Voodoo Man (1944)

I said in the announcement for this year's October Fest that a lot of what we're going to be looking at is stuff that I've had sitting in what I call the "nosebleed section" in my closet for a long time and need to get rid of; that's not quite the case with this first item. I did, however, pick it up at the same place where a lot of the stuff in the nosebleed section came from. Just about every July, I attend G-Fest in the town of Rosemont, just outside of Chicago, and each time, I do a lot of shopping in the enormous and very well stocked vendor's room. There's one vendor in particular whom I always visit, as he often has a lot of great stuff on DVD and Blu-Ray (prepare to read my mentioning him a fair number of times this month, particularly at the beginning). Granted, I've gotten both really good, obscure flicks from him and massive shit-bombs, but his selection is so diverse and interesting that it's worth the coin flip. Not only does he sometimes have items that are on my Amazon shopping list, but also often stuff that I've either heard of and been interested in seeing for a long time, or stuff I've never heard of but looks interesting; Voodoo Man falls into the latter category. In fact, back in 2023, its Blu-Ray from Olive Films was one of a number of Bela Lugosi Poverty Row flicks I picked up from that vendor. While I'd never heard of most of them, being a big Lugosi fan, his presence was enough to pique my interest, and if the movies turned out to be duds overall, I knew that he, at least, would be great. That is the case with Voodoo Man, but even his role here is disappointing. I knew I wanted to do at least one of Lugosi's Monogram films this year, seeing as how I did The Devil Bat as part of the first Schlocktober, so I just cherry-picked this one out of the bunch, mainly because, admittedly, it's one that stuck with me more than some of the others. Even though I know I've seen stuff like The Corpse Vanishes and Invisible Ghost, at the moment, I couldn't tell you much of what they were about, other than Lugosi was in them. But I did remember some stuff from Voodoo Man, such as how it also starred George Zucco and John Carradine, and that it was quite meta for a movie from this period. However, upon re-watching it, I realized why I didn't remember more about it. The plot, even for a Monogram quickie, is nonsensical and bare bones, with a lot of stuff left unexplained; outside of the group of villains, the other characters are pretty bland; and the actors who would attract genre fans are fairly wasted, including Lugosi himself. That said, it's definitely not one of the worst things he was ever in; rather, it's one of his more unremarkable.

On her way to Twin Falls, a young woman stops at a gas station near Laurel Road for directions. The man who runs it, Nicholas, instructs the woman to keep going until she comes upon a fork in the road and then turn right. But, when she drives off, Nicholas uses a hidden phone in the station to alert someone of her approach. Heading down the road and veering to the right like he said, the woman's car suddenly stops on her. Two men then emerge from the nearby bushes and abduct her, making her the third female motorist who's disappeared on that road, with no trace of the cars. Reading about this in the newspaper, S.K., a producer at the Banner Motion Picture Company, asks one of his writers, Ralph Dawson, to craft a horror film around the scenario. Ralph, however, is on the verge of two weeks' leave in order to get married and is allowed to do so, with S.K. asking him to give the concept some thought in the meantime. On his way to visit his fiancee, Betty Benton, he stops at the same gas station, but a mix-up causes him to leave before his gas tank can be filled up, and he runs out far down the road. Shortly afterward, another young woman is directed by Nicholas down the same path as the others. She picks up Ralph and, along the way, he learns that she's Stella Saunders, Betty's cousin, who's going to be the Maid of Honor. When they take the detour, Stella's car suddenly stops and Ralph, unable to figure out the problem, opts to go to a nearby house for help. While he's gone, the two men from before abduct Stella, taking her through a secret hatch in the ground, and dispose of her car as well. Reaching the house, Ralph learns that it belongs to Dr. Marlowe, but the housekeeper doesn't let him in. Returning to the spot and finding both Stella and the car gone, Ralph believes he's been tricked. Meanwhile, Stella is the latest victim in Marlowe's ongoing attempt to use voodoo to transfer the life essence of able-bodied women into his wife. And when Ralph, after making it to Betty's home, learns that Stella never showed up, he realizes he's stumbled into the very scenario his producer wanted him to write a horror movie about.

