105-The Corpse Vanishes

Film Year:  1942
Genre:  Horror, Thriller
Director:  Wallace Fox
Starring:  Bela Lugosi, Luana Walters, Trisam Coffin, Minerva Urecal, Elizabeth Russell
MST Season:  1
Featured Short:  "Radar Men from the Moon:  Chapter Three - Bridge of Death"

The Short

In one of the cooler Commando Cody cliffhanger payoffs, Cody rockets out of the cavern above the molten lava that threatened to trap him.  After that it’s business as usual as Cody is threatened by the Moon Men thugs’ ambush, leading up to an exploding bridge.

Three episodes into Commando Cody and probably the best thing that can be said for it is that I’m not sick of it yet.  Don’t worry, that’ll change.  The repetition is annoying but the pulp flavor isn’t quite worn down yet.  This chapter at least has the awesome lava sequence.

Commando Cody will be taking the next episode off, but don’t worry, he’ll be back.

The Movie

Various brides begin dying on their wedding day, and their bodies disappearing on their way to the morgue.  A female reporter investigates a mysterious orchid each girl receives just before the ceremony, leading her into the home of a mad scientist (Bela Lugosi).  He has been kidnapping the woman and stealing neck fluid to keep his wife young.

This daffy movie is almost a precursor to The Leech Woman, which also told of an aging woman who regained her youth through the magic of neck juice.  The poverty row production of The Corpse Vanishes can’t even reach the low bar of that film, which at the very least told the story with imagination.  This movie just makes it a basic mad doctor tale, with little else.

The film does try to present the story with the hook of the mystery the reporter is following, though it tends to lose its mystique with early scenes featuring Lugosi performing his experiments.  And as we find out what he’s doing the premise doesn’t quite make sense, as he kidnaps women on the most public day of their lives and leaves a clear visible pattern for follow for anyone with half a brain.  He is clearly not the brightest, nor the most threatening, villain Lugosi has ever played.

If I might make a suggestion to a Lugosi film with a similar premise, maybe check out Murders in the Rue Morgue, which also sees him kidnapping women and performing dastardly experiments on them.  It’s not a great movie either, but it’s stylish and interesting.  The Corpse Vanishes is neither.

The Episode

I don’t mean to be a contrarian.  It just kind of happens.  Most people think the first season doesn’t pick up until about halfway through while I find these earlier episodes more enjoyable than the later episodes of the season (with some exceptions).  I theorize it’s because I’m a bit more intrigued by poverty row crap like The Corpse Vanishes than colorful chores like Moon Zero Two and overexposed bad movies like Robot Monster.  But is the riffing worse in these earlier episodes?  I don’t really think that’s true.  I find myself laughing a bit more in Mad Monster or Crawling Eye than I do in others, personally.  So it might be the unpopular opinion, but these first four episodes of the national series (not counting the out of order Women of the Prehistoric Planet) tend to hit my rotation more than most others in the first season.

The Corpse Vanishes as an episode doesn’t quite live up to how much I enjoy the previous three episodes, and yet it’s one I like to pop in on a rainy day.  The movie is pure inane nonsense, so much so that it makes Servo’s head blow up at the end.  The riffing is very patchy, sometimes commenting just to comment while in other moments providing precision comedy.  The guys relish having a recognizable star in Bela Lugosi on their screens, and really play with his theatrical presence here.  The episode is mostly enjoyable when he is on screen, though it tends to slog when we focus on the reporter characters.  The final wedding scene and kidnapping of our female lead is a bit of a highlight, which ends the episode on a strong and funny note.  And while they usually struggle with Commando Cody, this week’s isn’t too bad.  There’s some solid flow with the line delivery, and the zingers land on target more often than not.

One of the worst things about this episode is their new “solution” to the film/silhouette contrast issue.  They abandon the eye-strain shifting color of the last few weeks in favor of turning our riffers green, and while it’s an improvement boy is it ugly.  The color burns itself into your retinas and never leaves.  And get ready, we’ll have to stare at this for two more episodes.

The host segments feature two remakes from the KTMA season, including one of the all-time greats of this era, the barbershop segment from Cosmic Princess.  The segment is still a goodie, parodying small-town small-talk with some wonderfully wacky scenarios being conveyed.  There’s also a repeat of the tag segment from Humanoid Woman, which is lightweight but fun.  We also have Good Thing/Bad Thing and an invention exchange involving a flaming flower and a recycled gag from the Green Slime pilot, the Chiropractic Helmet.

I’m going to give The Corpse Vanishes a more humble grade than previous episodes, though for the most part I like the episode.  I don’t laugh that often during it and it slows down pretty often during some rough patches.  I guess the same can be said for most first season episodes, though I tend to watch films like this with the greatest of ease, making me softer of the episode in general.

Average

The DVD

The Corpse Vanishes sees release on Shout Factory’s Volume XVI set, with great video and audio.  The only special feature is a trailer for the film.