Product: Invisible Ghost (UK PAL Region 0)
Rating: 5.0
Late Night Fun
For those who love to pop in these little "B" programmers on a rainy night with a bowl of popcorn this one with Bela Lugosi will certainly do the trick.A good story and a nice cast you've probably never heard of offer "B" fans a real treat in this atmospheric mystery that's strictly for fun. There is some good pacing by director Joseph H. Lewis so the story never lags in its meager 64 minutes. The cops don't seem as dumb as often portrayed in the programmers and when the plot takes a wild turn it doesn't seem hokey but simply part of the story.Lugosi's wife is thought dead but unbeknownst to him is actually being hidden away after a car crash left her mind a mess. He still loves her and pines for her in the house they lived in. His pretty daughter Virginia (Polly Ann Young) lives with him and is about to marry when her husband-to-be is arrested and convicted for one of the muders which have been occuring at the house.Lugosi, of course, is the real killer, going into a trance every time his wife sneaks out, and making it only as far as the house. The attractive maid who has the hots for Virginia's boyfriend gets it first, then the gardner. When Virginia's fiance pays the ultimate price for a crime he did not commit, his twin brother Paul (John McGuire) shows up and romance blooms between he and Virginia despite the murders.The cops are trying to figure out who could be doing the killings and Lugosi senses something may be terribly wrong when he awakens from a trance in his daughter's room. He comes to before anything horrible happens but begins to suspect the unthinkable.It's best not to ask how or why Lugosi's wife only gets loose at night or why her appearance sends him over the edge. This genre of "B" was only meant to be a fun distraction and it succeeds. It is miles ahead of some of Lugosi's Poverty Row stuff during the same period and rates high for fans of "B" horror and mystery films.