Voodoo Man
Director: William Beaudine
Year: 1944
Rating: 5.0
Lugosi to another woman with
his wife sitting in a chair next to them, "Can you help my wife?"
Woman, "Is she ill?"
Lugosi, "No, she is
dead. Dead for 22 years."
By the mid-1940s many of the horror icons
of the 30s had found a home at times at Monogram Studio when they needed
some quick cash churning out B films that scared no one. But they can still
be fun and certainly having Bela Lugosi, George Zucco and John Carradine
in the same film is kind of cool. And all on the same side of villainy -
or is it humanity? Depends on how much you love your wife, I guess. This
has just enough weirdness going on to register as a solid B film for the
studio. This film was followed by Return of the Ape Man with the same
three actors. This is one in which you wish you could read their minds in
their scenes together - Carradine on the tom-tom drums, Zucco making up words
for a spell he is doing and Lugosi saying some nonsense that came into his
mind - emotion into emotion, life into death - as he is trying to bring his
wife back to life. Because she is currently a . . . zombie!
When he is not chanting spells in his black
robe with X's and 7's on it, Zucco runs a gas station. A perfect situation
to send lost women the wrong way where Carradine and Grego are waiting for
them having set a trap. Lugosi has a device which makes their car stall and
then through a camera he can watch them. He should have sold that contraption
to the military, this being war time. Carradine is a little slow on the draw
but is good with the compliments- "aren't you a pretty one. You have some
nice pretty hair." as he grabs them and takes them to Lugosi. One of the
women they kidnap is Stella (Sally mistakenly in the credits) played by Louise
Curry. She is introduced to his lovely wife (Ellen Hall) who looks pretty
damn nice having been dead for 22 years. I hope they can say the same about
me some day. Lugosi hypnotizes them with one of those famous Bela stares
and then the hoped for transference of life to death begins!
No need to worry - a man was with her and
wonders where she went - they tell the sheriff and he goes "This is so monotonous.
This is the fourth women who has gone missing (all in Lugosi's cupboard).
I didn't sign up for this". Later when he sees a zombie on the road, he curses,
"Oh, fishhooks". It runs 61 minutes and is directed by a veteran of 350 films,
William Beaudine. This was probably not his proudest hour.