Produced by Sam Katzman during his tenure at Monogram, where he partnered up with fellow producer Jack Dietz (many of Bela Lugosi's films there were produced under them), Voodoo Man was based on a short story by Andrew Colvin called Tiger Man. But, after Monogram bought the rights to the story, they changed the title and Colvin got no credit whatsoever; indeed, the only writing credit is given to screenwriter Robert Charles (whose only other credit is for another Lugosi Monogram vehicle around this time, Return of the Ape Man). Speaking of which, that film's director, Phil Rosen, was originally intended to direct Voodoo Man but, due to production delays, he became unavailable. Instead, directing duties were assigned to William Beaudine (pictured), an extremely prolific director and one who I talked about during the first Schlocktober, as one of his last films was 1966's Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. In context with this film, it turned out to be the last of several Monogram films he directed with Lugosi, with others including The Ape Man and Ghosts on the Loose. He would work with Lugosi again on 1952's Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, the last movie Lugosi did before he began working with Ed Wood.

This, along with the aforementioned Return of the Ape Man, which featured a number of the same actors, was the last of Bela Lugosi's films for Monogram (it was actually the last one filmed but not the last released). I wish I could say he went out with a bang but, while he does, as per usual, give it his all, Dr. Richard Marlowe isn't one of his best roles. Living in a large house near Laurel Road, Marlowe has an elaborate setup for sending unsuspecting female motorists into a secluded spot where he's able to deactivate their cars' motors, enabling his two cronies, Toby and Grego, the opportunity to abduct them and whisk them away back to his house. There, he has Nicholas, who poses as the owner of the gas station, perform a voodoo ceremony to transfer the women's life essences into his wife, Evelyn, who has been in a state of living death for the past 22 years. Marlowe himself also has some skill at hypnotism, which he uses to force the women to do as he commands. However, time and again, the ceremony fails, with Evelyn only momentarily returning to life when the ceremony is attempted with Stella Saunders, and the process renders the women as virtual zombies. Desperate to find someone with, as Marlowe describes, a "perfect affinity," he presses on. Unfortunately for him, Ralph and Betty's relationship with Stella gets the police involved. While he's able to keep the sheriff from learning anything when he arrives at the house, things get worse for Marlowe when Stella wanders off the property and is picked up by the police. Toby later learns that she's been taken to Betty Benton's home and Marlowe shows up there, posing as a doctor. Pretending to examine Stella, he advises the others to leave her alone, then goes back to his home and has Nicholas perform a ritual to draw her back to them. But when her sudden disappearance prompts Ralph and Betty to pay him a visit, Marlowe, after they've left, believes that Betty may be the one who can resurrect his wife. He has Nicholas uses his power to draw her back to the house, and when the ceremony is performed, it does seem to be working. However, before they can complete it, the police, acting on a tip from Ralph, walk in on the ceremony and Marlowe is fatally shot when he threatens the sheriff. Before he dies, he tells his wife that they will soon be together.

Knowing what a gifted and magnificent actor he could be, it pains me whenever I see John Carradine in a low-rent movie like this, and when he plays a dim-witted character like Toby, one of Dr. Marlowe's henchmen, on top of it. But, that said, Carradine does make the most of his role, portraying Toby as someone who's not inherently malicious and only does what Marlowe orders him to out of fear, as he says Marlowe beats on him when he's angry. He acts very affectionate towards the abducted women, calling them pretty and telling the other henchman, Grego (Pat McKee), not to be so rough with them. He also comes off as someone who's desperate for some companionship. After the ceremony with Stella fails and she joins the other abducted women, who've all been turned into mindless zombies, in the room where they're kept, Toby goes in there to talk with her. He opens up the door to Stella's cell and, when she walks into the doorway, he tells her, "You mustn't come out any further. You shouldn't come out at all. If the master knew you were comin' out, he'd beat me. I just came down to talk to you... Nobody ever talks to me. The master won't talk to me. He doesn't talk to anybody, except when he's angry. I wish you could look at me. Your eyes look so funny. You don't know me, do ya?" His doing this is what leads to Stella wandering out of the house via a tunnel leading to the hatch near the road. When Toby finds that she's gone, he knows Marlowe will beat him for it and begs Grego not to tell him. Grego, however, besides being less mentally slow, also proves to be a snake and runs off to tell Marlowe, resulting in Toby getting thrashed (offscreen, mind you). Marlowe then orders him to find Stella, saying he'll kill him if he doesn't. Fortunately for Toby, he does, allowing Marlowe to show up at the Benton home, posing as a doctor. When Nicholas draws Stella back, Toby admonishes her for wandering off: "You bad girl. You're a very naughty girl. You know you shouldn't have left. I told you you shouldn't go." Carradine also manages to be memorably physical in his performance, walking and running about in a scuttling manner, and playing the drums during the voodoo ceremonies. (When they're preparing for the one involving Stella, you can see him burn his finger with a lit match while walking out of the room.)

