The Mad Monster (1942) User Reviews

Poverty Row Werewolf Thriller!

[bsmith5552 · 5/10 · 18 December 2004]

"The Mad Monster" is another of the low budget little horror movies turned out by poverty row studio PRC in the early 1940s. In spite of some of the comments that I've read on this picture, I rather enjoyed it.

Basically the plot involves mad scientist Dr. Lorenzo Cameron (George Zucco) experimenting on his dim-witted assistant Petro (Glenn Strange), turning him into a werewolf. It's the old story of a scientist trying to create a super race in order to build an invincible army and you guessed it, take over the world. At the same time Cameron seeks revenge on those who had publicly humiliated him when he first presented his ideas, by turning his mad monster upon them.

Director Sam Newfield gives us an entertaining little movie. In spite of its limited budget, it provides a creepy mist filled atmosphere, as the monster stalks its victims. It also aided by the casting of Zucco and Strange as the two principal characters.

Strange plays Petro not unlike "Lenny" as played by Lon Chaney Jr. in "Of Mice and Men" (1939). He also does a creditable job as the werewolf of the piece, again not unlike Chaney in the Universal series. Zucco was PRC's resident horror actor, a sort of a poor man's Karloff, and was always excellent in these roles. Strange usually played the Chaney like parts for PRC.

The standard hero Tom Gregory (Johnny Downs) and heroine Lenora Cameron (Anna Nagle) round out the cast.

If you are a fan of the old B & W "B" horror flicks of the 40s, then I'm sure you'll like this one.

The Mad Monster was not a very exciting horror movie

[tavm · 4/10 · 21 June 2018]

In writing reviews of werewolf movies I found on YouTube for the next several days, here is one on a production made by the lowest of the Poverty Row studios-PRC. George Zucco is the Mad Scientist wanting to create wolfmen so they can aid in the fight during World War II! But he also wants revenge against his former fellow colleagues at his previous institution. His patient is a mentally challenged farm hand played by Glenn Strange who would later take over the Frankenstein monster role at Universal after Boris Karloff didn't want to do it any longer. Also in tow is Zucco's daughter Anne Nagel who I just reviewed in Man Made Monster. Like in that one, she also falls for a reporter here played by a former Our Ganger from the silent era, Johnny Downs. One notable appearance is that of Mae Busch-formerly a usual Laurel & Hardy antagonist-as Susan who I think was the mother of that little girl who's fate was not good...My verdict: this movie seems to lumber its way through 77 minutes with not much of a music score, too many repetitious lines, and not much action till the end. In fact, part of me felt like sleeping while watching. So on that note, The Mad Monster is worth a look but no more than that.

"I wish I had a lot of book learnin' so I could understand what this is all about"

[capkronos · 4/10 · 14 October 2008]

Thankfully you don't need a lot of "book learnin" to understand where this thing's going... Obviously a poverty row cash-in on Universal's big hit THE WOLF MAN (which was made just one year earlier), this finds the always-watchable George Zucco in another of his patented "mad doctor" roles as brilliant, vengeance-minded scientist Lorenzo Cameron. Cameron, who has set up shop deep in the swamp lands of what I'm presuming is the Louisiana bayou, is plotting revenge against four of his former peers who both humiliated him and forced him to resign from his previous job. You see, they scoffed at his claims of being able to mix man with beast to create an unstoppable army of wolfman creatures that would come in handy during war-time. Thankfully Cameron has found the ideal test subject for his wolf blood injections - a hulking, child-like half-wit named Petro (Glenn Strange). Petro is pretty clueless as to what's going on, doesn't ask too many question and lets the doc strap him down to a table and shoot him up with whatever happens to be in his syringe. This results in a time-lapse change of man turning into a werewolf. Cameron lets him out of the mansion using a secret passageway, so you basically get a big guy (Strange was 6'5") dressed in overalls with a bushy beard, hairy paws and a set of over-sized plastic teeth, running around in the woods the majority of the time. After an eyewitness sees the beast and a little girl is killed, the locals grab their rifles and organize a posse to hunt it down. Dr. Cameron, who can control the beast with a whip and also has a handy antidote to reverse the effect, also drags Petro along to the big city to try to track down the professors who had made a mockery of his original theories and destroyed his reputation in the process. Also hanging around the house is Cameron's daughter Lenora (Anne Nagel), as well as Lenora's nosy reporter boyfriend Tom (Johnny Downs), whose first inclination is that they're dealing with an upright-walking prehistoric creature (!)

