EDITOR’S NOTE: Voodoo Man was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 1, 1969 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, August 1, 1970 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, October 9, 1971 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, April 14, 1973 at 11:30 p.m.
Originally written as Tiger Man by author Andrew Colvin — uncredited, of course — Voodoo Man was made in seven days along with Return of the Ape Man and was the last film that Bela Lugosi would make for Monogram.
If you understand the bottom-feeder ecosystem of Poverty Row cinema, you already know what kind of magical shortcut-filled ride you’re in for. Monogram Pictures was never accused of spending too much time or money on artistic polish, but what they lacked in budget, they often made up for in sheer chutzpah.
This movie really has a dream cast. For me at least. There’s British character actor George Zucco (House of Frankenstein, The Mummy’s Tomb) as a gas station owner whose primary job is essentially tricking unsuspecting motorists into taking wrong turns so they can be conveniently ambushed. And there’s Bela Lugosi as a doctor who captures gorgeous women and takes their life essence—or tries to, anyway, in a desperate bid to resurrect his long-dead or catatonic wife, Evelyn, who is preserved somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of his sprawling, dimly lit mansion.
And oh yes, John Carradine as the assistant who plays the bongos. Carradine sleepwalks through the proceedings with his characteristic theatrical majesty, stroking the hair of the various hypnotized zombie girls locked away in the cellar and lending a genuinely strange, poetic cadence to lines that honestly shouldn’t work at all. Watching these three horror titans—Lugosi, Zucco and Carradine—bounce off each other in a rushed, sixty-minute Monogram programmer is worth the price of admission alone, even if the plot starts dragging its feet about halfway through.
Our hero Ralph (Tod Andrews, who played the doctor in The Baby) of course comes through by the end, untangling the sinister local network of backroad kidnappings, rescuing the damsels, and putting a stop to the mad doctor’s cosmic soul-swapping aspirations. But what truly elevates the picture into meta-textual territory is its closing stretch: Ralph then writes a script about his experiences called Voodoo Man and suggests that Bela Lugosi appears in it. Yes, they made self-referential, fourth-wall-breaking Hollywood inside jokes back in 1944, long before it became a standard trope of modern postmodern horror-comedies.
Voodoo Man was directed by William Beaudine, a legendary industry workhorse affectionately or derisively known as “One-Shot” Beaudine, who shot fast, moved faster, and directed hundreds of motion pictures across multiple genres. Later on, Beaudine would helm Mom and Dad, which is widely regarded as perhaps the most important and financially successful exploitation movie of all time, as well as delightfully bonkers genre-mashups like Billy the Kid Versus Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.
The production background of Voodoo Man is just as entertaining as the fiction on screen. Producer Sam Katzman was famously unapologetic about churning out low-brow product for quick profits, once boasting to the press about how much money he made off these “moron pictures” while utilizing competent directors and game actors to milk every last nickel out of the box office. y.
You can watch this on Tubi.
