By JOE WINTERS

(Note: This is the first of a two-part series concerning the nine horror pictures Bela Lugosi made for the B-movie studio, Monogram.   Part Two concludes this tale in next month's issue.)

Mad Manchurians…deadly dames…murdering monsters…magical menaces…plastic surgery…enemy agents…vanishing brides…criminal masterminds…the living dead…simian stalkers…brain transplants…voodoo vixens.

Whom do they all have in common?

Bela Lugosi!

From where did they all emerge?

From that beloved fun factory known to connoisseurs of bargain basement cinema; Monogram Pictures!

Founded in 1915 as the Arrow Film Corporation, and known along the way as Rayart Productions, Syndicate Film Exchange and by 1931 as Monogram Pictures, the studio churned out a steady supply of low budget Westerns, melodramas and mysteries. Some of them were quite good, especially considering their economical origins, and frequently featuring slumming stars between quality gigs, or employing down-and- out, yet reliable character actors just looking for work in Depression-era Hollywood.

One such actor was Bela Lugosi. With phenomenal success as Dracula and in a rapid succession of horror film roles, he was by the mid-1930s already typecast as a bogeyman. He was also a man with a somewhat extravagant lifestyle to support and bills to pay. Saddled by this time with a reputation for saying "Yes" to almost any part offered, Bela took the title role (possibly intended at one point for Lionel Atwill) in Monogram’s Mysterious Mr. Wong (1935). Think Fu Manchu on a budget…and with a Hungarian accent.

At least since the days of Gilbert and Sullivan’s "The Mikado" the American public had been fascinated with Oriental characters, whether heroic (Charlie Chan, for example) or of the "Yellow Peril" variety. Most of these movies took a decidedly racist tone, and Mysterious Mr. Wong was no exception. Based on Harry Stephen Keeler’s "The Twelve Coins of Confucius" and directed by frequent Monogram employee William Nigh, the movie begins with a montage of murder in San Francisco’s Chinese-American community and headlines of "Tong Wars."

This is a cover for Wong’s efforts to recover a dozen coins which will give him unquestioned authority in the province of Keelat. On the story are reporter Jay Barton (Wallace Ford) and his girlfriend Peg (Arline Judge). In between gongs, Wong confines victims to the dungeon of the faithless. "A few hours with the rats will make him speak the truth," he declares as an underling is tossed through a trapdoor. Wong’s dungeon is nothing too elaborate, but there is a none-too-well concealed telephone on which unattended captive Barton calls for help. Wong is gunned down by the police and his plot foiled.

The film perks along nicely enough with Lugosi in charge and nice support from wisecracking Ford and Judge. Mysterious Mr. Wong was Bela’s only picture for the original Monogram, which was about to be absorbed into Republic Pictures. Monogram re-organized in 1937 and would in a few years strike a deal with Lugosi that would result in what later become known as "the Monogram Nine."

But first, the studio acquired the American distribution rights to Bela’s 1939 British film, The Dark Eyes Of London, to be known in the States as The Human Monster.

In a dual role of sorts that ranks among his most evil, Lugosi plays Dr. Feodor Orloff, the man behind a murder-for-insurance money racket. He doubles as blind Professor John Dearborn (with dubbed voice), whose Home for the Blind figures into the scheme. Since Dracula, many of Lugosi’s characters had the power of hypnosis.

Orloff has such control at times over potential victims and over his secretary whom he orders about shamelessly. Also at Bela’s command is blind brute Jake (Wilfrid Walter) who turns upon his master after one murder too many and hurls the villain to a well-deserved end in the muddy mire. Based on an Edgar Wallace story, the film was re-made in West Germany as Dead Eyes Of London (1961).

And now to the Monogram studios, where Boris Karloff was winding up the terms of his contract that included a series of Mr. Wong detective movies that had nothing to do with the earlier villainous Wong that Lugosi had played. By the end of the Thirties, horror had made a comeback, and the studio released Karloff from the last Wong film and cast him as the mad doctor in The Ape (1940). As for Bela, he was doing mad doctor duty on The Devil Bat (1940) over at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation).

With Boris on his way to better deals at Columbia and Universal, Bela became the star of the party at Monogram where he kicked things off with Invisible Ghost (1941), the first of the aforementioned nine pictures produced by Sam Katzman’s Banner Productions arm of the company. Working his way through the ranks of moviemaking since about 1914, Katzman had by now established himself as a man well-skilled at getting movies made on the cheap, a talent made-to-order for Monogram.

With a title that seems to have nothing to do with the movie, Invisible Ghost stars Bela on the receiving end of a hypnotic trance for a change. This happens whenever kindly Charles Kessler (Lugosi) sees his wife (played by Betty Compson), who years earlier had run off with another man and has since been believed dead from a car accident. In fact, she’s alive and unwell, in a state of shock and secretly sheltered by resident handyman Jules (Ernie Adams).

She occasionally wanders out on the grounds at night. Each time hubby catches sight of her he goes into a daze, the lighting on his face changes and he commits a murder with no memory of it later. Within five minutes of screen time after the maid is found dead, her former lover Ralph Dickson (John McGuire) is arrested, convicted and executed. Almost before one can say "what the heck happened?" Paul Dixon (John McGuire) shows up determined to clear his dead twin brother’s name.

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy), Invisible Ghost offers some nice camera angles and a competent cast. Besides Bela, there’s Polly Ann Young (Loretta’s sister) as his concerned daughter. Clarence Muse, who worked with Bela before as the coach driver in White Zombie, plays Evans the butler, and unlike many black actors relegated at the time to servant roles, he invests his part with authority and understanding.