Though a typically chintzy PRC flick in many ways, with unimpressive sets, cinematography and make-ups, as well as a fairly bland supporting cast, it remains watchable thanks to the histrionics of star George Zucco. I have no clue why Downs received top billing; he shows up half-an-hour in and really doesn't have a whole lot to do, nor is he all that impressive doing it. This is Zucco's show all the way and he's great ranting and raving, talking to himself while fantasizing that he's talking to his peers ("I'm not interested in your imbecilic mouthings!") and temporarily sliding in and out of sanity. Strange seems to have patterned his performance as the hilariously naive and slow-talking semi-retarded country bumpkin around the entire oeuvre of Lon Chaney Jr., from his turn as Lenny in OF MICE AND MEN, to his performance as the aforementioned WOLF MAN. In any case, Strange and Zucco do a fairly good job playing off one another. My favorite part is when Zucco calls him his "guinea pig" in front of a colleague while Petro just sits there grinning and staring at a doorknob. Some of the foggy swamp scenes are pretty atmospheric, too.

I will Hug him and squeeze him and call him George

[dukeyflyswatter · 29 July 2004]

I grew up with this amusing piece of silliness back in the early sixties when it used to show up as regular as the full moon on the local horror host show JEEPERS CREEPERS so I'm inclined to give it a bit of slack. The first half of it moves briskly and is helped considerably by George Zucco's mad Dr. "I'm as nutty as squirrel droppings" act. Glen Strange does a carbon copy performance of Lon Chaney Jr.'s of Mice and Men character Lenny but it's more fun to see him as the abominable snowman parody from the Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoon " What's the matter George?, You don't look so good." Once we've establish the hare brained plot and the first murder is discharged then Mad Monster becomes typical make-out fodder from the forties meaning that you look up only when you suspect a good part is coming. In my case I was sadly alone when I rewatched this film so I came out of the kitchen instead to see a couple of rantings from zucco then back to my lasagna. For horror completists it's not the worst of the lot,certainly better then most of Monogram's rock bottom efforts,but if you don't expect too much you might find it acceptable.

"I don't know what's come over me, I must have a touch of swamp fever."

[classicsoncall · 5/10 · 18 July 2005]

It seems to me that you'll either love or hate this offering, judging by the comments of other reviewers for the film. As a fan of the genre, I'll always give the benefit of the doubt to the plus side, I rather got a kick out of "The Mad Monster", with George Zucco as a deranged scientist, given to phantom meetings with his former colleagues who drummed him out of academia for his outlandish experiments and theories. After all, if you're looking to ingratiate yourself with the War Department, you might want to check the dictionary for a suitable replacement for an "army of wolf men".

But it's exactly this kind of weirdness that makes the film fun, especially when Dr. Lorenzo Cameron (Zucco) injects his gardener assistant Petro (Glenn Strange) with a serum of wolf blood to transform him into a revenge machine. With cunning precision, Cameron launches his creation on a scientist killing spree, taking out his detractors one by one while maintaining a self assured calm, not to mention a perfect alibi for his whereabouts each time. A half dozen years following his wolf man portrayal, Strange would take on the role of the feature creature in 1948's "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein".

What gives the movie it's most endearing charm however are the neat fog shrouded swamp scenes replete with hanging moss; for a poverty row effort I don't think I've ever seen it done better. It's the perfect touch for midnight viewings on a dark and stormy night.

Let's give some credit to the supporting cast, Anne Nagel as Lenora Cameron, the mad doctor's pretty daughter, who has a bit of a thing for newspaper reporter Tom Gregory (Johnny Downs), hot on the trail of the "beast on two legs" story. Downs is actually top billed over Zucco and Glenn Strange in this effort, though that's highly questionable. One look at Doctor Cameron, and one take of his diabolical laugh is all that's needed to know that it's George Zucco's show all the way. Just turn down the lights for maximum atmosphere, and in Petro's own words, you "ain't got no reason to be afraid".

Fairly Decent Early Werewolf Film, A Quality Cast

[gavin6942 · 5/10 · 5 October 2006]

While passed on by most people, I found this film to be an interesting early werewolf tale with makeup and a plot that are not altogether unpleasant. (I mean, heck, with modern werewolf tales including "Cursed", give this one some credit.) A professor (George Zucco, "Dead Men Walk") is shunned for his "Crazy" theories. He finds a way to control evolution by using interspecies blood transfusions (notably a wolf and man). This fails to get him back in everyone's good graces, however, as the wolfman does what wolfmen do -- kills people.

Zucco is a good actor, though he blends in to the background and could have been played by just about everyone else. Johnny Downs reminded me of a young Jack Nicholson, playing the quirky reporter and potential love interest of the professor's daughter Lenora. He is top-billed and should be. Anne Nagel played Lenora, who came across as a Judy Garlandesque actress, before Garland was a drug-addicted, suicidal lesbian. I felt that Nagel's character could have been stronger. They let her off as the "woman who obviously doesn't understand a man's world" when it's obvious her character is one of the few who could stop the madness.

