LURED - "Killer Bait" (1947)

 

Tonight's Saturday Night Special is a fun and very interesting film from 1947 that features Lucille Ball in a non-comedic film noir, with an all-star cast!

 

"Lured" was directed by Douglas (Written On The Wind) Sirk, and that in itself should be enough to make you want to see it, and I seriously doubt you will be disappointed when you do!

Lucy is an American named Sandra Carpenter who has come to London searching for a better life. She works as a hostess in a dance club full of lonely men willing to pay anything just to dance with a woman.

She doesn't really like her job, but then, who does? One of her fellow dancers has just become a victim of a weird serial killer who meets his victims through the personal columns, and then sends the police cryptic Baudelaire styled poems before each murder happens, just to mess with them!

 

So Sandra is enlisted as bait to try and flush out the killer. She is to be watched all the time by members of the force to guarantee her safety.

Sandra has to meet all kinds of strange men under strange circumstances in strange locations.

One of her first encounters is with a very odd old dude named Charles van Druten as played by Boris Karloff. I've seen a lot of films with Boris Karloff in them, and I'll tell you one thing........

............I think this is one of the most bizarre roles Boris has ever had!

Charles is a fashion designer, and this is an outfit from one of his finest hours!

He has a mini-theater set up in his flat with a dog and a mannequin as his audience.

Sandra decides that Charles is off his nut a little, but is not a serial killer by any means!

The mood changes quickly, and it appears that Charles night be a little more than just eccentric!

Sandra is saved by a stranger who has a big tussle with Charles who then falls down some stairs and we never see or hear from him again!

Sandra is then shuffled off into a car with another weirdo in it!

The weirdo turns out to be George Zucco as Police Officer H.R. Barrett, who was also the one who saved her from Charles. It was really refreshing to see George Zucco in the role of a quasi-comedic crossword-puzzle-junkie police officer instead of some dour and menacing villain!

After that, every one of the gentlemen that Sandra meets has the potential to be the killer, and if they are not that guy, they are usually into something equally against the law, or just losers in general.

Alan (Terror By Night) Mowbray is the creepy butler Lyle Maxwell who is up to his elbows in graft, but he's not a serial killer!

Sandra is sent a note and a ticket to a concert by an admirer called Music Lover, and in a pretty funny scene she waits for the seat next to her to fill up. When this guy sits down she slyly tries to find out if he's the guy, but it turns out he's in the wrong seat!

 

I should be showing you shots of some of the other great actors in this film like Charles (Around The World In 80 Days) Coburn as Inspector Harley Temple, and the star of the film, George (Village Of The Damned) Sanders as Robert Fleming, and Sir Cedric (Uncle Simon, The Forms Of Things Unknown) Hardwicke as Julian Wilde, but there's not room for everything, and I just really like this shot of Lucy and George better! It's such an odd pairing!

Joseph (Touch Of Evil) Calleia as Dr. Nicholas Moryani is an extremely likely suspect, but despite all the nefarious activities he's into, he's not a serial killer! Joseph was in two very cool gorilla movies, "The Monster And The Girl," and "The Gorilla."

It's very mysterious that Lucy was 5' 7½" but Sandra's I.D. card shows that she was only five foot six.

Sandra is just about to get married to Peter Fleming when she finds this photo of her dead friend who had been abducted in the drawer of her future husband's desk, so they finally have a suspect. Too bad he's not the serial killer either! Tanis (Spook Busters) Chandler had the role of Lucy Barnard.

In the end, the serial killer makes a move on Sandra Carpenter, but Police Officer Barrett is there too, and the case is finally solved, the murderer is revealed, and Lucille Ball gets to go on to entertain us for years in "I Love Lucy!"

THE MAD GHOUL - "A New Sensation In Horror" (1943)

Tonight's Weird Wednesday presentation just keeps the Universal madball rolling with "The Mad Ghoul" from 1943.

He's not really mad or a ghoul, but "The Mad Ghoul" sounds better than "The Poor Sap Who Was Lied To And Manipulated By His Evil Professor."

 

The always phenomenal George Zucco is Chemistry Professor, Dr. Alfred Morris. He's got some different ideas about how the laws of nature work.

David (The Smiling Ghost) Bruce is the Professor's best student Ted Allison. The professor likes him so much, he decides to just ruin his life!

 

Ted's girlfriend Isabel is a singing sensation on her way up, and his friend Eric is her accompanist. Isabel was played by the enchanting Evelyn Ankers, and Eric is played by the always great Turhan Bey!

Dr. Morris is not only insane, he's also a back-stabbing manipulative bastard. He's telling Isabel how he's watching over and out for Ted, while draining the life out of him. It's no secret that Dr. Morris would also really like to get into Isabel's panties!

Seventy-seven years ago, but with that mask on, this looks like it could have been filmed yesterday! The Prof is handling some serious substance that when ignited has this zombie effect. First he tried it on monkeys, and now it's Ted's turn. Unfortunately, Ted is not in on the deal. The tube on the mask stops him from inhaling the crap!

