John Stanley, in his Creature Features Strikes Again movie guide, wrote: “Fuzzy, unadjusted Bela Lugosi whodunit in which two brothers…are involved with development of TV. There’s also a death ray…” Death rays were all the rage in the 1930s. Television must have been very mysterious and wondrous back then. Now, you can watch “television” on your cell phone, which kind of kills the wondrous aspect of it as we’re so over-saturated with streaming content. We’re spoiled rotten. Now, if my cell phone had a death ray…well, I’d be staring at it in wonder. I don’t think anyone’s written about putting death rays in cell phones yet, so you heard it here first. Then again, what if you pressed the death ray button instead of the camera button? On second thought, death rays on cell phones may prove disastrous for selfies. But I digress. There’s an interesting article in this pressbook, Lugosi Make-Up Filmland Wonder. My guess is it’s a fluff piece someone thought up, but I don’t recall reading about Lugosi’s talents with makeup. Usually, Lon Chaney was the one often mentioned, who puttied around with–oh, look, a pun!–the greasepaint and collodion.
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