Glenn Strange was most notable as Petro, the wolfman. He was abnormally large and of an odd body type. I assume it was a costume, but perhaps some men really are that massive. Either way, he was an excellent lumbering beast. Too bad his wolf persona was also dumb and lumbering because I bet he could have been mighty vicious.

The picture and sound quality are poor. But if someone spruced these up, the film would be quite enjoyable. I would suggest a remake, but this is one of those films whose time has passed. They simply do not make them like this anymore.

Silly, harmless, early horror sci-fi

[mstomaso · 3/10 · 22 May 2005]

A paranoid scientist creates a wolfman by transfusing wolf blood into a meek, quiet, but very large gardener, in order to prove an hypothesis. So the gardener begins nightly rampages and the scientist tries to use him to reclaim his credentials, but is rebuffed by his former colleagues for tampering with nature. Island of Dr Moreau, Frankenstein and various wolfman films all blended together into a terribly dated, goofy, morality play.

Though the subject matter is pedantic and unoriginal at best, this film is not too poorly made, and interesting to watch as a representative of horror film making of its time. Like most mad scientist films, this is a weak warning against fooling around with Mother Nature. It doesn't have the power or intellectual challenges of Frankenstein, but it doesn't ever extend its reach anyway. The acting is passable, as is the cinematography, and the film moves along at an entertaining clip. Some of the dialog is utterly ludicrous, but hey... it's just a movie - and a B minus one at that. There are also a few nice shots of a wolf, and a smattering of humor tossed-in to prevent the film from appearing to take itself too seriously - always a plus for this genre.

It's a slow, slow movie.

[catfish-er · 3/10 · 21 September 2009]

I'm working my way through the Horror Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection and THE MAD MONSTER is one of the movies in the set.

I am sure that George Zucco was a good actor; but, this was only the second film in which I saw him, the first being DEAD MEN WALK, in which he played two parts. However, even good acting couldn't save THE MAD MONSTER.

Zucco plays a mad scientist, Dr. Cameron (who was banned from academia because of his unethical and inhumane experiments). He believes that he can control evolution by bringing out the characteristics of one animal into another.

In this case, like so many others of its ilk, it is a transfusion of (I assume) wolf's blood into humans. His goal is to create an invincible army, which he can control through the antidote. The subject of his experiments is his hired hand, a retarded gardener, whose dialogue slows down this snail-paced classic to almost a full-stop.

Beyond his experiments, Dr. Cameron also plots revenge on those who discredited him, using his transformed gardener. However, he loses control of his subject, who begins to transform without the transfusion -- yikes!

The werewolf transformations are classic Hollywood stop-action / makeup effects. No doubt these were groundbreaking techniques of the time; but, in today's digital age it's hard to imagine audiences being scared by this.

Mad scientist seeks revenge, forsakes all other responsibilities

[csteidler · 5/10 · 27 April 2012]

Spurned mad scientist George Zucco stands at the head of a long table lined with empty chairs. What do his enemies think of him now? His experiment is a success! He gloats over the empty seats—his imagination filling them with former colleagues cringing before his eloquent, triumphant and vengeful lecture.

Yes, Zucco is not only a mad scientist, but an angry one, too. The frightening product of his unconventional research will soon be his means of wreaking his revenge on the former colleagues who disgraced him and his "crazy" ideas.

Hired hand Glenn Strange is the unfortunate focus of Zucco's research and experiments. A mysterious transfusion involving a captive wolf transforms Strange from a large but weak-minded handyman into a—well, a wolfman.

Also part of the plot is Zucco's daughter (Anne Nagel), who doesn't like this spooky house and wants to go back to the city so she can see her boyfriend (Johnny Downs), a newspaper writer who takes a professional interest in the strange goings on down in the swamp country where Zucco has set up shop.

Zucco is happily ruthless as the revenge-driven genius; he lets loose one of the all-time great mad scientist laughs around the one hour mark. Strange has a somewhat unique role: as the big dumb handyman who doesn't understand the strange "dreams" he is having, he's part Lenny Small from Of Mice and Men, part Lawrence Talbot from The Wolf Man.

The story and script are never especially surprising, but the cast give it their best shot. At 77 minutes, the picture is actually a bit longer and more ambitious than many PRC productions; it does include a fair amount of philosophizing about the true aims and responsibilities of Science (nothing too inspiring, however). A big finish is actually pretty exciting…even if any viewer thinking ahead would probably have seen it coming.

