Vendredi 13

In order to save a friend's life (Ridges), Dr. Ernest Sovac (Karloff) must perform a "brain transplantation" using the brain from a gangster (also played by Ridges). It is an illegal operation and one that has horrifying results. I must admit I had a hard time getting past the idea that a man who had a brain transplant would make up and still be himself (and not the person whose brain he now had), but once I did I enjoyed all the wonderful melodramatic hooey. Karloff is great in his role as the caring doctor with a sinister motive for saving his friend's life and Lugosi is super in his unusual role as a gangster (despite his European accents). But Stanley Ridges stole this show and did a perfect job with his Jekyll and Hyde personas.

Karloff stars as a surgeon who's close friend Stanley Ridges is fatally wounded in a car accident with a notorious gangster. To save his life, Karloff transplants part of the gangster's brain into his friend's head, killing the gangster in the process. Karloff realizes that the gangster's personality is preserved in his friend's brain, and decides to exploit this to find out where a missing stash of $500,000 is hidden. An interesting take on Jekyll and Hyde with Ridges changing back and forth between a mild mannered English professor and a ruthless gangster, with Karloff playing the scientist who increasingly loses perspective on how badly he's exploiting his friend. Lugosi is here too in the extremely questionable role as a rival gangster. He's okay ... but he's very obviously wrong for this part.

After his close friend, an affable and absent minded college professor (Stanley Ridges) is critically injured when a gangster runs him down, Karloff does what any other doctor would do – he transplants the gangster's brain into Ridges' head. Incredibly, Karloff manages to do this by himself, with no one at the hospital knowing about it. What's more, he doesn't need prior authorization from Ridges' health insurance company. In fact, Karloff does such a great job, there are no scars on Ridges, and he also maintains his full head of hair.

It seems the gangster has hidden 500 grand somewhere, so Karloff figures maybe he can coax the location out of Ridges, who is starting to act strangely. In short order, the gangster brain takes over, and Ridges (now looking about 30 years younger) goes on a killing spree, exacting revenge on his former gang. On occasion, he returns to his professor self. How will this all end? If you can ignore the stupidity involved, this is one of the most entertaining of the Universal horror flicks. Beautifully paced, never dull, the film benefits from a great Hans J. Salter score, with familiar themes he used over and over in multiple films. Karloff is fine as the doctor. But the real star is Ridges, who is outstanding in a dual role. Anne Nagel, as the gangster's girlfriend, is gorgeous. Murray Alper is very amusing as a confused bellboy. However, Bela Lugosi, billed second, is woefully miscast as one of the gangsters.

This is not a bad film; it's a serviceable "B" thriller. In fact it is very reminiscent of the fine Columbia Studios Boris Karloff mad doctor/gangster/horror films of the late Thirties and early Forties. Curt Siodmak collaborated with Eric Taylor on a script variation of his "Donavan's Brain" theme. It has the polished look of some of Universal Studio's best "B" movies. Arthur Lubin's direction is competent-he keeps it moving along-but lacks the zest he would bring to the 1943 remake of "The Phantom of The Opera" starring Claude Rains. It has a good supporting cast that includes the lovely Anne Nagel, Paul Fix, Stanley Ridges, and in a brief role as the reporter who is the recipient of Dr. Sovac's notes, James Craig. Most important of all, and this cannot be overstated, it stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, the greatest horror team the cinema has produced. At least that is what the credits would have us believe. And this is where the film unfortunately goes all wrong. Karloff and Lugosi were a team with a fine pedigree; "The Black Cat" (1934) "The Raven" (1935) "The Invisable Ray" (1936) and their greatest collaboration, "Son of Frankenstein" (1939). They even did bits together in two slight films, "The Gift of Gab" (1935) and "You'll Find Out" (1940) with Peter Lorre. The chemistry the two generated in their scenes together in their horror films was terrific. Lugosi with his daemonic will to power and Karloff with his unique ability to combine the sinister with the sympathetic have delighted audiences for over seventy years. So it is not unnatural that devotees of their films would approach "Black Friday" with extremely high expectations. And for those expecting another Karloff-Lugosi teaming the disappointment, the sense of being cheated, is enormous. "Black Friday" is not a Karloff-Lugosi film despite what the opening credits suggest. Not only do they not share any scenes together, but Bela is relegated to the perfunctory, unimportant role of Marnay with very little to do except to try to look and act like an American gangster, who coincidently just happens to sound like Count Dracula. So what happened?

