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In all the annals of living horror, one name stands out as the epitome of Evil!

Zombie Dearest: A Selective Look at Pre-Romero Zombie Movies

I’ve said it on this blog before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a big fan of the endless hordes of plague-spawned zombies that have shambled their way across movie and TV screens ever since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead opened up the flood gates. For me, modern zombies are too abstract a threat, too numerous, and too interchangeable to be all that interesting after you’ve seen a handful of these shows.

I get it that apocalyptic zombies are just there to get the survivalist drama going, whereby we learn something about ourselves -- the good, the bad and ugly -- through characters desperately trying to get by in a desolate and dangerous world. But for me, the relentless survivalist thing with hardly a glimmer of hope gets awfully old awfully fast.

In contrast to the bleakness of a zombified world, I prefer my horrors to be more up close and personal and not quite so earth shattering. With more traditional horror, you can have your monsters and beat them too. When it comes to creating zombies, Voodoo practitioners and mad doctors are a lot more tangible and colorful than viruses or experimental gasses. And they make great foils in the eternal struggle of good vs. evil -- defeating a living, breathing mad person is so much more satisfying.

Zombies in the Great Depression

Voodoo-style zombies got their start in Hollywood around the same time that Dracula and Frankenstein debuted for Universal Pictures. In fact, it was Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi, as the enigmatic and aptly named “Murder” Legendre, who conjured up the first cinematic zombies in White Zombie (1932).

Legendre is the sinister foreman on a Haitian plantation owned by Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer). Legendre is worth his weight in gold to Beaumont, as he is able to create zombies out of the local population who are absolutely obedient and work for nothing (Jeff Bezos, take note). When Beaumont meets Neil and Madeline (John Harron and Madge Bellamy), an attractive young couple who are engaged to be married, he invites them to stay at his mansion and have the ceremony there.

Of course, the creepy old rich guy has designs on the beautiful girl, and he has his Voodoo-master henchman Legendre turn Madeline into a zombie so that he can have her for himself. Beaumont quickly realizes his mistake, as zombies are not exactly the life of the party, and orders Legendre to restore Madeline to life. When Legendre refuses, it becomes apparent who really runs the show (hint: it’s the guy with the platoon of zombies under his control). Legendre seems to be riding high, but Neil and a local missionary, Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn), may have something to say about that.

Although not well-received at the time, over the years White Zombie’s reputation has returned from the dead to be regarded as an example of the triumph of creepy atmosphere and moody black and white cinematography over stilted acting. According to Bela Jr., the film was a personal favorite of his father’s. But it was also an early indicator of bad career decisions that would haunt Lugosi throughout his life -- for years afterward he regretted taking a paltry sum upfront instead of a cut of the robust box office receipts. 

"Stick with me kid and you'll go places!"

Zombies go to war

While it was no Night of the Living Dead, White Zombie inspired more than a few imitators. Next out of the gate was Revolt of the Zombies (1936), which was not so much an imitation as a follow-up to White Zombie made by the same producers and director. Set shortly after World War I, Revolt switches locales from Haiti to the exotic temples of Cambodia, where an expedition sent by the Allied Command is rummaging around, looking for the arcane “Secret of the Zombies” (shades of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark!).

One of the eggheads attached to the expedition, Armand (Dean Jagger), stumbles upon the secret of making zombies, and uses his newfound power to intimidate the only female member of the group, Claire Duval (Dorothy Stone), who loves another.

The outbreak of World War II couldn’t stop the advance of zombies in the B movie units of Hollywood. Initially, the movie villains exploiting zombies shifted from evil plantation owners and Voodoo followers to Nazi operatives using their arcane knowledge to subvert the allied cause.

Monogram Pictures, King of the “Poverty Row” studios specializing in B programmers, made near-identical twin zombie pictures in the early ‘40s. King of the Zombies (1941) and Revenge of the Zombies (1943) share so many plot points and themes (and two cast members), that they’re easy to get confused with one another:

✔ Both feature suave doctors who turn out to be Nazi spies using Voodoo and zombies to further their sinister aims (Dr. Sangre in King, played by Henry Viktor, and Dr. Von Altermann in Revenge, played by John Carradine).

✔ Both doctors have beautiful wives who walk around in a catatonic state (I’ll leave it to you to guess why).

✔ Instead of just one rock-jawed protagonist, the films opt for a tag-team bro duo who for much of the time are maddeningly clueless to all the creepy stuff happening in front of their noses (Dick Purcell and John Archer in King; Robert Lowery and Mauritz Hugo in Revenge).

✔ Both feature an attractive female second lead for romantic subplot purposes (Sangre’s niece played by Joan Woodbury and Von Altermann’s secretary played by Gale Storm).

✔ Both Doctors’ households are run by Madame Sul-Te-Wan, who, according to IMBDb, was the first African-American actress to secure a contract with a major studio.

✔ And then there is the dubious comic relief of bug-eyed Manton Moreland, who plays a superstitious valet in both. Monogram could still get away with such stereotyped characters in the ‘40s. Manton’s routines were so popular that he was a regular go-to character actor for the studio, appearing in a recurring role in their Charlie Chan series (and often getting favorable billing). Even though Moreland jumps at every shadow that crosses his path, to be fair, he is far more perceptive than his obtuse bosses, who couldn’t sense danger if it walked up and slapped ‘em silly.

The biggest distinction between the two films, such as it is, is the scope of the villains’ ambitions. In King, Sangre, partnering with the Voodoo priestess played by Madame Sul-Te-Wan, attempts Voodoo soul transference (!?) on a Navy admiral he has captured in order to extract defense secrets. (This being 1941, shortly before the U.S. entered the war, the government Sangre is working for is unnamed...wink, wink.)

A couple of years later, with the U.S. fully immersed in the fight against the Germans and Japanese, Revenge ups the ante considerably, making Von Altermann into a mad Nazi doctor intent on creating an army of zombies to turn the tide of the war.

Will the dense protagonists get wise in time to foil the nefarious plots? Will the more handsome of the pair get the girl? Will Manton Moreland’s belief in zombies be vindicated? Take a wild guess.

War-weary zombies

As the global conflict ground on, movie-makers scaled back the war themes in their B programmers in deference to audiences who simply wanted to forget their troubles for a couple of hours at the theater.

Auteur B movie producer Val Lewton wisely set his 1943 film I Walked with a Zombie on a fictional Caribbean island, and borrowed liberally from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in telling the atmospheric tale of a young nurse (Frances Dee), who begins to believe that the expressionless, sleep-walking wife of her wealthy employer (Tom Conway) is really a zombie.

Lewton carries on the tradition of having a beautiful wife under a zombie spell, but also includes one of the creepiest male zombies ever for good measure. And thankfully, there’s not a whiff of war or spies or mad Nazi doctors.

Darby Jones' zombie scared the snot of me when I first saw I Walked with a Zombie.

Lewton’s film is dark, moody, beautifully photographed, and includes some genuinely suspenseful moments. On the other end of the scale is producer Sam Katzman’s Voodoo Man (1944), which is as gloriously cheesy as Lewton’s film is somber and serious.

