Vendredi 13

if you found this film in your "Bela Lugosi Collection" or some other feature with Karloff and Lugosi, you will probably be disappointed the two horror stars were minor players.

This movie is really about the Stanley Ridges character of a College professor who finds part of the brain of a gangster implanted in his head. You have some very nice transformational scenes where the actor changes personality by merely changing his hairstyle and mannerisms.

It is said Karloff was supposed to play the professor/gangster, and Lugosi the doctor, but they changed casting at the last minute when Karloff balked at what he thought would be too complicated a role. Ridges pulls it off perfectly. And sadly, the guy is probably not remembered for much of anything else.

Ruthless gangster by night, meek college professor by day.

Really a B-movie, but fun to watch.

The figure of the gangster in fiction has always been a very popular and fascinating image since the hardboiled crime fiction of the late 20s made the gangster a new model of antihero for the modern times. Through the decade of the 30s, gangster films and crime melodramas would become very popular among the audiences, culminating in the development of the Film Noir, the highly stylish kind of crime films that reigned supreme during the 40s and the 50s. Considering the popularity of gangsters in movies, it wasn't a surprise that soon they became used as characters in a wide array of stories, and horror films weren't an exception. Among the films that successfully mixed horror with crime melodrama, 1940's "Black Friday" was definitely one of the best. An often forgotten movie that had in his cast two of the most important figures in the horror genre: Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

"Black Friday" begins on a Friday 13, with Professor George Kinglsey (Stanley Ridges) giving his last class of English literature at the University of his town as he has been offered a position in a different school. However, on is way to the train station, Kinglsey is ran over by a car, putting his life in serious danger. In a last attempt to save Kingsley's life, his good friend Dr. Ernest Sovac (Boris Karloff) performs an illegal operation: Sovac implants parts of another man's brain into the professor's. Fortunately, the experiment is successful and Kingsley begins to recover his health quickly. However, something has changed in his good nature, and soon Sovac discovers that the personality of the man he used to save his friends can take control of the professor's body. And the problem is that the man was Red Cannon, a notorious gangster who now wants revenge.

With a screenplay written by Eric Taylor and Curt Siodmak, "Black Friday" is essentially a modern reinterpretation of R.L. Stevenson's classic horror novel "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" with gangster Red Cannon acting as the movie's Mr. Hyde. Like Stevenson's story, "Black Friday" is an interesting character study about human morality; however, while the professor's split personalities do represent two extreme sides of the human nature, the real drama is on Karloff's character, Dr. Sovac, who is at a crossroads between his willingness to help his friend and his desire to use him to prove that his theories about the brain are correct. While it is not on the level of Siodmak's posterior work (his immortal "The Wolf Man" for example), he and Taylor make a great job in creating an interesting story and developing remarkably their main characters.

A seasoned director of low-budget crime melodramas, Arthur Lubin makes a very effective work at the helm of "Black Friday", and manages to give the film the exact kind of atmosphere that made gangster films very popular in those years. The great work of cinematography done by his regular collaborator Elwood Bredell plays an important role in this, and in many ways one could say that "Black Friday" is one of the direct precursors of the Film Noir style. Despite the low-budget, "Black Friday" has that very polished and elegant look that movies produced by Universal in those years had, although this film lacks the ominous Gothic atmosphere of the classic 30s horror movies, as it relies more on its characters than in visual style. As usual, Lubin's directing of his cast is remarkable, and he manages to bring the best out of his actors, specially of Stanley Ridges.

While acting alongside legendary icons such as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, it's hard to avoid being overshadowed, however, Stanley Ridges not only manages to do that, he also achieves to deliver the best performance in the whole film. In his dual role, Kingsley is simply amazing, going from the good hearted Kingsley to the sociopath Cannon with remarkable ease, making the two characters look as if they were played by two actors. Even though Ridges steals the film, Karloff is still great as Sovac, which is a slightly more complex variation of his trademark "Mad Scientist" character. Bela Lugosi is also wonderful as Cannon's rival Eric Marnay, although sadly his role is extremely small despite having top billing. Finally, Anne Nagel is very effective as Sunny Rogers, the classic femme fatal of the movie.

With excellent performances by an effective cast, as well as solid directing by Lubin, "Black Friday" is a very good movie for its time and an example of the kind of horror movies that would dominate the decade. However, in all fairness this movie is not exactly a masterpiece as a small yet important problem that prevents it from reaching its true potential. The main problem is the serious miscasting of both Karloff and Lugosi, who really seem to be in the wrong role. Don't get me wrong, both make a great job in their characters (Lugosi has a couple of amazing scenes), but it's difficult not to think that Lugosi is playing Karloff's character and vice-versa (apparently, Karloff was supposed to play Ridges' character). Another detail is that those expecting the classic Gothic style of Universal's horror films will be sorely disappointed.

In many ways it could be said that "Black Friday" represents the ending of an era for the horror genre, and the beginning of another. Karloff and Lugosi, the ones who started the Golden Age of Gothic horror in the 30s, appear here in a movie that forecasts the moody noir-influenced horrors of the 40s. While different to the rest, "Black Friday" is still an excellent horror and a chance to see Stanley Ridges in his best role overshadowing two icons. 7/10

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.

Okay when I sat down to watch this film the other night it was with dread.All I had ever heard was how this wasn't a horror movie and it was a cheat because Lugosi & Karloff didn't have any scenes together.

Guess what?It was a darn fine movie.This falls more into a gangster/mad scientist type of genre but is a lot of fun just the same. Stanley Ridges actually steals the movie with his performance as the teacher/gangster.Karloff is his usual wonderful self.Lugosi does a great job in the allegedly thankless role of Varney the gangster.

Rather than go into the details of this little gem why don't you see if you can find a copy of it and watch it.

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.