EDITOR’S NOTE: Bowery at Midnight was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, April 10, 1971 at 11:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 7, 1973 at 11:30 p.m.

Criminology professor Brenner (Bela Lugosi) is also Karl Wagner and in addition to teaching, he also runs the Bowery Friendly Mission, where he feeds the unhoused but is also getting new members of his criminal army, which includes Doc Brooks (Lew Kelly), an alcoholic drug addict who knows how to make zombies.

Sure, alright.

Somehow, Bela’s character is able to do all of that and be a happily married man and he’s not exhausted by all of that. I mean, I’m tired just typing that out.

Meanwhile, Richard Dennison (John Archer) gets involved as his girlfriend Judy (Wanda McKay) works in the soup kitchen. He also gets killed, brought back as a zombie and somehow ends this film feeling perfectly fine. You know, he got better. He’s also a student of Brenner, so coincidences are everywhere in this.

Zombies in the basement are effective at eliminating corpses. That’s the lesson from this movie. Monogram is pretty great because their movies exist in the universe of their films, as East End Kids and The Corpse Vanishes posters are visible.

You can watch this on Tubi.