Voodoo Man has the distinction of being the first self-aware, meta-zombie movie in Hollywood history. Tod Andrews plays Ralph Dawson, a screenwriter working for Banner Pictures (the actual name of Katzman’s production company). The studio boss S.K. (uh-huh) summons Ralph to his office to assign him a horror script based on a ripped-from-the-headlines story of women who have mysteriously gone missing in the area. Ralph reminds him that he’s taking time off to get married and go on his honeymoon.

The hapless scenarist runs out of gas on the way to his fianceé’s house, and by chance is picked up by Sally (Louise Curry), who just happens to be the maid of honor and is headed to the house as well.

After they turn off on a detour in the middle of nowhere, Sally’s car dies. Ralph spots a nearby mansion, but is rebuffed at the door by a servant. When he gets back to the car, Sally is nowhere to be found. It seems that Ralph has stumbled into the missing girl mystery that S.K. wanted him to exploit.

At the center of the conspiracy is Dr. Richard Marlowe (Bela Lugosi), whose beautiful wife (Ellen Hall) is dead, but still able to walk around (you didn’t think they’d leave out the beautiful zombified wife, did you?). He needs healthy young women in order to transfer their life essences to his wife and restore her to the living. Marlowe is aided in his mad plan by Nicholas (George Zucco), the local gas station owner and Voodoo witch doctor (now there’s a unique skill set!), who identifies likely candidates and officiates at the transference ceremonies. John Carradine is on hand as half of a duo of mentally-challenged henchmen who do the actual kidnapping (a big comedown from his stint as the Nazi doctor in Revenge).

The ceremony is a marvel of B movie cheese, and it alone is worth looking up Voodoo Man. As master of ceremonies, the normally professorial-looking Zucco sports a feathered headdress, facial paint and a classic magician’s robe with stars and crosses. His dignity takes a further hit when he’s given lines like: “Ramboona is all powerful!” (All powerful, yes, but apparently Ramboona helps those who help themselves to unwary young women.)

Lugosi’s outfit is more restrained, but he gets the best lines of all as he facilitates the soul/life force transference. He summons up his best halting Dracula voice as he intones over and over, “Mind…to…mind, soul from body…to…body, emotion…to…emotion, life…to…death…” In the background, John Carradine's idiot henchman bangs on bongo drums (!?) with a vacant, almost zombie-like look on his face.

There’s not a chance of suspense in something this silly, but there is one notable scene in which Carradine releases several young women, the product of previous failed experiments, from their cells in the basement. Dressed in their long-flowing ceremonial robes and staring ahead, lifeless, yet still ambulatory, they’re reminiscent of Dracula’s brides.

The self-awareness comes full circle at the end, when Dawson delivers a script titled "Voodoo Man" based on his experiences, and he suggests to S.K. that Bela Lugosi play the lead (cue the laugh track).

Years later, Sam Katzman would try his hand with yet another zombie movie, The Zombies of Mora Tau (1957). That one is about a group of zombie sailors guarding a sunken treasure. Despite the unique nautical angle, Mora Tau is deadly dull compared to the madcap antics of Voodoo Man.

Zombies in the big city

In an era of total war, traditional movie monsters seemed lame and innocuous in comparison. So B movie makers embraced the lameness by increasingly mixing broad comedy with horror, often bringing together established comedic teams with horror icons. The result was pictures like Spooks Run Wild (1941) and Ghosts on the Loose (1943), in which Bela Lugosi serves as a foil for the comic pranks of the East Side Kids.

Several years before Universal decided to team up their stable of classic monsters with Abbott and Costello, RKO Radio Pictures jumped on the bandwagon by making a sort of sequel to the classic I Walked with a Zombie -- only this time featuring their own comic duo.

In Zombies on Broadway, two inept press agents, Jerry Miles and Walt Strager (Wally Brown and Alan Carney) are ordered by their gangster boss (Sheldon Leonard) to find a real living-dead zombie to appear at the opening of his new night club, The Zombie Hut. They travel to the Caribbean island of San Sebastian (the same fictional locale as the Lewton film), where a certain Dr. Renault (Bela Lugosi) has supposedly become an expert in creating zombies.

Needing help to find the elusive doctor, the boys team up with a beautiful nightclub singer, Jean La Dance (Anne Jeffreys), who in exchange wants a ride back to New York. Plans go awry when Jean is kidnapped by one of Renault’s zombies (Darby Jones, in the identical make-up he wore in I Walked with a Zombie), and Walt is zombified (but only temporarily) by the mad doctor.

By this point Lugosi, whose glory days were far behind him, was used to being upstaged by low-rent comedy acts in horror cheapies that exploited his name recognition. But just a few years later, Lugosi would have the last laugh (and the last big boost of his career) with yet another horror comedy, reprising his cherished Dracula role to wide acclaim in Universal’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). RKO, in recycling characters and locales from I Walked with a Zombie and bringing in Lugosi to share in the fun, provided a sort of dress rehearsal for Bela’s last big break at Universal.

Epilogue

As the Atomic Age dawned and the Cold War set in, supernatural zombies shuffled off the stage to make way for irradiated giant monsters and alien invaders. But you can’t keep the living dead down for long. Inevitably, zombies made a spectacular comeback via the imagination of an unassuming low-budget filmmaker named George Romero, and they’ve been overwhelming the earth ever since, powered by strange viruses instead of Voodoo.

Romero could scarcely imagine the endless zombie plagues that would be unleashed by Night of the Living Dead. But the old-time zombies are still around, waiting patiently on DVD and streaming sites for that special, nostalgic viewer to summon them.

Mad Doctors in Love: Special Valentine’s Day Edition

At first glance, B-movie mad doctors would not seem to be a natural subject for a Valentine’s Day post. As I pointed out in "The Best Laid Plans of Not-so-nice Madmen," most mad doctors were far too busy stitching together body parts or trying to create armies of zombies to pursue any sort of amorous relationship. 

They reserved their passions for proving their insane theories, wreaking revenge on the colleagues who laughed at them, and showing the world their brilliance. And they were often willing to sacrifice anyone, including friends, family and would-be lovers, in their demented quests.

Still, not every mad doctor of the movies was immune from Cupid’s arrows. A select few became mad and used their knowledge for evil because of lost or frustrated love.

To celebrate the occasion, Films From Beyond presents Valentines from a scattered assortment of oddball, passionate B-movie doctors who, unlike many of their crazy colleagues, did it all for love.

Dr. Gogol and Yvonne Orlac, Mad Love (1935)

"I have conquered science, why can't I conquer love?"

Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre), an accomplished surgeon, is obsessed with theater actress Yvonne (Frances Drake), attending all of her performances at the 'Théâtre des Horreurs' in Paris. He is devastated when he learns that Yvonne plans to quit the theater to marry concert pianist Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive) and move to England.

Unhinged, Gogol buys a wax figure of Yvonne from the theater, setting it up in his home and talking to it as if it were alive. When Stephen’s hands are mangled in a train accident, Yvonne, knowing of Gogol’s reputation as a top surgeon, pleads with him to help her husband. Gogol uses the hands of a recently executed murderer -- Rollo, a skilled knife thrower -- in a transplant operation.

