The Bela Lugosi Collection (Murders in the Rue Morgue / The Black Cat / The Raven / The Invisible Ray / Black Friday)
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Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Starring: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop, Sidney Fox
Directed By: Arthur Lubin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Lambert Hillyer, Lew Landers, Robert Florey
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781417058754
Format: Closed-captioned
ISBN: 1417058757
Label: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Universal Studios
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2005-09-06
Running Time: 337
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: 1934-05-07
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Seldom seen but excellent Universal horror
Comment: These five titles are good examples of Universal horror films both before and after the code. However, there is a little matter of truth in advertising to discuss. This is really more of a Lugosi/Karloff collection than a Lugosi collection. In fact, only one film does not feature both actors - "Murders in the Rue Morgue". Of the other four, two have Karloff and Lugosi on a fairly equal footing - "The Raven" and "The Black Cat", which are the best of the films. The other two - "The Invisible Ray" and "Black Friday" are really Karloff films. "Black Friday" really only has Lugosi as a bit player - Karloff is the star of that film.
All five feature the atmosphere and pacing that are unique to the Universal horror films of the time. I would say I found 1932's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" to be the least satisfactory of the films. The atmosphere is great, and Lugosi does one of the things he does best - play a sophistocated and charming madman. Lugosi has somehow managed to mix up ideas of evolution (man and ape being related) with religious ideals of pure blood only coming from virgins - thus his obsession with Camille, a girl he sees at the carnival where he exhibits his ape and speaks of his beliefs. The distracting part of the film consists of the love scenes between Camille and Pierre (Leon Ames). Later in his career Ames excelled at playing a sophistocated cad in the Warren William tradition, but here he just annoys me.
1934's "The Black Cat" changes things a bit and has Lugosi playing the hero for a change. Karloff plays a devil-worshiping priest who has a habit of preserving and displaying the bodies of his late wives in the basement of his castle. He has had Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi) imprisoned and stolen his wife. When Lugosi escapes fifteen years later, he returns for revenge and to retrieve the wife and infant daughter he left behind. Throw into the mix a honeymooning couple that is stranded at Karloff's castle and you have not so much a mystery but a chance for some really great moments between Lugosi and Karloff as they face off.
1935's "The Raven" has Lugosi again playing the charming madman. However here he is a legitimate man of science - brilliant surgeon, Dr. Villon. He saves the life of a young girl by performing emergency surgery on her and falls in love with her. Her father, Judge Thatcher, comes to Villon and tries to convince him that the relationship will never work. Angered that he is good enough to save his daughter's life but not to marry her, he plots a creative Poe-like revenge.
In 1936's "The Invisible Ray", Lugosi is again the good guy. He plays Dr. Felix Benet, who invites Dr. Janos Rukh (Karloff) on a scientific expedition to Africa. There Rukh discovers a powerful substance that has the power both to cure and destroy. When Rukh becomes infected with the substance he discovers he becomes mad with his own power to destroy, especially when he feels that he's been robbed by the expedition of both his wife and his discovery.
1940's "Black Friday" doesn't really fit with the other four, but it is still a very good film. It really is a noir more than it is a horror film. Karloff stars as brain surgeon Ernest Sovac. His good friend is run down by a gangster's car after that gangster is shot by his own mob. The gangster has a broken body as a result of the accident. Sovac's friend's brain is damaged to the point that he is dying. Sovac performs brain surgery and transplants part of the gangster's brain into his friend. He does this partly to save his friend and partly in hope of getting his hands on the money that the gangster has hidden from his mob. Lugosi plays a member of that mob and is not onscreen for very long.
This DVD is highly recommended to fans of Karloff, Lugosi, and Universal horror. The downside is that the films are on one dual-sided disc and there are absolutely no extras. However, the video and audio quality are excellent on all of the films.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Black Cat
Comment: I've wanted a copy of the The Black Cat for years and years because of some of the background music that it possibly contained.
I was not born yet when The Black Cat first came out, but saw it once, at a very young age in the late 1960's or 1970's, on the old Thriller Theater, I think, hosted by a local celeb Count Gregore in Oklahoma city years after the movie came out on a late night horror movie offering. It had a song in it that sounded familiar to me.
