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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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10
= Highest Rating |
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I
must've been in the grip of a serious Lugosi jones,
for even after wading through over four hours
of The Phantom Creeps
I was ready for more Bela. I satisfied this craving
by popping 1944's Voodoo
Man in the DVD player. Yes, it's an awful
movie — but awfully funny in spots, too. (Not
that it's meant to be.)
Taking
a cue from The Corpse
Vanishes, Lugosi plays Dr. Marlowe, a scientist
who kidnaps young women to help keep his dead
wife 'alive'. Though deceased for 22 years, Mrs.
Marlowe is perfectly preserved and prone to strolling
about the house if not restrained. Her mind's
a blank; she apparently lacks the "will" to live.
(Which I'd think isn't all that uncommon in dead
people.) Marlowe uses hypnosis and a voodoo ritual
to transfer some of the will and vitality of the
kidnapped women to his wife. The process never
really works, though, providing his spouse only
fleeting moments of lucidity while leaving the
victims in a zombie-like trance. Nor is the Doc's
kidnapping scheme particularly well thought out.
Pretty young women, traveling alone, are marked
for snatching by Marlowe's henchman Nicholas (George
Zucco), who works at a gas station along a lonely
stretch of country road. He phones ahead to Marlowe's
house after a suitable victim passes through.
Two gimpy servants of the doctor's, Grego (Pat
McKee) and Toby (a wild-looking John Carradine),
put a fake detour sign in the roadway, pointing
to a dirt path opened up by moving a section of
shrubbery attached to a hinged gate. When the
women take the phony detour Marlowe activates
a gizmo in the house that kills their car engines
dead. Toby and Grego grab the gals, remove the
fake detour and dispose of the vehicles. In the
rituals that follow, Nicholas, acting as voodoo
priest, calls on the mystical powers of "Ramboona"
to fully animate Marlowe's living dead wife at
the expense of the captives. The zombified victims
are stored in a row of cells in the basement —
unsolved cases in the police Missing Persons files.
Eventually, of course, there's
a screw-up. Stella (Louise Currie) falls for the
detour gag but she's not alone. With her is Ralph
(Tod Andrews), whom she picked up on the roadside
after getting directions from Nicholas.
(Ralph ran out of gas because he's too stupid
to periodically check the fuel gauge.) As luck
would have it Stella's the cousin of Ralph's bride-to-be.
So he's more than a little curious when, after
the engine suddenly dies and he leaves to seek
help, he returns to find Stella and her car have
disappeared. Ralph gets the local sheriff involved
and in fairly short order — the movie's barely
over an hour long, after all — the doctor's kidnapping
racket is exposed. Perhaps if Marlowe had patented
that handy engine-disabling device and sold it
to the government he could've afforded to hire
some decent help...
A very low budget cheapie
from 'Poverty Row' studio Monogram, Voodoo
Man fails utterly on just about every level.
The story is inane, the direction by William Beaudine
(Billy the Kid vs. Dracula)
totally pedestrian. The screenwriter apparently
made no effort whatsoever to research actual voodoo
lore. The film's only special effect consists
of a few seconds of stop-motion photography involving
an animated length of rope. Fortunately the flick
is just silly enough to be entertaining. Lugosi
gives a comparatively restrained performance (he
isn't given any juicy, instantly quotable lines
to spout), so it's supporting players George Zucco
and John Carradine who steal the show and make
it worth watching. Fans of their roles in many
of the classic monster films of the '30s and '40s
may be surprised — not to mention amused — by
their antics here. Carradine's childlike moron
Toby, nervously hopping to and fro, long greasy
hair flopping in his face, is a real hoot, especially
when he sits in on bongos during the rituals.
(Too bad he isn't paired with Tor Johnson's Lobo
here rather than the unremarkable Grego. What
a dimwitted duo they'd make!) Zucco, as
Nicholas, had me howling with laughter. In films
I've previously seen him in (such as The
Mummy's Hand), he's always an urbane yet sinister
figure, not exactly your typical gas station attendant...
especially one who doubles as a voodoo priest.
During the movie's ritual scenes he comes off
as a complete goofball, mugging shamelessly in
a feathered headdress as he gibbers utter nonsense
in supplication to Ramboona. The witchdoctor on
that Gilligan's Island episode was more
dignified than this!
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a shame, but Voodoo Man
is not available on home video from any regular
commercial source. Were it not for Creepy Classics'
DVD-R edition I may never have gotten the chance
to see it. For this I am grateful. That being said,
one must take this gray market disc with a big grain
of salt. In general the movie looks and sounds pretty
bad, like a substandard VHS dub taken from a beat-up
16mm dupe. It's grainy as hell, fuzzy, washed out
and very soft looking. Audio is muffled; there's
constant background hiss throughout. There is no
menu system to speak of. (Hitting 'Play' is the
only option. The disc is chapter-encoded, however.)
Only serious Lugosi, Carradine and/or Zucco
fans will likely find it acceptable... that, or
schlock lovers who aren't worried about balancing
their checkbook at the end of the month. Despite
the less than stellar presentation, kudos to Creepy
Classics for at least making the film available.
Very nice packaging artwork, too. 1/24/03 |
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