It Was NOT "Black Narcissus," Hons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                    Oh, girls, I am telling you, "Black Friday" was one  strange  movie!  A mixture of gangster film noir, "Frankenstein," and "Dr. Jekyll And  Mr. Hyde," it did not exactly congeal, but has several  outstanding features.

                                   Let's start with Bela Lugosi playing a gangster, with that "Dracula" voice.  How strange is that,  loves?????????????????  He is  even forced to fall into a  body of water by a bay; how undignified.  And, in the most macabre irony I have ever seen,  he is killed off but being  entombed  alive, in  a closet,  whose  door is  blocked by a refrigerator?????????  This,  for  the man  who defined "Dracula" on screen??????????????

                                   And how about that shadowy stairwell set, clearly recycled from Universal's 1934 "The Black Cat," which Svengoolie  showed  several  weeks  before?

                                    Boris and  Bela  give it  their all; they are real pros.  But the two most interesting performances in this film, are given by Stanley Ridges,  as Professor George Kingsley,  who sometimes morphs into gangster Red Cannon, thanks to a surgical  procedure Karloff performs on his friend,  Kingsley, to save his  life.  The transformation, and acting, are  both so brilliant, David did not at first  get it was the same actor.  Ridges presents both side of  the human psyche, in a  performance that is  chilling, and  easily the  film's best.

                                        Then there is Anne Nagel, as hard bitten nightclub singer, Sunny Rogers.  She is  almost camp.  I love the reference  about her being  given  money to get out of trouble she  got into  in Chicago.  (The film takes place in New  York City.)  This is one  dame, whose back story I want  to know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                            Not  the usual "Svengoolie" fare, but interesting to get an opportunity to see so  seldom shown a film!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                               Oh, hons,  I am  telling you,  the great B-movies of the Forties!  How many of you still remember Sheila Ryan,  Kane Richmond, and Stephanie Bachelor??????????????????

                                                  "Gonna take a sentimental journey," darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!