Orlac’s new hands are useless for playing the piano, but he finds he’s now very good at throwing knives. Gogol tries to convince Yvonne to leave her husband as Stephen’s mental state deteriorates. Yvonne stands by her man, but the deranged surgeon will try anything, including posing as the resuscitated murderer Rollo, to break up the couple and have her all to himself.

Fun Fact: Mad Love is based on Maurice Renard’s novel The Hands of Orlac (Les Mains d'Orlac, 1920). It was the second film adaptation of the novel -- a silent version was released in 1924. The novel would be adapted four more times (the last, Roxana’s Hands, 2012, switches Orlac’s gender and makes her a concert violinist).

Dr. George Lorenz and the Countess Lorenz, The Corpse Vanishes (1942)

Countess Lorenz: "Can you bear to look at me now?"
Dr. Lorenz: "Of course, you are beautiful, and I shall always keep you that way!"

Police are baffled when blushing brides start collapsing at the altar and their bodies disappear on the way to the morgue. Intrepid reporter Patricia Hunter (Luana Walters) traces the deaths and disappearances to mysterious orchids that were delivered to each wedding.

When she consults a renowned orchid specialist Dr. Lorenz (Bela Lugosi), she stumbles on his fiendish plot to extract glandular fluid from the brides to keep his aging wife (Elizabeth Russell) young and beautiful. Hunter has to fend off Lorenz and his minions, a demented housekeeper and her two thuggish sons, to keep from being the next supplier of the anti-aging elixir.

Fun Fact: Just a year later in The Ape Man (1943), Bela portrayed yet another mad doctor messing around with bodily fluids -- this time spinal fluid -- in order to reverse the effects of an experiment gone wrong. See "The Best Laid Plans of Not-so-nice Madmen."

Bill Leggat and Lena Maitland, Four Sided Triangle (1953)

"In all my life I've only wanted two things -- knowledge and... love. I used the first to try and gain the second."

Childhood friends Robin Grant (John Van Eyssen) and Bill Leggat (Stephen Murray) have made the scientific big-time. After getting degrees at Cambridge, they have returned to their tiny English village to work on a secret project: a matter duplicator.

They demonstrate their invention to the village doctor (James Hayter) and Robin’s rich father (Percy Marmont), duplicating the doctor’s watch and a bank check down to the smallest detail.

However, there is a cloud on the horizon. A third childhood friend, beautiful Lena Maitland (Barbara Payton), has returned from an extended stay in America. Although Bill has secretly been in love with Lena all his life, to his dismay Lena falls for Robin and they get married.

Bill redoubles his efforts to figure out how to duplicate living organisms while Robin is away in London consulting with government authorities on their invention. He finally perfects the process, and convinces Lena to submit to being duplicated in the mad hope that he can have his Lena and Robin can have one too.

Except there’s a catch: the duplicate Lena, renamed Helen, is exact in every detail… including her feelings for Robin.

Not-so-Fun fact: Somewhat like Lena, the beautiful Barbara Payton was used to having men compete for her affections. The most notorious instance was when actors Tom Neal and Franchot Tone had a knockdown, drag-out fight over her, which sent Tone to the hospital.

After all the bad publicity, Payton traveled to the UK to jumpstart her flagging career, making a couple of B movies, including Four Sided Triangle, for the fledgling Hammer Films. It was nothing doing -- by 1955 her short-lived film career was over.

Dr. Bill Cortner and Jan Compton, The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

"I want you as a complete woman, not part of one. Is it a crime to want to keep you alive?"

Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) is an arrogant, hotshot young doctor who insists that lives can be saved with new, experimental techniques. Although Bill proves himself by saving the life of a man everyone had given up for dead, his father, also a surgeon, is uncomfortable with the idea of using people as guinea pigs.

Bill gets a call from his lab assistant Kurt (Anthony La Penna) telling him that there’s an emergency in the lab located at the family’s country house. Bill, along with his fiancee Jan (Virginia Leith), races off in his souped up convertible. His lead foot results in tragedy when he fails to negotiate a sharp turn and the car crashes down a ravine.

Bill has been thrown clear, but when he recovers and checks the wreckage, he’s horrified to find that Jan has been decapitated. The panicked doctor wraps Jan’s head in a blanket and runs the rest of the way to the lab, where he sets up the head in a tray and feeds it a serum he’s invented to keep it alive.

Jan wants to die, but Bill won’t let her go so easily. He’s confident that the new serum will enable him to transplant Jan’s head onto a new body. While he goes body-shopping at the local strip club (naturally!), Jan, now telepathically charged due to the serum, is making friends with the horrific failed experiment -- a thing made up of discarded body parts -- that Bill has locked up in a closet.

Fun Fact: Since 2009, The Brain that Wouldn’t Die has inspired no fewer than four (!) stage musical adaptations and one movie re-make. 

Dr. Anton Phibes and Victoria Regina Phibes, The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

"My love, sweet queen and noble wife, I alone remain to bring delivery of your pain. Severed my darling, too quickly from this life. Of fires drawn and memories met, I shall hold our two hearts again in single time."

In 1920s London, prominent physicians are being murdered in bizarre ways: one by an infestation of bats, another by an ingenious frog mask designed to choke the wearer to death, and yet another has had every ounce of blood drained from his body.

Following up on a clue -- a strange amulet left at the scene of one of the murders -- Scotland Yard Inspector Trout (Peter Jeffrey) learns from a Rabbi that the symbol on the amulet represents the ten Old Testament curses inflicted upon ancient Egypt.

As the bodies pile up, Trout figures out that all of the victims worked under Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotten). Vesalius soon meets the scourge of the London medical community -- Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price), inventor, concert organist and all-around Renaissance monster.

It seems Phibes, who had supposedly died in a car accident, blames Vesalius and his surgical team for the death of his beloved young wife on the operating table. And the hideously disfigured Phibes is determined to visit one more Old Testament plague on Vesalius in retribution.

Fun Fact: ‘70s scream queen and Bond girl Caroline Munro appears (uncredited) in a non-speaking role as Anton Phibe’s dead wife, Victoria.

Heinous Henchmen of Classic Horror #7

In the mid-19th century, cadavers for medical research and teaching are hard to come by. Dr. Wolfe "Toddy" MacFarlane (Henry Daniell; no relation to Todd MacFarlane), is a respected surgeon who has taken to teaching at a medical college in his advanced middle age. 

When a distraught mother approaches MacFarlane as a last resort to help her crippled young daughter, he at first refuses to help, telling her that if he conducted surgeries for everyone who came to him, he would have no time for teaching. 

Over drinks at a local tavern, MacFarlane's medical student assistant, Fettes (Russell Wade), and his supplier of cadavers, cabman John Gray (Boris Karloff) manage to get the doctor to change his mind, as the poor girl's condition will only worsen if she doesn't have an operation. Fettes is perplexed by the relationship between the esteemed doctor and the lowly cabman, with Gray being extremely familiar with the uptight MacFarlane and contemptuously calling him by the nickname Toddy.

The doctor needs a fresh cadaver to prepare for the girl's complex operation, and Gray is called in to supply one ASAP. MacFarlane will once more have to look the other way as Gray The Body Snatcher employs his extremely dubious methods for securing bodies.

