The Mad Monster

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The Mad Monster

I really enjoyed this movie,, not quite sure why but I just did. A scientist is badly disgraced by his employers because his theories and experiments are not conventional, so abruptly he is dismissed from the company,, he decides to carry on his work in a dilapidated mansion that is out of sight, he uses his gardener as a guinea pig for all of his experiments, the experiment sort of a blood transfusion, to turn the gardener into a werewolf.. the scientist's daughter becomes suspicious of her father,, and her boyfriend happens to be a reporter, so she tells him what she thinks her father is up to ,, and the reporter starts to snoop around and gather up some information,, meanwhile our mad scientist is making plans for a serum to use against his former employers to get revenge on them for dismissing him from the company,, very decent "b" movie.

.....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.

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