The background song I was searching for was an old contest song I sang all the way back in junior high school. The title may be something like Roses At Night and sure enough there it was in instrumental version in the first scene where Boris Karloff in off to nighty-night with Bela's former wife.
I had always heard that this was the one movie that Lugosi did not play "the heavy" in and was glad I got to see two of my heroes in one movie.
I would suggest this collection as a primer for anyone who doesn't have much experience with the classics in horror by Lugosi, Karloff or Price. It is also great for those of us who still are enchanted by the old black and white anthems of good verses evil.
Customer Rating:
Summary: MUST HAVE/ Black Cat, horror/ Invisible Ray, sci-fi, UNIVERSAL Style
Comment: This is the one with the right films. THE BLACK CAT would likely still bother the censors and is a great remake of the OLD DARK HOUSE but more stylish and satanic than the studio hoped for and a wonderful film to see on Halloween or a full moon. There is also THE INVISIBLE RAY a SciFi'ish horror film with special effects that cut to today. The rest of the set is great and are others faves. I would pay 5 times the price for this set. It's not just Bela; it's great Universal Horror that I waited for.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply, Superb !
Comment: This is an excellent collection for Bela Lugosi's fans. We see our famous Holywood's Dracula, a very professional actor, in different roles but always involved in mystery, murders ans suspense. I recommend and enjoy so much this five films, in particular "The invisible ray", based on the spectacular properties of the radioactive chemical element the "radium", so interesting but only as a science-fiction proposal. The Raven and the Black Cat are also magnificent. The participation of Mr. Boris Karloff gives a special touch to these horror series.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Some details and positive comments on "The Invisible Ray"
Comment: I just wanted to drop in here and voice my profound enthusiasm for "The Invisible Ray" (1936), which is perhaps the most obscure film of the entire package, and which stars both Boris Karloff (as Dr. Janos Rukh) and Bela Lugosi (as Dr. Felix Benet).
This one is an actual treasure among B-films -- it's a sci-fi, jungle movie, murder mystery all in one! And you'll never see either Karloff or Lugosi look better than they do here. In fact, Lugosi (with his goat-tee beard) looks astoundingly like the handsome Robert De Niro in the wedding scene of The Deer Hunter! This is also one of the few films where you'll see Lugosi playing the good guy.
THIS STORY is a lot more complex (but very coherent) than what we're accustomed to in comparable old sci-fi films. It begins in Dr. Rukh's mansion observatory in the Carpathian Mountains where he resides with his blind mother (Violet Kemble Cooper) and with his lovely young wife, Diane (whom they mostly call "Diana" throughout the film, played by the lovely Frances Drake). It's a dark and stormy night when guests arrive to whom Dr. Rukh has a visionary theory to prove.
Dr. Rukh's guests include Sir Francis Stevens (Walter Kingsford, Algiers), his wife Lady Arabella Stevens (Beulah Bondi, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), Dr. Benet, and Arabella's nephew, Ronald Drake (played by Frank Lawton). Rukh's wife and Mother Rukh are both very supportive of Dr. Rukh's incredible theory while the newly-arrived house guests are initially all skeptical.
Dr. Rukh guides the entire group into his observatory where, as they look on, he "captures" a ray of light which ultimately reveals, in a hologram show (in his adjacent lab where there is all manner of cool Frankenstein-ish electronic gewgaws), past astronomical events concerning the Earth, and specifically that a significant meteor once came from the Andromeda Nebula and impacted the Earth in the wilds of Africa! (The special effects on this are incredibly well-done.)
Having impressed his guests with his astounding results, Dr. Rukh agrees to accompany an already planned expedition of Benet's and Stevens' to Nigeria in an attempt to locate a sample of "Radium-X" which was the powerful atomic element in the meteor. All present go on the expedition except for Mother Rukh who ominously warns her son against the trip.
