The Mad Monster (1942)

The Mad Monster, directed by Sam Newfield and produced by Poverty Row studio PRC, has mad scientist Lorenzo Cameron (George Zucco) turns his handyman (Glenn Strange) into a wolf man. Sounds familiar?

The Wolf Man was first announced on February 11, 1941, and The Mad Monster on July 31, 1941 — months before The Wolf Man even started shooting. Clearly, PRC followed the trades closely and were determined to beat Universal at their own game (as were Fox with The Undying Monster and RKO with Cat People). Indeed, the small company seems to have regarded The Mad Monster as a kind of prestige film. With a running time of 77 minutes, it’s longer than many “B” and some “A” pictures of the time, and longer than The Wolf Man as well — though, frankly, it could well have been cut down to a leaner 60 minutes.

For a film riding on the tail of The Wolf Man, The Mad Monster has remarkably little in common with its more prestigious forerunner, once we get past the very basic premise: A man turns into a monster. There is no curse, no full moon, no father conflict in The Mad Monster, nor does the film provide as much pathos for his shape-shifter as The Wolf Man had done for its tragic hero Lawrence Talbot, as played by Lon Chaney jr. Instead, The Mad Monster’s focus is on mad scientist Dr. Cameron, using his dim-witted handyman Petro — a character the film doesn’t much care about — to take revenge, as Lionel Atwill had done to Lon Chaney jr in Universal’s Man Made Monster (1941), even though Glenn Strange’s portrayal of Petro is reminiscent of Lennie (Lon Chaney jr again) in Of Mice and Men (1939).

The film’s other main inspiration seems to have been PRC’s own The Devil Bat (1940) — another mad scientist gleefully taking revenge on his enemies. But whereas The Devil Bat had a curious quasi-comedic flair, with Bela Lugosi clearly relishing his role and, perhaps encouraged by comedy pro Jean Yarbrough, having a field day spouting ominous “last greetings” to his victims until they turn into a running gag, The Mad Monster is a rather grim affair in more than one way. By making Petro a halfwit, the film denies us the opportunity to sympathize with him; it’s as if somebody had decided “Let’s make a werewolf movie, but we can do without a whining, hand-wringing character!” Petro, who never quite understands what’s happening to him, is a mere tool in the hands of Dr. Cameron, who is the actual Mad Monster.

For anyone who’s watched their share of old horror films, George Zucco’s behavior in The Mad Monster will come as a surprise — it is, in a way, the most baffling aspect of the film. Adept at sophisticated villains, Zucco could both underplay his characters (as he did in Universal’s The Mad Ghoul (1943), again as an evil scientist turning an innocent man into a monster, delivering a rather realistic, subdued portrayal) or, for example in The Mummy’s Hand and as Moriarty, offer enjoyably larger-than-life — but still intelligent and, in their way, even subtle — performances. (For a rare sympathetic and quite charming Zucco performance, watch Lured (1947)).

But in The Mad Monster, Zucco, from his first moment on screen, lays it on incredibly thick, rolling his eyes, raving and rant­ing like … well, simply like mad. It’s almost as if PRC had tried and failed to get Lugosi, and Sam New­field told Zucco to “play it like Bela”. (Clearly, that wasn’t what happened, for when Zucco played a vampire in Newfield’s Dead Men Walk (1943), it was a recognizable Zucco performance.) As far as I am aware, only one other time can Zucco be seen in a similar acting mode: After he’s been stabbed on Fog Island (1945).

What happened? Well, it seems that Zucco simply took his job seriously. There is method in this madness, for Dr. Cameron may be the maddest scientist of his time. The movie takes pain to establish that fact right at the beginning, when we see him arguing with his imagined foes, the former colleagues of his university, whom he imagines sitting, ghost-like, around the table. They had booted Cameron out for his crazy ideas, which, for the benefit of the audience, he now reiterates:

„You are aware, of course, that this country is at war. That our armed forces are locked in combat with a savage horde who fight with fanatical fury. Well, that fanatical fury will avail them nothing when I place my new serum at the disposal of the War Department. Just picture, gentle­men, an army of wolf men!“

It is indeed a crazy idea, and the film, somewhat surprisingly, actually acknowledges that fact by having one of the professors sensibly ask how one is supposed to administer Cameron’s antidote to a million wild animals. (“Poor Cameron,” notes Tom Wea­ver. “Even in his own daydreams, he can’t win an argument.”)

The werewolf soldier idea, by the way, will play no part whatsoever in the film. In fact, the whole bit of Cameron arguing with the figments of his own imagination could be cut in its entirety without leaving a gap in the narrative: It exists solely to make it clear that Cameron is not merely your run-of-the-mill over-en­thu­siastic scientist, whose theories are, after all, correct, and who will eventually meet his doom merely because of his ethical failings. No, Cameron is a lost case: Even though he has succeeded in turning a man into a wolf man, he needs to erect a delusional scheme on top of it; nothing is left of him but a psychotic thirst for revenge. (Throughout the movie, his ex-colleagues are painted as decent, rational men: Only in Cameron’s fevered imagination are they his enemies. Lugosi’s character in The Devil Bat had been similarly deluded, but that film, and Lugosi’s performance, made us root for the villain.)

Having committed the gaffe of proposing the absurd “werewolf soldier” scheme, Cameron feels that he cannot vindicate himself before his ex-colleagues even though he actually is able to change a man into a monster and back. It would not suffice to simply demonstrate that feat — the real problem is not science, but Ego. As he tells the figments of his imagination:

“You robbed me of everything that I held most dear in life — position — honor — respect! You branded me as a madman, held me up for ridicule before the whole world!”

