THE CORPSE VANISHES [1942]One of the many 3rd-rate horror films that Bela Lugosi did in the 1940s, this one fully earned its place on MST3K.Lugosi plays (what else?) a mad scientist, one Dr. Lorenz, whose talents include physics, horticulture, hypnotism, reversing the aging process, and committing strangulation murders when necessary. Lorenz resides in a creepy old mansion (complete with secret passageways) with his ailing but violent wife The Countess (Elizabeth Russell), his old-hag servant Fagah (Minerva Urecal), and her two sons, a simple-minded hulk named Angel (Frank Moran) and a three-foot dwarf named Toby (Angelo Rossitto).The plot: young brides are dropping dead at the altar, after which their corpses mysteriously disappear. Both the cops and the newspapers focus on who is stealing the dead brides and why. Seems it never occurs to them (or to public-health officials) to wonder why these strapping young women have all bought the farm just as they're about to say "I do."Hard-boiled reporter Patricia Hunter (Luana Walters) becomes suspicious when she sniffs the orchid the last bride wore, only to feel faint herself. Patricia found the orchid on the chapel floor, in the spot where the bride had collapsed and croaked. Rather than turn this evidence over to the police, Pat keeps the flower and begins her own investigation into this odd series of events. This leads her to Dr. Lorenz's mansion.Long story short: Lorenz is using a special type of orchid to kill the brides when they sniff it. Seems the good doctor needs "fluids" from the newly-deceased brides to inject into his elderly wife so that she becomes young again. Exactly which fluids perform such a miracle? And why is it imperative that the dead women all be brides? The screenwriter didn't bother with such trifles.Item: the film provides many head shots of Lorenz looking very, very sneaky.Item: For a hard-boiled reporter, Patricia has a penchant for fainting when things become dangerous. She does this more than once, leading me to wonder if she suffered from sleeping sickness.Item: The hunchbacked, non-verbal Angel gets his jollies from stroking the hair of the dead brides, who Lorenz keeps in a morgue below his mansion. When Lorenz finds him engaged in this necrophilia, he flogs Angel with a whip and tells Fagah, "He's at best an animal. Someday, I shall have to destroy him." Yes, he tells that to the mother whose son he has just flogged in front of her. Not a nice man, our Dr. Lorenz!Item: when a cop sees Lorenz loading a passed-out Patricia into his car, the officer responds by pulling out his gun and firing, which kills Toby the dwarf. I suppose yelling "Police, stop!" was too much effort.If contrivance or clichés are your forte, this film explodes with each.

I think this may in fact be the oldest movie that was ever featured on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". I guess there were some serials that were in fact earlier, but I think this fits the bill. This movie features Bela Lugosi doing, well exactly what the plot synopsis says. There's almost nothing else that goes on. It was really weird to just see a bride die for no reason at the beginning of the movie. It does make a little more sense later, but it's still pretty dumb. It's weird how this wasn't the part where Lugosi was in bad movies.He became much more infamous during the Ed Wood years. Well, there were always cheesy movies. The main problem is how slow this movie is. You just keep on seeing characters walk around for the longest time. I guess the story could have been dumber. You could say it set a sort of weird precedent for later bad movies. Well, "Reefer Madness" was earlier. There's too much darkness and the characters have little depth, but at least it was short. **

Brides are dropping dead at the altar one by one. To make matters worse, their corpses have gone missing. These strange events inspire a plucky lady reporter to investigate, leading her to the home of the menacing scientist played by Bela Lugosi.While it's not awful by any means, The Corpse Vanishes (1942) feels like a waste of time. Luana Walters is a pain as the heroine, fainting at every little thing. Lugosi is alright and manages to rise somewhat above the insipid material. The highlight of the film is an atmospheric bit with Luana wandering through the Lugosi's manor in her night robe, stalked by his hunchbacked assistant. The ending includes a silly and hectic chase scene.I would recommend this only to Lugosi fanatics. The easiest way to get through it would be with the aid of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

