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32 reviews in total

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15 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Kitsch, a Werewolf and an utterly mad scientist! What more could you wish for?, 25 November 2004

Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls

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!

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11 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Poverty Row Werewolf Thriller!, 18 December 2004

Author: (bsmith5552@rogers.com) from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

"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.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
I will Hug him and squeeze him and call him George, 29 July 2004
Author: Dukey Flyswatter (dukeyflyswatter@juno.com) from U S A

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.

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10 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
I will rip off the Werewolf badly George I will I will.., 19 October 2004
Author: gazzo-2 from United States

.....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.

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7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
In the heat of war mad ideas sometimes become brilliant strategies, 18 July 2004

Author: sol from Brooklyn NY USA

****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".

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Fairly Decent Early Werewolf Film, A Quality Cast, 5 October 2006

Author: gavin6942 from United States

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.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Good for what it is, 12 March 2006

Author: Vampenguin from Canada

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

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Silly, harmless, early horror sci-fi, 22 May 2005

Author: mstomaso from Vulcan

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.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Good, silly 40's cheapie horror fun, 8 November 2006

Author: Woodyanders (Woodyanders@aol.com) from The Last New Jersey Drive-In on the Left

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Crazed, bitter, vengeful mad scientist Dr. Cameron (veteran villainous character actor George Zucco in peak lip-smacking wicked form) creates a special experimental serum which he uses to transform his gentle, dim-witted, but hulking gardener Petro (sweetly played by Glenn Strange) into a lethal and ferocious wolf-like humanoid beast. Dr. Cameron sics Pedro on the various folks responsible for his professional failure. Both Cameron's feisty daughter Lenore (pretty brunette Anne Nagel) and her aggressive go-getter newspaper reporter boyfriend Tom Gregory (a charmingly robust Johnny Downs) suspect that something is amiss. Competently directed by Sam Newfield, with a fun, if rather talky script by Fred Myton, plenty of nicely misty'n'spooky backwoods bayou atmosphere, stark black and white photography by Jack Greenhalgh, solid acting (Strange brings a real touching pathos to his pitiable character while Zucco excels as a hatefully haughty heavy), a snappy pace, a booming, overwrought score by David Chudnow, a cool monster, and a stirring fiery conclusion, this modest fright feature overall sizes up as a perfectly enjoyable poverty-row low-budget horror potboiler.

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
"I don't know what's come over me, I must have a touch of swamp fever.", 18 July 2005

Author: classicsoncall from United States

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".

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