All in all, it is a pretty standard 1940s B horror movie—and thus good fun for those of us who enjoy such nonsense.

Neither Good Nor Original - But Certainly Ambitious As It Weaves A Variety Of Horror Plots Into One

[sddavis63 · 2/10 · 2 June 2010]

It's certainly ambitious. That's perhaps the best thing that can be said for this rather ... strange (as in Glenn Strange, who played the monster) movie. Apparently trying to cash in on the recent success of Lon Chaney's "The Wolf Man," this blends elements of that movie along with ideas from "Frankenstein" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" among others and turns out an inept but still somewhat amusing horror picture.

Strange played Petro, the simple-minded servant of Dr. Cameron (George Zucco). Cameron has stumbled upon a way of turning humans into ravenous, murderous beasts by injecting them with the blood of animals - in the belief that they could be used as an invincible army (remember that this was made during World War II.) In the midst of explaining what he was doing he claimed to have discovered the "secret of life." (How this was the secret of life was unclear to me.) For his efforts, Cameron is drummed out of the academic community, and continues his experiments on Petro. There's little surprise here. Cameron is able to transform Petro, but he can't control him, and eventually Petro starts to transform without the injections, leading up to a "Frankenstein-ish" style of ending inside a burning house.

Yes. It's ... ambitious. Not good - not by a long shot. Not original - not by a long shot. But ambitious as it tries to weave the various threads from different stories together. Not much effort was put into the makeup for Strange. His "werewolf" looked like a guy with bushy hair and a beard, and his fangs looked rubbery to me - they seemed to bend and twist at times. The setting of the old house surrounded by mysterious swampland constantly shrouded in fog and mist was moderately effective in creating a "spooky" environment. I liked the thought here, but it just wasn't carried out particularly well.

Kitsch, a Werewolf and an utterly mad scientist! What more could you wish for?

[Coventry · 8/10 · 25 November 2004]

This is a really cool movie and, no…I'm not joking! The Mad Monster is a pleasant and fairly original camp-film obviously trying to pick in on the Universal Monster successes. But who cares if it can't live up to the preciously wealthy production values of those films? I sure don't and especially not since it features werewolves and insane men of science which are my two top favorite horror topics! It stars the infamous B-movie legend George Zucco as the very devoted – but equally insane – scientist Dr. Cameron who got banned from the academic community because of his unethical and inhuman experiments. Cameron plots a violent vengeance on those who discredited them and with his groundbreaking new formulas he manages to turn his slightly retarded gardener into a ravenous werewolf. While his cute daughter is unaware of what happens in her father's lab, Cameron sends out his creation to devour his scientific competitors. I can't stress this enough: this film is fun! Not very scary, of course, and the werewolf-transformations & killings mostly happen off-screen. And even when they do make an attempt to use special effects or make up it looks really cheap and kitschy. So, lovers of new-age computerized gore should avoid this at all costs. Zucco is really terrific and the madness can be seen in his eyes throughout the entire film! He even holds imaginary meetings in his basement, trying to convince the world his visions are brilliant! I love this; Zucco surely ranks amongst cinema's most memorable demented doctors. Glenn Strange also was an outstanding casting choice to play the not-so-clever guinea pig. Strange looks an awful lot like Lon Chaney Jr. who made himself immortal one year before by playing …. The Wolf Man! If you're intrigued by undiscovered horror gems, werewolf horror films or just ordinary cult-amusement this is your film! Highly recommended!

Good for what it is

[Vampenguin · 7/10 · 12 March 2006]

As far as Mad Scientist B-movies go, this was pretty good. George Zucco steals the screen as always, playing his typical mad doctor role to perfection. A pre-Frankenstein Glenn Strange also throws in a decent performance (for this kind of movie) as the grounds-keeper turned into a Werewolf. If you're into this kind of flick like I am, this is highly recommended. Otherwise, you might as well skip it. Most of the actors suck, the story drags, and it borrows *cough*steals*cough heavily from Universal's 1941 film "The Wolf Man". Actually, I say check this out even if you don't normally enjoy this kind of film, you could be pleasantly surprised!

7/10

Using your gardener as your test subject results in your garden suffering!

[Aaron1375 · 3/10 · 1 October 2016]

I saw this film on the cult television riffing show, Mystery Science Theater 3000. Basically, this film is yet another take on the Universal classic, The Wolf Man with the only new aspect a mad scientist is the cause behind the terrible creature that roams the area. Not particularly bad, but not really much good in it either as it is very slow moving for a film that clocks in at only 77 minutes. Still, the acting is not too bad in this one and so it is a bit tolerable. Not sure I would care to see this without MST3K, but if I did it would be only to fill in the blanks as they must have cut a lot out of this one to make the episode because they had a short preceding it. In the end though, nothing to out of the ordinary as far as monster movies during its time.

