In today’s film, Boris Karloff plays a brain surgeon who makes the mistake of trying to save a friend’s life by performing an experimental procedure that involves combining bits of a gangster’s brain with the brain of an otherwise meek English professor.  Bela Lugosi plays a rival mobster.

First released in 1940, Black Friday is an entertaining combination of sci-fi horror and gangster action.  Originally, Lugosi was going to play the mad scientist and Karloff was going to play the mobster but Karloff, who felt he had been typecast as a villain, reportedly requested to be given the more sympathetic role.  This noir-tinged fright flick was the last of the movies that Karloff and Lugosi would make together,