"Bullets for Bandits" director Wallace Fox never lets the action lag in "The Corpse Vanishes," a preposterous but provocative Monogram pictures potboiler. Although he achieved immortal fame as Bram Stoker's legendary vampire in Tod Browning's "Dracula," Bela Lugosi spent more screen time cast as either sinister scientists or deranged professors. In fact, the snappy screenplay by Sam Robins and Henry Gates, based on a story by Gerald Schnitzer, anticipates a similar plot in the later Lugosi B-movie "Voodoo Man" where he played a mad doctor who kidnapped women as part of a ritual to bring his zombie wife back to life. In "The Corpses Vanishes," brides collapse at the altar during the wedding ceremony and Dr. Lorenz hijacks their corpses so he can draw glandular fluid from their necks and restore his decrepit wife to her pristine beauty. Furthermore, both films feature a mentally challenged character who loves to stroke the hair of the victims. Angel (Frank Moran) does the stroking here while John Carradine did the stroking in "Voodoo Man." Indeed, "The Corpse Vanishes" and "Voodoo Man" qualify as far-fetched little melodramas, but they are entertaining nonsense staged with some competence. Mind you, Lugosi was a better actor than he received credit for, and his straight-faced performance in "The Corpse Vanishes" makes this atmospheric, 64-minute, black & white epic better than is should be. Rather than making it a predictable police procedural, Fox and company replace the typical gun-toting copper with a fast-talking female reporter eager to get off the society page and onto the front page"The Corpse Vanishes" opens as a bride , Phyllis Hamilton, collapses at the altar. Dr. Rayburn pronounces the bride dead, and they contact Forest Mortuary to fetch the body. When the hearse arrives for the body, the attendants learn to their chagrin that the body has already been picked up and spirited away. A montage of newspaper printing presses state that this constitutes the fourth time that something so unspeakable has taken place. Society reporter Patricia Hunter (Luana Walters of "The Third Sex") and her photographer Sandy (Vince Barnett of "Scarface") covered the wedding. Later, they cover a second wedding and the bride drops dead at the altar, too. Sandy presents Patricia with a souvenir from the wedding that turns out to be a rare and exotic orchid. This is the clue that Patricia needs to learn more about the people behind this audacious plot to kidnap brides. Our heroine has a devil of a time persuading her antagonistic boss Keenan to let her investigate. After all, Patricia learns the whereabouts of the professor who had once grew the flowers that link each of the fatal weddings. A florist, Mr. Smith, informs her that the gentlemen lives in Brookdale. Patricia heads off to interview Dr. Lorenz (Bela Lugosi of "Invisible Ghost") about these unique flowers. Initially, she tries to hire a cab, but the cabbie refuses to take her, so she catches a ride on the back of a truck carrying a casket out to the Lorenz estate. The driver, Mike, spots her and removes her. As she is walking along the road, another doctor, Dr. Foster (Tristram Coffin of "Homicide"), who is working Lorenz to find a cure for his wife, gives her a lift. "Professor Lorenz is a man of unusual accomplishments, but his wife is rather peculiar. I expect you'll find them both a bit eccentric." The Lorenz house is surrounded by a high wall with gates for privacy. When Dr. Foster and Patricia arrive, Lorenz is playing an organ. A midget named Toby takes them in to see Dr. Lorenz. Countess Lorenz slaps Patricia because she suspects that she is up to no good. Patricia has no desire to stick around after she interviews Lorenz, but a storm prevents her from leaving. The night that she spends at Lorenz's residence is the stuff of nightmares. She snoops around and sees Lorenz and his wife Countess Lorenz (Elizabeth Russell of "Bedlam") sleeping in coffins. Later, when he talks to Lorenz, he observes that he prefers coffins to a bed. Patricia manages to get back to her newspaper where her cynical editor Keenan threatens to fire her until Dr. Foster shows up to validate her far-fetched story. The big twist comes when Patricia convinces Keenan to stage a phony wedding. The police are poised to make an arrest when a guy shows up with an orchid. Everything looks good for the wedding. Indeed, Dr. Lorenz and his wife read the newspaper earlier about the impending wedding and both love the picture of a June bride, Peggy Woods (Gwen Kenyon) who decided to pose as a bride for the publicity that the incident will generate and thereby advance her career. Just before the wedding begins, Patricia learns that the real reverend needs to see her. The reverend lies sprawled on the floor of his study behind a desk so Patricia doesn't see him when he enters the room. None other than Dr. Lorenz is waiting for her and he kidnaps Patricia and takes her back to his house. Just as Lorenz is about to carry out his experiment on Patricia, he is stabbed in the back by the mother of a mentally challenged man who likes to stroke the hair of the unconscious women in Lorenz's laboratory. "The Corpse Vanishes" concludes with Patricia giving up her job as a newspaper woman and marrying Dr. Foster. Fox doesn't rely heavily on comic relief was usually the case in this movies. He stages the action with fast efficiency