The story has a scientist who is working on a formula to mix the blood of an animal with that of a human being. The animal in question is a wolf and the man in question is the scientist's gardener who apparently believes that if you are a gardener you have no right to question anything your employer tells you to do. The result a wolf man...though it actually looks more like one of the monkeys from planet of the apes with a pair of Dracula novelty teeth. The scientist wishes to sell his creation to the army so that the army can have an army of animal/man hybrids at their disposal, but first he must have his revenge upon the men who criticized his work! That, of course, will be his undoing.

This made for an okay episode of MST3K considering it was a first season episode which I consider their weakest season. They were still feeling their way at this point and it shows. The movie is preceded by a Commando Cody short and I see no reason for the short to be in front of this one. This film is 77 minutes long, that is plenty long enough to fill out an episode of MST3K. Maybe one small short, but this one took up the first block of the episode. Most films that have to have shorts to fill up the first block clock in at under an hour. Still, the jokes are rather good in the film portion of the film and make what would otherwise be a mundane Wolf Man clone into something a bit more humorous to watch.

So, not a great film, but nothing to terribly horrible either. Just kind of a bland film featuring a Wolf Man and a mad scientist. I am sure there were several such films back in the day, in fact, I know there were as several have been showcased on MST3K. The film is a bit uneven too as it seems to take place in several time periods almost. You have the mansion, you have the city and then you have the people living in a swamp that almost seem to be living in a different time period than the rest of the film. In the end though, I say this film would have been better had the monster been just a little bit madder.

I will rip off the Werewolf badly George I will I will..

[gazzo-2 · 19 October 2004]

.....wow what a dull movie. Here you have 'Sam the Barkeep' from Gunsmoke shambling around in a blatant Lon Cheney knock-off, wearing the world's worst lupine doo while stumbling after George Zucco's ex-colleagues. Zucco himself does his Moriarty routine as always, and is easily the best thing here, while Anne Nagel once again stars in a Monogram poverty-row B flick.

It's a slow, slow movie, where the hillbillies act rather badly, the victims scream in a monotone, and the dry ice is used and abused frequently. I enjoyed the vines in the 'swamp woods'--clearly they doubled as clotheslines.

I have a weakness for old B genre flicks from this era, but this one-is snooze central.

Def. one to avoid unless you are a Zucco fanatic.

** outta ****. Zzzzzzz.

THE MAD MONSTER (Sam Newfield, 1942) *1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 3/10 · 9 October 2011]

I have always been wary of horror programmers from the Golden Age of Horror, primarily because they degraded such genre icons as Bela Lugosi and John Carradine, who were somehow unable to find work in A-grade films around this time; however, these Z-movies also gave the opportunity for character actors like Lionel Atwill and J. Carroll Naish to have their own star vehicles and let rip with the villainy. Perhaps the most prolific – and unhinged – among the latter group was George Zucco (who, apart from appearing in the occasional prestige production, was also the best incarnation of Professor Moriarty in THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES {1939}), and I have decided to incorporate a handful of his efforts in the current "Halloween Challenge".

This film, then, is also one of a quartet I will be checking out revolving around werewolves: PRC obviously attempted to jump on the bandwagon of Universal's latest monster THE WOLF MAN (1941) with this one, but the result is so lame that one would do best not to compare the two. Even worse than a family curse or being 'marked' by lycanthropy is the notion of having someone turned into a monster by being injected with a serum extracted from a genuine wolf (except the film-makers here apparently could only lay their hands on a coyote!). In fact, the real protagonist here is not the creature (played in human guise as a dim-witted Ozark – derived from the Lenny character in John Steinbeck's "Of Mice And Men" – by Glenn Strange!) but the mad scientist (Zucco, of course), with the title further confusing the issue! Incidentally, Lon Chaney Jr. had incarnated both Lenny in the 1939 film version of the afore-mentioned literary classic and Lawrence "The Wolf Man" Talbot!

Anyway, Zucco is the usual disgraced genius who in the film's very opening scene imagines himself lecturing the 4 eminent colleagues who had publicly humiliated him and forced his resignation. This being the war years, his original plan was to build an invincible army of werewolf soldiers(!) but, if the ultra-sluggish Strange was anything to go by, the outcome of these experiments would doubtless have proved disastrous to the Allied cause! In fact, out of his targets, he only manages to eliminate one (the only other fatal attack being completely unrelated to his 'mission', committed upon a little girl whose mother is actually played by frequent Laurel & Hardy foil Mae Busch!)! Strange's werewolf make-up is as much a slapdash job as the script itself, barely concealing his facial features and accentuated by the cheapest of dime-store fangs!

