Night Monster (1942)

Zombos Says: Very Good

“Do you hear that?” asked Zombos.

“Hear what? It’s quiet,” I said, puzzled by his question.

“That is my point: the quiet. The cicadas have gone quiet.” He looked over his shoulder.

“By George, you’re right. I wonder what…” I looked over my shoulder, though I wasn’t sure why.

We had been walking the beach close to the mansion, enjoying the West Egg summer night’s mix of sticky humidity and soft breeze coming off the water. With the sudden quiet, we had stopped and were now intently looking at the dense woods a few feet away on our left.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I reassured him. “Come to think of it, it reminds me of that movie…let me think…the one with that swami guy, Bela, and those croaking frogs that stop croaking in the middle of the night just before a murder happens.”

“Oh, you mean Night Monster,” said Zombos, not taking his eyes off the woods.

“That’s it!” I said, not taking my eyes off the woods, either. “You know, we should retreat to the cinematorium for a showing.” Zombos agreed wholeheartedly and we dashed back to the mansion, looking behind us every so often as we ran. Though I’m not sure why.

An old dark mansion, blood stains that keep appearing in the carpeting, and thick fog swirling off the slough; if that’s not creepy enough for you, Night Monster, an unusual Universal B-horror movie energetically directed by Ford Beebe, also has Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, and some thing—scaring the croaking frogs into silence—going around killing people inside the brooding Ingston Towers mansion and outside it.

Of the many B-movies that Universal churned out in the 1940s, Night Monster stands out as a tidy little exercise in country-gothic horror, and, while not truly a mystery, although it plays like one, it retains an eerie atmosphere with its fast-paced tale of grotesque preternatural goings-on, Hindu mysticism, and familial madness at the Ingston Estate nestled deep in the southern woods.

Curiously enough, while Lugosi and Atwill are given top billing in the opening credits, both have only supporting roles: Lugosi plays the persnickety butler, Rolf, and Atwill is Dr. King, whose mortal coil is shuffled off rather early in the movie. They make the best of their limited time onscreen with enough preening and posturing between them to satisfy any fan of the classic horror genre. Perhaps Lugosi was supposed to be the plot’s red herring, but if so, that aspect of his role got lost in the translation from script to screen.

Evil things are afoot at the old Ingston homestead. One look at Torque (Cyril Delevanti), the sour, hunched-over gatekeeper, and Sarah (Doris Lloyd), the starch-collared and tight-lipped housekeeper, is enough to see the household is not doing all that well. Margaret Ingston (Fay Helm) worries she’s got hereditary bats in her belfry, so she invites psychiatrist Dr. Harper (Irene Hervey) to visit and bring a cup of sanity. Kurt Ingston (Ralph Morgan), her crippled brother, stews in his own juices, cynical of the modern medicine that failed him, and hating the three doctors responsible for his disfigurement. Yet he invites them to a little-dinner-and-a-lot-of-vitriol weekend to see a demonstration of something beyond their science, beyond the natural laws of nature, courtesy of his very own yogi master, Agor Singh (Nils Asther).

Surprisingly, the important Hindu mystic role is not played by Lugosi, who did wear a turban as Chandu the Magician in The Return of Chandu, and as psychic, Tarneverro, in The Black Camel. Instead, Asther, an actor born in Denmark, provides the foreign accent and dark features this time around, perhaps necessarily less than Lugosi would have mustered given his iconic gravitas.

It’s when Agor Singh does his after-dinner demonstration for the guests, calling forth a skeleton from an ancient tomb far away to appear out of thin air, with blood dripping from its outstretched bony fingers, that the story takes a welcomed spooky detour from the usually more straightforward B-movie fare. Singh has been teaching Kurt Ingston the ancient art of cosmic substance control. With his mind properly trained, Ingston can replace his amputated legs with new ones created by his mind, enabling him to walk again; or instead, he could kill those incompetent medical bastards one by one with his new, cosmic stuff-filled limbs.

I wonder which way he’ll go? A puddle of blood is found where the skeleton appeared; an odd byproduct of the arcane mind control, comments Singh. A quirky little toss away detail that adds a touch more to the weirdness.

Jack Otterson’s (The Mummy’s Tomb) art direction and Charles Van Enger’s camera build a gothic atmosphere and slick gloss for Beebe’s movie. Enhanced by moody, terror-tense music, some of it previously heard in The Wolf Man, the secluded mansion’s menacing shadows, secret passageways, and flickering, fireplace-lighted gloom, all surrounded by a miasma of swirling fog, show a hypnotic palette of images. Window-frame shadows play across daytime interiors, and ominous shadows cast by furniture give a noir-ish textural depth to ordinary scenes, showing unexpected creativity and artistic preference in this budget production. The sudden quiet of the boisterously croaking frogs, followed by the screech of a door opening in the garden, signals the approach of the monster, a clever gimmick to heighten the suspense. In the 2007 movie Dead Silence a similar technique is used to equal effect.

The air of dread and impending doom is sustained by the mansion’s characters and their questionable intentions: Laurie (Leif Erickson) the chauffeur has nothing but dames and hanky-panky on his mind, but it’s not clear what else he’s involved in. Rolf acts sinister and supercilious until the bodies start showing up, and Sarah secretly has the hots for Kurt Ingston and looks guilty just standing around.

Providing comic relief are Constable Beggs (Robert Homans), who investigates when Millie (Janet Shaw) the maid is found strangled next to a puddle of blood, and Dr. Phipps (Francis Pierlot), the diminutive physician with a penchant for gland research. The more serious romantic roles are handled by Dick Baldwin (Don Porter), a mystery writer invited to the little gathering by Kurt Ingston (okay, why invite a mystery writer?), and Dr. Harper, who’s trying to get to the bottom of Margaret’s fears.

The weird murders happen fast and furious. While Dr. King is strangled off-camera, the discovery of his body is shown through the reactions of others, followed by a close-up of his lifeless clenched hand.  Dr. Timmons is surprised in his room next as a silhouetted figure steps out of his closet, its shadow growing larger on the wall as it lunges toward him. A close-up of his lifeless hand is shown. Then timid Dr. Phipps is attacked when he opens his bedroom door, thinking it is Laurie come to take him away from the mansion. We see him through the killer’s eyes as he recoils in fear, unable to scream as death approaches.

In the climax, Dr. Harper and Baldwin make a dash for it as the frogs stop croaking and the garden door creaks open, while Margaret decides to throw a hissy-fit with Sarah and play with fire. Will the killer be revealed? Will Dr. Harper ever get her blasted foot unstuck from the rotted foot bridge that Dick insisted on fleeing across? Will we ever find out why the, up-till-now, very reserved and strong-willed psychiatrist starts screaming like a B-movie girl instead of concentrating on getting her foot unstuck before Dick gets his ticket punched by the monster?

I’m sure you’ll enjoy finding out.

Special thanks to HHWolfman at the Universal Monster Army. While at the 2007 Monster Bash, I mentioned I wanted to review this neglected film. He soon surprised me with a copy of it, hot off the back of a hearse. Thanks HH. Thanks also to Richard Scrivani, who screened it at the Monster Bash, rekindling my interest in it.