Wallace Fox | Through the Shattered Lens

Someone is holding up stages and making off with a fortune of gold bullion. The government decides to send in a gun packer. Jack Denton (Jack Randall), the son of a legendary lawman, is sent to investigate, along with his sidekick Pinkie (Ray Turner) and Rusty the Wonder Horse. Jack goes undercover, telling an elderly ex-con (Barlowe Borland) that he’s a former partner of his, which leads Jack to the leader of the robbers, Chance Moore (Charles King).

There are a lot of familiar faces in this western. Not only does Charles King play yet another villain but Glenn Strange shows up in his customary role as the town sheriff. Lloyd Ingraham, Forrest Taylor, Victor Adamson, George Hazel, Dave O’Brien, and Tex Palmer all have roles. It’s interesting that the same actors showed up in these movies and almost always seemed to be playing the same roles. The only thing that changed was the hero. In this case, it’s Jack Randall, who may not have been a great actor but who was a believable western hero. His sidekick here is Ray Turner, a black actor who began his career during the silent era and who had a long career in the westerns. While Turner plays a subordinate character, the role still avoids a lot (though not all) of the demeaning racial stereotypes that were very common in most films from the 1930s. Jack treats Pinky with respect and they’re clearly friends outside of work. That may not sound like a lot but it was a big deal for a 1938 Poverty Row western.

The real hero here is Rusty the Wonder Horse. Rusty’s best scene? Jack, needing to climb a mountain, calls for Rusty to drop his lariat. Jack grabs the rope and Rusty pulls him up. Rusty truly earns the right to be called a wonder horse.

1942’s The Corpse Vanishes opens with a young bride collapsing at her wedding. A doctor runs over to her and says that she’s died. A hearse — or a “stiff wagon,” as one witness puts it — pulls up and takes the body. However, the body never reaches the morgue!

It turns out that this is not the first time this has happened. In fact, there’s an epidemic of brides dying on their wedding day and their bodies disappearing. One would think that this would cause a citywide panic or, at the very least, it would cause some people to maybe get married out-of-town. Considering that the most recent victim was the daughter of one of the richest families in the community, you would think solving this mystery would be the police’s number one priority.

However, the police are useless. And when the police can’t get the job done, it falls to journalists. At least, that’s the way it worked in movies from the 1930s and the 40s. While the cops were busy saying, “Scram!” and “Beat it, buster!,” it fell to the cynical and quick-witted journalist to find out what was going on. In this case, Patricia Hunter (Luana Walters) investigates and discovers that all of the brides received an orchid on their wedding day. (How the police didn’t notice this, I don’t know.) Patricia tracks down the eccentric Dr. Lorenz (Bela Lugosi), who was once quite renowned for his orchids.

Dr. Lorenz now lives in a secluded mansion. He’s polite when Patricia comes to speak to him but it’s obvious that he’s hiding something. A sudden thunderstorm leads to Patricia and Dr. Foster (Tristram Coffin) getting stranded at Lorenz’s mansion. Foster was visiting the mansion to examine Lorenz’s wife, the Countess (Elizabeth Russell).

Lorenz, as you probably already guessed, is behind the corpse abductions. Except, of course, the brides aren’t dead. Instead, the orchid has put them into a state of suspended animation. Lorenz is extracting their blood and using it to keep his wife young. Helping him out are his servants, a dwarf named Toby (Angelo Rossitto), Toby’s hulking half-brother, Angel (Frank Moran), and their mother, Fagah (Minerva Urecal). Patricia figures out what is going on but will she be able to convince anyone else!?

From what I read about the film online, it would appear that The Corpse Vanishes has got a terrible reputation but, when I watched it, I actually found it to be entertaining when taken on its own Poverty Row terms. No, the plot doesn’t make any sense. But Bela Lugosi’s smile manages to be both sinister and inviting and Toby and Angel make for good henchmen. The movie only has a 64-minute runtime and, as a result, the plot has to keep moving fairly quickly. The film also features a lot of snappy “newsroom” dialogue between Patricia and her easily-annoyed editor (Kenneth Harlan), all delivered at a fast pace and with the the casually cynical outlook that makes 1940s newspaper movies so entertaining. The Corpse Vanishes is a thoroughly ludicrous film that epitomizes an era and, as such, it’s far more diverting than one might otherwise expect.