Black Friday, 1940
Directed by Arthur Lubin
Starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Stanley Ridges
Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi team up once again (although never on screen at the same time) in Black Friday, a strange little horror movie that doesn’t always quite work. But when it does work, it’s absolutely brilliant.
Karloff plays Ernest Sovac, a brain surgeon who is about to put to the chair but before he dies, he gives his notes to a news reporter that tells the story of how he got to this point. His best friend Professor George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges) was in a terrible car accident and the only way to save him was to transpose part of the brain of criminal Red Cannon (also Ridges) into his. Although Kingsley survives the experiment, he starts to show signs of Cannon’s previous existence which Sovac realises he can use to find his hidden money.
Where the film works is Ridges’ brilliant portrayal of both George Kingsley and Red Cannon. He switches between old bumbling Kinslgey into the suave and dangerous Cannon beautifully without the aid of any special effects or prosthetics. He is supported very well by Karloff who acts as the supportive yet controlling doctor. He knows that what he is doing is wrong and that he should be doing his best to help his friend rather than use him and it’s only his daughter Jean (Anne Gwynne) who can convince him. He isn’t inherently evil which is what makes him such a great character.
Originally it was supposed to be Karloff in Ridges’ role with Lugosi as his supporting doctor. However director Arthur Lubin felt that Karloff’s gangster persona was unconvincing and so placed him in the role of Ernest Sovac. This sadly means that Lugosi is pushed into a very meaningless gangster role in which he only really has around 5 scenes with not a lot to do. It seems like an awful waste of what was clearly a great talent. Not only that, but Lugosi feels out of place as a New York gangster. Not even an actor as good as him can hide his speech pattern to make it sound convincing. Obviously I never saw the auditions that Lubin did, but I can’t help but think that Black Friday would have been a much better movie had the roles been kept with Lugosi and Karloff. The two worked so well together and while Karloff and Ridges have good chemistry, it isn’t on par with the superb work pulled out by Karloff and Lugosi in The Black Cat and The Raven.
Where the film slightly fails is in the execution of Kingsley and Cannon’s switch. At first it’s played up really well with Ridges taking on the appearance of Cannon for the audience to see while the rest of the cast see him as Kingsley (kind of like how they did with Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap). The problem here is that, unlike Quantum Leap, Black Friday seems to get confused with which role the cast can see. No one seems to react to Kinglsey the way they should when he is acting like Cannon. He is a bumbling professor of English Literature but everyone seems to treat him like he is a gangster that belongs in their surroundings. It can often get quite confusing.
But even with my slight issues with casting and direction choices, Black Friday is a fantastic movie. Its hour long runtime means that the film never outstays its welcome, even though there is enough intrigue and suspense to fill out 90 minutes. It has this wonderful Twilight Zone feel to the story (even though it predates it) and it will keep you guessing right up until the last moments of the film. The two central performances are very good and although it’s a waste of Lugosi, he still does a fine job.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Month in Review show for Flickering Myth’s Podcast Network. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published June 16, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
