Bela LugosiFilmography

Studio Snapshots

Synopsis: This program features a compilation of promotional film shorts produced during the 1930s as part of the Hollywood on Parade and Star Reporter in Hollywood series. A number of the Parade shorts were produced or directed by Lewis Lewyn and they often provided songs and comedy sketches. It's Read More

The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr.

Actors: Dolores Fuller

Synopsis: The strange life and the wonderfully awful films of 1950's Hollywood Z movie director Ed Wood are profiled in this documentary that was conceived of and researched several years before commercial-filmmaker Tim Burton made his feature film tribute. Actually, Wood does not appear much in this film. Read More

Ed Wood: Look Back in Angora

Synopsis: This is a campy documentary about Ed Wood, who is considered to be the worst filmmaker ever. The notorious cross-dressing director gained fame posthumously as the object of a Tim Burton movie. This profile uses clips from a number of Wood's infamous movies to illustrate his life. Clips from Glen or Glenda? Read More

Innocent Blood

Actors: Anne Parillaud, Robert Loggia, Anthony LaPaglia, David Proval, Don Rickles, Don Rickels

Synopsis: An uneven but entertaining blend of graphic horror and black comedy from John Landis, very much in the mode of the director's successful An American Werewolf in London. French actress Anne Parillaud -- star of Luc Besson's acclaimed thriller La Femme Nikita -- plays Marie, a lithe and lovely Read More

Monsters and Maniacs

Mondo Lugosi: A Vampire's Scrapbook

Synopsis: A profile of the world famous vampire in rare interviews and film clips of his greatest screen appearances. Lugosi is featured in a full-dress vampire sketch performed for the live television show "You Asked For It!" ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Into the Night

Actors: Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard Farnsworth, Irene Papas, Kathryn Harrold

Synopsis: Filled with enough cameos to keep film buffs entertained, this otherwise routine action-comedy by John Landis boasts Michelle Pfeiffer as one of its major attractions. She plays Diana, a woman prone to having affairs with some very dangerous men, and Jeff Goldblum is Ed Okin, an aerospace engineer Read More

Terror in the Aisles

Actors: Donald Pleasence, Nancy Allen

Synopsis: Director Andrew Kuehn has excerpted brief segments of terror and suspense in a wide variety of horror movies and strung them together with added commentary, as well as some enacted narrative, to create a compilation of cinematic, fright-inducing effects. Donald Pleasance and Nancy Allen provide Read More

The Hollywood Collection: The Horror of it All

Synopsis: Directed by Philip Martell, music director of such horror films as Snake Woman (1961) and Die, Monster, Die! (1964), this documentary recounts the history of horror movies, with footage and scenes from major horror films such as Nosferatu and The Horror of Dracula. Highlights include footage of Read More

The World of Abbott and Costello

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Marjorie Main

Synopsis: The World of Abbott and Costello is a dismal attempt by Universal Pictures to cash in on the popularity of Robert Youngson's silent-movie compilation films. Random scenes from eighteen of the films of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are yanked out of context, then assembled in a patchy continuity by Read More

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Actors: Criswell, Tor Johnson, Carl Anthony, Maila "Vampira" Nurmi, Bela Lugosi, Mona McKinnon, Gregory Walcott

Synopsis: With its incoherent plot, jaw-droppingly odd dialogue, inept acting, threadbare production design, and special effects so shoddy that they border on the surreal, Plan 9 From Outer Space has often been called the worst movie ever made. But it's an oddly endearing disaster; boasting genuine Read More

The Black Sleep

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Akim Tamiroff, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Bela Lugosi, Herbert Rudley, Tor Johnson

Synopsis: Given its cast and director, it is disheartening that The Black Sleep isn't any better than it is. Basil Rathbone heads the cast as Sir Joel Cadman, who uses a mind-controlling drug known as "The Black Sleep" to place brilliant scientist Gordon Ramsay (Herbert Rudley) under his control. Cadman Read More

Bride of the Monster

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Tony McCoy, Loretta King, Harvey B. Dunn

Synopsis: To most outside observers, Bride of the Monster probably seems like a ridiculously inept horror film, and in many ways it is just that. To connoisseurs of the work of director Edward D. Wood Jr., however, it is the biggest budgeted film in his entire output, made with the resources of a normal Read More

Glen or Glenda?

