It's hard not to get excited when you come across a film featuring both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, but 1940's Black Friday features a somewhat disappointing and certainly unusual pairing of the two legendary stars. Not once do the two men appear in the same scene, and Lugosi's character is actually a rather minor one. As for Karloff, you won't find him hidden behind a mummy's shroud or dressed up as Frankenstein in this one (and it's always nice to actually see Karloff's own true face). Rather than playing a monster, Karloff gets to try his hand at creating a monster this time around. As the film opens, we meet Dr. Ernst Sovac (Karloff) on his way to the electric chair, and the notes he gives to a reporter tell the story of his downfall. Sovac's best friend was George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges), a mild-mannered college professor of English literature, who was critically injured when a group of mobsters tried to kill their former partner Red Cannon. Kingsley had serious brain damage and could not survive; knowing that Red Cannon had a spinal injury and was nothing but a low-down dirty criminal to begin with, Dr. Sovac made the decision to transplant part of Red's brain into Kingsley's. He saved his friend's life, but Kingsley soon began to act strangely. About this time, the good doctor found out that Red had half a million dollars hidden somewhere, and he took Kingsley to Red's old stomping grounds in New York hoping that the vestiges of Red in his friend's brain would lead him to the money. Unfortunately, Red actually began taking full control of his new body at times and set about systematically killing his old partners. Kingsley had no consciousness of the things Cannon had done when his persona reemerged, but events soon began to catch up with the dishonorable Dr. Sovac, making his bid for the loot all the more desperate.

The real horror of this movie is Sovac's increasingly criminal ambitions and disregard for his best friend's life and sanity. Lugosi's role as a gangster is something of a bit part for him to be playing, and even Karloff is somewhat overshadowed by the performance of Stanley Ridges as Kingsley/Cannon. The casting of this movie does have an air of controversy around it which does much to explain Lugosi's throwaway role. Reportedly, Lugosi was originally to play Dr. Sovac, with Karloff taking the role of Kingsley. Some say Lugosi couldn't pull the part of Sovac off, which I don't buy for a second; the truth of the matter, it seems to me, is that Karloff wanted the part of Sovac for himself. Thus did Lugosi end up with a minor part in the movie, and there may have been some lasting resentment on his part as a result. There is one very interesting aspect to Lugosi's otherwise forgettable performance, however. The trailer to the film claims that Lugosi, in order to make the scene more realistic, was hypnotized to actually believe he was suffocating when his character is shut up inside a small room; I have not found any corroboration for this claim as of yet, but the scene itself lost some of its luster when Lugosi's character began suffocating after only a couple of minutes in what was basically just a closet.

The whole brain transplantation idea is left rather vague, but the main flaw of Black Friday is the fact that some striking physical changes are wrought in conjunction with the transformations of Kingsley to and from Cannon. I can run with the transplant idea, but the notion that Kingsley's gray hair and wrinkles disappear when Cannon takes over is just a little much. Other than that, I was actually quite impressed with this film. In its own way, it does feature something of a novel twist to the whole Jekyll and Hyde motif, the action is compelling, and the cast is especially good for what could be considered a B-movie.