Horror Classic 28 of 50: THE CORPSE VANISHES
The Corpse Vanishes is a 1942 film, and guess who's in it? Bela Lugosi! It's been a long time since the last Lugosi film in the 50-movie DVD set, so seeing him again was like being reunited with an old friend. A spooky old friend who tries to drain the life from you for his own nefarious purposes, but a friend nonetheless. Good to see ya, Bela ol' buddy.Last time, I asked you, the readers, to be active participants in this blog by making predictions about when exactly the corpse would vanish... but nobody did. Come on, guys! The internet is supposed to be interactive! For the record, though: More than one corpse disappears, but the important one vanishes at 11 minutes and 33 seconds into the movie. What or who makes it vanish, and how and why? Well, I'll tell you.
Synopsis
The first scene is a wedding. Isn't that nice? The church looks lovely, the groom is handsome, the bride is dropping dead, and the-- THE BRIDE IS DROPPING DEAD?! Yeah, she is, and her body is immediately loaded onto a hearse and driven away... only it turns out the hearse is a phony, and now nobody knows where the corpse is. To make matters worse, this is only the latest in a series of mysteriously-dying- then-disappearing brides.
Smart, spunky girl reporter Patricia Hunter is determined to get the bottom of this. She goes to the next big wedding in town, and sure enough, the bride kicks the bucket again, and her body stolen. Sheesh, and they never even got to do the chicken dance. Now, who do you suppose is driving the car that steals the body? That's right, it's Bela Lugosi.
Patricia soon finds a lead: All the brides were wearing a rare breed of orchid when they died, and nobody knows where the orchids came from. It must be an important clue, right? Her stupid editor, Mr. Keenan, dismisses it as having no significance whatsoever (How did he ever get to be a journalist?), but Patricia is undeterred, so she sets out to visit Professor Lorenz (Lugosi!), an expert on orchids. Of course, she has no idea he's the man behind the vanishings, so she hitches a ride to Lorenz's mansion with his colleague Dr. Foster.
Lorenz, meanwhile, is keeping busy. In his lab, he sticks a needle in the fresh bride, extracts her young-and-beautiful juice, and injects it in his aging wife. Naturally, her wrinkles immediately disappear, and she's a hot young thing. It seems like an extreme way to fight aging, but you have to remember they didn't have Botox in 1942. (A Botox joke! Yes, that's the kind of cutting-edge humor you get here on Ryan Watches 50 Movies.)
Patricia arrives and asks Lorenz for an interview, but he says it'll have to wait until tomorrow, and since there's a big storm outside, why doesn't she just spend the night at his place? So she does. That night, Lorenz sneaks into her room via a secret passageway, and leers at her. Bela Lugosi was an expert at leering at sleeping people, and having it witnessed it as many times as I have in these movies, I hope he never leers at me while I sleep.
As you've probably guessed, Lorenz and his wife (who, by the way, sleep in matching his-and-hers coffins) see Patricia as their next victim. But Patricia is no damsel in distress: As she investigates the house, she discovers Lorenz's lab and his collection of dead brides.
Now Patricia has her evidence... and her work cut out for her. Will this be the biggest story of her life... or the end of it?
Is It Scary?
It's kinda spooky at times, though like several of these movies, it's more suspenseful than shocking.
Lessons I Learned
- According to Professor Lorenz, many people prefer coffins to beds. Oh yeah? What kind of people? Besides Dracula, I mean.
- If a mysterious man hands gives you an orchid at your wedding, DON'T SNIFF IT.
- Patricia: "What if I get a clue?"
Other reporter: "I wouldn't worry about that, sweetie pie. You wouldn't know a clue if it bit you!"
Patricia: "I'll remember that, stooge." - Patricia, on the Lorenzes: "So that's what you call being eccentric. I have another name for it."
- Patricia: "Do I get a byline?"
Mr. Keenan: "After this, you can have a clothesline. With my shirt on it!"
(What does that mean?)
Comments
• This was not a bad movie. It was extremely refreshing to have a hero like Patricia, who is the most active female protagonist I've seen on this DVD set. There have been female leads before, sure, but they've done a lot of cowering and screaming. Patricia was like Lois Lane, fearlessly diving into danger to get her story.
Which is why the ending was a bit disappointing. Patricia's plan to catch Lorenz in the act involves staging a phony wedding, and while this is going on, Dr. Foster proposes to her, which comes out of abso-frigging-luteley nowhere because we never seen any kind of chemistry between them. And then Patricia quits her job and marries Dr. Foster. I guess that's the way things worked in 1942, but couldn't she at least have kept her job until they had kids?
• The idea of an old person stealing their victim's youth has popped up in these classic horror movies a few times before, but they all run together so I can't remember which ones.
• You may have noticed that these movies often involve the normal protagonists staying overnight at the home of the scary character. It's a horror movie tradition that's been carried on right up through The Rocky Horror Picture Show and beyond.
• The score was pretty good, especially when Patricia was sneaking around Lorenz's house. The music there managed to be pretty and unsettling at the same time.
• Lorenz has three servants that we see a lot of: A big dumb guy, a little guy, and their mother. The mother was a really bad actress. She sort of... growled all her lines.
Letter grade for The Corpse Vanishes: B
Next film in the 50-movie set: Night of the Living Dead. Whoa, really? That's an actual horror classic... and it's only 40 years old! Can it really be included in this set?
Comments