MacFarlane: "Gray, I must be rid of you, you've become a cancer, a malignant,
evil cancer rotting my mind." 
Gray: "You've made a disease of me, eh Toddy?"

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
DELIVERY MAN

Name:  John Gray           Date:   1945       

Supervisor:  Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane              

Category	Unsatisfactory	Satisfactory	Excellent	Comment
Work Productivity			X	Gray and I go back a long way, and in all that time the employee has delivered dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies.
Work Quality			X	The cadavers Gray delivers are invariably fresh and very suitable for teaching and research purposes.
Communication/ Work Relationships	X			I do wish Gray would stop calling me by that infernal nickname "Toddy."
Initiative		X		Is there such a thing as too much initiative? Gray should not be getting specimens from the "pre-deceased."
Dependability			X	Every time I turn around, Gray is there, pulling up to the delivery door with a fresh body, or frequenting my favorite tavern. He's nothing if not dependable.

Summary: I can live with the way Gray obtains the cadavers, but I can't stand it when he calls me Toddy in front of my colleagues and students.

Don't miss these other great henchmen!

Fritz (Frankenstein, 1931) | Morgan (The Old Dark House, 1932) | Sandor (Dracula's Daughter, 1936) | Jake (The Human Monster, 1939) | Ygor (Son of Frankenstein, 1939) | The Creeper (House of Horrors, 1946)

Heinous Henchmen of Classic Horror #5

When Wolf Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone), son of the original monster-maker, moves himself and his family back to his father's old stomping grounds, he finds that he has inherited more than a creepy castle.

A demented old villager, Ygor (Bela Lugosi), has been hanging around the ruins of Frankenstein's laboratory, scaring away the other locals. Ygor was condemned to hang for grave robbing, but miraculously survived with a broken neck as a souvenir of his date with the hangman.

Ygor shows Wolf the still living body of the monster -- comatose after being struck by lightning. It soon becomes apparent that, like his father, the Son of Frankenstein can't resist dabbling with things better left alone.

"This is a place of the dead. We're all dead here."

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
CARETAKER

Name:  Ygor           Date:   1939       

Supervisor:  Dr. Wolf Frankenstein              

Category	Unsatisfactory	Satisfactory	Excellent	Comment
Work Productivity		X		I am very grateful to Ygor for looking after the slumbering monster and keeping nosy villagers away from the laboratory.
Work Quality	X			The employee is not much help in the laboratory. He mostly just stands around and watches me work.
Communication/ Work Relationships	X			Ygor does a lot of skulking about, and I get the feeling there's a lot he's not telling me.
Initiative	X			Ygor apparently has plans for the monster once he's revived, but I believe they are for a personal vendetta and not for the advancement of science.
Dependability	X			Ygor tried to kill me when we first met. Since then his attitude has improved, but he comes and goes as he pleases, and I feel that I can't trust him.

Summary: Ygor is very solicitous of his friend the monster. He is also very effective at scaring away nosy villagers. However, I question his motives and work ethic, and he does not appear to be very interested in advancing the cause of science.

Don't miss these other great henchmen!

Fritz (Frankenstein, 1931) | Morgan (The Old Dark House, 1932) | Sandor (Dracula's Daughter, 1936) | Jake (The Human Monster, 1939)

Heinous Henchmen of Classic Horror #4

Our next henchman, Jake (Wilfred Walter), is an insurance adjuster of sorts. Jake works for Dr. Feodor Orloff (Bela Lugosi), who is a psychopath and a Human Monster. Orloff, a disgraced physician, has opened up his own insurance agency, where he specializes in taking out life insurance policies as collateral on loans to men with no close relatives.

Orloff is also the staff doctor for the Dearborn Home for the Blind, where he found Jake and enlisted his help. Jake is not exactly gifted in the looks department, but he's as strong as an ox. Once one of Orloff's clients/victims has signed off on the insurance policy, Jake's job is to "adjust" the man's status from living to dead. Orloff then collects on the policy using the Dearborn home as a front.

"We have an especially nice view of the river from here Miss Stuart.
Jake, would you care to show her?"

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
INSURANCE ADJUSTER

Name:  Jake           Date:   1939       

Supervisor:  Dr. Feodor Orloff              

Category	Unsatisfactory	Satisfactory	Excellent	Comment
Work Productivity			X	Jake keeps very busy "interviewing" various clients. As a result of those visits, the company has been making a killing, so to speak.
Work Quality		X		The employee needs to work on attention to detail and follow-through. Recently, the daughter of one of our deceased clients, Miss Diana Stuart, has been asking inconvenient questions. Jake has not satisfactorily concluded his interveiw with her.
Communication/ Work Relationships			X	Jake and I have a very simple work relationship. I slip him messages in Braille, and off he goes.
Initiative			X	In spite of his disability, the employee always manages to find his man.
Dependability		X		Lately Jake has been tending to a sick friend at the home. This is all well and good, but he also needs to keep in mind his responsibilities to me.

Summary: Jake is a great help in dealing with our policyholders. However, he needs to be careful that his personal life and infatuation with Miss Stuart don't get in the way of his duties.

Don't miss these other great henchmen!

Fritz (Frankenstein, 1931) | Morgan (The Old Dark House, 1932) | Sandor (Dracula's Daughter, 1936)

The Best Laid Plans of Not-So-Nice Madmen

We’re all waiting with bated breath as the world’s finest medical and scientific minds tirelessly work to come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus. When it happens, it will rank among humanity’s greatest medical achievements, right up there with Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin and Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine.

The difference being that there will almost certainly not be an individual man or woman to point to as the latest hero of the 21st century (although no doubt some politicians will try to take credit). The complexity of the challenges and the resources needed to address them dictate that literal armies of brilliant minds work cooperatively and collectively, versus leaving it up to an eccentric lone wolf scientist burning the midnight oil in a secluded lab.

"It's okay doc, I'm feeling much better now... really I am!"

Society is deeply ambivalent when it comes to brilliant lone wolves. On the one hand, we say we cherish individualism, ambition and initiative, and yet also seem to be smugly satisfied when some modern-day Icarus flies too high and comes crashing back down to earth.

One of the purest expressions of that love-hate relationship is the B-movie mad scientist. Whether they’re busy stitching together body parts and animating them with life, or concocting serums that can turn human beings into mind-controlled zombies, there’s nothing more fascinating or more deserving of punishment than the mad doctor dabbling in things better left alone.

It seems as if we value intelligence up to a certain point -- then, when we’re confronted with extraordinary genius, we’re deeply suspicious that such a gift is a license to disregard the value of “normal” human life. The movies help us work out the conundrum and restore order to the universe, at least on celluloid.

The mad doctors and scientists profiled below -- represented by some of the greatest names in classic horror -- are all inheritors of the Frankenstein tradition of lonely brilliance, a tendency to flout society’s norms, and hubris bordering on a God-complex. They up the ante by being willing to experiment on live people; no digging up subjects from the local graveyard for them.

