Midnight Mission

I'm not sure Bowery at Midnight (1942) is technically a horror movie. But it does star Bela Lugosi, and it isn't NOT a horror, so...

It starts with a prison break. The escapee overhears some bums mention a soup kitchen so he heads over. He finds a genial and generous Bela Lugosi presiding. Bela takes him aside and reveals his secret: Bela knows that he is an escaped safecracker, and offers to take him on a job. They rob a jewelry store safe, and then Bela has his henchman kill him. Bela is the jewel thief who leaves a dead henchman at each job. Must make recruitment hard - no, we just saw how easy it is.

It turns out that Bela has been living not just a double life (philanthropist and thief) but spends his days teaching psychology. With a specialty in criminal insanity (mwa-haha!). John Archer is one of his students, and coincidentally, is dating a nurse who works at the soup kitchen.

One day, Tom Neal (Detour) stumbles in with some wounds, and the nurse (Wanda McKay) treats him. Then Bela decides to take him into the fold. He takes in to his hidden underground lair, where his assistant, a mad junkie doctor Lew Kelly, plays with and disposes of his corpses. 

One day, Archer goes to visit his girlfriend at the mission and finds that his psych professor is moonlighting there. This starts things unraveling. McKay goes looking for Archer, and bribes the doctor with his "prescription" to let her find the underground lair. I'll skip some of the best parts (Bela killing his henchman by throwing him off the roof into a crowd - acts as a diversion - for instance), and just mention the almost-horror element: The doctor offers to hide Bela, and throws him in with the corpses - that he has been re-animating! But there's only a split second of this zombie plot. 

So, triple role for Bela, including one murderer, a junkie mad doctor, jewel robberies, Tom Neal, and so much more, all in about an hour and three minutes. This is real value.