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Corpse Vanishes (The) AKA The Case Of The Missing Brides
R2 - United Kingdom - Network Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (23rd January 2009). |
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The Film
 
In 1942, Bela Lugosi and director Wallace Fox worked together on two films for the ‘poverty row’ studio Monogram Pictures, The Corpse Vanishes and Bowery at Midnight. Both films are macabre little thrillers that have developed a cult following amongst Lugosi fanatics; like many of the pictures that Lugosi made for the poverty row studios in the 1930s and 1940s, The Corpse Vanishes is appreciated by Lugosi’s fans for its camp qualities and also for some genuinely effective imagery, such as the moment in which journalist Patricia Hunter (Luana Walters) discovers Lorenz (Lugosi) and the Countess (Elizabeth Russell) asleep in their coffins. 
However, like many of the Lugosi-starring poverty row pictures, The Corpse Vanishes trades on Lugosi’s iconic role as the Twentieth Century’s most famous vampire in Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931). The aforementioned scene in which Lugosi is discovered sleeping in a coffin has no narrative function and no rationale other than to allude to Lugosi’s most famous role (when confronted, Lorenz simply tells Pat that, ‘I find them much more comfortable than a bed’), and although in The Corpse Vanishes Lugosi plays nothing more than a flesh-and-blood villain his many appearances are filmed in such a way as to recall his performance as the supernatural ‘lord of the night’. In his first appearance in the film, in the back of a hearse that has been used to steal the body of one of the brides, Lugosi looms out of the darkness, his face picked out of the shadows that surround him by a focused key light. In The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi (2003), Arthur Lennig suggests that The Corpse Vanishes ‘relies on the mere presence of Lugosi to create fear, without supplying any good dialogue or effective direction’ (308). However, to be fair the same could be said of most of the poverty row thrillers and horror films that Lugosi starred in. 
The film’s narrative opens with the wedding of Phyllis Hamilton. During the ceremony, Hamilton collapses and is declared dead. Her body is taken into the ante-room, and later a hearse arrives to take her away. As the back door of the hearse is opened, Lorenz leans out of the darkness to ease her corpse into the back of the vehicle. However, when the real hearse arrives the guests realise that the woman’s body has been stolen. Discussing the news of the abduction of Phyllis’ corpse, the editor of the local newspaper jokes, ‘Well, I’ve heard of ambulance chasing, but this is something new’. In response, ambitious journalist Pat Hunter asserts with glee: ‘New? It’s sensational. Another kidnapping of a dead bride. What a story!’. As the press celebrate this exciting new story, their headlines are depicted in bold text over a montage of the printing press machines as they pound out the latest issues of the newspapers: ‘BODY OF DEAD BRIDE DISAPPEARS!’, ‘POLICE BAFFLED BY MYSTERIOUS THREAT OF ALTAR VICTIMS’. 
After investigation, the police arrest one of the men who drove the hearse; however, it is revealed that the man was picked up off the street by Lorenz but cannot identify the man who employed him and knows nothing of Lorenz’s plan. Understandably nervous, Alice Wentworth (Joan Barclay) and her mother seek confirmation from the police that Alice’s impending wedding will be safe. However, immediately before her wedding Alice is presented with the gift of an orchid; we are led to infer that this has been sent by Lorenz. Not long after, Alice passes out and is presumed dead. A blazing car blocks the path of the ambulance carrying Alice’s body. With the blazing car as a diversion, Lorenz and a heavy (‘packing heat’, no less) quietly steal Alice’s body from the back of the ambulance. At Lorenz’s gothic mansion, Lorenz confronts his assistant Fagah (Minerva Urecal) and her sons, the simpleton Angel (Frank Moran) and the dwarfish Toby (Angelo Rossito, the 2’11” actor who played Angeleno in Tod Browning’s Freaks, 1931, and also co-starred with Lugosi in 1941’s Spooks Run Wild and 1947’s Scared to Death). When Angel begins to stroke Alice’s hair, Lorenz responds by whipping him as Toby rubs his hands with glee. (Fagah asks Lorenz, ‘Why do you beat my son so hard?’ Lorenz responds by telling her, ‘He is a beast, an animal. Some day I shall have to destroy him’.) Using a large syringe, Lorenz removes some fluid from Alice’s neck and injects it into his ailing wife, the Countess. Studying the flower that Alice received prior to her collapse, Pat deduces that ‘Every one of the brides who died was wearing one of these orchids’ and that the ‘bride groom didn’t give it [the orchid] to her’. She discovers form an expert that Lorenz was the man who ‘first hybridised’ the specific genii of orchid that she has discovered as the factor that binds each of the cases. Joining forces with a local medical doctor named Foster (Tris Coffin), who is attending to Lorenz’s wife, Pat visits the Lorenz home—despite Foster’s warning that Lorenz ‘is a man of some accomplishment, but his wife is quite peculiar. I expect you will find them both a bit eccentric’. When the Countess declares to Pat that ‘No one asked you to come here. You are not welcome’ before viciously slapping the reporter across the face, Pat comments to Foster, ‘So that’s what you call being eccentric. Well, I have another name for it’. Trapped in the Lorenz home by a freak storm, Pat develops a plan to try to ensnare Lorenz and expose his plan, which involves taking glandular fluid from virgin brides in order to rejuvenate his wife. 
