| Mid 19th century Paris: weird Dr. Mirakle (Lugosi) travels with the carnival sideshows, exhibiting his pet gorilla Erik and marketing it as some 'ape-man evolutionary link.'
But what his audience doesn't know is that, after the shows, Mirakle sneaks through the city streets at night, kidnaps young women, tortures them and then drains them of their blood...finally killing the poor things.
It seems Mirakle needs human female blood for use in his bizarre experiments to create an ape-woman for Erik! (Say what?)
Local med student Pierre (Waycoff) and his girlfriend Camille (Fox) stumble into Mirakle's nutty web, but it's anybody's guess whether they can extricate themselves before lovely Camille falls prey to the mad doc's terrible schemes.
This 1932 horror may not boast the strongest of plots. But it's certainly worth seeing for Lugosi's electrically-charged performance.
His portrayal of the Darwin-obsessed Mirakle yields up some creepy acting from the horror icon. And he's sporting one of his coolest looks ever in this one.
Check out those hypnotic closeups of Bela during Mirakle's opening stage appearance.
Bonafide midnight fun.
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