"The Corpse Vanishes" is not Bela Lugosi best film for Monogram, but it's not his worst either. In it he plays a doctor who has poisonous scented orchards sent to young brides to wear at the alter. When the women are presumed dead, Lugosi and his crew steal their bodies and Lugosi uses their youth serum to make his aged wife look young again. The wife is played coldly and ineffectively by Elizabeth Russell. A reporter who is more than a bit like Rosalind Russell's "Hildy Johnson" in "His Girl Friday" goes to the doctor's home to investigate. The reporter is played by Luana Walters. Joan Barclay is pretty as one of the brides. Minerva Urecal, as the female member of Lugosi's mob, has some awful lines of dialog to speak. The cheap looking stone wall with the arched doorway in Lugosi's laboratory was one of Monogram's shoddiest props and it showed up again in a Bowery Boys flick.
Review of The Corpse Vanishes
