Creaky but fun, this Monogram programmer is a must for Lugosi fans and lovers of "Bad Cinema". It's actually his most consistently enjoyable Monogram film, campy in spite of Lugosi's sincere performance. He is a mad doctor (what else?) having brides kidnapped right before their wedding so their bodily fluids can be used to revitalize his aging wife (a ridiculously hammy Elizabeth Russell playing a modern version of Elizabeth Bathory). A reporter (Luana Walters) manages to get clues which lead her to Lugosi and his band of wackos (dwarf Angelo Rossitto who sneers and laughs at the evil around him, Frank Moran as a perverted simpleton who may be necrophiliac, and Minerva Urecal as his psychotic mama).
While Lugosi's caring for his aging, vile wife is touching from his perspective, the countess is such an angry, mean character (at one point slapping Walters simply out of jealousy for her loveliness) that you long to see her brutally dispatched. A doctor (played by the ironically named Tristram Coffin) aids Walters in her determination to find out what has happened to all the "virginal" brides, and points out to Walters that while Lugosi and Russell themselves sleep in coffins, "normal" people may not understand the reasons.
There are many unintentional laughs (such as Rossito laughing in glee as Moran gets whipped for stroking one of Lugosi's victim's hair), some of them disturbing in a rather perverse way. Urecal is hammy but touching, stealing her few moments on screen. This non-pretentious melodrama is certainly no "Dracula" or "The Black Cat", but certainly better than such dogs as "Scared to Death" and the ridiculous "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla". Lugosi also starred in the very similar "Voodoo Man" two years later that has enough twists to stand on its own but is basically just a reworked version of the same plot.
While Lugosi's caring for his aging, vile wife is touching from his perspective, the countess is such an angry, mean character (at one point slapping Walters simply out of jealousy for her loveliness) that you long to see her brutally dispatched. A doctor (played by the ironically named Tristram Coffin) aids Walters in her determination to find out what has happened to all the "virginal" brides, and points out to Walters that while Lugosi and Russell themselves sleep in coffins, "normal" people may not understand the reasons.
There are many unintentional laughs (such as Rossito laughing in glee as Moran gets whipped for stroking one of Lugosi's victim's hair), some of them disturbing in a rather perverse way. Urecal is hammy but touching, stealing her few moments on screen. This non-pretentious melodrama is certainly no "Dracula" or "The Black Cat", but certainly better than such dogs as "Scared to Death" and the ridiculous "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla". Lugosi also starred in the very similar "Voodoo Man" two years later that has enough twists to stand on its own but is basically just a reworked version of the same plot.