead him to the small fortune. Bela Lugosi plays a gangster also trying to get his hands on the cash. Lugosi, although second-billed, has only a small part in the film, and he does not appear with Karloff.
The film provided a rare opportunity for the now semi-forgotten Stanley Ridges to display his considerable acting ability, and gave him one of his finest screen roles (Ridges was nearly always one of many supporting cast members, and seldom was cast in roles where he could really make an impression. He is also remembered as Professor Siletsky in the original To Be or Not to Be (1942 film), and as the Scotland Yard inspector in the Charles Laughton thriller, The Suspect).
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