Voodoo Man is a 1944 horror film about a scientist who attempts to revive his dead wife by transferring the life essences of several hapless young women he has kidnapped and imprisoned in the dungeon beneath his mansion.
Directed by William Beaudine (Billy the Kid versus Dracula; Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter; Ghost Chasers) from a story and screenplay by Robert Charles (Return of the Ape Man). The movie stars Bela Lugosi, John Carradine and George Zucco.
Plot:
Nicholas runs an isolated gas station in the countryside. One night, he gives a young woman driver directions to Twin Falls, but after she leaves, he notifies someone via a special telephone. Two men, Toby and Grego, block the road with a traffic barricade and uncover a previously hidden road. They capture her; she is the third woman motorist reported missing on Laurel Road that month.
Plot [contains spoilers]:
Hollywood screenwriter Ralph Benton turns down his boss’s suggestion that these disappearances would make a good horror script, as he is getting married soon. By chance, he stops at Nicholas’s gas station, but drives off before the attendant can pump any fuel. He runs out of gas.
Meanwhile, another woman driver, Stella Saunders, stops at the station and receives the same directions. This time, however, Ralph hitches a ride with her. It turns out she is to be the maid of honor at the wedding of her cousin Betty to “some sap from Hollywood”: himself. Doctor Richard Marlowe watches by television as the car is mysteriously disabled. When Ralph leaves to seek help at a house visible in the distance, Marlowe orders his men to kidnap Stella.
Marlowe introduces Stella to his wife Evelyn … who has been dead for 22 years, though she is mysteriously preserved. He tells Stella that he wants something from her to help his wife, “your will to live, your mind”.
Nobody answers when Ralph knocks on the door of Marlowe’s house, and he returns to find Stella and the car gone. When he eventually sees Betty, he learns that Stella is missing and goes to the sheriff.
Marlowe, Nicholas and the others prepare a voodoo ceremony. Stella, Evelyn and four women zombies are brought into the room. Marlowe tries to transfer Stella’s mind and soul into Evelyn’s body to bring her back to life. It works, but only briefly. Marlowe remains determined to find a woman with “perfect affinity”.
After a visit from the sheriff, Marlowe decides to try again with Stella, but Toby left her cell door open, and she escapes, though in a trance-like state. The sheriff and his deputy find her on the road and take her to the Benton apartment. Toby finds out where she is, and Marlowe goes there to offer his medical expertise. He says she just needs some rest.
Nicholas summons Stella using voodoo. Ralph and Betty go to see Marlowe. He shows them a portrait of his dead wife. When he telephones the sheriff, Evelyn wanders into the entrance of the room and is seen by Ralph and Betty but not Marlowe, before an older woman takes her away.
After Ralph and Betty leave, Marlowe wonders if Betty might have “perfect affinity” to his wife. He has Nicholas summon Betty while Ralph is phoning the sheriff. Ralph sets out in pursuit and arrives in the middle of the ceremony, but is promptly knocked out by Grego. The sheriff and his deputy arrive just as Evelyn returns briefly to life. The sheriff shoots Marlowe, who tells his wife “Soon, we will be together,” before dying. Stella and Betty come out of their trances.
Ralph turns in a script titled “The Voodoo Man” to his boss, who asks who should star in it. Ralph suggests … Bela Lugosi.
“Voodoo Man could easily have ranked with some of Lugosi’s better Monograms: it’s eerie plot, which combines futuristic science with black magic, had good possibilities […] Unfortunately, the opportunity is in many wasted. The film brims with egregiously poor dialogue, repetitive situations and more than a few dead spots, and Carradine and Zucco play the most demeaning roles of their careers.” Tom Weaver, Poverty Row Horrors! book
“The movie’s whole zombie element primarily comes across as parading women around as visual objects, Marlowe’s experiments amount to a veritable machine for female objectification, with women going in one end and women’s bodies coming out the other.” Peter Dendle, The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia book
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Cast and characters:
Bela Lugosi … Doctor Marlowe
John Carradine … Toby
George Zucco … Nicholas
Wanda McKay … Betty
Louise Currie … Sally
Tod Andrews … Ralph (as Michael Ames)
Ellen Hall … Mrs Marlowe
Terry Walker … Alice
Mary Currier … Mrs Benton
Claire James … Zombie
Henry Hall … Sheriff
Dan White … Deputy
Pat McKee … Grego
Mici Goty … Housekeeper
Technical specs:
1 hour 2 minutes (62 minutes)
Audio: Mono
Black and white
Aspect ratio: 1.37: 1
Production:
Filmed in October 1943. During production, co-producer Sam Katzman told UPI Hollywood correspondent Frederick C. Othman: “I call this a moron picture. I have made a number of these films and I claim there must be something wrong and anybody who goes to see ’em… Just look at me, making all this money and with a fancy house and swimming pool. Do I deserve it? For making moron pictures?… This is a cockeyed business. We dream up these hokey stories and we hire some actors and a fine director like Bill Beaudine. Then the money flows in as if we were great geniuses. We’re not. We’re just lucky to be sitting in the right seats.” quoted from EOFFTV
Read more about Voodoo Man in Guilty Pleasures of the Horror Film book
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