By the way, Zucco has the obligatory clueless daughter who, just as inevitably, is romanced by the very man (in this case a scoop-seeking reporter) who will eventually bring about his downfall. Amusingly, Zucco goes to the house of his chief nemesis with Strange in tow to demonstrate his theory but then contrives to absent himself and have the victim administer the transforming drug to the harmless-looking handyman…which then takes forever to produce the desired effect, so that the supposedly intrigued man of science has already gone back to his bit of dead-of-night reading, thus being ostensibly oblivious to the change from man into monster!; another intended prey, in fact, is even asked to give Strange a lift to town with the metamorphosis subsequently occurring inside the car in mid-journey! Unsurprisingly, the leading lady eventually comes face to face with the werewolf but is saved in the nick of time, whereas the scientist expires at the hand of his own creation (the former had earlier kept the latter in check by the use of a whip, apparently a pre-requisite of such cheapies!) which, rather than via the proverbial silver bullet, gets his in the fire that consumes Zucco's remote country-house!!

A word on director Newfield: he is considered among the most prolific American film-makers ever (with almost 300 titles to his name over a period of 30 years!); this was actually his very first horror movie (reportedly shot in just 5 days!), which rather explains its considerable narrative shortcomings compared to a more satisfactory later effort like THE MONSTER MAKER (1944).

The Mad Monster (1942) *1/2

[JoeKarlosi · 4/10 · 22 February 2009]

Pretty bad PRC cheapie which I rarely bother to watch over again, and it's no wonder -- it's slow and creaky and dull as a butter knife. Mad doctor George Zucco is at it again, this time turning a dimwitted farmhand in overalls (Glenn Strange) into a poor man's wolf-man. Unfortunately, his makeup is virtually non-existent, consisting only of a fluffy wig, beard, and dimestore fangs for the most part. If it were not for Zucco and Strange's presence, along with the cute Anne Nagel, this would be completely unwatchable. Strange, who would go on to play Frankenstein's monster for Universal Studios in two years, does a Lennyesque impression from "Of Mice and Men", it seems. Really tired. *1/2 out of ****

Glenn Certainly Is Strange

[Hitchcoc · 3/10 · 8 March 2006]

There are so many holes in the plot, it makes you wonder if they knew they had an audience for this and just threw it together. I don't know much about George Zucco, but I've seen him in two movies. Obviously, he has been cast as the loving father, mad scientist, vampire guy. He looks so ordinary. I'm surprised that he ended up in the genre. This is the typical, "I will create monsters that can be used to fight as an army." By transferring wolf blood (or is it coyote) to his hired hand, he turns him into a werewolf. Glen Strange, who was one of Karloff's successor's as the Frankenstein monster, plays the kindly, lovable hired man who is victimized because he trusts the mad doctor. At first the scientist is able to control when Petro (his name) can be transformed. But, like the invisible man, suddenly he starts morphing on his own and becomes a liability. There is a little love story of the daughter and a reporter with kind of a high pitched voice (Golly Miss Brooks). She wants to leave but her father, the doctor, won't allow that. He is also driven by a group of his peers who mocked his research before and now he is going to have satisfaction. The way he plot to embarrass or kill them is pretty far fetched and depends a lot on Petro and the guys sitting around waiting to be attacked. It's not a very good movie. The strong point is atmosphere of the woods as people and monsters lurk around the Spanish moss. Once again, the townsfolk are a bunch of morons, who look like they escaped from a bad western. One thing that stayed with me was that a little girl is the first victim and that seems unusual for a film of this era. There's also a pipe smoking old lady who knows about werewolves but nobody listens to her.

'Doing it for defense'

[bkoganbing · 2/10 · 22 August 2014]

Watching this awful film from PRC I kept thinking of Betty Hutton from Star Spangled Rhythm saying she was doing it all for defense in that all star wartime flag waver from Paramount. Though George Zucco's mad scientist is far from Betty Hutton, even mad scientists are entitled to be patriotic and contribute what they can to defeat the Axis.

Zucco's idea is to create an army of werewolves and by injecting wolf's blood into his farm hand Glenn Strange and creating a prototype werewolf. As for Strange when he's not being a werewolf he's a simple soul, in fact a complete ripoff of Lon Chaney, Jr. in Of Mice And Men. All he needed was the rabbits.

For those colleagues who called him mad Zucco is setting Strange on them when he's in werewolf mode.

All this is disturbing to Zucco's daughter Anne Nagel and her boyfriend Johnny Downs who happens to be a reporter. Boy does he get the scoop of the year.

