Horror Classic 17 of 50: THE MAD MONSTER

One unexpected result of watching a bunch of cheap old horror movies is that I've developed a familiarity with the now long-forgotten studios that released them. On doing some academic research (i.e. clicking around Wikipedia), I've learned a little bit more about "Poverty Row," which was the collective name given to all the tiny, low-budget studios who used to crank these things out.

One such Poverty Row studio was Producers Releasing Corporation. They produced last
week's Dead Men Walk, so I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for when I realized that this week's The Mad Monster, from 1942, was also unleashed on the world by PRC.
But I watched it anyway. After all, I've come this far. I can't turn back now!


Synopsis
George Zucco of Dead Men Walk is back again, this time as Dr. Cameron, a mad scientist who lives in a big ol' house in some kind of swampy area. As the film begins, Dr. Cameron is the happiest mad scientist on the block, because his big crazy experiment is a
success! His colleagues all said he was a madman, but he's proven them wrong... and he proceeds to celebrate by gloating in front of a roomful of said colleagues.

Oh, but the colleagues are transparent, and they appear and disappear into thin air. At first I thought they were ghosts, but then I realized they were all in his imagination. Who's mad now, guys? Wheeee!

So, Cameron's experiments involve injecting a human with specially treated blood from a wolf, and his test subject is his slow-witted but good-hearted and loyal gardener Petro. Sure enough, when Cameron sticks Petro with a needle, Petro grows long hair and a beard. Cameron has invented were-hippies! With really bad teeth!

Later we meet Cameron's daughter, Lenora. She wants to move away from this ol' swamp house back to the city so she can be close her to sweetheart, Tom the investigative reporter. But the doc tells her they're not going anywhere. Sorry, Lenora.

The next night, he wolf-erizes Petro again, but this time he sets him loose to roam the neighborhood. And what does Wolf-Petro go and do? He kills a little girl! That's not cool, man. Not cool at all. When he wakes up in human form, Petro has no memory of any of it. Dr. Cameron simply tells him he's been sleepwalking. That there is some pretty hardcore sleepwalking. I mean, I used to sleepwalk some in my early teens, but I never committed murder. The worst thing I ever did in my sleep was entering the Indianapolis 500 with an expired valid driver's license.

Now, what happens in these movies when a mysterious killer strikes? I hope you said "An angry mob forms," because that's the correct answer. Meanwhile, Tom the reporter shows up, eager to get to the bottom of the story. His theory is that the murder was perpetrated by an upright-walking prehistoric lizard that somehow managed to survive for millenia in the swamp.

Which is completely wrong, but it does sound like the premise for one of these movies... Maybe there's a film out there somewhere called The Upright-Walking Prehistoric Lizard Who Survived Extinction and Now Kills People, and it has a reporter character who suggests a theory of scientifically engineered werewolves.

Let's see, what happens next? Dr. Cameron keeps shooting up Petro every night. He even gets the poor guy to do his dirty work for him, siccing him on one of those ex-colleagues who used to shun him. And then some other stuff happens, and then the whole thing ends with a house going up in flames, just like in Dead Men Walk, which isn't
so surprising considering they were both made by the same studio. They must have gotten a good deal on matches.

Is It Scary?
Well, the monster is pretty ugly.

Lessons I Learned

• Don't try to rush evolution. Just be patient
• If a mad scientist offers to let his gardener give you a ride into town, say NO.

My Favorite Line
There weren't many gems in this one, but I did like it when Dr. Cameron snapped at his skeptical fellow scientist: "How would you like a pair of donkey's ears? That would fit your level of insight!" Burn.

Body Count
Five by my count, including that poor, defenseless little girl, and that horrible, defenselessnessless Dr. Cameron.

Comments
•Probably my favorite thing about this movie was the way George Zucco pronounced the word "madman" the same way you would pronounce the last syllable of the names Sherman or Kurtzman: "I am not a madmin!" Other than that... eh. As is often the case with these movies, even 76 minutes seemed like an unnecessarily long running time for the
amount of actual plot.

•Dr. Cameron was a real jerk. After last week's vampire, I have to wonder if George Zucco ever played any nice guys.

•Although the titular monster is essentially a werewolf, he's a product of science rather than magic, unlike any other movie werewolf I've ever seen. But I'm still a bit surprised the word "werewolf" doesn't appear in the title. Maybe they just liked alliteration.

Also, Cameron mentions the possibility of creating an army of werewolves to fight in wars... but isn't that a really bad idea? The precedent set by Petro suggests that they would be very bad at taking orders, and probably would only go around killing enemy and ally alike, all willy-nilly.

•Speaking of Petro, that's how his name was spelled in the credits, but everyone pronounced his name as "Pedro," except for Tom, who said it like "Pietro."

•I already linked to it once, but check out the Wikipedia article for this movie. It reads like a second grade book report.

Letter grade for The Mad Monster: D

Next film in the 50-movie set: Maniac. I hope it features a monster played by Jennifer Beals.