While the mad theories, serum formulas and lab equipment vary from film to film, some plot elements pop up time and again:

• A brilliant but highly eccentric scientist is denounced and/or ostracized by his colleagues for his mad theories
• Seething with resentment, he locks himself away in an isolated lab, often in a large, remote mansion, working round the clock to prove himself to the world
• To anyone who will listen, the scientist compares himself to the great thinkers of history who were misunderstood in their day
• An innocent woman -- a daughter, niece, sister or colleague -- initially stands by the beleaguered scientist, holding out a slim hope of redemption for him
• The scientist is not just content to prove his discredited theory, but has to exact revenge on his disbelieving colleagues, even those who still respect him but don’t understand his mad obsession
• A young man, the boyfriend or fiance of the scientist’s daughter/niece/colleague (and often a newspaper reporter), becomes suspicious and starts nosing around

Please note: Thanks to the amazing Embed-O-Magic process, the full-length movies shared on this page are queued to a clip illustrating each mad doctor’s peculiar modus operandi. If you want to see how he gets his just deserts for flouting the laws of humanity and Nature, you’ll have to watch the full movie.

The Man Who Changed His Mind (aka The Man Who Lived Again, 1936)

The Man: Dr. Laurience (Boris Karloff)

The Plan: Dr. Laurience is a brain specialist whose eccentric theories got him kicked out of the research institute he was working at in Genoa. Now on his own, Laurience hires brilliant neurosurgeon Clare Wyatt (Anna Lee) to assist him with his experiments.

Laurience claims that he can “take the thought content from the mind of a living animal and store it as you would store electricity.” This content can then be transferred to another living being. To Clare’s amazement, he exchanges the minds of two chimpanzees, one gentle, the other fearful and aggressive.

Against his better judgment, the doctor takes up the offer of Lord Haslewood (Frank Cellier), a newspaper mogul and patron of the sciences, to relocate his equipment and experiments to Haslewood’s institute.

When Laurience presents his theories to a distinguished group of colleagues and is promptly ridiculed as a fraud, Haslewood fires the doctor and tells him that all his equipment and notes are the mogul’s property to do with as he sees fit. Laurience decides on the spot that he has the means to make the rich blowhard change his mind…

Man Made Monster (1941)

The Man: Dr. Paul Rigas (Lionel Atwill)

The Plan: When Dan McCormick (Lon Chaney, Jr.) becomes headline news as the sole survivor of a bus crash into power lines that electrocuted 5 other passengers, electro-biologists Dr. John Lawrence (Samuel S. Hinds) and Dr. Paul Rigas (Atwill) offer Dan room and board on Lawrence’s sprawling estate if he will agree to let the doctors examine him to find out why he is so immune to electricity (yes Virginia, there really is a branch of science called electro-biology).

Lawrence has a normal scientific curiosity with regard to Dan, but Rigas sees the potential for so much more: “I believe that electricity is life, that men can be motivated and controlled by electrical impulse supplied by the radioactivities of the electron. That eventually, a race of superior men can be developed, men whose only wants are… electricity!”

Lawrence’s niece June (Ann Nagel) and her fiance, newspaper reporter Mark Adams (Frank Albertson) are leery of Rigas. Adams sums up his impression of the doctor: “I bet he spent his childhood sticking pins in butterflies.”

While Lawrence is away at a scientific conference, Rigas pumps poor Dan with higher and higher doses of electricity in an effort to create an electro-man obedient to his will. When Lawrence returns and finds out what Rigas is doing, the madman must silence his colleague…

The Mad Monster (1942)

The Man: Dr. Cameron (George Zucco)

The Plan: Cameron’s mad theory -- that you can pass on the characteristics of animals to humans via blood transfusions -- has gotten him denounced by his colleagues and dismissed from his prestigious academic post.

When he succeeds in transforming his simple-minded gardener Petro (Glenn Strange) into a wolf-man, he imagines bringing together all his critics for an “I told you so” session:

“Just picture gentlemen, an army of wolfmen, fearless, raging, every man a snarling animal! My serum will make it possible to unloose millions of such animal men, men who are governed by one collective thought -- the animal lust to kill without regard to personal safety. Such an army will be invincible!”

But Cameron is not satisfied to just deliver tongue-lashings in his daydreams. He devises a diabolical plan to get his chief rival, Professor Blaine (Robert Strange), alone in a room with Petro, and have Blaine himself inject the handyman with the serum that turns him into a mindless killer…

The Ape Man (1943)

The Man: Dr. James Brewster (Bela Lugosi)

The Plan: Brewster, a famous gland expert but a sloppy scientist, uses himself as a guinea pig in his experiments and ends up as a hairy, hunched over human-ape hybrid. With the help of his colleague Dr. Randall (Henry Hall) and his sister Agatha (Minerva Urecal), he stages his own disappearance and hides out in the cellar of the family manor, desperately seeking a cure for his condition.

There is one hope, but there’s a catch. Human spinal fluid might help him return to his normal self, but it has to be harvested from living bodies, meaning instant death for the donor. When Randall draws the line at killing people, Brewster explodes in a fit of self-pitying rage: “It’s my life against somebody else’s -- I don’t want to live the rest of my life this way, and I WON’T!”

When a wisecracking reporter (Wallace Ford) and his photographer (Louise Currie) start snooping around the manor, the pressure is on. Brewster, with the aid of his pet gorilla, takes matters into his own hands to secure the precious spinal fluid…

The Unearthly (1957)

The Man: Dr. Charles Conway (John Carradine)

The Plan: Conway runs a private sanatorium in the middle of nowhere, where a number of people, including the beautiful but vulnerable Grace Thomas (Allison Hayes), are convalescing. They’ve been referred to the sanatorium by a duplicitous crony of Conway’s, Dr. Wright (Roy Gordon), to become unwitting guinea pigs in Conway’s secret experiments with glands (there are those glands again!) None have any family members who will notice if they go missing. Lobo (Tor Johnson), a hulking giant with the mind of a child (and a product of Conway’s experiments), is on hand to make sure the “patients” stay put.

In his research on human glands, Conway has found a way to “control the flow of vitamins” to them in order to create giants like Lobo, but he has also created a new artificial gland that in theory is the key to eternal youth: “I can prolong life for thousands of years, perhaps forever! Think of it, to be always, exactly as you are now. Suppose you could wake up every morning and see your face untouched by time!”

But to prove his theories, he needs a “completely sound physical specimen, mentally and physically perfect!” He thinks he has such a specimen in Mark Houston (Myron Healey), a fugitive criminal that Lobo found lurking around the property, and whom Conway has blackmailed into sticking around.

In the meantime, Conway continues to experiment on the other patients who have been lured to the house of horrors…

What Might Have Been: The Universal Monster Rally You Never Saw

When the Metzinger Sisters at Silver Scenes put the call out for participants for their Imaginary Film Blogathon, I experienced a flashback (the cinematic kind of course -- I hardly ever drop acid anymore). I saw a skinny, pasty-faced 10 year-old-boy wearing a Dracula cape and directing a motley assortment of neighborhood kids in short plays based on the Universal monster rallies he'd recently seen on the late night horror show (specifically Gravesend Manor, central Iowa's Saturday night horror fest broadcast by WOI Channel 5, and hosted by Malcolm, the Duke, Esmerelda and Claude). The plays were held in my parents' garage, with the garage door used as a very noisy curtain. The audience consisted of extremely patient, slightly bemused parents, with a few semi-curious siblings and friends also parking their butts in the folding chairs.