I think that George Zucco fares even worse than Carradine, as he has virtually nothing to do as Nicholas. When he's not manning the gas station near Laurel Road, contacting Marlowe via a hidden telephone to inform him of an oncoming woman who may be right for the ceremony, he's performing said ceremony, wearing a ridiculous costume complete with face-paint and a goofy headdress, and speaking a bunch of gibberish. He also uses his influence, in combination with a personal item, to draw any escaped zombies, as well as Betty, when Marlowe gives him one of her silk gloves, to the house. That's all he does. Not that you would expect a lot of detailed backstory in a low budget quickie like this but, you literally don't learn anything about Nicholas' exact relationship with Marlowe, if he's somehow related to what's happened to Marlowe's wife, or if he's an actual voodoo priest or just some local who knows how to make use of it. It seems as though helping Marlowe get his wife back is just as important to Nicholas as it is to the doctor himself, possibly to prove that the voodoo deity he worships is indeed all-powerful, but that's the only insight we get into him.

Lack of explanation is a big issue with this flick, and that applies to the very core of the story: Marlowe's wife, Evelyn (Ellen Hall). Marlowe claims that she's dead and has been so for 22 years, but apparently, she's one of the undead, as she walks around but never speaks and always stares straight ahead, unblinking. The women whom Marlowe uses in the ceremony to transfer their life essence into Evelyn end up the same way, making me wonder if something like that happened to her originally, as well as question Nicholas' part in all of this. The only explanation that Marlowe himself gives is when he tells Stella, "She is dead only in the sense that you understand that word," which is no help whatsoever. In any case, when Marlowe performs the ceremony with Stella, Evelyn does briefly "come back to life," happily recognizing her husband and asking how she got there. But, as has happened before, she regresses into her walking death state, with the only explanation given being that Stella didn't have the right "affinity." Again, that doesn't help to understand it, and neither does one random scene where Marlowe is seen exposing Evelyn to some kind of rays. At the end of the movie, when the police interrupt Marlowe's attempt to use Betty in the ceremony and fatally shoot him, Evelyn, again, momentarily returns to life. She scans the room, calling for Marlowe, but after he dies, so does she. This time, she's clearly dead, and the other women who've been turned into zombies regain consciousness.

You may expect Ralph (Michael Ames) to turn out to be the hero of this movie, since he's the most traditionally handsome man in the cast, but that's not the case. After turning down his producer asking him to write a horror movie about the recent disappearances on Laurel Road so he can marry Betty Benton, Ralph blunders into that very mystery when, on the way to Betty's home, he runs out of gas on that road and is picked up by Stella Saunders. When she and her car disappear after it randomly stops working and he's gone to the nearby house for help, only to be run off by Dr. Marlowe's housekeeper, Ralph feels he's been made the butt of a big joke. It's only when he finally makes it to Betty's home, having walked two hours to get some gas for his car, that he starts to suspect that something might be wrong, as he learns Stella hasn't arrived. And when she still hasn't shown up by midnight, and Ralph learns she may be the latest disappearance at Laurel Road, he and Betty inform the sheriff. After that, Ralph is little more than a bystander, although he notices how, when Stella is found and brought to Betty's home, she acts strange when Dr. Marlowe shows up and examines her. Moreover, when Stella is drawn back to Marlowe's house, Ralph decides to go over there himself and see what he can learn. While there, he and Betty see Evelyn wandering around, even though Marlowe says she's dead, and they later note that she was dressed and acted in the same manner as Stella. Ralph calls the sheriff and tells him this, only for Marlowe and Nicholas to then use the latter's voodoo power to draw Betty to the house for another ceremony. With the help of a bystander, Ralph manages to tail Betty there and has the man call the police and tell them to get to the house. But, while Ralph finds the tunnel leading to it and comes upon the ceremony in Marlowe's basement, Grego knocks him out before he can do anything, and the sheriff and his deputy are the ones who stop Marlowe. That said, though, the movie ends with Ralph having delivered his producer a complete screenplay based around what happened.

