Saturday, April 4, 2015

BLACK FRIDAY 1940 (UNIVERSAL)

Re-visiting a very unusual and maligned film.

Stanley Ridges is Prof. George Kingsley, a kindly man who teaches at a local college. After being hit by a car carrying a gangster he is operated on by his good friend Dr. Ernest Sovac, played by Boris Karloff. In order to save his friends' life Sovec transplants the brain of the gangster into the head of Stanley.

All seems well until the personality of the dead gangster, Red Cannon begins to take over. Bela Lugosi is Eric Marnay a top rival of Cannon's. Marnay wants the money Cannon had hidden away, and does Sovac so he can use it to further his experiments.

For some reason this film is always torn apart by people who love Universal horror films. This isn't a horror film per se, but it works on many levels including horror an film noir. I personally like this film a lot.

Anne Nagel is Sonny Rogers, the former mistress of Cannon and lovely Anne Gwenne is Sovac's daughter. If you haven't seen it, take a look and judge for yourself.

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