As you can imagine, this was in a place and time far away and long ago: a.) neighbors actually knew each other and would hang out together; b.) adults would occasionally find the time to sit still for the nerdy neighbor kid's monster movie-inspired plays; and c.) garages were still used primarily for parking cars vs. storing a lifetime's worth of accumulated junk, and could therefore easily be converted into a makeshift theater.

Alas, from those promising beginnings I failed to become another Steven Spielberg or George Lucas (or even a Joe Dante for that matter), but from time to time over the years, I've thought about what I might do with a Universal monster mash-up. Frankenstein meeting the Wolf Man was a revelation for the 10-year-old me. (At the time, I wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box -- I wondered why Bela Lugosi was listed in the credits but didn't seem to appear in the movie. It took me some time to realize it was dear Bela under all that Frankenstein monster make-up!) Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man was a tasty appetizer, but the chefs at Universal outdid themselves with the sumptuous feast of House of Frankenstein! (On the other hand, House of Dracula, while certainly moody and atmospheric, left a taste in the mouth like Tuesday leftovers. Can you tell it's getting close to dinner time as I write this?)

For a kid who's very, very into monsters, two in the same film is great, but three classic monsters is sublime. Sometimes, more is indeed more, and the best recipes come from piling on the ingredients: starting with a base of Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man, throw in Boris Karloff as a mad, vengeful doctor, add the gaunt, debonair John Carradine as Dracula, and you've got the perfect monster stew! (Yep, it really is getting close to dinner time.) Sure, the various plot lines don't coalesce very well, and the monsters don't really meet up with one another, but there's just something very satisfying and likable in the attempt to merge three classic monster universes. And for those of you who like a side dish or two of pathos with their monster main course, I challenge you not to shed a tear for the lovelorn hunchback Daniel (J. Carrol Naish) or the tragic gypsy girl Ilonka (Elena Verdugo) who loves a wolf man. (Okay, I'm taking a break and getting something to eat…)

(Alright, I'm back.) I know that as a responsible adult, I'm supposed to revere Universal's classic monsters of the '30s and disparage the make-a-quick-buck kiddie matinee monster rallies of the '40s, but as a lover of B's, I can't bring myself to be that high-minded. Frankly, the original Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy are slooooowwwww-moving and sleep inducing compared to the frenetic, wacky energy of the rallies. One of the greatest horror movies of all time, The Bride of Frankenstein, is essentially an intellectual exercise in spite of its B horror trappings. In contrast, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein engage the cheesy fun center of the brain. And that's not a bad thing, as I've tried to demonstrate with this blog.

Make no mistake, cheesy fun is hard to pull off. Like good comedy, it requires a delicate balance. Try just a little too hard, and you've got something that's patently artificial and just plain bad. Did the producers of Universal's monster rallies of the '40s fail miserably? Look at it this way -- these films have been issued on VHS and DVD multiple times, are still in print, and have been rated by thousands of fans and analyzed by hundreds of reviewers on sites like IMDb. Glenn Strange, the B western actor who donned the Frankenstein monster makeup for several of the rallies, over the years has become the iconic monster, more so perhaps than Boris Karloff. Not bad for throwaway kids' stuff, huh?

So, it is only with the deepest respect for the later films that I try my hand at conceptualizing a Universal rally that might have been. Mixing and matching monsters is no easy task. Naturally, any similarity in what follows to an actual B movie is purely coincidental.

Now Playing: Chamber of Horrors (1944)

Pros: Brings together neglected and underrated Universal monsters in an atmospheric setting
Cons: Script is a confusing mess (okay, so I'm not a screenwriter!)

Directed by George Waggner
Cinematography by George Robinson
Cast: Henry Hull (Kruller), Claude Rains (Cedric Griffin), Evelyn Ankers (Isabel Lewis), Turhan Bey (Eric Iverson), Martin Kosleck (Peter Hoffman), Bela Lugosi (Ahmet), George Zucco (Andoheb), Lon Chaney, Jr. (Kharis), Acquanetta (Ananka)

In their comprehensive and cheesily fun survey of Universal Horrors: The Studio's Classic Films, 1931-1946 (McFarland, 2nd Ed. 2007), Tom Weaver and John and Michael Brunas note that the penultimate monster rally, House of Frankenstein, had something of a shaky start:

"On June 7, 1943, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Universal was developing a new shocker entitled Chamber of Horrors with an all-star cast of goons including the Invisible Man, the Mad Ghoul, the Mummy and 'other assorted monsters.' George Waggner was named as the ringleader of this three-ring circus of horrors. The cast read like a who's who of cinemacabre: Karloff, Chaney Jr., Lugosi, Lorre, Rains, Zucco, Hull and … James Barton (!). Chamber of Horrors never saw the light of day."

(However, the film that was eventually released as House of Frankenstein did get the green light in the summer of 1943 under the working title The Devil's Brood.)

"Hey, where's my invitation to the House of Frankenstein?"

I've always loved Universal's Mummy movies (as well as Hammer's), and I feel badly for dear old Kharis that he never got invited to any of the rallies. As described, Chamber of Horrors has a completely different cast of monsters from the two House rallies. It sounds like after Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the studio execs wanted to give their other franchises a shot in the arm (and in the case of the one-shot The Mad Ghoul, possibly make it into a franchise). The 10-year-old kid that still occupies a good portion of my brain was tempted to just throw the Mummy into the pot with Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man, but I decided to stick with the concept as originally reported -- although I've played around with the cast somewhat. Here goes!

The story: In the Egyptian desert, a uniformed Nazi SS officer, Kruller (Henry Hull) stands at the opening of a newly excavated tomb, interrogating an old local dressed in a traditional robe and wearing a fez. Andoheb (George Zucco), High Priest of Karnak and protector of ancient secrets, is surrounded by soldiers, but he is unnaturally calm. "Your people have betrayed you and led us to Princess Ananka's tomb," he tells Andoheb. "It's all over-- you might as well turn over the Scroll of Life to us as well. We will find it with or without your help!"

"For defiling Ananka's tomb, you and your men will be cursed for a thousand lifetimes," Andoheb responds defiantly. "The Scroll will never end up in infidel hands like yours!"

Henry Hull

Kruller nods at his men, who grab Andoheb and take him off camera. As a shot rings out, we see a face peering out from behind a large rock near the tomb (and it looks a lot like Bela Lugosi!). Schiller motions his men: "pack up the tomb's contents and ship it to Berlin. The Princess herself will come with me."

Cut to the sleepy college town of Mapleton, New York, where an inquest into the bizarre death of Dr. Alfred Morris is being held. On the witness stand, concert pianist Isabel Lewis (Evelyn Ankers) tells a weird tale of how the seemingly kindly Dr. Morris exposed her fiance Ted to an ancient Mayan poison gas, turning him into a living dead man and mindless slave to the mad doctor. Worse still, Ted had to have regular injections of fluid from fresh human hearts to keep going. After her testimony, Isabel and her new boyfriend, debonair Eric Iverson (Turhan Bey) are approached by a strange, rat-faced little man who introduces himself as Peter Hoffman (Martin Kosleck), a researcher with the newly opened Museum of Metaphysics and Ancient Sciences. When Hoffman insists that Isabel knows more than she's telling and tries to grab her arm, Iverson steps between the two and advises the strange man to get lost. Regaining his composure, Hoffman apologizes and invites the couple to visit the museum. Fade out.