Even Zucco who had these mad scientist roles down pat in these grade Z films couldn't summon enough energy for a real performance. He did chew the scenery a lot just to keep the audience awake.

This sounds more like a scheme he could have sold the Nazis.

Very familiar territory for Zucco but still not bad

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 20 February 2007]

This is a very low-budget film starring one of the kings of low-budget horror films, George Zucco (the other, of course, being Bela Lugosi). Here he is in VERY familiar territory--he's a mad scientist working on a formula to transform people into monsters AND he is bent on revenge. While this is a rather worn out premise, WHY he originally wants to create his own version of a wolf-man is truly unique!!! He actually wants to do this as an aid to America's war with the Nazis! He reasons that these insane killing machines CAN be dropped into enemy territory and allowed to run amok! Why didn't Roosevelt think about this?! Assisted in what later turns into a mad scheme for revenge is a nice but simple-minded man played by Glenn Strange (who also played Frankenstein in the later Universal horror films of the 1940s). Strange is strangely compelling since he is a good person who thinks everything is being done to help his country. Too bad he really is running around killing people when he is transformed into the wolf-man! If you are a fan of B-horror films, then this one is sure to please despite its tiny budget. However, if you aren't a horror fan, I doubt if you'll find much to interest you here--especially since there are many better horror films out there already.

Variation of "The Wolf Man" story with a war twist thrown in.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 18 March 2010]

A scientist (George Zucco) wants to create wolf men out of American soldiers to fight the Nazis, but is branded as mad. He uses a simpleton gardener (Glenn Strange) to experiment on by mixing his blood with the blood of a wolf. Strange, constantly embedding his dialogue with the tones of Lon Chaney Jr. in "Of Mice and Men", has no idea what's going on, only that he sleepwalks. The victims begin to pile up (including a little girl, which modern viewers might find rather disturbing, and two of Zucco's rivals). There is some good dialogue on how man should not mess with nature (still prevalent today) and play God. Zucco's motives may be honorable, but his methods are most questionable. And then there is his daughter, Anne Nagel, who is sympathetically nice to Strange, yet has no idea of her father's deeds. Johnny Downs is a reporter who gets on Zucco's bad side by questioning him, but wins Nagel's heart, thus creating the usual and always dull romantic subplot in classic horror films. At 77 minutes, this is about 15 minutes longer than usual for a horror film of the early 40's (particularly one out of PRC, who released this one), so the romantic story could have been trimmed for costs and to speed things up a bit. Zucco, fortunately, is never hammy; He left that to Bela Lugosi (who always hammed in a deliciously theatrical manner which endeared him to audiences) and England's Todd Slaughter. But try not to think of "Bride of the Monster's" laboratory while looking at the one Zucco works in, or some of Lugosi's dialogue in that now classic cult film. "Mad Monster" lacks a cult following more because it is not delightfully bad, just has dull pacing in more than a few spots. For PRC and Monogram lovers, I would recommend "The Corpse Vanishes" or "Fog Island" higher than this.

Move along - nothing to see here

[bensonmum2 · 3/10 · 12 October 2007]

For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, Dr. Lorenzo Cameron (George Zucco) begins injecting wolf's blood into his dim-witted handyman, Petro (Glenn Strange). The result – Petro is transformed into a hideous (as hideous as someone with a bad wig and pointy teeth can be) killer beast. Dr. Cameron uses Petro to get his revenge against those in the scientific community who scoffed at and ridiculed his ideas (and why wouldn't they, Dr. Cameron's nuttier than a fruitcake).

Overall, The Mad Monster is one dull and poorly made Poverty Row thriller. There's really only one positive I can come up with to write about in The Mad Monster. George Zucco can be fun to watch as he plays the mad scientist about as well as anyone. His Dr. Cameron is a regular loony. He has no qualms about killing; he has entire conversations with people who aren't there; and, as with most mad scientists, he messes in "God's domain" (actually, I'm not sure anyone accuses him of this, but it fits). But beyond Zucco, there's nothing here to recommend. Everything else from the monster effects to the supporting cast to the music is plain old bad. There are far better examples of Poverty Row horror from the 1940s than The Mad Monster.

What has happened to movie lovers?

[magicshadows-90098 · 9/10 · 4 January 2017]

What is wrong with you people? The rating is in the 3's. One idiot says Glenn Strange rips off Lon Chaney Jr. and he can't even spell Chaney. OK we have a kids monster movie from the 1940's. A kids movie, no adult would be caught dead in a theatre watching this in 1942. Today we analyze the plot to infinity about whether this scene was believable etc.... It's a kids monster movie, not Citizen Kane. Suspend your current political correct state of mind and enter a 1940's kids movie. It's fun, trust me.