Cameron is a traumatized victim gone irredeemably toxic: Even if he managed to obliterate all his “enemies”, there’d still be a void in place of his self, while Lugosi’s mad scientist in The Devil Bat would probably have happily retired. Like the villains of the later Herman Cohen productions, Cameron is an angry, resentment-filled shell, and like the Cohen films (and The Mad Ghoul), The Mad Monster depicts the “rape” of an innocent by an older man. In a curious scene, actor Glenn Strange seems to forget his character and stops talking in the “Lenny” manner, reverting to the slurred speech of a halfwit only when he is slapped by Cameron. It is almost as if Cameron’s bad influence went even beyond injecting him with a wolf serum.

Even more curious is the way Newfield keeps staging the action of Cameron administering the antidote to Petro. It happens three times in the film, and each time we see Cameron effectively moun­ting the beast, with a hasty fade out to avoid icky details. It is not quite clear why this is necessary — the monster is tightly strapped down on a couch, after all. Why not give him a shot in the arm? Clearly, somebody involved felt that there was a point to be made.

Thus, Zucco is not hamming it up: What we see is not the actor going over the top, it’s the character having gone over. It is a courageous and entertaining, though somewhat monotonous performance, as Zucco lacks the built-in charm of a Lugosi and Cameron is allowed only two ways of behavior: Either act deviously or go on another rant. Even a pleasant chat with his daughter quickly turns into a threat-filled diatribe, with Cameron getting progressively louder and raising on his toe tips, until he suddenly snaps out of it, offers his daughter a paternal kiss and smilingly bids her good night.

(It should be pointed out that Petro, in wolf persona, kills a little girl — a shocking moment, even though it happens off-screen. If we take Petro to function as Cameron’s “Id”, Cameron’s relationship with his daughter — who, throughout the film, remains oddly unaware that her old man isn’t playing with a full deck — takes on a quite unpleasant undercurrent.)

Director New­field, instead of emphasizing Cameron’s mania, watches all this in one static two-shot. Indeed, much of The Mad Monster has the quality of a cold, detached clinical case study: The “sympathetic” characters are drawn so sketchily that it’s hard to care about them, the villain is off-putting and unpleasant, and everybody slowly makes their way to their prescribed destinies in something which is not quite reality, missing a few colors from the palette, or perhaps some dimensions — a quality also in evidence in Newfield’s other horror films, Dead Men Walk (1943), The Monster Maker (1944) and The Flying Serpent (1946), and distinct from, say, the slapdash lunacy of Monogram horrors — often worse-made films, but just as often more entertaining ones.

On the technical side, the film’s effects are rather well-done for the budget level. (The make-up itself is less effective, especially when the wardrobe department puts a hat on the monster.) The double expositions and lap-dissolve transformations look fine, and the film even attempts a clever way of hiding a dissolve: When Glenn Strange is transforming in a car, moving windshield wipers are placed between him and the camera. While not successful, the shot is still pleasing in that we find a film which is supposed to be utter dreck showing some ambition.

Jack Greenhalgh’s photography, while perfunctory in most dialogue scenes, makes the film look better than it perhaps deserves. He offers some atmospheric images, the fog-drenched swamp scenery is impressive in its dime store way, and Greenhalgh even manages a genuinely scary shot or two. As a matter of fact, a few moments are done so well that, were there more of them, The Mad Monster might have turned into a little gem. (Watch She Oughta Said No/Wild Weed (1949) for proof that Newfield and Greenhalgh were capable of better things.)

The score (credited to David Chudnow, but likely library tracks) is mostly annoying. No film deserves it, but it least it isn’t as surrealistically jarring as the tracks inflicted upon Return of the Ape Man.

Between Zucco’s ravings and Glenn Strange’s Lenny take-off (as embarrassing as his wolfish performance is effective), nobody else has a chance to leave an impression. The actors portraying Cameron’s ex-colleagues offer competent, if flat, performances, and Anne Nagel and Johnny Downs suffer the usual fate of juvenile leads in those movies: They stand in our way while we want to see madmen rave and monsters kill.

Reviewers were mostly bored.

Film Daily: Slow-moving horror pic (…) Fred Myton has woven a monotonously paced screenplay out of a fantastic, far-fetched idea.

Motion Picture Daily: The ingredients of this type of melodrama are all here in abundance (…) — but they fail to add up much suspense or consistent thrills.

Harrison’s Report: Discriminating audiences will be considerably bored with its triteness.

Variety: A childish, almost naive attempt to inject horror, and its situations, rather than being tense, are ludicrous. Leftover dialog and warmed-over situations of this nature are strung together.

New York Daily News: George Zucco glowers his way through the role of the two-way mad scientist. And poor Glenn Strange, as the foolish fellow, who, with childish faith, lets the doctor work on him, is so simple that he is repulsive.

Hollywood Reporter: By the simple expedient of using competent and personable actors, PRC has turned out a thriller-diller that can stand up with the best of such product on the market.

In his thesis Realism, Fantasy, and the ‘H’ Certificate: Rethinking Horror Cinema in Britain during the 1940s, Paul William Frith re­veals that the British BBFC rejected The Mad Monster in July 1942, “although attempts to appease the BBFC with a new treat­ment (…) came in the form of a reworked script submitted that September, accompanied by the less conspicuous title ‘Professor Cameron’s Experiment’”. In this version, “the various scenes which form the main subject of the story are really a form of a dream which Cameron has whilst suffering from a breakdown due to overwork”.

Alas, it didn’t help. Only in 1952 was the ban lifted, and even then the BBFC demanded a disclaimer:

The public would be quite mistaken to think that any personal characteristics could be passed on by blood transfusion. Animal blood is never used for transfusions in the treatment of disease.

Imagining the mental state of the British public, ca. 1952, may be more frightening than anything within The Mad Monster.