An unusual horror movie that nonetheless provides an entertaining spectacle for the viewer, Bowery at Midnight comes across as a convoluted mess with a random nonsensical ending. An enjoyable yet confusing film.

Béla Lugosi, masterfully as always, plays the famous Professor Brenner; a psychology educator by day; but at night he runs a bowery (a shelter and soup kitchen for the poor), under the alias Karl Wagner. Mr. Wagner isn't the saint he seems however; he secretly runs a criminal gang and collects the corpses of escaped convicts, serial killers and other undesirables; giving them to the drug-addict Doc Brooks (Lew Kelly) to experiment on first. It's up to the good-hearted Judy Malvern (Wanda McKay) to find out what's going on.

However, in the last 5 minutes it randomly becomes a zombie movie. Sort of. Surely a coincidence that Universal Pictures had released 3 successful Frankenstein movies over the previous 11 years ... but to be fair, the random inclusion of the undead is foreshadowed around the half-hour mark and the 15 minute mark. They disappear again for the ending however. Whatever...