Voodoo Man 1944

Nicholas runs an isolated gas station out in the countryside, a quiet hub where the night shifts feel like they happen at a different pace from the rest of the world. One evening, he gives a young woman driver directions to Twin Falls, then, after she leaves, he calls someone on a special telephone that seems to reach beyond the ordinary. Not long after, two men, Toby, [John Carradine], and Grego, [Pat McKee], block the road with a barricade and uncover a hidden path that leads to trouble. They capture the driver, making her the third missing woman on Laurel Road that month, a grim pattern that the locals begin to fear more and more.

Ralph Benton, a Hollywood screenwriter who [Tod Andrews], turns down his boss’s idea that these disappearances could be fodder for a horror script because he’s about to marry soon. Yet by chance he stops at Nicholas’s gas station, only to drive off again before a pump can reach him, and later he finds himself stranded when the car runs out of gas. The night takes a sharper turn when another woman driver, Stella Saunders, [Louise Currie], arrives at the station with a set of directions that echo the earlier route. This time, Ralph ends up hitching a ride with her, and the two strangers find themselves linked by circumstance more than they expected. Dr. Richard Marlowe, [Bela Lugosi], watches the events unfold on television as the car suddenly dies, and he orders his men to seize Stella, tightening the noose around anyone who might resist.

Stella is brought to Marlowe’s house, and the scientist introduces her to his wife, Evelyn Marlowe, [Ellen Hall], who has been dead for twenty-two years yet remains eerily preserved. Marlowe explains that he is seeking something from Stella—“your will to live, your mind”—to help revive his wife in some unnatural way. The visit to the house leaves Stella shaken, and when Ralph knocks on the door later, no one answers; by the time he returns, Stella and the car are already gone, and concern drives him toward the sheriff for help. Meanwhile, Stella’s disappearance becomes a focal point for the town, and the sense that a sinister ritual is taking place grows stronger with every passing hour.

A voodoo ceremony swings into motion as Stella, Evelyn, and four other women, all in trance-like states, are brought into the room. Marlowe attempts to transfer Stella’s mind and soul into Evelyn’s body, a dangerous experiment that initially seems to succeed but can only hold for a brief moment. The doctor remains determined to locate a woman with “perfect affinity” to restore his wife to life, a goal that consumes the momentum of the night. After a visit from the sheriff, Marlowe resolves to try again with Stella, but a careless slip costs him his chance—Toby had left Stella’s cell door ajar, and she slips free, slipping into a dreamlike state as she wanders along the road.

The sheriff and his deputy chase after the fugitive; they eventually find Stella on the road and bring her back to the Benton apartment, where the tension of the night begins to converge. Nicholas calls Stella back via his voodoo rites, and Ralph and Betty—Betty Benton, [Wanda McKay]—head to Marlowe’s house to confront him. Marlowe reveals a portrait of his dead wife and phones the sheriff, while Evelyn herself briefly appears at the room’s doorstep, seen by Ralph and Betty but not by Marlowe, before an older woman takes her away. After Ralph and Betty depart, Marlowe wonders aloud whether Betty could have “perfect affinity” with his wife, and he arranges for Nicholas to summon Betty while Ralph is on the line with the sheriff.

Ralph races toward the house and interrupts the ongoing ceremony, only to be knocked unconscious by Grego. The sheriff and his deputy arrive just as Evelyn returns briefly to life, and Marlowe fires a final, haunted line—“Soon, we will be together”—before he collapses under the gunshot from the sheriff. Stella and Betty emerge from their trances, the danger subsiding as dawn creeps in over the countryside.

In the aftermath, Ralph turns in a script titled The Voodoo Man to his boss, who asks who should star in it. With a sly wink to the superstition that fuels his plot, Ralph suggests Bela Lugosi as the perfect choice to bring such a story to life on screen.

Soon, we will be together.