Bowery at Midnight

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Bowery at Midnight
Directed by	Wallace Fox
Produced by	Sam Katzman Jack Dietz
Written by	Gerald Schnitzer
Starring	Béla Lugosi John Archer
Distributed by	Monogram Pictures
Release date(s)	1942
Running time	61 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
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IMDb profile

Bowery at Midnight (1942) is a horror film starring Béla Lugosi. Lugosi plays a psychology professor by day who, secretly and under an assumed name, runs a Bowery soup kitchen by night called the Bowery Friendly Mission. Lugosi's character uses his soup kitchen as a means to recruit members of a criminal gang, of which he is also secretly the head.

[edit] A 'Zombie Film?'

Bowery at Midnight is sometimes referred to as a zombie-film, but many find this inaccurate and misleading.[1] Throughout the film, one of Lugosi's henchmen, a doctor who seems to be an alcoholic drug-addict, alludes to having plans for the corpses of henchmen Lugosi has had killed. Then, at the end of the film, these corpses are revealed to have been restored to life by the doctor. Lugosi's character meets his demise when the doctor leads the unwitting Lugosi into a basement room where the reanimated corpses are waiting for him.

It is not clear, however, that the doctor has made these men into zombies. All of the men who are reanimated have reasons for wanting to kill the Lugosi character, above and apart from any zombie-induced lust for the flesh of the living.

Near the end of the film, the male lead, played by John Archer, appears to be killed and mysteriously reanimated. Then, in the film's final scene, he appears restored to his former health, and not like a zombie at all.

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• In the opening credits, Lugosi is billed as portraying more than one character. This is, in fact, inaccurate. Lugosi plays one character who maintains separate and secret identities within the world of the film.

• At one point in the film, characters walk past a poster for The Corpse Vanishes, an earlier Lugosi film, replete with an obvious picture of Lugosi.

• If the reanimated corpses at the end of the narrative do qualify as zombies, then Bowery at Midnight is the first American film to portray zombies inside the United States.[2]