Let's get the disappointment out of the way first: Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi are in the same damn movie and never share a scene. That's almost criminal. Universal had two of horror's greatest icons sitting on the same call sheet and somehow decided the best course of action was to keep them apart. Once you accept that—and stop waiting for the Karloff/Lugosi showdown that isn't coming—Black Friday reveals itself as something wonderfully strange.
Watching it in 2026 as the next entry in Karloff and Lugosi's Tales of Gothic Terror – Part One in Umbrella Entertainment's Universal Horror: Monsters and Curiosities (1923–1960) collection, I was reminded that Universal was increasingly willing to leave the castles behind and drag horror into contemporary streets, operating rooms, nightclubs, and the human brain itself. No monsters. No supernatural curse. Just brain surgery, gangsters, buried memories, and science once again doing something it absolutely should not fucking do.
Karloff stars as Dr. Ernest Sovac, a brilliant surgeon whose mild-mannered friend, English professor George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges), is nearly killed after being struck during a gangster's attempted hit on mobster Red Cannon. Sovac saves Kingsley's life through an experimental procedure by transplanting part of Cannon's brain into his skull. Everybody following so far? Good, because Universal is about to slam the gas pedal through the floor. Cannon had hidden half a million dollars before his death, and Sovac realizes that somewhere inside Kingsley's newly modified brain might be the memory of where the money is hidden. What begins as an ethically questionable attempt to save a friend's life becomes something much uglier when Kingsley starts transforming into Cannon. His posture changes. His voice changes. His personality changes. The meek professor disappears and the gangster comes roaring back, bringing old grudges and unfinished business along for the ride.
Stanley Ridges is the reason the whole crazy experiment works. He essentially has to play two completely different men without monster makeup, elaborate effects, or some convenient glowing transformation sequence to help sell it. One moment he's the gentle, slightly befuddled Kingsley; the next his shoulders tighten, his eyes change, and Red Cannon is standing there. It's genuinely impressive, and Ridges attacks the dual role with enough conviction that the movie's pseudoscience stops mattering. Karloff, meanwhile, gets another opportunity to play the scientist rather than the experiment. Sovac isn't evil, which makes him more interesting. He saves his friend first. Then he discovers the possibility of recovering Cannon's fortune and begins nudging the experiment farther and farther beyond anything resembling medical ethics. Karloff plays that moral slide beautifully. He doesn't wake up a villain. He talks himself into becoming one.
And then there's Lugosi. Poor Bela. As gangster Eric Marnay, he's essentially orbiting a movie that never quite figures out what the hell to do with him. He's sinister, suspicious, and unmistakably Lugosi, but his role is frustratingly small, especially considering the advertising potential of putting his name beside Karloff's. Still, whenever he appears, the temperature changes. That voice, those eyes, that effortless sense that somebody is about to have a very bad evening—Lugosi could manufacture menace while reading a restaurant menu. What makes Black Friday particularly interesting, though, is how little it resembles the earlier Karloff/Lugosi pictures. The Black Cat was Gothic psychological warfare. The Raven was sadistic Poe-flavored insanity. The Invisible Ray went cosmic. This thing is practically a gangster picture that wandered into a medical horror movie and couldn't find the exit.
That's ultimately why Black Friday works better than its reputation suggests. The science is complete bullshit. The Karloff/Lugosi pairing is basically a marketing trick. And the movie occasionally feels like three different genres are fighting over who gets to drive. But there's something irresistible about that messiness. Universal horror was changing by 1940, becoming less dependent on cobwebs and castles while exploring identity, memory, personality, and the increasingly uncomfortable idea that science might be able to alter the very thing that makes us who we are. Strip away the gangsters and brain-transplant nonsense and there's a genuinely creepy question underneath: if somebody else's memories, impulses, and personality were placed inside your head, at what point would you stop being you? Black Friday doesn't have the sophistication to fully answer that question. Hell, it barely slows down long enough to ask it. But for a brisk little B-picture about Karloff stuffing a gangster's brain into a college professor, it gives us plenty to chew on.
Universal Horror: Monsters And Curiosities Blu-ray - Umbrella Entertainment Exclusive / Collector's Edition
Home Video Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment
Available on Blu-ray - July 1, 2026
Screen Formats: 1.33:1; Various
Subtitles: English SDH
Video: 1080p
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; nineteen-disc set
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A
Black Friday is absolutely the oddball of the Karloff/Lugosi collaborations, but that's part of its charm. Stanley Ridges delivers a terrific dual performance, Karloff brings intelligence and moral ambiguity to another scientist playing God, and Lugosi does everything possible with a role that desperately needed more of him. The fact that Karloff and Lugosi never actually share the screen remains a gigantic missed opportunity, but once you get past that frustration, there's a nasty, fast-moving little cocktail of medical horror, gangster melodrama, and identity crisis waiting underneath. It isn't The Black Cat. It isn't The Raven. It doesn't need to be. Sometimes Universal's curiosities are interesting precisely because they're weird.
Video
Umbrella Entertainment's high-definition presentation of Black Friday handles the film's more contemporary visual style nicely, preserving strong black levels and natural grain while allowing plenty of detail to emerge from the hospital interiors, nightclubs, offices, and shadowy gangster hideouts.
This isn't the expressionistic playground of The Black Cat, but the cleaner photography suits the film's collision of crime drama and medical horror.
Facial detail is particularly important given Stanley Ridges' transformation relies almost entirely on performance rather than makeup, and the transfer allows those subtle shifts in expression to register beautifully.
Audio
The audio presentation is clean and appropriately straightforward, keeping dialogue crisp while allowing the film's gunshots, street noise, and dramatic score to retain enough weight without artificially beefing up the original mono mix. Karloff's controlled delivery comes through particularly well, as does the sudden tonal shift whenever Ridges transforms from Kingsley into Cannon.
And, yes, whenever Lugosi finally gets something to say, that magnificent voice arrives exactly as it should—rich, unmistakable, and capable of making even ordinary dialogue sound vaguely threatening.
Supplements:
Commentary:
- None
Special Features:
As another entry in Karloff and Lugosi's Tales of Gothic Terror – Part One, Black Friday demonstrates exactly why Umbrella Entertainment's Universal Horror: Monsters and Curiosities (1923–1960) collection works so well as a chronological journey rather than simply a pile of old monster movies.
By this point we've watched Karloff and Lugosi move through Gothic horror, Poe-inspired sadism, cosmic science fiction, and now a gangster-flavored brain-transplant thriller. The collection's hardcover companion book and broader historical material help provide context, but simply having these films gathered together makes the evolution obvious.
Universal was experimenting, sometimes brilliantly and sometimes messily, but almost never boringly. Black Friday is definitely one of the messy ones.
And I mean that as a compliment.
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