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Daniel Davis [Edward D. Wood, Jr.], Lyle Talbot, Dolores Fuller, Tommy Haynes

Synopsis: In his heart-felt cinematic debut, Edward D. Wood, Jr. himself stars under the pseudonym Daniel Davis as a young man with a dilemma: should he tell his lovely young fiancee (played by real-life girlfriend Dolores Fuller) about his burning desire to cross-dress? She has begun to notice articles Read More

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Duke Mitchell, Sammy Petrillo, Charlita, Muriel Landers

Synopsis: Bela Lugosi plays a mad scientist in the jungle who stumbles across a couple of comedians (intended to resemble Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis) and proceeds to use them as lab mice in his experiments. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide Read More

My Son, the Vampire

Synopsis: In this horror movie an Irish char woman must stop an insane inventor who is planning to take over the world with a monstrous-robot. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney, Jr., Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange

Synopsis: It seems that Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), in league with a beautiful but diabolical lady scientist (Lenore Aubert), needs a "simple, pliable" brain with which to reactivate Frankenstein's creature (Glenn Strange). The "ideal" brain belongs to the hapless Lou Costello, whom the lady doctor woos to Read More

Scared to Death

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Douglas Fowley, Joyce Compton, George Zucco, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: Completed several years before its 1947 release, Scared to Death is historically important as Bela Lugosi's only color film (outside of his brief unbilled appearance in 1931's Fifty Million Frenchmen, which today exists only in black & white). Other than that, it's a dreary story of how a Read More

Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome

Actors: Ralph Byrd, Boris Karloff, Anne Gwynne, Lyle Latell, June Clayworth, Skelton Knaggs

Synopsis: Befitting his status as a genre star, Boris Karloff earns top billing over leading man Ralph Byrd in RKO's final Dick Tracy caper. The former Frankenstein monster plays an escaped convict masterminding a daring bank robbery. To get in and out of the bank without being noticed, the gang uses an Read More

Genius at Work

Actors: Wally Brown, Alan Carney, Anne Jeffreys, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi

Synopsis: RKO's prefabricated comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney came to an abrupt end with Genius at Work. A slapsticky remake of 1937's Super Sleuth, the film casts the stars as Jerry and Mike, the stars of a weekly radio "unsolved mysteries" series. Ellen (Anne Jeffreys), the show's head writer Read More

The Body Snatcher

Actors: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, Edith Atwater, Donna Lee, Russell Wade, Rita Corday

Synopsis: Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were given top billing in the Val Lewton-produced The Body Snatcher, but the film's protagonist is played by Henry Daniell. A brilliant 18th century London surgeon, Daniell can only make his humanitarian medical advances by experimenting on cadavers, which is strictly Read More

One Body Too Many

Actors: Jean Parker, Bela Lugosi, Bernard Nedell, Blanche Yurka

Synopsis: Another of Jack Haley's comedy vehicles for Pine-Thomas productions, One Body Too Many casts Haley as timid insurance salesman Albert Tuttle. Much against his better judgment, Tuttle makes a business call at a sinister old mansion, intending to sell life insurance to the owner. He proves a bit Read More

Return of the Ape Man

Actors: Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Frank Moran, Judith Gibson, Michael Ames

Synopsis: Campy Bela Lugosi plays a deranged scientist in this Monogram -produced horror movie. This time, Lugosi and his partner John Carradine accidentally discover a Neanderthal frozen in ice. Elated, they haul the iceman back to their lab and prepare to free him. Sure enough the beetle-browed fellow is Read More

Matinee Double Feature, Part 5

Synopsis: Two monster movies from the '40s, Fog Island and Return of the Ape Man, appear on this single video release. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Zombies on Broadway

Actors: Alan Carney, Bela Lugosi, Wally Brown, Anne Jeffreys, Sheldon Leonard

Synopsis: This irresistably-titled comedy is arguably the best of RKO Radio's Wally Brown-Alan Carney vehicles. The daffy duo is cast once more as Jerry Miles and Mike Strager, this time employed as Broadway press agents. Mike and Jerry's latest scheme is to hire a genuine zombie for the opening of a new Read More

Voodoo Man

Actors: Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, George Zucco, Michael Ames, Wanda McKay

Synopsis: Though no more expensive or ambitious than any of his earlier Sam Katzman-produced vehicles, Bela Lugosi's Voodoo Man is perhaps the best of the batch, if only because of its quirky supporting cast and casually offbeat dialogue. Lugosi plays Dr. Marlowe, a practioner of voodoo who kidnaps nubile Read More