Stella Saunders (Louise Currie), who's mistakenly called "Sally" in the credits, initially has a memorable personality, when she picks Ralph up after he runs out of gas on Laurel Road. It's only while they're driving that they learn who each other is, with Stella revealing that she's Betty's cousin and is going to be the Maid of Honor at the wedding. She also calls Betty's fiance "some sap from Hollywood," and realizes she's riding with this very man when Ralph tells her she knows him because, "I shave him every morning." Fortunately for her, he decides to let it go. But then, Marlowe causes her car to stop, and Stella is abducted by Toby and Grego when Ralph goes to the

house, looking for help. In the house, she's introduced to Marlowe, who uses his hypnotic influence to make her compliant and unable to run away. She still has enough will to ask what's wrong with Marlowe's wife, and is shocked when he claims that she's "dead." But after that, and following the failed ceremony to use her life essence to revive Evelyn, Stella is an emotionless zombie until the end, doing nothing but wandering around in a daze and not reacting to stimuli. The only reaction she has is when Marlowe finds her at Betty's home, as an expression of fright appears on her face and she starts breathing heavily. It's not until Marlowe is fatally shot by the sheriff that Stella becomes herself again. The same also goes for Betty (Wanda McKay), who has probably the most thankless role of the main characters. She's even more of a bystander than Ralph, doing nothing but standing around and observing, as well as tagging along when he goes to the sheriff and later to Marlowe's home following Stella's disappearance. That puts Betty herself in danger, as Marlowe decides she may be the subject necessary for the ceremony, and after getting a hold of one of her silk gloves, he has Nicholas draw her to the house (she actually drives there perfectly, despite the deep trance she's in). Fortunately for her, the sheriff intervenes and saves her and the other women.

The sheriff (Henry Hall) is really lazy and dismissive of Ralph and Betty's claims when they first come to him, making excuses about Stella's disappearance and complaining about the other women who've gone missing, saying, "Sheriff's job in this county used to be a cinch. Now, it's a pain in the neck." But, when Ralph tells him about the "ROAD CLOSED" sign that shouldn't be there, and about how he went to Dr. Marlowe's house but didn't get any luck, the sheriff decides to check it out. He takes his equally lazy and sleepy deputy, Elmer (Dan White), with him, with the guy complaining about how his wife always gets aggravated when the sheriff keeps him out late. At Marlowe's house, the sheriff has Elmer look around outside, while he goes in and talks with the doctor himself. He also searches around the drawing room for clues while Marlowe gets him a sherry (as well as tells his housekeeper to hide Evelyn down in the basement), but finds nothing unusual, nor learns anything from talking with Marlowe. But while he and Elmer are leaving, they come upon Stella after she's wandered off the property and take her over to the Benton house. Neither he nor anyone else find it at all suspicious when Marlowe happens to be the doctor who turns up to examine Stella, but after Ralph and Betty have been out to Marlowe's home and have told the sheriff what they've seen, he begins to realize Marlowe's likely connection to what's been happening. During the climax, he and Elmer are directed to the Marlowe house, are forced to break in, and make their way down to the basement, where they come upon the ceremony. The sheriff fatally shoots Marlowe when he tries to attack them, and he and Elmer keep the others back as the doctor passes away and the women return to their senses.

