Billed as a horror film, Black Friday is actually a pretty standard B-movie film noir with just a touch of science fiction.
When his friend is severely injured in a car accident, Dr. Ernst Sovac (Boris Karloff) takes matters into his own hands. Brain matter, that is. Dr. Sovac transplants a piece of a gangster’s brain into the skull of Professor Kingsley (Stanley Ridges.) By doing so, he not only hopes to save Professor Kingsley’s life but prove the validity of his secret research into the workings of the human brain.
After his release from the hospital, Professor Kingsley begins showing drastic changes to his personality. He’s prone to sudden outbursts of rage and is unusually irritable. Dr. Sovac discovers that Red Cannon, the dead gangster who’s brain he used, was hiding $500,000 somewhere in New York City. With that money, Dr. Sovac could build a laboratory to continue his brain experiments. Dr. Sovac’s motives change and he tries to lure Cannon’s dark personality out of the mild mannered professor. Under the guise of medical treatment, Dr. Sovac takes Professor Kingsley to New York to introduce him to Red Cannon’s old stomping ground with the hopes he can locate the missing money.
Not long after Dr. Sovac and Professor Kingsley arrive in New York, the Professor (believing he is Cannon) approaches Sunny Rogers (Anne Nagel,) the gangster’s old girlfriend, and startles her with his intimate knowledge of Cannon’s habits. Cannon’s old gang, now led by Eric Marnay (Bela Lugosi,) believes that Red tipped someone off to the location of the money. When members of Cannon’s old gang start getting murdered, Marnay intends to find the person responsible before it’s too late.
Though Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi get top billing in Black Friday, their performances take a back seat to third-billed Stanley Ridges. Playing both the bookish Professor Kingsley and the hardened criminal Red Cannon, Ridges completely fooled me into believing different men played each role. It wasn’t until the end of the movie that I realized that an actor wasn’t credited for Cannon’s performance. I can think of no higher praise for an actor than being able to literally disappear into a performance.
Karloff plays Dr. Sovac with appropriate menace but is undermined by expository notebook sequences that literally spell out what is going on. Lugosi is largely wasted in what barely amounts to a supporting role and never shares a single scene with Karloff. It makes their top billing even more misleading. This was their final film for Universal and theater audiences most likely were disappointed that the two titans of terror never appeared together on-screen.
Billed as a horror film, Black Friday is actually a pretty standard B-movie film noir with just a touch of science fiction. Directed by Arthur Lubin (1943’s The Phantom of the Opera,) the film moves at a brisk pace. Clocking in at just over 70 minutes, this movie is as lean as one could expect. Yet, there’s a feeling that it could have been much better considering the casting and the credentials behind the camera. As it is, it’s quite entertaining but ultimately a minor disappointment.
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