It has long been rumored that Karloff was originally going to play the duel role of Prof. Kingsley/Red Cannon-the best part in the film-and Lugosi was to play Dr. Ernest Sovac-the part Karloff eventually took. This would make sense. Sovac has a Hungarian name, so Lugosi's accent would not have seemed out of place and also his daughter makes reference to his being in the process of gaining American citizenship while the Kingsley/Cannon part would have provided Karloff with a nice variation of the type of roles he had been playing at Columbia. Instead for reasons that remain a mystery, Karloff got bumped to the Sovac role-Hungarian name still intact, Lugosi got the thankless part of Marnay while Stanley Ridges, an actor no one wanted to see got the plum role of Kingsley/Cannon! Who was responsible for this ineptitude? Ridges was a good actor with a fine speaking voice, and he had a career in supporting roles, usually playing minor officials or bureaucrats but no one in their right mind would ever think about building a film around him, certainly not a horror film. Not from a box-office point of view. Not when you have the talents of BOTH Karloff and Lugosi on the payroll. Then to add insult to injury when the film didn't perform to expectations instead of blaming it's failure on the moronic casting-imagine MGM casting Marie Dressler to play Juliet and then wondering what went wrong-the studio heads chose instead to believe the Karloff-Lugosi team was no longer box-office. It was a sad end to a great horror collaboration, and the disappointment of Karloff and Lugosi fans is thoroughly understandable.

Unfortunately while the miscasting is the most grievous flaw, it is not the only one. There are other problems at work undermining the film. The most serious being it completely lacks any atmosphere of horror. Like many of Universal's Forties fare the film is slick and professional but utterly lacking in any style. This can be deadly in a horror film. As mentioned before the direction is serviceable while the score-always one of the strong points of the Universal horror films-is simply stock music and forgettable, except when it recycles some of Hans J. Salter's themes from earlier horror films. The same might be said of Elwood Bredell's cinematography-its serviceable but nothing more. And that pretty much sums up this last teaming of Karloff and Lugosi in a Universal horror film. Its serviceable and nothing more and thats sad because with a little more thought and care-and more intelligent casting-it could have been quite good. It is somewhat ironic that RKO Pictures, Universals great horror competitor of the Forties actually provided a more fitting coda for the Karloff-Lugosi team in the beautifully atmospheric 1945 Val Lewton production of "The Body Snatcher". They have only one real scene together but it showcases both stars. And it gives Lugosi, in ill health and drug-ridden as he was, one last chance to show the world he was a fine actor and not just a flamboyant personality.

There are so few films in which either Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi are in where they do not steal each and every scene, but Black Friday is indeed one such film. Character actor Stanley Ridges delivers the performance of his career as a dottering English literature professor that has the brain cells from a gangster implanted into his brain in order to save his life. Dr. Slovac, deliciously played by Karloff, performs the necessary surgery and soon puts his friend's life in peril as he tries to force him to relive memories in order to find five hundred thousand dollars. Ridges basically flows from one personality to another. The transformation is incredible as he looks and speaks and moves like a completely different actor in every way. He certainly deserved some recognition for this acting feat. The story has the feel of a gangster film mixed with supernatural elements. Lugosi has a small(and I would argue thankless) role as a gangster. He has little to do with his role and does little with it. The cast is fine overall with a surprisingly good performance from the lovely Anne Nagel as the former gangster's moll. Fine Universal production values, intriguing writing by Curt Siodmak, and the performance of a lifetime from Ridges make this film a cinematic treat. Just for added measure are a couple of guys named...Karloff and Lugosi. Too bad they do not share a scene in the film!