The Bowery at Midnight (1942)

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Bowery at Midnight is a Poverty Row crime drama with a handful of zombies thrown in for kicks. The fabulous Bela Lugosi stars, and stars playing as many as four personae, actually. He’s first introduced as the philanthropic owner of the “Bowery Friendly Mission,” a no-questions-asked soup kitchen for the disadvantaged and, as luck would have it, criminals on the lam. It so happens that he also secretly runs a criminal organization of his own. Just to stir things up, one of his associates is a nervous former doctor with a quirky hobby of reanimating the dead as zombies, which he keeps hidden in a secret room beneath another secret room behind yet another secret room. (They’re so secret, in fact, that even the viewing audience hardly ever gets to see them.)

Meanwhile, the possibility is raised that this entire double life Lugosi’s character is leading may itself be an elaborate moonlighting career, for Bela Lugosi appears separately as a writer and devoted husband, whose wife wonders where he keeps going at night. Finally, Bela Lugosi plays a minor role as a university professor of psychology (whose school appears to be UC Berkeley, even though the rest of the movie takes place in Manhattan). Some viewers may stroke their chins and think, “What are the chances they’d all look and sound just like Bela Lugosi?” Others will scratch their heads and wonder, “What’s the point of all this?”

Bowery at Midnight is, ultimately, a bit silly, and has little regard for character motivation or even logic. The final bits seem thrown together and baffling (“what the hell?” baffling, not thought-provoking). Viewers looking for real action or horror may be disappointed there is no blood, little onscreen violence, and not much real suspense aside from Lugosi’s trademark evil-eye gaze. But the curious factor of Lugosi’s double and triple lives is engaging enough, and the dialogue is interesting, even quite humorous at times. (Two vagrants discussing dinner at the soup kitchen: “Wouldst thou partake?” “Wouldst!”) And that tense ‘40s atmosphere is established in the opening shots, and maintained nicely throughout. Ultimately, Bowery at Midnight is dated, slightly awkward, and poorly explained; but it’s certainly inventive, and fun enough to be worth a watch if you’re looking for an early entry into the “Zombies vs. Gangsters” sub-subgenre.

Unfortunately, modern zombie fans are also likely to be disappointed here, since these shamblers have about a minute of total screentime. I mean, Hitchcock had longer cameos in his films than this. However, there is at least one death by zombie, and there’s something eerie about the manner and location of their confinement. ‘Bowery’ earns its place in zombie film history as the first appearance of zombies in a domestic setting, as opposed to a tropical locale (thanks go to Peter Dendle, The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, for that observation). It has been argued that these are also the first fleshmunching zombies, based on one scene in which the deranged doctor coos to them, “Hungry, eh? Well, you shall have food and a new companion, too!” But no one really gets eaten, and the “food” may simply be medication; it’s never really explained. And be warned the final scene will test the limits of even us zombie fans’ well trained suspension of disbelief.

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