Black Friday

Karloff's great, but Lugosi's role is a minor one
It's hard not to get excited when you come across a film featuring both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, but 1940's Black Friday features a somewhat disappointing and certainly unusual pairing of the two legendary stars. Not once do the two men appear in the same scene, and Lugosi's character is actually a rather minor one. As for Karloff, you won't find him hidden behind a mummy's shroud or dressed up as Frankenstein in this one (and it's always nice to actually see Karloff's own true face). Rather than playing a monster, Karloff gets to try his hand at creating a monster this time around. As the film opens, we meet Dr. Ernst Sovac (Karloff) on his way to the electric chair, and the notes he gives to a reporter tell the story of his downfall. Sovac's best friend was George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges), a mild-mannered college professor of English literature, who was critically injured when a group of mobsters tried to kill their former partner Red Cannon. Kingsley had serious brain...

Bland Horrors; A Waste Of Talent
The horror dream team of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff produced erratic efforts in their numerous on-screen parings. With The Black Cat (1934) and The Raven (1935), the two men actually created a new genre of horror film; one which, it could be said, has never been equaled. Unfortunately, these two films went too far for 30's audiences, as The Raven led to a British ban on horror movies.

Panicking, Universal began the sterilization of their future efforts. The first signs came with The Invisible Ray (1936). A rather polite and straight forward science fiction tale, it at least gave Lugosi and Karloff the opportunity to have a protagonist/antagonist relationship similar to that of the earlier films.

But with Black Friday (1940), the results are so watery and uninspired that all sense of mood or lurking danger have been completely eliminated. As a surgeon who transplants the brain of a dead gangster into an English professor, Karloff's character is no longer a...

Mad Scientist Boris Gets Greedy!
Karloff plays Dr. Sovac, a doctor with high ambitions. Both his friend and a criminal gangster are hurt and lie in a hospital. As Dr. Sovac examines them he finds that the gangster has a half a mill hidden somewhere. Hey, I got an idea. Why not put part of the gangster's brain into my best friend's head. The friend no longer has brain damage and I have a half a mill "for research" *wink-wink*.

The movie is basically a gangster picture with some horror/sci-fi elements. Lugosi is disappointing in his gangster role, trying to snarl it up with his Hungarian accent.

Karloff tries to keep control over Kingsley. He takes him to the same hang-outs as the gangster in hopes the gangster part comes out and then Sovac can get the money. Unfortunately things get a little out of control.

The whole film is a flashback sequence. We start out with the Karloff character being led to the electric chair and the audience follows the diary left behind. The diary...

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