What do we have? We have George Zucco, one of the best raving mad scientists of all time, playing a mad scientist. We have a werewolf unlike any other (that is a good thing). We have rural bumpkins getting torn to pieces. Great. We have Universal's scream queen Anne Nagel making a much appreciated appearance.

The idiots who watch MST3K have ridiculed this movie so it must be bad, right? Wrong. Our current society watches endless superhero movies today and praises them as masterpieces. While old movies made for kids are ridiculed. Hmmm... a psychologist could have a field day with that.

In the heat of war mad ideas sometimes become brilliant strategies

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 18 July 2004]

****SPOILERS**** The movie comes up with the bright idea of using the blood of wild animals and having it injected, by blood transfusions, into human beings. Thus combining that of the animals strength cunning and ability to hunt and take down game far bigger then itself, and only kill for food and survival, with that of the mindless and destructive mentality to kill and destroy for personal gratification and glory by man. Dr. Cameron, George Zucco, planned to create an army of mindless killers, half-man and half-beast, to be used against Hitler's vaunted Wehrmacht that would win the Second World War for the allies.

This mad idea had Dr. Cameron thrown out of the faculty of the university that he was a member of and declared insane as well as him being stripped of all his honors and accomplishments as a brilliant man of science. That left him a very bitter and vindictive man.

At his laboratory in his plantation home in the swamps the discredit Dr. Cameron was to put his experiments to a different use, against those who destroyed his professional career. Dr. Cameron has his hulking and powerful as well as harmless and simple minded handyman and gardener Petro, Glenn Strange, injected with wolf blood. That's how Dr. Cameron plans to do in those who made a monkey out of him as well as having him be the laughing stock of the scientific community.

George Zucco in one of his many mad doctor roles that he played in his long movie career is convincingly and perfectly insane as the mad Dr.Cameron. Glenn Strange is at the top of his game as the innocent and slow-witted Petro who's used by Dr. Cameron in his mad experiments as the instrument of revenge and murder.

The movie "The Mad Monster" was in some ways as insane as Dr. Cameron with his former faculty members, who should have known better, being so gullible as to fall right into the trap that he set for them. Coming over to Prof. Blaine, Robert Strange, home with Pedro Dr. Cameron tells the professor to inject Petro with a syringe of serum, wolf blood. This to be done after Dr. Cameron left and thus giving him an alibi was really brainless on the part of Prof. Blaine who was then killed by a transformed and wolf-man-like Petro. Later in the movie we have Prof. Fitzgerald, Gordon De Main, being invited to Dr. Cameron's plantation in the deserted swampland who should also have know better not to fall for Dr. Cameron's trap.

Prof. Fitzgerald having it out with Dr. Cameron about his mad monster experiments than, without thinking, has Petro, who lived at the Cameron plantation, put in his car to drive him back to town. Petro changed by a delay-action injection of wolf blood given to him by Dr. Cameron just before he left with Prof. Fitzgerald. Again Petro turned into a wolf-man and attacked Prof. Fitzgerald and made him drive off the road. Knocked out but alive Prof. Fitzgerald is saved by a group of townspeople who came to his rescue but is later killed by Dr. Cameron at his home, where he was taken for help, before he could wake up and tell the police what happened.

The ending of "The Mad Monster" was a bit too much with Petro as the wolf-man running amok at the Cameron home after it was hit by a lightning bolt and set on fire during a heavy thunderstorm with both Dr. Cameron and Petro perishing in the flames.

It was truly ironic that the movie "The Mad Monster" came up with the idea for the allies to use an army of wolf-men to fight against the German army. It was three years later in 1945 there were rumors that were taken very seriously by the allies that Hitler planned to use German guerrilla-type units to attack and battle behind the lines of the allied forces who were invading Germany; Those units were called by the German as well as the allied high command "WEREWOLVES".

The Mad Monster Is A Werecoyote

[Calaboss · 2/10 · 24 February 2010]

OK, this movie seems to have been pretty well covered by earlier comments, but there are a couple of items I wish to add. The mad scientist is producing a serum from the blood of a caged animal in order to turn a man into a werewolf. If we suspend our disbelief enough to buy into that, fine. But the animal in the cage is a coyote. That would make a werecoyote. Did audiences in 1942 not know the difference between a wolf and a coyote? They're easy to tell apart. That's weak.

Secondly, this movie was covered in the third episode of MST3k (on the Comedy Channel). It took Joel and the bots a number of episodes to get up to full riffing steam, and they weren't up there quite yet on this one. They DID add enough to this snoozer to keep you awake until the end, but it was not one of their better episodes. They never even mentioned the glaring omission of an actual wolf, and THAT joke was just hanging in the air waiting to be smacked.