Ghosts on the Loose

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Ava Gardner, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan

Synopsis: Ghosts on the Loose (which features no ghosts whatsoever) is perhaps the best-known of Monogram's "East Side Kids" series. This time, Muggs (Leo Gorcey), Glimpy (Huntz Hall), and the rest of the kids offer to decorate the honeymoon cottage of Glimpy's sister, Betty (Ava Gardner), and her new Read More

The Return of the Vampire

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Frieda Inescort, Nina Foch, Roland Varno, Miles Mander

Synopsis: He looks like Dracula, talks like Dracula and dresses like Dracula; but since the movie rights to Dracula were controlled by Universal, Bela Lugosi's character name is Armand Tesla in Columbia's Return of the Vampire. Bringing the Old Legend up to date, the film contrives to have the blood-sucking Read More

The Ape Man

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Wallace Ford, Louise Currie, Minerva Urecal, Henry Hall

Synopsis: Whatever poor Bela Lugosi may have done in a past life, the man did not deserve The Ape Man, arguably the worst of his Monogram horror clunkers. Viewed today, it seems that screenwriter Barney Sarecky and infamous director William Beaudine (whose nickname "One Shot" was earned helming movies like Read More

Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman

Actors: Lon Chaney, Jr., Ilona Massey, Patric Knowles, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi

Synopsis: The fifth film in Universal's "Frankenstein" series goes for the box-office gold by combining two--count 'em, two!--of the studio's star monsters. We all thought that Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), alias The Wolf Man, had been shot dead in his own starring film in 1941, but the opening scenes of Read More

Bowery at Midnight

Actors: Bela Lugosi, John Archer, Wanda McKay, Tom Neal, Vince Barnett

Synopsis: Bowery at Midnight casts Bela Lugosi as Professor Brenner, a psychology instructor at New York University (which looks a lot like Berkeley in the exterior shots!). When not enlightening his students -- most of them buxom Monogram starlets -- Brenner is engaged in charitable work, running a mission Read More

Night Monster

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Irene Hervey, Ralph Morgan

Synopsis: More than one aficionado of Universal's horror films has cited Night Monster as the weakest of the batch. Part of the complaint lies in the fact that, despite their first and second billing, Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill are utterly wasted, with Atwill getting bumped off in the first reel! The Read More

The Corpse Vanishes

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Luana Walters, Tristram Coffin, Elizabeth Russell, Minerva Urecal

Synopsis: Despite the typical Monogram drawbacks -- murky photography, stolid staging, ramshackle sets -- The Corpse Vanishes remains one of the more deliciously outrageous horror exercises of the 1940s. Bela Lugosi, as hammy as ever, stars as Dr. Lorenz, a European horticulturist whose octogenarian wife Read More

The Ghost of Frankenstein

Actors: Lon Chaney, Jr., Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Bellamy, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi

Synopsis: Universal's "Frankenstein" series descended from the "A" to the "B" category with The Ghost of Frankenstein, though production values were still well above average and the cast is first-rate. The story picks up where Son of Frankenstein (1939) left off, with both the Monster (Lon Chaney Jr.) and Read More

Black Dragons

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Joan Barclay, Clayton Moore, George Pembroke, Robert W. Frazer

Synopsis: After an opening scene at a Washington DC cocktail party where it is demonstrated that "loose lips sink ships", the plot proper gets under way, wherein a group of six men conspire to undermine America's war effort. What is the connection between these six men, all of them outwardly respectable Read More

Spooks Run Wild

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, David Gorcey

Synopsis: In their first of two Monogram spook comedies, the East Side Kids and Bela Lugosi square off in yet another haunted house. On their way to summer camp, the malapropism dependant East Siders are warned of a "monster killer" loose in the area, and, sure enough, almost immediately encounter Nardo Read More

The Wolf Man

Actors: Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Warren William, Evelyn Ankers, Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya, Patric Knowles

Synopsis: "Even a man who is pure at heart/And says his prayers by night/May become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms/And the moon is full and bright." Upon first hearing these words, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney) dismisses them as childish folderol. After all, this is the 20th Century; how can a human being Read More

The Black Cat

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Hugh Herbert, Broderick Crawford, Bela Lugosi, Gale Sondergaard