Filmmaking-wise, Voodoo Man makes use of a good deal of day-for-night cinematography in the outdoor scenes, which is very obvious, despite the black-and-white. However, there are some instances of noteworthy direction and technique, such as extreme close-ups of Dr. Marlowe and Stella's faces when he hypnotizes her, as well as light accentuating their faces in shots where they're shown looking at each other. Obviously, this is reminiscent of those iconic, and creepier, shots in Dracula, but they still get the point across. Also, when Nicholas uses his voodoo to draw someone to Marlowe's house, his growing influence over them is emphasized by the sound of his chanting being audible as they make their way over

there. And during the ceremony with Stella, as Nicholas chants, there's a close-up of two strings tying themselves together. While I don't quite know what they're meant to symbolize, the visual, likely done by pulling them apart and running the film in reverse, looks kind of cool.

I kind of like how lonely and out-of-the-way Laurel Road feels, with the gas station being the only one for quite a distance. And, as ridiculous as it gets, I also like Marlowe's elaborate set-up for capturing women to use in the ceremonies. He has Nicholas operate the gas station near Laurel Road, using that hidden telephone in the building to tell Marlowe when a lone girl is heading his way, and has Toby and Grego put up a "ROAD CLOSED" sign, as well as move a fake hedge, revealing a detour, to send them on the wrong path. There's one spot on this alternate path where Marlowe throws a switch that does something to stop the women's cars (like a lot of stuff in this movie, it's not explained at all), and he also has a ridiculously

sophisticated camera and audio set-up hidden somewhere around there, allowing him to keep tabs on his intended victims via a monitor in his house's laboratory, as well as communicate with Toby and Grego with a microphone. The two of them emerge from a hatch in the ground behind a nearby bush and abduct the women, taking them to the house through an underground tunnel, while the vehicles are disposed of in some manner offscreen.

Marlowe's house, which never gets an establishing exterior shot aside from the front door, looks pretty nice and well-to-do on the inside, though what we mostly see of the first floor are the foyer and the drawing room, where Marlowe introduces Stella to Evelyn, speaks with the sheriff, and later talks with Ralph and Betty (despite the staircase, we never go up to the second floor, although Evelyn does wander downstairs in one scene). In this drawing room, there's not only a large picture of Evelyn above the fireplace, and the phone where Marlowe speaks directly with Nicholas at the gas station, but also a spot behind a curtain where Marlowe goes to fix the sheriff some sherry, as well as sneak out into the

hallway to get his housekeeper to take Evelyn down into the basement. To the left of the staircase is the laboratory filled with electrical equipment, which is also where Marlowe monitors his intended victims when their cars are stopped near the road and where he throws the switch that does so. The basement, accessed through a door in the staircase's side, however, is the most notable part of the house, as at the bottom of the stairs, there's a large room to the left where the ceremonies are performed, with candles all around, Toby and Grego playing drums, Nicholas chanting at an altar, and Evelyn and the intended subject sitting in front of each other, while Marlowe

kneels beside them and tries to encourage the transference of life-force. To the right of the bottom of the stairs is a chamber where the women, or the zombies, are kept contained within cells with glass windows (it makes me think of the scene in The Black Cat, where it's revealed that Poelzig keeps his past wives' preserved bodies in large, glass cases), and are then brought in to participate in the ceremony. And down here is also the entrance to the tunnel that leads to the hatch out near the road.

It's obvious that all of the film's meager budget went into the interiors for Marlowe's house, as none of the other settings are as notable as it or the surrounding countryside. All we see of Betty's upper-class home, which she shares with her mother, are the immediate interiors and living room, as well as an upstairs bedroom where Stella is put when the sheriff brings her back home. The sheriff's office consists of a single room, with his desk, some filing cabinets, a coat/hat rack, and a bench where Elmer is often dozing, and S.K.'s office at the studio is about the same. And when Betty falls under Nicholas' control and goes to Marlowe's house, she and Ralph are in this little bar (which I think is the only location that has a true establishing exterior shot).

While not much is made of it in the long run, it is surprising how meta of a movie this is for its time. Not only is Ralph a Hollywood screenwriter but his place of employment makes reference to the very people and low-tier studios who were making these types of flicks at the time, as he works at the "Banner Motion Picture Company"; Banner Productions was the name of the production company that Sam Katzman and Jack Dietz formed in order to produce movies for Monogram. Speaking of Katzman, Ralph's producer, who appears at both the beginning and end of the movie, is known only as S.K., i.e. Katzman's initials. But where things really get self-reflexive is at the end, when Ralph hands S.K. his newly completed

screenplay for the horror film he's based around what just happened. The title? The Voodoo Man, of course. And as Ralph and Betty, who are now married, head out to begin their honeymoon, S.K. asks Ralph who he thinks should play the title character. Ralph answers, "Say, why don't you try to get that actor, uh, Bela Lugosi? It's right up his alley!"