Dr. Morris ignites the shit, and then calls Ted into the room and locks him in, and this is the result! I just can't get over how it affects his hair!

Hey Doc, I don't really feel that great!

One of the original 'Queens of Horror,' if the world was a fair place, Evelyn Ankers would be as well known as Marilyn Monroe, but who said the world was a fair place?

I found this cool shot on Pinterest, that shows just some of the classic horror films Evelyn was in! A couple years later, and they could have added "Weird Woman," "The Frozen Ghost," and "The Invisible Man's Revenge" to that uncanny list!

For obvious reasons like "The Mummy's Hand," "The Monster And The Girl," "The Mad Monster," and "The Flying Serpent," just to name a few, George Zucco was, is, and always be a core member of The Dungeon Hall Of Fame!

So, let's see, when he's not busy being a ghoul, Ted wants to marry Isabel, and the Doctor is also hot for her, but she's actually in love with Eric, so it is a bit of a cluster! 

Turhan Bey as Eric is always awesome no matter if the role is classy like this, or creepy like in "The Mummy's Tomb," another film that also had George Zucco in it.

Dr. Morris just keeps on stoking the fire of deceit! The lies that flow from his lips make you wonder why he was not a politician, instead of a Professor!

The Professor has given the order to Ted, "Kill Eric, then kill yourself!"

Just being a ghoul wasn't enough. A ghoul with a gun takes it to a different level!

Everything ain't so merry in Merryville tonight!

Isabel is on a small tour thrilling audiences from one town to the next with her warbling!

The Doctor has Ted cutting hearts out of bodies left and right, and all over the place! In order to keep him going, he needs a full tank of juice. Eventually somebody puts two and two together and notices that the killings and heart extractions are happening in the same exact places and times that Isabel is performing.

This reporter figures it all out, and sets up a ruse with himself as bait acting like a corpse. As smart as he was to figure it all out, he wasn't smart enough to see Ted standing there with a scalpel in his hand!

The hour and a minute this film runs is almost over, so there's no more time for any more made up stories.

When he was in a normal state, Ted figured out what the Doctor was doing to him, so he turns the tables on him, and Dr. Morris inhales a big bunch of the stuff, and ends up suffering the same fate as Ted, but since he no longer has anybody to cut out hearts for him, his fate is sealed!

THE MUMMY'S GHOST - "Nameless! Fleshless! Deathless!" (1944)

Tonight's Saturday Night Special is another Universal Studios Mummy tale!

 It's the second of three shot in the 40's starring Lon Chaney Jr. as Kharis The Mummy! "The Mummy's Hand" also came out in 1940, but it had Tom Tyler as The Mummy!

"The Mumy's Ghost" is probably my least favourite of the three, but it's only a little over an hour long, and besides Lon Chaney Jr., it also has John Carradine, George Zucco, and Barton MacLane in it, so you really can't go wrong!

This time John Carradine is Yousef Bey, The Mummy's caretaker! John is, was, and will always be great! Period!

 The stoic George (The Mummy's Hand, The Flying Serpent) Zucco has a very small role as the High Priest!

The Mummy has a long history of being a ambling, lumbering, slow moving, but powerful creature. He's a little limited in what he can do, but he somehow always manages to get the job done. He can't go over or under this fence, so he just busts through!

Ravishing Ramsay (Calling Dr. Death, The Black Widow) Ames was a dancer and a singer in a Rhumba band before she became an actress!

My big question is how can a Mummy have a ghost when it's already dead?

Besides being as slow as a snail riding on a turtle, you'd really think they could smell him coming from at least a mile away!

This shot made me go back and look up whether this film was first shot in 3D.

Ramsay's character is an Egyptian woman named Amina Mansouri, and the spirit of Princess Ananka is slowly taking over her body each time some Tanna leaves get burnt, hence the sudden "Bride of  Frankenstein" hairstyle!

"The Mummy's Ghost" ends with him carrying Princess Ananka off into a swamp in New England. In the so-called sequel he comes up in a swamp in Florida, so there's either something weird going on or, there's a giant network of underground swamps in America I didn't know about.

"The Mummy's Ghost" is your basic revenge film, and The Mummy is summoned to off a bunch of guys one by one.

Yousef Bey comes to America to boss The Mummy around, and he has a portable altar he can set up in remote places like in the woods.

Kharis is not the delivery they were expecting!

The rampage of The Mummy actually makes John smile!

Dungeon stalwart Barton MacLane is in there as a Detective who never really figures anything out. They did dig a 10 foot deep pit to try and trap The Mummy, but they never get a chance to use it!

This scene in this abandoned mill is amazing I have to admit! I wonder how many times he fell while filming this. His vision is impaired and that looks pretty damn steep to be stumbling up and down on!

Then at the end of the movie, he has to climb down a ladder carrying Ananka!

 

This little dog's name is Peanuts, but the first couple of times they say it, it sounds like Penis!

Amina keeps transforming further into Ananka!

Yousef Bey crosses over the line, and that's it for him! That's when Kharis grabs his girlfriend and walks out and into the swamp, and that's about as close to a happy ending as you're gonna get!