Synopsis: 1941's The Black Cat is neither a remake of the 1934 Karloff-Lugosi film of the same name, nor does it bear the slightest relation to the same-named Edgar Allan Poe story (as if the 1934 picture did!) The fact that the heroes are played by Hugh Herbert and Broderick Crawford is indication enough Read More

The Devil Bat

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Suzanne Kaaren, Dave "Tex" O'Brien, Guy Usher, Yolande Mallott

Synopsis: This campy, entertaining cheapie from PRC Pictures features Bela Lugosi as a chemist who plots an elaborate revenge scheme on his business partners, whom he feels have cheated him out of his share. To this end he develops a mutant breed of vicious, oversized bats and trains several of this breed Read More

The Invisible Ghost

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Polly Ann Young, John McGuire, Clarence Muse, Terry Walker

Synopsis: Invisible Ghost is far from the best of Bela Lugosi's Monogram vehicles (if indeed there is such a thing), but with Joseph H. Lewis at the controls it is far and away the best directed. Lugosi is cast as Kessler, an otherwise normal gentleman who goes balmy whenever he thinks about his late Read More

The Saint's Double Trouble

Actors: George Sanders, Helene Whitney, Jonathan Hale, Bela Lugosi, Donald MacBride

Synopsis: Responding to star George Sanders' complaint that his role of "modern Robin Hood" Simon Templar was becoming a bore, RKO Radio permitted Sanders to essay a duel role in The Saint's Double Trouble. This one finds Templar, aka the Saint, heading to Philadelphia to catch a gang of diamond smugglers. Read More

Saturday Night Serials

Synopsis: Rhino Video put out this compilation tape of trailers and film clips from the golden age of serials (the 1930s and 1940s), released mainly by Republic, Columbia, Universal and Mascot. Among the serials showcased are The Phantom Creeps, Junior G-Men, Phantom Empire and Undersea Kingdom. ~ Brian Read More

Fantasia

Synopsis: Fantasia, Walt Disney's animated masterpiece of the 1940s, grew from a short-subject cartoon picturization of the Paul Dukas musical piece The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Mickey Mouse was starred in this eight-minute effort, while the orchestra was under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Disney and Read More

Black Friday

Actors: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Stanley Ridges, Anne Nagel, Anne Gwynne

Synopsis: Told in flashback as Dr. Ernest Sovac (Boris Karloff) is marched into the gas chamber, Black Friday concerns kindly college professor George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges), who is seriously injured when he is caught in the middle of a gangster shootout. Kingsley's best friend Sovac performs an Read More

You'll Find Out

Actors: Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Helen Parrish, Dennis O'Keefe

Synopsis:
This film contains the one and only cinematic group appearance by Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi. Essentially a vehicle for bandleader Kay Kyser and his orchestra, the film finds Kyser hired to perform at the 21st birthday party of heiress Janis Bellacrest (Helen Parrish), the Read More

The Phantom Creeps [Serial]

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Robert Kent, Dorothy Arnold, Regis Toomey, Edward Van Sloan

Synopsis: The bravura performance of Bela Lugosi is the main selling card for the 12-episode Universal serial The Phantom Creeps. Unhinged by the death of his wife, Dr. Alex Zorka (Lugosi) vows to avenge himself on the world with a variety of strange inventions, including a "disvisualizer belt" which allows Read More

Son of Frankenstein

Actors: Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson

Synopsis: The most elaborate--and longest--of Universal's Frankenstein series, Son of Frankenstein represents Boris Karloff's last appearance in the role of the Monster. The title character is played by Basil Rathbone, who with wife Josephine Hutchinson and son Donnie Donegan returns to the Old Country to Read More

The Human Monster

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Hugh Williams, Greta Gynt, Edmon Ryan, Wilfred Walter

Synopsis: In this eerie British thriller, a Scotland Yard detective looks into the mysterious drownings of five blind people. A daughter of one of the victims helps the investigators discover that each of the victims were patients of Dr. Orloff who turns out to be the killer. They then discover that he was Read More

Ninotchka

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Bela Lugosi, Sig Rumann, Felix Bressart, Ina Claire

Synopsis: "Garbo Laughs!" declared the ads for Ninotchka. In the face of dwindling foreign revenues, MGM decided to put Greta Garbo, a bigger draw in Europe than the US, in a box-office-savvy comedy, engaging the services of master farceur Ernst Lubitsch to direct. The film opens in Paris during the Read More

