Movies with Lugosi

Watching a Bela Lugosi DVD collection makes me appreciate that even though I prefer Boris Karloff as an actor, Lugosi is way better than I frequently think of him (seeing him mostly in the Z movies and Ed Wood messes he made in later years has distorted my judgment).
MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932) reworks Poe’s mystery story into a Mad science thriller with Lugosi plotting to inject women with ape blood for some unfathomable reason (the Mexican Doctor of Doom with ape-brain-to-women’s-skull transplants would make a good double bill) while art student Pierre Dupin (Leon Waycoff) pieces together the terrifying truth in time to save his fiancée from becoming the latest guinea pig. A great turn by Lugosi (though his curly hair reminds me of Harpo Marx!) with a surprisingly lurid shot of one woman tied up (reminiscent of some of the shudder pulps) but a very unconvincing man-in-gorilla-suit at the climax.“We shall know if you are to be the bride of science!”
THE BLACK CAT (1933) is the best of Lugosi’s team-ups with Karloff: Lugosi plays a kindly Great War veteran who stops off with two honeymooners at Karloff’s isolated mansion to settle an old score, play a game of chess and save the young bride from Karloff’s Satanist cult. Great looking and well played, with both stars squaring off while they were still equals (though the fact Karloff was already identified simply as “Karloff” shows his star was rising).“Like evil, the black cat can never die.”
THE RAVEN (1934) is the only team-up of the two stars where Lugosi gets the biggest role (but he’s ranked under Karloff in the credits) as a deranged, Poe-admiring surgeon whose response to the pain of a broken heart is to subject the girl, her lover and the girl’s father to Poe-esque deathtraps with the help of tormented scarface Boris Karloff. A weak film buoyed up by great performances from the leads; Karloff’s Man They Could Not Hang would make a good double bill with it’s similar deathtrap-ladedn house. “Death does not have the same significance for me that it does for you.”
THE INVISIBLE RAY (1936) has a radiation-tained Karloff (apparently using the same hair stylist as Lugosi in Rue Morgue) using his deadly touch to destroy the men he believes cheated him of both his wife and his Great Discovery (“Radium X!”), using the eponymous death ray to mark their deaths by melting statues of them. This ought to be a classic, but stumbles by devoting so much screen time to Karloff’s other research, and to the safari hunting radium x, so that the horror part feels awkwardly squeezed in. It would also work better if Lugosi were as black-hearted as Karloff thinks instead of a good guy. “My eyes have always looked 200 years ahead of yours.”
BLACK FRIDAY (1940) is what my friend Ross classifies as a “just enough” film—i.e., a straight drama with just enough horror or sf to trick a fan of those genres into watching. Karloff plays the neurosurgeon who saves brain-dead English professor Stanley Ridges by transplanting a dying mobster’s brain into Ridges’ skull. When Ridges starts to show some of the gangster’s memories (curiously this assume transplanting a complete brain doesn’t transplant the personality, so the gangster is only a lingering presence, a la Hands of Orlac) Karloff tries to exploit it to get the gangster’s hidden loot before rival mobster Bela Lugosi finds it (his subordinate role shows how much his status dwindled by comparison to Karloff). Ridge does an excellent job and Karloff turns in a solid performance, but this is a dull film; Curt Siodmak did much better dealing with similar themes in Donovan’s Brain. “He always liked me to knock the same way.”