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"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.

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

.....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.

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.

****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".