The Gorilla

Actors: Jimmy Ritz, Harry Ritz, Anita Louise, Al Ritz, Patsy Kelly

Synopsis: When Fox bought the rights to Ralph Spence's warhorse stage mystery-comedy The Gorilla for the Ritz Brothers, they walked out en masse, refusing to work on the picture until their contracts were renegotiated and the script heavily rewritten. The finished product features an escaped circus gorilla Read More

S.O.S. Coast Guard [Serial]

Actors: Ralph Byrd, Bela Lugosi, Maxine Doyle, Herbert Rawlinson, Richard Alexander

Synopsis: In his third of four action serials, horror star Bela Lugosi played Boroff, an internationally notorious fiend who's attempting to pawn off his deadly invention, a disintegrating gas, to the highest bidder. Before the gas can be manufactured, however, Boroff must go in search of certain hard to Read More

Postal Inspector

Actors: Ricardo Cortez, Patricia Ellis, Bela Lugosi, Michael Loring, David Oliver

Synopsis: A postal inspector finds himself caught in a sticky situation as he tries to pin a rap for mail theft upon the owner of a prominent nightclub owner. The owner is guilty and only stole the mail so he could get the money he needs to pay off a murderous and impatient loan shark. Unfortunately, upon Read More

The Invisible Ray

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Frances Drake, Frank Lawton, Walter Kingsford

Synopsis: The last of Universal's three Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi teamings of the mid-1930s, The Invisible Ray is dominated by Karloff as Dr. Janos Rukh, the inventor of a laser-like heat ray. Despite the scoffing of his colleagues, Rukh intends to use the ray for the benefit of mankind, but first he Read More

Dracula's Daughter

Actors: Gloria Holden, Otto Kruger, Marguerite Churchill, Irving Pichel, Edward Van Sloan

Synopsis: It may be sacrilege to say so, but Dracula's Daughter is an immense improvement over the original 1931 Dracula, despite the absence of Bela Lugosi in the cast. Gloria Holden is first-rate as the title character, alias "Countess Marya Zaleska," who after stealing her father's body from the Read More

Shadow of Chinatown [Serial]

Synopsis: Notorious Hollywood tightwad Sam Katzman's first serial, Shadow of Chinatown stars Bela Lugosi as Victor Poten, a Eurasian with a destructive hatred of both whites and Asians hired by Sonya Rokoff (Luana Walters) to ruin the tourist trade in San Francisco's Chinatown. But, as Sonya discovers and Read More

The Best Man Wins

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Jack Holt, Bela Lugosi, Florence Rice, Forrester Harvey

Synopsis: Tobu (Edmund Lowe) and Nick (Jack Holt) are championship scuba divers who fall out when Tobu loses his arm saving Nick's life. Tobu then gets mixed up with jewel thieves, warning Nick to butt out of his business. The two former friends dive into the depths during the climax, though only one Read More

The Raven

Actors: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Irene Ware, Lester Matthews, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff team up in this excellent 1935 chiller. Lugosi is crazed brain-surgeon Dr. Richard Vollin who is infatuated with the characters and devices found in the Edgar Allan Poe stories. When a local judge brings his beautiful daughter for brain surgery, the doctor falls in Read More

Murder by Television

Synopsis: One of Bela Lugosi's least remembered films, this ultra low-budget whodunit with science fiction overtones features the murder of a professor who had recently perfected the new invention of television. Suspects are plentiful and include Bela Lugosi's rivaling academician Dr. Perry. Alas, the good Read More

The Mysterious Mr. Wong

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Wallace Ford, Arline Judge, Fred Warren, Lotus Long

Synopsis: To the world at large, Mr. Wong (Bela Lugosi) is a harmless shopkeeper in the Chinatown district (where no one seems unduly put off by his Hungarian accent) In truth, however, Wong is an eeeeevil Mandarin who'll stop at nothing to get his hands on the Twelve Coins of Confucious, which according to Read More

Phantom Ship

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Shirley Grey, Arthur Margetson, Edmund Willard, George Mozart

Synopsis: This chiller speculates upon a haunting real-life mystery that occurred off the English coast on December 5, 1872 where the American ship Marie Celeste was found drifting with her sails set at half-mast with absolutely no one on board. According to the film, the crewmen were murdered by Read More

Mark of the Vampire

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi, Elizabeth Allan, Lionel Atwill, Jean Hersholt, Carroll Borland