In the African Jungle, Dr. Rukh leaves the main camp to search for the Radium-X impact site, a spot which he locates in 8 weeks while the others remain at the main campsite, carrying out their own priorities. With the aid of his native assistants he rigs up a pulley system in which he can be lowered into a cave of flaming Hellfire to possibly collect a sample, fully protected in a radiation-proof suit. He gets his sample but he somehow still receives radiation poisoning -- in fact, any living thing he touches dies immediately as Dr. Rukh glows brightly in the dark! Dr. Rukh also develops an atomic ray gun at his campsite which he demonstrates for his native helpers by "melting" a huge rock, mostly in an effort to coerce them into not running away.
Dr. Rukh's wife, Diana, rushes through the wilds to his side when she hears where he is located but he immediately tells her to go away as he remains hidden and glowing in the dark of his tent's interior. She returns to the main camp, emotionally devastated and Dr. Rukh also sneaks back to the main camp to seek Dr. Benet's assistance in developing a cure for his radiation poisoning. Dr. Benet bails him out but the cure is only a temporary one and Dr. Rukh has to inject himself regularly to keep from exuding the poisonous atomic rays and killing whomever he touches. And there's another caveat -- while Dr. Rukh returns to his discovery site for a few weeks to recover more Radium-X, his wife (Diane) and Arabella's nephew (Ronald) fall in love. Diane remains faithful to her husband but she is clearly unhappy.
The group eventually returns to civilization and Dr. Rukh immediately uses a tiny exposure of his Radium-X ray to cure his mother's blindness. Then the scene switches to Paris where, knowing of Dr. Rukh's success with his mother, Dr. Benet begins curing thousands of people with various afflictions (including blindness) with the atomic ray. Dr. Rukh also goes to Paris and there he begins to go a bit mad. He had been warned of this possibility by Dr. Benet back in Africa. In any case, Dr. Rukh sees it that people have "stolen" from him. Dr. Benet has heisted his secret ray and Ronald Drake has stolen the love of his wife... in fact, Dr. Rukh suspects his wife of having cheated (which she did not).
So, in a mad, paranoid scheme, Dr. Rukh lures a man away from a pub who is about his own size, and then he fakes his own death by killing this unfortunate fellow, mutilating the body beyond clear recognition. The funeral is held and it's not long after this that we see the widow Rukh and the young and handsome Ronald Drake getting married! Dr. Rukh watches the ceremony from a dark corner and it's clear that he's going to seek vengeance. The first to die from Dr. Rukh's poisonous touch is Sir Francis Stevens. All Dr. Rukh has to do is to avoid injecting himself and when he begins to glow, it's "LOOK OUT!" for anyone he touches.
I absolutely must stop there to avoid a revelation/spoiler of the ending which is just as good as the body of the film. It all sounds far-fetched, I realize, but this one really flows with plenty of activity and enough action to keep it from dragging. The sets and locations are especially excellent.
This movie is, of course, in black-and-white, full-frame, and runs for 80 minutes. It was directed by Lambert Hillyer, (a prolific and talented director who did over 160 films and wrote the screenplays for many more.) The Screenplay was written by John Colton, based upon an original story by Howard Higgin and Douglas Hodges. The Musical score is a very good one and was composed by Franz Waxman. Finally, all the superb special effects were pulled off by John P. Fulton (special cinematographer) and Raymond Lindsay (who was uncredited.)
If this film has a weak link it's simply that Frank Lawton was perhaps poorly cast as he's just too diminutive a character to ever convincingly steal a wife away from the imposing persona of Karloff. But still, Lawton played his role to the pinnacle so this is a very minor criticism. There is also the scene of the meteor entering Earth's atmosphere and striking southern Africa, a good 1000 miles from Nigeria which is where the expedition supposedly went -- but again, this is nothing more than minor impedimenta.
I was especially impressed with the beauty of the brunette Frances Drake (Diane) with her slightly droopy and wide-set bedroom eyes and perfect features. She reminded me quite a lot of the striking and renowned Marie Windsor (Outpost in Morocco.)
As to the other films in this package, it's been awhile since I've seen them but I recall that they are all top old B-films that I liked. My chief point here was to draw folks' attention to "The Invisible Ray" which I highly recommend to appropriate audiences.
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