The Mad Monster (Sam Newfield, 1942)

"It was more than a fever - his eyes were the eyes of a wild beast!  He was possessed by a demon!"

When in the early 1940s Universal Pictures added another star horror character to their unhallowed echelons with Lon Chaney essaying the lycanthropic Lawrence Talbot of Llanwelly aka The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941) who would become a regular in the roster of monster mash team-ups over the ensuing decade, it was no surprise that other studios smelled the wolfsbane-scented buck and decided to get in on the act: Twentieth Century Fox came out with the John Brahms-helmed The Undying Monster in 1942, followed by Columbia Pictures with their unofficial 'Dracula meets the Wolf Man' offering of Lew Landers' Return of the Vampire in 1943.  So it was no surprise whatsoever that the lower end Poverty Row studios would also get bandwagonesque - Monogram would concoct their own 'man into semi-animal' effort in 1943 with Bela Lugosi seeming simian in William "One-Shot" Beaudine's so-awful-its-great The Ape Man, but their fellow low-rent outfit Producer's Releasing Corporation beat them to the punch a year earlier with their own tale of lupine lunacy: The Mad Monster.

Starring Mancunian-born B-movie veteran and rent-a-mad scientist George Zucco (for my money, by far the best of the three Professors Moriarty in the Basil Rathbone series of Sherlock Holmes films - being elegantly menacing as the Napoleon of crime in 1939's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [Alfred L. Werker]) as the unhinged Dr Lorenzo Cameron - perhaps the second most evil person who ever concocted a bizarre plan that went awry and caused havoc to go by that surname ("Bit of politics there, ladies and gentlemen" - Ben Elton).  Seemingly being more interested in bondage than Brexit, though (and quite sensible too), this Cameron's "secret work" entails tying up a large muscular man with leather straps in his basement dungeon - sorry, laboratory - and he has a whip to hand.  I'm not saying that this lends itself quite easily to a Queer Theory reading, but come on.

The aforesaid object of his attentions is the slow-witted and lumbering gardener Petro, portrayed by future Western star and three-times Frankenstein's Monster Glenn Strange - making this role a sort-of pre-emptive Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man with both classic creatures incarnated in one body.  Cameron has cloistered himself in a remote mansion (complete with underground recreational facility, easily accessible via secret passage - reasonable rates) surrounded by swampland - akin to the "forsaken jungle hell" to which Bela Lugosi's Dr Eric Vornoff was exiled in Ed Wood's 1955 Bride of the Monster - in order to prove his theory that injecting a human with the blood of a wolf can transform the subject into a wolf-man.  Perhaps it was a radioactive wolf.

Anyway, the unhinged egghead has carried out his experiment using lupine life force combined with a unique catalytic agent of his own invention in order to create the first of his projected army of werewolves ("snarling, ferocious, lusting for the kill!") out of patriotic wartime duty - his aim is to combat the Nazis - " a savage horde who fight with fanatical fury" - by unloosing millions of "these animal men" (These Animal Men released Wheelers, Dealers and Christine Keelers in 1993, a split release along with S*M*A*S*H of the gloriously-titled single 'Lady Love Your Cunt' fame: pop factoid).  His dreams of conquest with an invincible animal army that could "sweep everything before it" have led to ridicule from his peers an exile from the hallowed groves of academe, but he has shown the will and fortitude to suck seed succeed, turning "harmless, good-natured" Petro into a ludicrous looking loup garou in optical effects by Gene Stone and make-up by Harry Ross that are hardly the equal of the efforts of John P Fulton and Jack Pierce at Universal.

Preparing to wreak his revenge by using his newborn lycan slave to destroy the trio of academics who had him thrown off the faculty, Cameron has a test run of sending Wolf!Petro out on a merciless mission dead set on destruction, wherein he sallies forth into the swampland - a moribund marsh in which the local yokels (including a cackling, pipe-smoking old woman reminiscent of Elspeth Dudgeon's "We got no pepper and salt!" turn as a gypsy hag in Bride of Frankenstein) as having a devil mist that smells of evil - to crawl through a log cabin's window into the bedroom of a small child and leave the torn corpse of this slaughtered lamb in his wake.

"Its dominant urge is to kill and destroy even when unprovoked - a human characteristic translated into animal instinct - animals only kill for food or in self-defence" philosophises crazy Cameron, clearly pleased with his work.

Also residing in the quagmire-bound not so des res is Cameron's daughter, the lovely Lenora (Anne Nagel, who had starred alongside the legit Lon Chaney in Man Made Monster [George Waggner, 1941]), who misses the bright lights of the big city and pines for her plucky investigative reporter boyfriend Tom (Johnny Downs) who has been drawn into this web of mayhem and intrigue by investigating first the death of the Cajun child (and i find it impossible after typing that not to hear it in the voice of Eric Roberts saying "the Asian child" in the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie) and then Professor Blaine - the first of Cameron's academic enemies to face the fury of the wolfman.  Lonesome Lenora also has the added problem of the docile Petro following her around with puppy-dog (as opposed to his nocturnal alpha wolf) eyes, ensuring the Strange gives us a bargain two Lon Chaney performances for the price of one, so reminiscent is it of Chaney's celebrated performance as Lennie in Lewis Milestone's 1939 version of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

Petro is also giving Dr Cameron and his plans some trouble, as he not only begins to go through the metamorphosis without being injected with the formula, Mr Hyde-style, but also fails in his mission to wipe out the second designated victim Dr Fitzgerald - leaving Cameron convinced that the merely wounded Fitzgerald will regain consciousness and tell all.  What with not only his inquisitive prospective son in law snooping around the place, but the stock mob of pitchfork-bearing townsfolk roaming the area and out for blood, the demented doc euthanises his enemy in a panic whilst the inquisitive Lenora accidentally unleashes the transformed Petro from the dungeon and the manse catches fire after being struck by a bolt of lightning (a very on the nose 1940s metaphor for Cameron's comeuppance after "meddling in the realm of Gaaahhhd").  As hammy Cam wrestles with his canid creation and the flaming rafters of the roof tumble down around them, Lenora and Tom escape the inferno into the mire to watch the fall of the house of Cameron.  And then possibly go on to start a Cam fam of their own.

Monster madness indeed.