Interesting direction, nice production design and settings, and some unique screenwriting choices aside, Voodoo Man is mostly much ado about nothing. One reason is how utterly bare bones and blase the script is, as I've been saying. Again, you shouldn't go into something like this expecting a rich, multi-layered story, but it is astonishing how little is explained here, from Dr. Marlowe's random hypnotic powers at the beginning to what exactly is wrong with his wife, what he's trying to accomplish with the voodoo ceremonies using abducted women, and how he learned of this possible cure to begin with. Also, even for the time period, the depiction of voodoo and zombies here is completely ridiculous and

stereotypical, with the silly costumes that both Marlowe and Nicholas wear, Nicholas' chanting and talking about how mighty his deity is (I couldn't make out what he called it and, since it's not likely a real deity anyway, I'm not going to try), and Toby and Grego drumming, as the female zombies just stand around and serve no function, even though Marlowe demands their presence. And as I've already talked about, this movie's concept of zombies is mystifying, like a messy combination of actual voodoo zombies and the living dead, twenty plus years before George Romero made the latter the dominant image of the term. You at least assume that it's all supernatural,

given the nature of the ceremonies and Marlowe saying he needs a woman's "will to live" and her mind, but then, there's that brief moment in the lab where it takes on a scientific nature, as Marlowe exposes his wife to some kind of rays. It's a complete mess that I doubt Robert Charles put much thought into, so I'm not going to put much thought into trying to unravel it.

The other major reason why this flick isn't much to write home about is because it's just not that entertaining. The actors who would most interest you, including Bela Lugosi, aren't given much of anything significant to do, the others are mostly bland and forgettable, and the movie just kind of meanders along, as you watch the one ceremony with Stella fail; the sheriff and deputy "snoop" around the house (the sheriff stays in the drawing room and you don't even see what Elmer is doing outside) and find nothing; Stella wander off the property and get taken to Betty's home, Marlowe and Nicholas draw her back, Ralph and Betty pay Marlowe a visit, Marlowe decide to use Betty and has Nicholas draw her to the house; and the

lackluster ending, where Ralph walks in on the ceremony, gets knocked, and the sheriff and deputy do the same, with the former managing to kill Marlowe and free the girls. Even at just 62 minutes, the pacing here isn't the greatest, and the ho-hum, forgettable, and very soft music (likely previously used music from other Monogram movies, as no actual composer is listed, only a "musical director"; the music for the opening credits practically screams stock) doesn't help. And the attempts at humor, like when Sam, Nicholas' dim-witted assistant at the gas station, annoys Ralph to where he unknowingly drives off before he can gas him up, or Elmer being equally slow, don't land at all.

Like I said, the music score is barely worth talking about, and yet, ironically the man listed as "musical director," Edward Kay, not only frequently worked with William Beaudine (the two of them even died within just three years of each other, in the early 70's), but was actually nominated for an Oscar numerous times! In any case, other than maybe the ethereal music that plays during the ceremonies and some scenes with the zombies, there is nothing I can say about this music. It really leaves no impression.

Yeah, while Voodoo Man may not be one of the absolute worst movies of Bela Lugosi's career, it's also, unfortunately, not that good or even entertainingly bad either. Lugosi does do his expected best, it's always cool to see John Carradine and George Zucco, there are some interesting moments of direction, some of the production design and location work is nice, and the screenwriting has surprisingly self-reflexive aspects about the genre for the time, but make no mistake, the movie is most certainly one of those duds I mentioned before. The big horror actors are badly wasted, including Lugosi, the other characters are bland and unremarkable, the music score is forgettable, and it's not as well-paced as you might think, considering its very short running time. Unless you're a very hardcore Lugosi aficionado, this is one of his that I think you'd be better off skipping.