Highly Overrated But Still Good

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Watching this awful film from PRC I kept thinking of Betty Hutton from Star Spangled Rhythm saying she was doing it all for defense in that all star wartime flag waver from Paramount. Though George Zucco's mad scientist is far from Betty Hutton, even mad scientists are entitled to be patriotic and contribute what they can to defeat the Axis.Zucco's idea is to create an army of werewolves and by injecting wolf's blood into his farm hand Glenn Strange and creating a prototype werewolf. As for Strange when he's not being a werewolf he's a simple soul, in fact a complete ripoff of Lon Chaney, Jr. in Of Mice And Men. All he needed was the rabbits.For those colleagues who called him mad Zucco is setting Strange on them when he's in werewolf mode. All this is disturbing to Zucco's daughter Anne Nagel and her boyfriend Johnny Downs who happens to be a reporter. Boy does he get the scoop of the year.Even Zucco who had these mad scientist roles down pat in these grade Z films couldn't summon enough energy for a real performance. He did chew the scenery a lot just to keep the audience awake.This sounds more like a scheme he could have sold the Nazis.

For an obscure werewolf "B" movie, it's hard to beat PRC's 1942 epic, "The Mad Monster". George Zucco is a mad scientist extracting wolf DNA and injecting it into half-wit yokel Glenn Strange, thereby turning him into a werewolf. Strange makes a pretty good werewolf but when not in the throes of lycanthropy, he seems to think he's Lenny from "Of Mice and Men". Anyhow, Zucco uses Strange to bump off several scientists who had ridiculed him in the past and caused him to resign his position in disgrace. The movie moves along at a pretty brisk pace up to the end when Zucco gets strangled by Strange and Strange perishes in a conflagration cause by lightning. Typical PRC production standards except for the werewolf transition scene, which, while not up to Universal standards, ain't bad.

OK, I've now seen George Zucco in at least four separate horror/suspense films recently as I worked my way through various 50 pack collections, and I have to say, the guy had a limited range, but he was good at what he did. He wasn't Karloff, but PRC was lucky to have him. But the poor guy was stuck in a kind of back-water ghetto of horror films, and he wasn't good enough to take them to the next level of interest....not with the thread-bare screenplays and direction and budgets he worked under. That's the case here. This movie is, well, slow, stodgy and unexciting for the most part. The "heroine" seems to be doomed to be a rent-a-center version of Judy Garland, the "hero" is bland as white rice, and the poor guy playing the monster doesn't even get a good transformation scene out of the deal. His make up effects aren't scary at all - he looks like a slightly more shaggy version of a farm hand, is all. It's not a total waste. Zucco looks good on camera, he chews the scenery while managing to deliver some terribly affected and contrived set speeches without flinching or losing the flow. There are some moody B&W shots here and there that don't completely suck. So all in all...this movie helped some "C" through "Z" level actors pay their rent for another month, and it never sinks below a certain hacked out level of quality. Watch it once if you like George Zucco, or just feel the need to see every wolfman-themed movie ever made.

Pretty bad PRC cheapie which I rarely bother to watch over again, and it's no wonder -- it's slow and creaky and dull as a butter knife. Mad doctor George Zucco is at it again, this time turning a dimwitted farmhand in overalls (Glenn Strange) into a poor man's wolf-man. Unfortunately, his makeup is virtually non-existent, consisting only of a fluffy wig, beard, and dimestore fangs for the most part. If it were not for Zucco and Strange's presence, along with the cute Anne Nagel, this would be completely unwatchable. Strange, who would go on to play Frankenstein's monster for Universal Studios in two years, does a Lennyesque impression from "Of Mice and Men", it seems. Really tired. *1/2 out of ****