Night. The camera slowly zooms in on what looks to be a deserted house. The night wind moans through the gnarled branches of the trees surrounding the house. Close-up of the front door, and a nameplate: Dr. Alfred Morris. The doorknob starts turning by itself. Inside the house, a chair is knocked over by an invisible body, and another door opens by itself. We see a large room set up as a laboratory. Beakers are brushed aside by an invisible arm, file cabinets open by themselves and disgorge their contents, and finally, a cabinet door flies open and a test tube seems to float through the darkened room.

Martin Kosleck

Cut to another night shot, where Hoffman is entering the gate in front of a large, ramshackle mansion. A sign over the gate reads "Museum of Metaphysics and Ancient Sciences." As he walks up to path to the house, a shadowy figure observes him from a hiding place behind a gnarled old tree. The wan light from the house illuminates his face, and we see it's the same man who watched Kruller and Andoheb at the excavation site. Hoffman proceeds into the house, passing by bizarre tableaux with wax figures depicting ancient Egyptian burial rites and blood-curdling Mayan sacrifices. He touches an ornamental dagger hanging on a nearby wall, and a secret door creaks opens to reveal a passageway.

Cut to a large, underground laboratory lit eerily by torches. Kruller, now dressed in civilian clothes, is hovering over an open sarcophagus. He looks up momentarily as Hoffman enters from the steep, narrow stairway. "It's all coming together now Hoffman!" he says triumphantly. "First we stole Griffin's invisibility formula from the British, who had forgotten it even existed! Then we recovered Morris' secret for creating the living dead from right under the noses of these ignorant townspeople. And we're close -- very close now -- to discovering the Egyptian secret of eternal life!"

"Berlin will be very pleased," Hoffman responds. "Ah yes, Berlin…" Kruller says with a smirk, "we'll keep all of this to ourselves for right now… at least until the final piece is in place." Hoffman frowns. "Do you think it wise that we openly advertise ourselves with this museum? Won't it attract suspicion?" "That's the beauty of it Hoffman! We're hiding in plain sight, and scholars with knowledge of the esoteric arts are coming to us, unwittingly giving us the information to uncover these dark secrets. To them it's all an academic exercise, good for a scientific paper or two. But it will be Germany that will reap the rewards! We'll create whole armies of invisible soldiers, turn our enemies into living dead slaves, and while we're at it, help ourselves to eternal life courtesy of the Egyptians!"

As he finishes his speech, Hoffman's eyes widen in horror. Both men look down at the sarcophagus, where a moldering, bandaged body is slowing sitting up. After emitting a low moan, the mummy slowly and painfully lays back down. "Don't be such a mouse Herr Hoffman," chides Kruller. "I administered the tana leaves to the princess, but by themselves, they can only animate the body for a moment or two. It's the Scroll of Life that we need. We'll find it eventually. But for now, we'll concentrate on Prof. Morris' discoveries. Our test subject here," nodding at Ananka's mummy, "might still be revived with fluid from the hearts of some, shall we say, volunteers.

Bela Lugosi

Cut to the ruins of the Banning house (site of the fiery climax of The Mummy's Tomb). The lurking man previously seen shadowing Kruller is standing just outside the charred foundation of the house. His face is lit by a single candle. "Kharis, your work here is not done. I, your loyal servant Ahmet, have traveled to this strange land to call you yet again to your sacred mission. I have read from the Scroll of Life. It is time to arise again to avenge the House of Karnark and reclaim your Princess!"

The earth in front of Ahmet (Bela Lugosi) stirs, and a clutching, bandaged hand breaks through the clods of dirt. Close-up of Ahmet's grim face as a shadow falls across it. Kharis (Lon Chaney Jr.) stands in front of his summoner, his face and body blackened by fire and dirt. Cut to Kruller's basement laboratory. Closeup of Ananka's mummy. As Kruller and Hoffman converse in the background, the Princess stirs and takes a gulp of air through the moldering bandages. Fade out.

Isabel, with Eric by her side, is being interviewed by a wire service reporter about her recent brush with the living dead. She recaps the story of how Prof. Morris, madly in love with her, gassed her fiance Ted Allison with his deadly Mayan poison. The reporter mentions in passing that he also interviewed a Dr. Kruller and his assistant Hoffman at the new museum, who seem to know a lot about the recent tragedy and Morris' macabre discoveries. Isabel and Eric exchange glances, recalling their encounter with Hoffman at the inquest. "Maybe it's time we visit this museum, since we were so graciously invited," Eric suggests. The reporter suggests that if they're going to visit the museum, they should get in touch with Cedric Griffin (Claude Rains), son of Britain's notorious Invisible Man. He's heard that the museum staff have been researching Griffin and the invisibility formula, and he's traveled all the way from London to interview them.

Isabel and Eric meet Cedric in the lobby of the hotel he's staying at. Cedric tells them that there was a break-in at the university housing his father's papers, most of which have disappeared. Cedric is concerned that Griffin's formula will fall into the wrong hands. Even in the right hands it's dangerous stuff, since the serum still creates madness in anyone foolish enough to take it. Cedric has learned through the academic grapevine that Kruller and Hoffman have studied his father and his research extensively, and they're his only lead to tracking down the papers.

Claude Rains

The three agree to visit the museum together, and arrange a special night tour with Hoffman. Cut to the museum, where Kruller and Hoffman are standing amidst the macabre tableaux in the main room. Hoffman is clearly nervous. "It's not just the singer and her escort visiting tonight, it's Griffin's son as well! I tell you he knows something-- why else would he travel all this way to our humble little museum? It's time to tell Berlin everything we know and get out!"

"Why so faint of heart now Hoffman, when we're so close to capturing the secrets of the ages?" Kruller sneers. "Besides, the bureaucrats in Berlin wouldn't have the faintest clue what to do with our discoveries! Forget them! We hold in our hands the power to kill our enemies without being seen, make others into our slaves, and to live for eternity. With that power, we can move nations, we can rule the world! Now's the time to be a lion Hoffman, not a mouse!"

Hoffman backs away, his mouth agape. Kruller's hands, which had been balled into fists, suddenly turn pale white, then translucent as capillaries and veins pop into view. Kruller opens his hands and brings them up to his face as they disappear altogether. "It's treason!" Hoffman sputters, "you can't mean it!" "Ah, I thought I had more control over it," Kruller mutters to himself. He grins evilly as his dark eyes bore into Hoffman. Kruller advances toward the subjective camera, two handless arms stretched out in front of him. "Here Hoffman, come with me to the lab. It's time we tested Morris' discovery on a living subject. Take heart Mouse, it's all for a good cause…"

Evelyn Ankers

When Isabel, Eric and Cedric arrive at the museum, Kruller, his hands swathed in bandages, greets them. He makes his apologies for Hoffman, who's off on an errand, and explains that he scalded his hands making tea. The visitors exchange glances among themselves as Kruller walks them through the tableaux in the main room. Kruller's face is unnaturally pale, almost translucent as he explains the research he's doing into ancient, occult arts. "We can learn much from what we formerly dismissed as superstition and cheap mysticism," he explains. "The Griffins and the Morris's of the world have proved that…" When Cedric presses him on what he knows about his father's work, Kruller apologizes to the group that he's not feeling well, and needs to retire. At this point, his head is entirely in shadow. The group mumbles their good nights as Kruller, his bandaged hands covering his face, quickly escapes to a back room.