Shot in less than twenty days (Rhodes, 2006: 125), The Corpse Vanishes is an effective little chiller, thanks largely to the performances of the cast who, as in many of the poverty row horror ‘quickies’, are given characters who are little more than archetypes: the mad scientist and his disturbed and spiteful bride; the outcast family of Fagah, Angel and Toby. However, despite its short running time the film is bogged down with the scenes featuring Pat, possibly the most tepid intrepid reporter who has ever graced the screen. When Pat is abducted by Lorenz, it’s unfortunate that the conventions of the genre dictate she will not meet the sticky end which most viewers will have wished upon her. (Pat’s reward for her bravery is a rather chauvinistic little joke by her editor; she asks ‘Do I get a by-line?’, to which her editor responds ‘After this you can have a clothesline… with my shirt on it’.) Many no-budget thrillers of this period focused on the work of a journalist of some kind, rather than the private detectives and policemen that graced the ‘A’ list pictures of the 1940s and 1950s; these reporters were usually ambitious career women, and they were presumably female so that they could be more easily manoeuvred into situations in which they were in peril. The Corpse Vanishes is somewhat critical of the press community: Hunter’s gleeful response upon hearing the news of Phyliss Hamilton’s death and abduction immediately makes her less than wholly sympathetic, and the sensationalistic headlines that are shown to exploit the incident make the press seem almost as bloodthirsty as the villains who have committed the crimes. Although Pat is well played by Luana Walters, it’s hard to sympathise with the character due to her lack of consideration of the human cost of the crimes that she so gleefully accepts as a potential rung on the ladder that is her career. With the business of Pat’s investigation of the crimes out of the way, the film ambles into a rushed climax which is confusingly edited, possibly signifying that some material was cut in order to conform to the demands of the Breen Office. However, this narrative confusion is a trope of many of Monogram Pictures’ films; as Lennig notes, ‘The Corpse Vanishes has the usual Monogram inattention to logic and decent plotting, but some of the events are so outrageous that they make for great fun’ (op cit.: 308).
Video
The film is presented in its original pre-1954 Academy aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The picture is a little soft, but no more than is to be expected from a release of a vintage low-budget picture of this kind. 
The film runs for 63:18 mins (PAL).
Audio
Sound is presented via a two-channel monophonic track. Audio is good but a little muffled; however, this is typical of the poverty row quickies of the period rather than indexical of any fault in the transfer of the movie to DVD.
Extras
None.
Overall
All in all, despite its camp elements and the heavy reliance on clichés (and its star’s most famous past role), The Corpse Vanishes is a fondly-remembered film that, like many of Lugosi’s poverty row pictures, has developed something of a ‘cult’ following. Network’s DVD contains a good presentation of the film and, as such, is to be recommended to fans of no-budget 1940s horror pictures or the films of Lugosi. References: Rhodes, Gary Don, 2006: Lugosi: His Life in Films, on Stage and in the Hearts of Horror-Lovers. McFarland & Company Lennig, Arthur, 2003: The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi. University Press of Kentucky Schaefer, Eric, 1999: ”Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!”: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959. London: Duke University Press For more information, please visit the webpage of Network DVD
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