Manufacturer: Digiview Productions  SRP: $1.00 (Cheap!)

This seems to be a new Golden Age for small, independent manufacturers who specialize in video entertainment of a cheap, public domain variety.  Sure, these fly-by-night little outfits and their product tend to have varied degrees of quality, both regarding their transfer material (usually due to poor source material to tranfer from) and packaging, but they nonetheless possess a certain charm the majority of the time (well....49% of the time) that must be noted. New to the scene, Digiview Productions, seems to be leading out on the right foot.  With discs popping up in various Wal-Mart chain stores (this may be a regional promotion, so one may have to search a little to find them), they have shown a tendency to offer several genre titles and a flair for really nice packaging (attractive cover art contained in a slim version of the classic plastic clam-shell case, think FOX Home Video's Futurama season box sets) for an incredibly affordable price....one dollar American, baby!  Now, the majority of their catalog is available from other manufactuers (Alpha Home Video comes to mind), but I've seen nodody as CHEAP as these guys....

This time around on the Cheap-Ass Report, HKC has decided to devote the space to acknowledging his love for one of the  true masters of horror, Bela Lugosi.  Why?  Because I've been a big fan for years, and.....well...basically, I ended up purchasing several poverty row Lugosi flicks that they are offering....stuff trhat I'd been meaning to pick up on disc for a while (as an excuse to retire my ancient VHS copies of), but just never got around to doing so.  First off, there was The Corpse Vanishes, a little ditty ol' Bela churned out  in 1942 that sort of sets the standard for the majority of the types of roles he was forced to take because of type-casting during the period...here, he plays a mad scientist who kidnaps and murders young brides so's he can make hormone extracts from them to keep his elderly wife youthful.....or, keep from transforming into an ape....or for his advancements in giant bat research....or something.  You get the idea....Bela wasn't showing too much range in his performances at this point in his career.

Oh...waitaminnit...here's the giant bat thing- The Devil Bat (1941).  For some odd reason, I've always loved this flick.  1.)  Bela is at his maniacal goofy-ass ham acting extreme in it.  2.) It's got Dave O'Brien (from Reefer Madness) as the hero reporter.  And, finally....3.) A big honkin' rubber bat menaces the country-side, a result of Lugosi's experiments that seem to involve some Strickfadden devices and a fruit bat. Awesome. I can remember a local independent UHF station in the area during my childhood running this thing, Bowery Boys flicks, and syndicated re-run episodes of M*A*S*H and The Andy Griffith Show for what now seems like an eternal rotation on their late night schedule....fun, goofy stuff.

Scared To Death (1946) is noteable for being the only color feature Lugosi ever starred in.  It's also noteable because of the fact that it was believed for years to have been lost by genre VHS collectors, when in actuality it wasn't, there just wasn't that many copies out there.  This may have been due to the fact that Leonard Maltin's video guides (up until recently) had listed it as never being available on VHS. It's nothing spectacular plot-wise, just a rehash of Lugosi's mad scientist and/or hypnotist roles of the time....only in color.  It may just be my opinion, but Bela just doesn't look right in color.  It's weird, I know...but nonetheless true.  Little person thespian Angelo Rossitto stars as Bela's dwarf servant Indigo.  Rossitto,  a frequent collaborator of Lugosi's during his poverty row period,  had a career that reached as far back as the silent days, was a cast member of Tod Browning's infamous Freaks (1932), had bit parts in 1950s B-movie classics such as The Mesa of Lost Women and Invasion of the Saucer Men, was "Seymor Spider" and "Clang" on 1970s television's "H.R. Pufnstuf", was the monster from the egg in Galaxina, and found fame in one of his last roles as the Master half of 'Master/Blaster' in the 1985 post-apocalyptic blockbuster, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome......

To finish off this installment devoted to Digiview's Lugosi offerings, we have quite possibly the best pre-Romero zombie flick ever made- White Zombie (1932).  And here you probably thought it was just the name of an industrial heavy metal band.... Still effectively creepy with atmosphere to match the hardest thing to believe about this flickl is the fact that the Brothers Halperin (director Victor and producer Edward) snagged a then-hot Lugosi (who was still riding on the success of the previous year's Dracula (1931) for Universal) for six hundred bucks to star in this classic cult film.....