Watch The Mad Monster For Free

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

What is wrong with you people? The rating is in the 3's. One idiot says Glenn Strange rips off Lon Chaney Jr. and he can't even spell Chaney. OK we have a kids monster movie from the 1940's. A kids movie, no adult would be caught dead in a theatre watching this in 1942. Today we analyze the plot to infinity about whether this scene was believable etc.... It's a kids monster movie, not Citizen Kane. Suspend your current political correct state of mind and enter a 1940's kids movie. It's fun, trust me.What do we have? We have George Zucco, one of the best raving mad scientists of all time, playing a mad scientist. We have a werewolf unlike any other (that is a good thing). We have rural bumpkins getting torn to pieces. Great. We have Universal's scream queen Anne Nagel making a much appreciated appearance.The idiots who watch MST3K have ridiculed this movie so it must be bad, right? Wrong. Our current society watches endless superhero movies today and praises them as masterpieces. While old movies made for kids are ridiculed. Hmmm... a psychologist could have a field day with that.

I saw this film on the cult television riffing show, Mystery Science Theater 3000. Basically, this film is yet another take on the Universal classic, The Wolf Man with the only new aspect a mad scientist is the cause behind the terrible creature that roams the area. Not particularly bad, but not really much good in it either as it is very slow moving for a film that clocks in at only 77 minutes. Still, the acting is not too bad in this one and so it is a bit tolerable. Not sure I would care to see this without MST3K, but if I did it would be only to fill in the blanks as they must have cut a lot out of this one to make the episode because they had a short preceding it. In the end though, nothing to out of the ordinary as far as monster movies during its time.The story has a scientist who is working on a formula to mix the blood of an animal with that of a human being. The animal in question is a wolf and the man in question is the scientist's gardener who apparently believes that if you are a gardener you have no right to question anything your employer tells you to do. The result a wolf man...though it actually looks more like one of the monkeys from planet of the apes with a pair of Dracula novelty teeth. The scientist wishes to sell his creation to the army so that the army can have an army of animal/man hybrids at their disposal, but first he must have his revenge upon the men who criticized his work! That, of course, will be his undoing.This made for an okay episode of MST3K considering it was a first season episode which I consider their weakest season. They were still feeling their way at this point and it shows. The movie is preceded by a Commando Cody short and I see no reason for the short to be in front of this one. This film is 77 minutes long, that is plenty long enough to fill out an episode of MST3K. Maybe one small short, but this one took up the first block of the episode. Most films that have to have shorts to fill up the first block clock in at under an hour. Still, the jokes are rather good in the film portion of the film and make what would otherwise be a mundane Wolf Man clone into something a bit more humorous to watch.So, not a great film, but nothing to terribly horrible either. Just kind of a bland film featuring a Wolf Man and a mad scientist. I am sure there were several such films back in the day, in fact, I know there were as several have been showcased on MST3K. The film is a bit uneven too as it seems to take place in several time periods almost. You have the mansion, you have the city and then you have the people living in a swamp that almost seem to be living in a different time period than the rest of the film. In the end though, I say this film would have been better had the monster been just a little bit madder.

Taking a look at a Mill Creek box set that a fellow IMDber has kindly sent me,I spotted that the set contained 2 George Zucco movies,which led to me getting ready to find out how mad the monster could be.The plot:Wanting to prove all the scientists who have called him mad wrong, Dr. Lorenzo Cameron decides to use his servant Tom Gregory as a test case,by crossing his DNA with wolves in order to create a wolf army (as you do!) Taking Cameron's injection,Gregory transforms into a werewolf.Wanting to get his revenge on those who doubted him,Cameron sends werewolf Gregory out on revenge attacks.As fear spreads across the town of a monster who is half beast and half man,a local reporter begins to suspect that Cameron may somehow be involved.View on the film:Running at an epic (for Poverty Row) 77 minutes,the screenplay by Fred Myton does very well at stopping the movie from running out of steam,by crossing the mad scientist with the creature feature and murder mystery. Daringly killing a child,Myton gives the werewolf an extra bite by making the hunt for the unknown killer be one that increases the viciousness of the werewolf.Sending Gregory/the wolf out for the kill,director Sam Newfield displays a surprisingly subtle touch for the murders,with the killing of a girl being perfectly delivered in a chilling manner.Slithering across the screen, George Zucco gives a delightful performance as Cameron,who is so slippery that Zucco almost slides across the screen,whilst Johnny Downs gives Gregory dollops of charm,as Gregory's aw-shucks are replaced by murderous howls.

OK, this movie seems to have been pretty well covered by earlier comments, but there are a couple of items I wish to add. The mad scientist is producing a serum from the blood of a caged animal in order to turn a man into a werewolf. If we suspend our disbelief enough to buy into that, fine. But the animal in the cage is a coyote. That would make a werecoyote. Did audiences in 1942 not know the difference between a wolf and a coyote? They're easy to tell apart. That's weak.Secondly, this movie was covered in the third episode of MST3k (on the Comedy Channel). It took Joel and the bots a number of episodes to get up to full riffing steam, and they weren't up there quite yet on this one. They DID add enough to this snoozer to keep you awake until the end, but it was not one of their better episodes. They never even mentioned the glaring omission of an actual wolf, and THAT joke was just hanging in the air waiting to be smacked.