Out in the night air, the three shake their heads in near disbelief. "What an odd duck!" Eric exclaims. "He's clearly hiding something," Cedric says with a frown. "And what do you make of those grotesque displays?" Isabel asks. "Not the work of serious scholars," replies Cedric. Eric finishes his thought: "More like a chamber of horrors!" Isabel suddenly stops walking and shudders violently. Eric grabs her. "What's wrong?" "It felt like a cold hand reached out and brushed my face!" she says breathlessly, her face pale.

At that moment, a horse-drawn wagon noisily bursts out of the dark, nearly sideswiping the group by the side of the road. It clatters on down the road and vanishes in the darkness. "Did you see that?" Cedric exclaims. "I don't think there was anyone driving it!" "Well, we've survived the Chamber of Horrors and a driverless wagon tonight," Eric says drily, trying to lighten the mood. "Let's get out of here before our luck runs out!"

Turhan Bey

In the morning, Eric and Cedric meet at the hotel to compare notes. Cedric shows Eric a copy of the local newspaper, and taps his finger on the headline. "Here's the explanation for the driverless wagon!" "Local Junk Man Found Dead," the headline reads. "The corpse was mutilated, the poor man's heart cut out. Sound familiar?" Cedric asks. "Except that Morris and Ted are dead," Eric responds. "Something's not right here," Cedric observes. "Kruller's evasiveness, and his strange skin condition, and now this murder happening practically on his doorstep… He seems to know an awful lot about Prof. Morris' monstrous work, and my father's … and now the old horror seems to be playing out again. We need to find out what's going on at that so-called museum, and not by taking tours from evasive hosts."

That night, the two men meet nearby the museum to discuss strategy. "I've got to get into the house to look at records, see what they're up to," Cedric says. "Stay here where you have a good view of the whole house, and whistle if anyone gets near while I look for a way in."

Just then, a shadowy figure emerges from the back of the house. Cedric squints. "Too short to be Kruller -- must be Hoffman. Well, one less to worry about," he says as he moves stealthily toward the house. With Cedric seemingly confident about breaking in undetected, Eric decides to follow Hoffman. He shadows the figure through dense forest, then hides behind a tree as Hoffman stumbles into a cemetery. In the light of the moon, Eric can see that Hoffman's face is unnaturally grey and hideously wrinkled-- a living corpse! The ghoulish Hoffman proceeds to get down on his hands and knees, digging furiously at a fresh grave. Before Eric can react, another shadow looms up behind him and he's knocked out with a large tree branch. Closeup of Ahmet, smiling evilly. Kharis appears behind him and shuffles into the clearing.

The ghoulish Hoffman, obsessed with his digging, looks up just in time to see the 3000-year-old mummy hovering over him. Hoffman stands up just as Kharis clamps a moldering hand around his throat. The ghoul struggles in the mummy's grip, but soon weakens and collapses in a heap on the grave he'd been digging at just a few moments before. Ahmet and Kharis head off into the woods, toward the museum.

Cut to Cedric, who's found the door to the museum conveniently unlocked. He carefully makes his way through the main room, reeling around as a tree branch, blowing in the night wind, taps against a window. He backs up into a bandaged hand, freezing until he realizes it belongs to one of the wax figures-- ironically, a depiction of his father, the original Invisible Man.

Cut to another bandaged hand reaching for Isabel sleeping in her bed. It covers her mouth just as she awakens and starts to scream.

Back to Cedric, who's found a room full of file cabinets. He starts rifling through the drawers.

Back to Eric, who shakily stands up, rubbing his head. He heads off to the museum at a dead run.

Cedric is startled by a noise. He peeks out from behind the office door and gasps at the sight of a headless man in an overcoat, his hands bandaged, carrying the unconscious Isabel. Kruller, now completely invisible, nudges the dagger to open the secret passageway. Cedric pauses, then hurries over to the passageway, slipping through before the door can close. Closeup of Ahmet's face at the window, silently observing, Kharis standing patiently behind him.

Cut to Ahmet's hand opening the passageway. The unholy pair proceed down the staircase.

Cut to Cedric, who slips unseen into the laboratory behind Kruller. The German is completely mad now. The invisible man is almost crooning to the unconscious Isabel: "I may not yet be able to awaken Ananka, but every King must have his Queen, and you shall do nicely for now… and perhaps for eternity!" As he lays her out on the lab table, shuffling footsteps echo from the stairway. Kruller whirls around to confront the centuries-old Kharis shambling toward him, arm outstretched, hand clutching at the air. Behind the mummy, Ahmet is intoning the words of a sacred rite over and over.

Unseen by Kruller, Ahmet's incantation has awakened Ananka in her sarcophagus, who rises slowly, the decaying bandages falling away to reveal… the beautiful and exotic new Universal starlet Acquanetta! Ananka/Acquanetta places her still bandaged hand on Kruller's shoulder. As he turns around again, Kharis is on him, gripping Kruller's invisible throat.

On the lab table, Isabel stirs, sits up, and emits a healthy scream as she takes in the macabre tableau of an ancient mummy and an invisible man locked in mortal struggle. Cedric rushes over to her. Upstairs, Eric has burst into the house and hears Isabel's screams. Trying to locate the source, he reflexively grabs for the dagger on the wall. The passageway opens up, he hears another, louder scream coming from below, and he plunges down the stairs.

He runs straight into Cedric and Isabel, who rush to the exit as the monsters grapple. The quick-thinking Eric chucks the useless dagger, then grabs an old-fashioned gas lantern hanging on a hook. He throws it at a table of lab equipment. The chemicals quickly ignite, and the three stumble up the steps as an intense fire roars through the lab. Ahmet is still chanting even as the flames consume him. Outside of the house, Cedric, Isabel and Eric look back to see that the flames have spread to the main floor, and are now consuming the Chamber of Horrors.

The End.

Imaginary production note #1: Lionel Atwill, king of sinister character actors, was originally slated for the role of Kruller. But health and legal problems caused him to bow out, and the Werewolf of London, Henry Hull, stepped in.

Note #2: Realizing he had other commitments, Universal execs nonetheless tried to entice Boris Karloff to take the small role of Andoheb, hoping to hawk the film as another pairing of the two horror greats, Karloff and Lugosi. When Boris begged off amiable George Zucco agreed to reprise his role from The Mummy's Tomb.

Note #3: The script originally called for a much larger speaking part for Acquanetta, who as Ananka was supposed to be fully revived much earlier in the film. When Waggner showed the producers some test footage, they drastically cut her part and kept her mute.

Note #4: The setting of Mapleton was borrowed from The Mummy's Tomb, but for the purposes of the script, Mapleton was also identified as the setting for The Mad Ghoul.


Trailers for some real Universal monster rallies:

"Hordes of Horror... Spawned by the Devil..."