Spooks Run Wild

In Brief: The second of Bela Lugosi's Monogram Nine, Spooks Run Wild, mixes horror with comedy as it finds Lugosi going up against producer Sam Katzman's other major property of the era, The East Side Kids, a slightly cleaned-up version of The Dead End Kids from Sidney Kingsley's play (and film) Dead End. In other words, these were comic juvenile delinquents (though hardly as sanitized as they'd become when they transitioned to The Bowery Boys). It's a silly trifle of a personality vehicle that presents Lugosi in one of those roles where he does things of a mysterious and/or sinister nature simply because he is Bela Lugosi — and because, in this case, he has a dwarf sidekick (Angelo Rossitto). In a movie like this, that's enough of a reason. It mostly involves the Kids seeking shelter in his Old Dark House after one of them gets shot in the local cemetery ("How ... unfortunate!"), then concluding that he's the serial murderer known as the "Monster Killer." (In fairness, his actions do lend themselves to that interpretation.) As filmmaking, it's no great shakes. As a Lugosi picture, it has quite a bit going for it.