Night Monster

Dir. Ford Beebe

73 Minutes

USA

1942

Starring: Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Leif Erickson, Irene Hervey, Ralph Morgan, Don Porter

**1/2/*****

Entertaining enough, but certainly a low-tier example of the types of horror that Universal was shelling out after its post-Son of Frankenstein resurgence in popularity. The reclusive Kurt Ingston (Ralph Morgan) invites the group of doctors who caused him to become a hopeless cripple to his spooky, isolated mansion in the swamps, but one by one they begin to be found dead.Night Monster is a bizarre composite of a variety of modes: the old dark house narrative, dabbling of mysticism and the occult, what would essentially become the slasher film, and a revenge murder mystery. And oftentimes the thing feels as lazily put together as a sentence like that would suggest, failing each individual one in an effort to give more push to the story. But certain elements work, though oftentimes the pleasure of the film comes from its ability to scratch the itches that one seeks out in looking towards this kind of fare. Faces like Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill certainly add some marquee value to the equation, though Lugosi is relegated to a small role as a butler and Atwill disappears far too soon (though both remain top billed). And Beebe, known for basically being a journeyman on genre fare (mainly westerns, though he would return to helm the decent The Invisible Man's Revenge for Universal soon after this), is certainly efficient in his set-pieces (the instant silence of the swamp noises, for instance, is a nice little effect and gives off a good mood). But the picture is unfortunately quite slow, and the whispers of interest are not entirely successful as arbiters of tension. Night Monster is by no means a slog to get through, but it is certainly a weaker link in the Universal horror chain and may only really appeal to completists of the offerings.

October 21st, 2019