Hollywood genre star Bela Lugosi sailed to England in the late 1930s to make the 11-day wonder known in the U.S. at THE HUMAN MONSTER, arriving on Blu-ray for the first time from VCI Entertainment.

Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Orloff, the wicked head of an insurance company who poses as Mr. Dearborn (in white wig, handlebar moustache and granny sunglasses), the director of a home for blind men. When several of the home’s residents sign over their insurance policies to Dearborn and are then discovered floating around the River Thames, the police are naturally suspicious and mount an investigation. The nasty Dr. Orloff employs various blind vagrants to carry out his dirty work, and he even goes so far as to deafen one of his men, Dumb Lew (Arthur E. Owen), when he suspects him of overhearing too much! Aided by an undercover employee at the home, Diana (Greta Gynt, BLUEBEARD’S TEN HONEYMOONS), the daughter of one of the victims, the police – Scotland Yard Det. Insp. Larry Holt (Hugh Williams, WUTHERING HEIGHTS) and visiting wise-cracking Chicago copper Lieutenant Patrick O'Reilly (comic-relief-providing Edmon Ryan, TOPAZ) – trace the murders to Orloff/Dearborn, the curious young lady is abducted by the doctor’s brutish assistant Blind Jake (Wilfrid Walter, LADY IN DISTRESS). But when it appears as if the doctor is going to add Diana to his tally of homicides, a fight breaks out between towering Jake and the mad Orloff which could mean the end of both of them.

After a 1936 ban on horror films in the U.K. which put production of such films in Hollywood in limbo for several years, Lugosi was finding work wherever he could by the late 1930s, including his appearance in several low budget serials. Although he had already gone to England in 1934 to star in THE MYSTERY OF THE MARIE CELESTE (aka THE PHANTOM SHIP), he would return there for this dual role made the same year that he starred as Igor in Universal’s SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, with the genre now making a comeback after a smash 1938 re-release of DRACULA paired with FRANKENSTEIN. Known in the U.K. as THE DARK EYES OF LONDON and based on the Edgar Wallace story of the same name, THE HUMAN MONSTER gives us a terrific Lugosi performance, and he's actually underplaying his rather sadistic dual character role and making palatable the more contrived elements of the script by John Argyle, Patrick Kirwan, director Walter Summers and Jan Van Lusil. When Lugosi is guised as the seemingly kindly (and seemingly sightless) Dearborn, his voice is dubbed by British actor O. B. Clarence in a curious pairing that somehow works well on screen. It’s also a treat to see Lugosi, with his heavy Hungarian accent, juxtaposed against the English cast and even American Ryan (who has some great lines like, “Don’t they ever shoot anybody in this country?”).

In its native U.K., the film would be the first to get slapped with an “H” certificate (meaning “horrific” and no persons under 16), and it’s actually quite nasty for the time especially in it depictions of homicide, as well as the gruesome wide-shouldered, Frankensteinian “monster” played by respected Shakespearean stage actor Walter, who reportedly helped create his character’s effective make-up. Highlights of the menacing Jake include him chasing heroine Diana around a darkened room, attacking criminal Grogan (Alexander Field, THE WOMAN EATER) in a bathtub before the police can arrive at his flat, and of course the climatic scuffle with no-good Orloff. With the film being shot at Welwyn Studios and on location, director Walter Summers maintains an effectively eerie mood throughout, making optimal use of the fog-shrouded Thames setting and the grotesque society of vagrants. Even with the impressive production values, it fits right into the “Poverty Row” horror category, especially since it was released in the U.S. by Monogram Pictures in 1940 (afterwards, Lugosi would star in nine deliciously low-rent programmers for the company). With the film being especially popular in West Germany, it was there that a 1961 remake was produced, THE DEAD EYES OF LONDON, which was part of a popular cycle of cinematic Edgar Wallace mysteries, and it featured Tor Johnson look-alike Ady Berber as Jacob "The Blind Jack" Farrell, sort of an updating of THE HUMAN MONSTER’s Blind Jake.

VCI presents THE HUMAN MONSTER (under that title and not THE DARK EYES OF LONDON) in a transfer restored in 2K from a 35mm fine grain print. It’s in 1080p HD and pillarboxed full frame. The film elements do show their age from time to time, but the image is largely clean and free of excessive blemishes. After a rather soft title sequence, the black and white picture settles in with tight grain, decent grey scale and deep-enough black levels. Textures and detail are not perfect, and contrast is occasionally overblown, but it’s obvious that no significant digital tampering was done and the picture is filmic and more than acceptable overall. As this title has been in the public domain and done to death on VHS and DVD, what’s present here is far better than what’s been available before (including the Roan Group DVD from 2000). The English LPCM 2.0 mono track is adequately presented, with surprisingly clear dialogue and consistent sound levels. Optional English subtitles are included.