Betty Compson, once a big star, plays Mrs. Kessler with little to do other than look dazed and confused. She handles it well enough, and her willingness to stand next to a portrait of herself from better days is admirable. Lugosi approaches his sympathetic portrayal with customary sincerity, which is the main reason we watch. Any lapses in logic, and there are many, are part of the Monogram tradition and part of the fun. That’s not intended to excuse or dismiss the flaws. One simply accepts them or not.

One of the more promising moments of Monogram Horror would have been the casting of Bela Lugosi in King Of The Zombies (1941). His plate was rather full at the time, so the role of sinister Dr. Sangre went to Henry Victor who lacked Bela’s style. It would have been nice to see Lugosi teamed at least once with the studio’s resident clown prince, comedian Mantan Moreland, who pretty much made the movie his own.

Bela’s next Monogram assignment teamed him with another of the studio’s laugh-coaxing commodities, the East Side Kids. Spooks Run Wild (1941) concerns a small town search for the brutal "Monster Killer" just as mysterious strangers Nardo and Luigi (played by Lugosi and dwarf sidekick Angelo Rossitto) show up. They travel by night with three…uhh…boxes. At a nearby cemetery they dematerialize before the caretaker’s gunfire can hit them. Later they roam the catacombs of a deserted house where the Kids soon arrive with one their own wounded by gunshot.

Lugosi leers lustily at the wound prior to providing treatment. The boys read up on vampires while Nardo instructs Luigi that "Our guests must not leave the house." All this leads to the not-so-surprising revelation that Nardo and Luigi are red herrings and on the side of good. The only time Bela appears frightened is when a skull-headed sheet (with a couple Kids under it) speaks with a Lugosi accent. He’s otherwise mostly all-smiles and in on the jokes, even as the estate is stormed by the traditional angry villagers (in cars this time).

Director Phil Rosen’s long career in the movie business included scores of B-pictures and a lot of work for the old and the new Monogram. Among the screenplay credits are the names Carl Foreman and Charles R. Marion, whose writing careers took decidedly different paths from about this point. Foreman went on to work on scripts for High Noon (1952), Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) and The Guns Of Navarone (1961), among others. Marion continued to toil in Lower Budget-land with his credits including several vehicles for the Bowery Boys, a Fifties incarnation of the East Side Kids.

As did most studios in the early 40s, Monogram went to war. And when they did, they put Bela on the front line in Black Dragons (1942). Director William Nigh was another tinsel town denizen since the days of the silents and with many Mono-programmers to his credit, including House Of Mystery (1934), Mystery Liner (1934), all five Karloff/Mr. Wong movies and The Ape, and at Universal The Strange Case Of Dr. Rx (1942).

In Black Dragons, Lugosi is on the loose in our nation’s Capitol as the mysterious Monsieur Colomb, whose arrival shakes up a group of well-to-do Fifth Column operatives. "I’m a very sick man," he admits, though still better adjusted than most Lugosi characters before or since. He’s really the Nazi plastic surgeon Doctor Melcher, out for revenge on the Japanese agents made Caucasian by his skill. The Black Dragon Society had earlier tossed Melcher in a cell before launching their infiltration scheme. "You swine!" he declares. "Da Fuehrer vill vipe you from da face of da Earth!" Luckily the doctor held on to his pocket plastic surgery kit.

Even luckier was the presence of a lone cellmate who looked just like Bela Lugosi! In what basically amounted to Melcher shaving his beard, he disposed of his soon-to-be released double and took his place. Utilizing everything from the hypnotic stare to an ability to slip in and out of cabs, he goes about the business of payback. In one scene, he tricks two enemies into killing each other, appearing on the scene in time to give one gunshot victim a gentle push to the floor, accompanied with a smiling "Thank you."

Among the supporting cast of Black Dragons was future Lone Ranger Clayton Moore as an American agent on the case. Joan Barclay plays the innocent daughter of the disguised Dr. Saunders (George Pembroke). Robert Frazer, who played the plantation owner in White Zombie, is on hand as a conspirator who gets the drop on Bela once again. And once again, the Frazer character dies in the bargain, this time before Bela bites the dust. Stanford Jolley, a bit player in hundreds of films and television shows, was on hand as the head Dragon in a flashback sequence.

VHS box art describes Black Dragons as the ultimate lethal weapon. Maybe they were referring to Bela. In any case, the movie remains an enjoyably hokey mix of propaganda, murder and power plays. Those in the know have caught the similarities in the Black Dragons plot and that of an Outer Limits episode titled "Hundred Days of the Dragon" wherein an enemy replaced the President of the United States.

Well, Presidents come and go, but no one can replace Lugosi! See why in part two next month, when we’ll take a look at the rest of Bela’s Monogram Madness!

Thanks, Joe.  On the one hand, classic horror fans in general and Lugosi fans in particular might well wish that Bela had found a more prominent studio in which to issue his final series of relatively well-regarded horror flicks--but, on the other hand, at least Monogram used him, when other studios, especially Universal, didn't seem to recognize the former screen horror star was still very much alive and kicking.  And Monogram wasn't Producers Releasing Corporation, at least.  As it stands, the Lugosi Monogram horrors are, at best, a mixed bag--a fact that will be brought out even more prominently in part two of this article in next month's issue.

Article copyright © Joe Winters

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