The Mad Monster

The Mad Monster is an American horror film produced and distributed in 1942 by "Poverty Row" studio Producers Releasing Corporation, directed by Sam Newfield, written by Fred Myton, and starring George Zucco, Glenn Strange, Johnny Downs and Anne Nagel. The plot involves a mad scientist who has been discredited by his peers. He attempts to kill them off after he develops a secret formula that transforms his gardener into a murderous wolfman.

Plot
The story begins on a fog-bound moonlight night in a swamp; a wolf howls. The scene shifts to the nearby laboratory of Dr. Lorenzo Cameron (George Zucco), who draws blood from a caged wolf. Secured to a table is Dr. Cameron's simpleminded but strong gardener, Petro (Glenn Strange), who is to be the doctor's subject in an experiment. Cameron injects a serum made from a wolf's blood into the cooperative Petro, who loses consciousness, grows fur and fangs and awakens after he has turned into a wolfman.

Cameron then turns to an empty table and visualizes his former colleagues sitting there—four professors who ridiculed his theory that transfusions of wolf blood could be used to give a human being wolf-like traits. He recalls how the scientific community, the press and the public joined in a resounding chorus of ridicule, which cost him his position at the university.

Addressing the spectral professors, Cameron declares, "Right now, we're at war. At war with an enemy that produces a horde that strikes with a ferocious fanaticism". Cameron proposes giving wolfman traits to the army to help with the war. When the professors scoff, Cameron says that his proposal doesn't really matter; he is now going to have his wolfman kill his former colleagues. He then administers an antidote to Petro that transforms him back into a human; Petro remembers nothing.

The following night, Cameron turns Petro into a wolf and sends him to the swamp. Before the night is over Petro has entered a nearby home and killed a little girl. When Cameron hears of the child's fate, he knows his formula works. He turns to his real priority, which is destroying the scientists who ruined his career. The rest of the film involves Cameron setting up elaborate scenarios in which Petro is alone with each scientist when he becomes a wolf. However, the more he does this, the more Petro's transformations into a wolfman become unpredictable.

Cameron's daughter Lenora (Anne Nagel) is romantically involved with Tom Gregory (Johnny Downs), a newspaper reporter who is investigating the death of the little girl. As the professors are killed off one by one, Gregory begins to suspect that Cameron is behind the slayings.

The principals are in the Cameron home when a thunderstorm begins and a bolt of lightning sets Cameron's laboratory on fire. Lenora and Tom escape from the house after encountering Petro in wolf form. Petro turns on Cameron and kills him, just before the fire brings the house down on both of them.

Cast
Starring:
 * George Zucco as Dr. Lorenzo Cameron
 * Glenn Strange as Petro
 * Anne Nagel as Lenora Cameron
 * Johnny Downs as Tom Gregory

With:
 * Gordon De Main as Prof. Fitzgerald
 * Reginald Barlow as Prof. Warwick
 * Robert Strange as Prof. Blaine
 * John Elliott as Prof. Hatfield
 * Sarah Padden as Grandmother
 * Ed Cassidy as Father
 * Mae Busch as Susan
 * Henry Hall as Community Doctor
 * Slim Whitaker as Officer Dugan
 * Gil Patric as Detective Lieutenant

Production
Filming started March 19, 1942 and took five days.

Reception
The film was re-released by PRC in 1945 on a double bill with The Devil Bat. According to British film historian Phil Hardy, the film "shocked the British censor enough to ban it until 1952, and even then to insist that it should be accompanied by a disclaimer on the matter of blood transfusions."

Author Tom Weaver described the basic story as "a combination of The Wolf Man and PRC's own The Devil Bat with Zucco subbing for Lugosi as the wacky doctor... one of those uniquely bad films that is difficult to dislike."

Mystery Science Theater 3000

 * Episode guide: 103- The Mad Monster (with short: Radar Men from the Moon, episode 2: Molten Terror)
 * Episode guide: 103- The Mad Monster (with short: Radar Men from the Moon, episode 2: Molten Terror)