Corpse Vanishes, The
Entry updated 11 March 2024. Tagged: Film.
US film (1942; vt The Case of the Missing Brides). Banner Productions. Directed by Wallace Fox. Written by Harvey Gates from a story by Sam Robins and Gerald Schnitzer. Cast includes Tristram Coffin, Bela Lugosi, Frank Moran, Angelo Rossitto, Elizabeth Russell, Minerva Urecal and Luana Walters. 63 minutes. Black and white.
As she says "I do," a bride collapses and is declared dead; the mortuary staff arrive, to be told the body has already been removed. Reporter Pat Hunter (Walters) is thrilled: "It's sensational. Another kidnapping of a dead bride." – there having been three other recent cases. Nonetheless the forthcoming wedding of Miss Wentworth goes ahead after assurances from the District Attorney that there will be a heavy police presence. Pat attends, but for her paper's Society column, not – as she would prefer – to investigate the bigger story. Before the wedding begins the bride receives a gift, an orchid: she wears it down the aisle, duly dying at the alter. She is driven to the mortuary with a police escort but the van is hijacked and her body taken to a laboratory where an old woman weeps. The head abductor puts on a lab coat and inserts a syringe below Miss Wentworth's right ear, extracting a fluid which he mixes with a chemical then injects into the distressed woman (see Medicine). He now whips Angel (Moran), an idiot, for showing interest in the corpse, whilst an amused dwarf, Toby (Rossitto), looks on – they are the sons of his dour assistant Fagah (Urecal) – and when he returns to the woman, she is young and beautiful.
Meanwhile, Pat's photographer finds the corsage and hands it to her: she sniffs it and feels faint. Investigating, she learns the other dead brides wore an orchid too: an expert identifies the species as a hybrid created by Professor Lorenz (Lugosi), who lives nearby. A scared taxi driver refuses to take her to the professor's house but she is given a lift by Dr Foster (Coffin), who is helping Lorenz find a cure for the Countess (Russell), his sick wife. He admits the couple are eccentric, confirmed by Pat's first sight of the pair: he is playing the organ as the Countess sits on a throne-like chair, staring into space – the audience recognize them as the abductor and weeping woman. A storm means Pat has to stay the night, which proves eventful: the professor comes out of a wardrobe and stares at the sleeping Pat, then goes to stare at Dr Foster. Whilst he does so, Angel enters Pat's bedchamber and begins stroking her hair: she screams and runs into the corridor seeking Dr Foster – opening one door she finds Professor Lorenz and his wife asleep in open coffins. Finding the secret door in the wardrobe she enters and eventually reaches a room where Angel is now stroking Miss Wentworth's hair; another woman's body is nearby. The Professor, tired of this behaviour, throttles Angel: the watching Pat faints and awakes in her bed, the professor assuring her she must have had a bad dream.
She departs, but later Dr Foster meets up with Pat and her editor to report he has looked around the house and found a moss used to grow orchids; yet Lorenz said he had not grown orchids for several years. Dr Foster also believes his previous inability to notice anything odd going on was due to being Hypnotized. He adds Lorenz is "a physicist and a Scientist of great ability" and his wife, though "she has the appearance of a young woman, her heart and arteries indicate that she's at least seventy or eighty years old" and theorizes that the brides – not dead but in a cataleptic state – are used as "human guinea-pigs to sustain his wife in a youthful state" (see Rejuvenation), using extracts from their glands. As they lack evidence, the editor agrees to a fake wedding to trap Professor Lorenz: but he kidnaps Pat, not the fake bride; Toby is shot as they flee. When his mother, already upset at the loss of one son, learns this she mortally wounds Lorenz; he throttles her, but before dying Fagah manages to stab the Countess. Dr Foster and the police now arrive and the film ends with Pat's and Dr Foster's wedding.
The Clichés of the genre are played out in perhaps too comfortable a setting; a castle atop a bleak hill would seem more fitting. However, this dissonance does add a little humour – though the use of a dwarf and the mentally handicapped to covey wrongness is uncomfortable to modern eyes. The plot is heavily flawed – weddings seem to be very rare events in the city – and the ending rushed, but The Corpse Vanishes is a reasonably entertaining trashy Horror film – short, bizarre and eventful – with Lugosi and Russell giving good performances. [SP]
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