As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 9 pm et, Tim Buntley will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? Black Friday!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
The 1940 film, Black Friday, opens with Dr. Ernest Sovac (Boris Karloff), a once-respected scientist, being led out of his cell on Death Row and being taken to the electric chair. As he enters the death chamber, he hands one of the gathered reporters his journal. Dr. Sovac says that he wants the reporter to know the true story of how he came to be on Death Row. While the police strap Dr. Sovac into the electric chair, the reporter reads the journal.
It’s flashback time!
Months earlier, Dr. Sovac’s best friend, an befuddled English professor named George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges), is nearly fatally injured when he has the misfortune to get caught in the middle of an attempt to assassinate a gangster. In order to save George’s life, Sovac performs a brain transplant, giving George part of the gangster’s brain. George does recover but now he’s got the gangster inside of his head, trying to take control. Much like Dr. Jekyll, George continually switches identities and becomes a viscous hoodlum who is looking for revenge against those who betrayed him, including gang boss Eric Marnay (Bela Lugosi).
Dr. Sovac, however, is more concerned with the fact that, before he died, the gangster apparently hid a good deal of money somewhere. Sovac wants that money for himself so that he can build his own laboratory and hopefully help other people with otherwise incurable brain conditions. Sovac tells himself that, once he gets his hands on the money, he can find a way to rid George of his evil alternative personality. But until George finds the money, Sovac is content to allow George to continue turning into a murderous gangster. Things, however, come to a head when George starts to threaten Sovac’s daughter (Anne Gwynne).
Black Friday is yet another Universal Horror Film featuring Boris Karloff was a mad scientist. What makes Dr. Sovac a compelling character is that he starts out with the best of intentions. He just wants to save the life of his best friend and Sovac’s desperation is increased by the fact that George himself was just an innocent bystander when he was injured. Later, when Sovac starts searching for the gangster’s money, his intentions are again not necessarily bad. He sincerely wants to do some good with that money and he uses those good intentions to justify allowing George to do some very bad things. In the end, Sovac becomes so obsessed with being able to fund his laboratory that he loses sight of the price that both he and George are having to pay. Karloff does a great job of playing Sovac, showing how a kind man manages to lose track of his morals until it is too late. Stanley Ridges is also well-cast as George and does an excellent job of switching back and forth from being a befuddled professor to a ruthless gangster. There’s an excellent scene in which George, attempting to teach his class, suddenly hallucinates that all of his students have become gangsters. Ridges does a great job playing it.
Reportedly, the film was originally conceived with Karloff playing George and Bela Lugosi playing the role of Dr. Savoc. However, Karloff said that he would rather play Savoc and, as such, Lugosi lost a role for which he probably would have been very well-cast. Since Lugosi was a bit too naturally sinister for the role of George, he instead had to settle for a small role as a gang leader. Lugosi, it should be said, is a convincing gangster but it’s still hard not to be disappointed that, in this film, he and Karloff don’t share any scenes together.
Today is Black Friday! This is the day when, all across the United States, people storm into stores and fight each other over …. well, everything.
Every year, there’s like a hundred think pieces decrying the commercialism of Black Friday and complaining that corporations are exploiting human weakness and that it’s a sad state of affairs and blah blah blah. Listen — I love Black Friday. Black Friday is where you prove what your worth and show just how far you’re willing to go to make sure that everyone you love has a merry Christmas. My sisters and I are expert Black Friday shoppers and yes, we still go out and hit the stores. We take the risk. We don’t hide behind online shopping. Not on Black Friday.
So, let’s hope that the Bowman sisters can summon half as much energy this Black Friday as Stray From The Path summons up in this video. Of course, I should point out that this song is very much against the madness of Black Friday. It attacks “American Greed” and basically taunts those of us who hit the sales. Well, that’s their right. I mean, I don’t think anyone can be shocked to discover that Stray From The Path is skeptical of capitalism run amok.
The Twin Titans of Terror, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, reteamed for their fifth film together in 1940’s BLACK FRIDAY. Horror fans must’ve been salivating at the chance to see the duo reunited after the success of the previous year’s SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, but left the theaters let down upon discovering Boris and Bela share no scenes together, and the bulk of the action is carried by character actor Stanley Ridges in a dual role.
The movie’s a variation on the old Jekyll & Hyde theme, with a twist: instead of a secret formula, the change occurs via brain transplantation! The preposterous premise finds Karloff on death row as Dr. Ernst Sovac, walking that last mile to his fate in the electric chair. Sovac hands his notes and records to a sympathetic newspaper reporter, and our film begins in earnest. Flashbacks relate the tale of kindly old English literature Professor…
Through the Shattered Lens 