Synopsis: Mark of the Vampire is Tod Browning's remake of his own 1927 thriller London After Midnight, which unfortunately no longer exists. The sudden appearance of ghostly vampires in a remote mittel-European community is seemingly tied in with an old, unsolved murder case. Police inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill Read More

The Black Cat

Actors: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Jacqueline Wells, Lucille Lund, Andy Devine

Synopsis: The first cinematic teaming of horror greats Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi is a bizarre, haunting, and relentlessly eerie film that was surprisingly morbid and perverse for its time. Peter (David Manners) and Joan Allison (Julie Bishop) are honeymooning in Budapest when they meet mysterious Read More

Gift of Gab

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Gloria Stuart, Ruth Etting, Phil Baker

Synopsis: In this musical, a radio-announcer is fired after giving a false interview. For consolation he begins to drink heavily. It is his girlfriend who helps him sober up when she provides him with a major scoop--a missing airplane. He enthusiastically sets out after it and eventually finds it. As a Read More

The Return of Chandu

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Maria Alba, Clara Kimball Young, Dean Benton, Josef Swickard

Synopsis: Return of Chandu is a 65-minute feature version of the 12-chapter Principal Pictures serial, based on the radio program Chandu the Magician. Bela Lugosi, who played the villain in a previous 1932 adaptation of Chandu, here portrays the famed magician himself, better known to friends and family as Read More

Chandu on the Magic Island

Synopsis: In this campy fantasy, Chandu the Magician returns and goes to the lost island of Lemuri. There he uses his mystical powers to battle the dreaded Ubasti cult. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Night of Terror

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Sally Blane, Wallace Ford, Tully Marshall

Synopsis: Top-billed Bela Lugosi has only a minor role in this routine variant on the Old Dark House scenario, playing a mysterious Indian mystic who is but one of numerous eccentric characters lingering about in an eerie mansion, stalked by an unseen murderer. Other potential victims/suspects include a Read More

The Devil's in Love

Actors: Victor Jory, Loretta Young, Vivienne Osborne, David Manners, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: The French Foreign Legion is the setting for this episodic adventure yarn. Victor Jory plays a Legion doctor falsely accused of murdering his commander over the love of Loretta Young. Jory escapes prosecution by heading for parts unknown, but when a deadly illness strikes his old fort, he returns Read More

International House

Actors: Peggy Hopkins Joyce, W.C. Fields, Stuart Erwin, Sara Maritza, George Burns, Rudy Vallee

Synopsis: Hollywood responded to the exigencies of the Depression with such glorious nonsense as International House. The plot is motivated by a revolutionary television device called the Radioscope, which its Chinese inventor (Edmund Breese) is offering to the highest bidder. All interested parties are Read More

Whispering Shadow [Serial]

The Whispering Shadow

Synopsis: With customary lack of restraint, Bela Lugosi tore into his role of Professor Strang, a foreign agent masquerading as a wax museum proprietor, in this the first of Mascot Pictures' five serials of 1933. Bela is smuggling jewels into the country as security for a loan. The "jools," however, are Read More

The Death Kiss

Actors: Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Adrienne Ames, John Wray, Vince Barnett

Synopsis: While Tonart Studios is filming a gangster movie, one of the actors is killed in a shooting accident. After several other incidents occur, police begin to think of sabotage. Their list of suspects includes the studio chief (Alexander Carr), his manager (Bela Lugosi), the director of the film (Edward Van Sloan Read More

Murders in the Rue Morgue

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Leon Waycoff [Ames], Sydney Fox, Bert Roach, Brandon Hurst

Synopsis: Having missed the opportunity to direct Frankenstein for Universal, Robert Florey was offered Murders in the Rue Morgue as a consolation, whereupon he transformed a pedestrian property into a minor classic. Owing more to Cabinet of Dr. Caligari than to Edgar Allen Poe, the film stars Bela Lugosi Read More

Chandu the Magician

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Irene Ware, Bela Lugosi, Herbert Mundin, Henry B. Walthall

Synopsis: Based on the radio serial of the same name, Chandu the Magician is a veritable rollercoaster ride of thrills and terror, boasting some of the best special effects of its period. Edmund Lowe stars as suave Frank Chandler, better known to his enemies as Chandu the Magician. Though he tries to keep Read More

