"The Corpse Vanishes" might just be the best movie I’ve seen in a year! OK I’m lying, it makes even the average bad movie look like masterpieces of filmmaking. Of all the bad movies I’ve reviewed this one ranks among the worst of the worst. I don’t know though, there are a couple like "The Beast of Yucca Flats" that are working mighty hard for that bottom prize. I like Bela Lugosi, but that doesn’t mean all his movies are great. He’s the one and only bright spot in this whole thing. Otherwise from story to execution this one is just a stinker.

Body snatchers are running off with the corpses of brides who are falling dead at the altar with alarming regularity. It’s the mad scientist Lugosi (or whatever his mad scientist name is this go around) who needs something or other (what it is exactly never comes to light) that he extracts from the young women and uses to cure his own wife of her mysterious affliction - at least temporarily.

Pat, a fashion reporter, stumbles across a clue that nobody else thinks is important and takes that as her cue to hunt down the crooks. When Pat arrives at the doctor’s house and is forced to stay overnight strange things start happening. Will she be the hero or the next victim? Don’t be fooled, though, there’s more suspense in that sentence than in the entire movie.

So the concept itself is kind of strange. Lugosi isn’t just kidnapping/killing women, he’s going after brides in the midst of a crowded event where they are the focus? That’s pretty bold even for a genius mad-scientist. He shouldn’t be that hard to catch and wouldn’t be in reality. I guess part of the supposed fun in this bit of fiction is watching him outwit the authorities (don’t miss the “supposed” in that sentence).

Still, I’ve seen movies with goofy concepts before that worked out OK. In this case there are other problems that hold it back further keeping the experience from being able to overcome the horse-pill plot (being hard to swallow if you didn’t follow my rather vague allusion there). One of my biggest gripes is that the dialogue is bad and the acting is worse. Bela is the only actor worth his screentime.

With that glaring problem it doesn’t help that there are contradictory plot and character elements. Pat’s boss, for example, goes back and forth between wanting a printable story out of the young reporter and wanting to get rid of her for her antics, so much so that it would have been more believable to make him schizophrenic. Another is the bringing to Pat’s attention the clue that sets her upon the story, followed by the complete neglecting of that clue by everyone except Pat including the person that first discovered it. Mixed with an unconvincing plot base all this does is cause the movie to go from bad to worse.