In 1942, the L.A. Times called Wallace Fox’s Bowery at Midnight “maybe the most farthest fetched of the Bela Lugosi films.” Given Lugosi’s filmography up to that point, that is indeed saying something significant. With such offerings as Murder by Television (1935), The Phantom Creeps serial (1939), and Spooks Run Wild (1941) in the intervening years after Dracula, one might well question that reviewer’s assessment. Bowery at Midnight does indeed push the disbelief suspension quite far, but in fact, these very surrealistic, logicstretched aspects of the film set it apart from conventional B-picture horror fare and place it squarely as a weirdly compelling proto-noir, in the same— albeit less polished—vein as Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942). Fox capitalizes on viewer associations with Lugosi’s vampire roles, making the ensuing narrative about underground criminal networks, drug addiction, and class privilege much deeper than those of typical scare features and displaying the unapologetically violent, logic-averse, and morally ambiguous elements of film noir that would come to define the cycle.

As film noir developed, elements of post-WWII angst, including gender role shifts and global fears of communism and nuclear annihilation, became some of its significant themes. However, the roots of noir are solidly found in Depression-era economic and social crises, with 1930’s pulp fiction depicting these crises and functioning as the source material for so many film noir narratives. At the core of these crises is the crushing sense of instability engendered by the Depression fallout. The depth of this instability is emphasized by Philip Hanson, who argues that “[i]ntensifying the collapse of prosperity was the sense that the reputations of society’s pillars had been illusory; intensifying the dissolution of respected reputations was a fear that fundamental American values had themselves been an illusion.’” It is these sensibilities that hover around the edges of Bowery at Midnight, centered on the ironically named “Friendly Mission”—soup kitchen on the outside, but criminal headquarters on the inside. Lugosi’s apparently kindly Karl Wagner operates the establishment, offering “food for your body, as well as counsel for your troubled mind.” The down-and-out clientele prefer Wagner’s secular approach to social reform, as one comments approvingly, “Most places you go to, they want to save your soul.”