White Zombie

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert W. Frazer, John Harron

Synopsis: It is altogether typical of Bela Lugosi's lousy business judgement that he accepted one of his finest film roles for a mere $500 dollars. In the haunting low-budgeter White Zombie, Lugosi stars as Murder Legendre, a shadowy character who exercises supernatural powers over the natives in his Read More

Island of Lost Souls

Actors: Charles Laughton, Bela Lugosi, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, Kathleen Burke

Synopsis: This first film version of H.G. Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau stars Charles Laughton as Dr.Moreau, a dedicated but sadly misguided scientist who rules the roost on a remote island. Shipwrecked sailor Edward Parker Richard Arlen finds himself on Moreau's island, agreeing to stick around until another Read More

The Black Camel

Actors: Warner Oland, Sally Eilers, Bela Lugosi, Dorothy Revier, Victor Varconi, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: Actress Shelah Fane (Dorothy Revier) is in Honolulu to shoot a movie, but her chaotic personal life is keeping her from concentrating on work. She's supposed to marry millionaire playboy Alan Jaynes (William Post Jr.), but she's also got an ex lurking around and a possible skeleton in her closet Read More

Women of All Nations

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Greta Nissen, El Brendel

Synopsis: Flagg and Quirt, the eternally bickering "friendly enemies" introduced in Lawrence Stallings' WWI play What Price Glory, were at it again in 1931's Women of All Nations. Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe reprise their screen characterizations as pugnacious, girl-crazy marine sergeants Flagg and Read More

Broadminded

Actors: Joe E. Brown, William Collier, Jr., Marjorie White, Holmes Herbert

Synopsis: In this comedy, a carefree carouser creates trouble for his cousin the chaperone as they go 'round the world. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Fifty Million Frenchmen

Actors: William Gaxton, John Halliday, Helen Broderick, Claudia Dell

Synopsis: Cole Porter's Broadway musical 50 Million Frenchmen was brought to the screen in 1931 with one minor alteration -- all of the music was removed! Set in Paris, the story concerns the exploits of wealthy Jack Forbes (William Gaxton), who bets his friend Michael Cummings (John Halliday) that he can Read More

Dracula

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan

Synopsis: "I am....Drac-u-la. I bid you velcome." Thus does Bela Lugosi declare his presence in the 1931 screen version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Director Tod Browning invests most of his mood and atmosphere in the first two reels, which were based on the original Stoker novel; the rest of the film is a Read More

Viennese Nights

Actors: Alexander Gray, Vivienne Segal, Jean Hersholt, Walter Pidgeon, Louise Fazenda

Synopsis: This early musical was filmed in color and centers upon the love affair between a young composer and the woman he wants to marry. Unfortunately the two quarrel and split up, causing her to marry a wealthy man. He also marries, but the union is unhappy because his new wife doesn't understand his Read More

Such Men Are Dangerous

Actors: Warner Baxter, Catherine Dale Owen, Albert Conti, Hedda Hopper, Claud Allister

Synopsis: In this drama an unattractive, dour German businessman leaps out of a flying plane after learning that his wife only married him for his fortune. It appears that he has died, but in reality he has traveled to the Alps where he has his face surgically reconstructed. As he becomes more handsome, he Read More

Oh, for a Man

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Reginald Denny, Marjorie White, Warren Hymer

Wild Company

Actors: Frank Albertson, H.B. Warner, Joyce Compton, Claire McDowell

Synopsis: This drama is set during Prohibition and follows the exploits of a spoiled brat with overly permissive parents. He soaks them for as much money has he can get and then squanders the money in an illicit speak-easy where he has fallen for the lovely singer. Unfortunately, she is a gangster's moll. Read More

Oh! For a Man!

Synopsis: This sprightly romantic comedy chronicles the delightfully unlikely and tempestuous relationship between an opera diva and a sneak thief. They meet after he breaks into her home and attempts to chloroform her. She awakens and arrogantly warns him that the drug could destroy her beautiful voice. Read More

Renegades

Actors: Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Noah Beery, Sr., Gregory Gaye, George Cooper

Synopsis: In this action-adventure opus, Deucalion (Warner Baxter), Machwurth (Noah Beery), Mordiconi (C. Henry Gordon) and Biloxi (George Cooper) are four members of a desert patrol fighting off godless villains amidst the sand dunes. The four soldiers are lured away from their mission by Eleanore (Myrna Read More

