ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Curt Siodmak wrote the screenplay for this fascinating examination of the idea that a damaged brain can be repaired by grafting on healthy parts from a donor brain.

"Black Friday" suggests that such a brain would combine the personalities and memories of the two.

College professor Stanley Ridges and a notorious gangster are both involved in auto accidents and brought to a hospital. Surgeon Boris Karloff attempts to repair the professor's damaged brain by borrowing portions from the brain of the injured gangster. The strange procedure is an apparent success because Ridges lives.

Another gangster (Bela Lugosi) wants to find out where the dead gangster hid $500,000, so he takes Ridges to New York, hypnotizes him, and convinces him that he is the dead gangster.

*------*------Spoiler Alert!-----*------*

This story is so imaginative I can't help discussing it in detail, but if you don't want to know what happens, don't read on.

Ridges commits several murders and then visits the dead gangster's girl friend, displaying intimate knowledge which only the dead gangster would possess. Ridges gets the hidden loot and then kills both Lugosi and the girlfriend for trying to double cross him. In a twist ending to beat all twist endings, Karloff must kill Ridges when the professor-gangster threatens Karloff's own daughter — and then Karloff is sent to the electric chair for murdering the man he turned into a killer by saving him with a procedure that killed the murderer who donated the brain parts!

An incredible film from director Arthur Lubin, music by Hans Salter.

Lugosi was originally cast (and filmed a few scenes) as the man whose brain is saved by Karloff's odd surgery, but the footage was scrapped and Ridges replaced him. Lugosi took the gangster role instead.

A bizarre experiment was performed by the filmmakers when they shot a scene in which Lugosi's character suffocates in an airtight closet. With reporters present on the set to witness the event, Lugosi was put into a trance by a professional hypnotist and told that he was actually suffocating.

As a result, the scene has a disturbing strangeness about it, even for viewers who know nothing about the odd circumstances under which it was filmed.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Watch the trailer to hear the story of how Bela Lugosi was hypnotized and placed inside a closet after being told he was suffocating, in a misguided attempt to get a very realistic performance from him.

I've heard the story is true, and it worked too well. Decide for yourself. Here's the trailer and the movie.

Enjoy!

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___________Black Friday - 1940 - Official Trailer


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_____________________Black Friday (1940)


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Rick]

[Bud Brewster]

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I got that stuff about the hypnosis stunt and the casting change from a film reference book back in the 1990s (don't remember which) when I wrote the above review (along with 680 others, just for fun). All reference books are hit-or-miss when it comes to accuracy, so your suspicions on this matter are probably right.

Ditto for the questionable accuracy of IMDB's trivia items (which I've contributed to myself quite often, so they'll obviously let just anybody submit those things . . . )