Prisoners

Actors: Corinne Griffith, James Ford, Bela Lugosi, Ian Keith, Julanne Johnston

Synopsis: In this early talkie that contains very little talking, an Austrian showgirl working in a cabaret moonlights as a thief. When she is caught in the act, a young lawyer offers to defend her. Unfortunately, he isn't very good and loses the case, causing her to spend several months in jail. Read More

The Thirteenth Chair

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Leila Hyams, Margaret Wycherly, Helene Millard, Holmes Herbert

Synopsis: Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks) directed this second film version of the Bayard Veiller play, which was his first collaboration with Bela Lugosi, whom he would launch to stardom two years later. Lugosi plays Inspector Delzante, who investigates a series of murders near a British mansion in Read More

How to Handle Women

Actors: Glenn Tryon, Marian Nixon, Raymond Keane, Bull Montana, Cesare Gravina

Synopsis: When Universal's plans to create a popular screen team out of Glenn Tryon and Patsy Ruth Miller fell through, the studio co-starred Tryon with another contract charmer, Marian Nixon, in How to Handle Women. When Prince Hendryx (Raymond Keane) of Volgaria is unable to float a loan during a visit to Read More

The Veiled Woman

Actors: Paul Vincent

Synopsis: Emmett J. Flynn had directed everyone from William S. Hart to Laurel and Hardy by the time he wielded the megaphone for his first talkie, The Veiled Woman. The title character is Nanon (Lia Tora) who, in flashback, cautions a virginal young woman (Lupita Tovar) from trodding the primrose path in Read More

Daughters Who Pay

Actors: Marguerite de la Motte, John Bowers, J. Barney Sherry

Synopsis: The husband-and-wife acting team of John Bowers and Marguerite De La Motte heads the cast of Daughters Who Pay. Marguerite plays a city gal who poses as an exotic Russian to keep her job as a cabaret dancer. Bowers plays her wastrelly boyfriend, who happens to be her brother's boss. When brother Read More

Midnight Girl

Synopsis: This melodrama, which starred Lila Lee, had quite a few names in the cast that were well known at the time but are largely forgotten now: Gareth Hughes, Dolores Cassinelli, and stage star Charlotte Walker. It also featured someone who was relatively new to pictures, but who eventually found fame Read More

The Rejected Woman

Actors: Alma Rubens, Conrad Nagel, Wyndham Standing, George MacQuarrie, Bela Lugosi

Synopsis: John Leslie (Conrad Nagel) and Craig Burnett (Antonio D'Algy) land their plane near a small Quebec town. Leslie becomes infatuated with Diane DuPrez (Alma Rubens), although her father (George MacQuarrie) wants her to marry Jean Gagnon (Bela Lugosi, who had just recently begun making films in the Read More

The Silent Command

Actors: Edmund Lowe, Bela Lugosi, Carl Harbaugh, Martin Faust

Synopsis: Captain Richard Decatur (Edmund Lowe) is a young commander who is an undercover agent for the U.S. secret service. His ship cruises in the Panama Canal zone where he uncovers an enemy plot to dynamite the famous passage that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Peg Williams (Martha Mansfield) Read More

Daughter of the Night

Actors: Bela Lugosi

Synopsis: This German melodrama starring blonde bombshell Lee Parry is notable only for containing an early appearance of future horror icon Bela Lugosi. Lugosi plays a French count who falls for a Russian cabaret singer turned spy for the revolutionary forces (Miss Parry). Happily, Bela's recently jilted Read More

Lederstrumpf 2: Der Letzte der Mohikaner

Actors: Emil Mamelok

Lederstrumpf 1: Der Wildtöter und Chingachgook

Actors: Emil Mamelok, Bela Lugosi

Synopsis: Released in two episodes ("Der Wildtöter und Chingachgook," "Der Letzte der Mohikaner") and produced in Germany by Luna Film , this retelling of James Fenimore Cooper's famous story starred Emil Mamelok and, as Chingachgook, a very young Bela Lugosi. The first installment has survived and is Read More

Az Ezredes

Bela Lugosi Collection

Synopsis: This collection of short features is a must see for Bela Lugosi lovers. Included are a backyard interview with Lugosi from the 30's, a shipboard interview from the 50's, and a 1950s vampire appearance with Art Baker. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Bela Lugosi Scrapbook

Synopsis: This interesting documentary is comprised of Lugosi appearances, outtakes, flubs, and trailers. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Phantom of the Movies Collection

Synopsis: Enjoy this collection of excerpts from "B" horror movies. ~ All Movie Guide Read More