Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror
Directed by George Waggner/John Sherwood/Jack Arnold.
Starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Lionel Atwill, Grant Williams, Anne Nagel, Arthur Franz, Samuel S. Hinds, Lola Albright, Joanna Moore, Judson Pratt.
SYNOPSIS:
Box set featuring three classic creature features from the Universal vaults.
You can count on Eureka Entertainment to dig deep into a studio’s vault to unearth some treasure. With Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror they have brought together three movies spanning from 1941 to 1958 that may not be very familiar to modern audiences but manage to capture something of the magic from Universal’s classic – and better known – monster movies.
First up is 1941s Man-Made Monster, a freaky sci-fi romp starring Lon Chaney, Jr. in a pre-The Wolf Man role and giving the sort of hangdog performance that he would make his own in that movie. Here he plays Dan McCormick, a carnival performer who escapes death or injury in a bus crash that killed five people after the vehicle hits an electricity pylon. How did he escape unscathed? Because he knows how to channel and manipulate electricity as that is his act in the carnival (it was the 1940s), and so his doctor, Dr. Lawrence (Samuel S. Hinds) concludes that Dan is immune to the effects of electricity.
However, Dr. Lawrence’s assistant Dr. Rigas (Lionel Atwill) is already tinkering with electricity in order to create some sort of ultimate super soldier (where have we heard this before?) and uses Dan to conduct his experiments whilst Dr. Lawrence is away on business. Naturally, things get out of hand and after being exposed to the maximum amount of electricity – we know because Dr. Rigas’s experiment machine has a setting that says ‘Maximum’ on it – Dan ends up going on a rampage, shocking people with his electric touch and causing no end of mayhem.
Despite being based on a story called The Electric Man, somebody clearly said to Lon Chaney, Jr. to play Dan in his electrified state as Frankenstein’s creature – a role that Chaney would go on to play in The Ghost of Frankenstein a year later, alongside Lionel Atwill – as all he does is lumber around with his arms outstretched whilst gurning but to let the audience know that he is super-charged somebody has gone over his face and hands with what looks like a fluorescent marker pen, actually drawing on the celluloid. No mean feat in a black-and-white movie but it gives Chaney a weird glow that probably wowed audiences back in 1941, but obviously just looks silly now.
But Dan is not the bad guy in this movie, as Lionel Atwill plays the pantomime villain Dr. Rigas, who is just using Dan to further his cause. What he actually hopes to achieve by forcing Dan to electrocute everybody in the vicinity is a bit vague but it is quite fun and you can see the Frankenstein influence along with the seeds of what Chaney would go on to do in The Wolf Man later that year. Given that World War II was destroying Europe at the time the idea of super soldiers was probably something that audiences could react to and helped sell the movie but, ultimately, there isn’t a great deal of action and the pacing is totally off, making it feel a lot longer that its 56 minute running time, relegating this to B-movie status but with some charming and fun performances from the biggest names in this box set.
Moving forward to 1957, The Monolith Monsters is probably the most interesting movie in the set but the least fun to watch. Now firmly in the Cold War era, the movie is set in a desert town in the US where a meteor has hit. Nothing unusual there but instead of little green men or giant insects, this meteor brings with it strange black rocks that react and grow bigger when they get wet, getting so big they shatter and make more little rocks that will eventually grow, shatter, spread and so on. Not only that but anyone exposed to these weird pieces of rock will eventually turn to stone themselves. Not good at all.
But this is a 1950s B-movie and so the idea of something terrible happening is a lot more frightening than what we actually get. Add to that the po-faced and totally straight delivery and The Monolith Monsters isn’t as much of a hoot as you hope it would be, although production-wise it is quite spectacular to look at as the miniature work is excellent, a lot better than many bigger budget movies that came along decades later.
Otherwise, The Monolith Monsters trundles along as scientists and desperate townsfolk go to laboratories and try to figure out how to stop the giant killer rocks. As is the case with Man-Made Monster it is extremely silly but being so serious and with no big genre names to anchor it – star Grant Williams appeared in The Incredible Shrinking Man the same year for Universal but that was it – the only other notable thing about it is an early appearance from the town set of Gremlins and Back to the Future, which is instantly recognisable.
Which leads us onto 1958s Monster on the Campus, the real gem of the set that captures everything that was/is great about those crazy monster movies from the period. Arthur Franz stars as Donald Blake, a university professor who is an expert in evolution. He takes delivery of a huge fish fossil of an extinct species that has been packed in ice but being California the ice doesn’t last that long. Unfortunately, the delivery man’s dog is thirsty and laps up the water, which makes its fangs grow and it develops a bloodlust, which leads Professor Blake to pack his fossil somewhere safe, during which he cuts his hand on the fish’s sharp teeth.
Funny thing is, after this incident a strange primitive-looking creature is seen running around the university campus and before long the bodies start piling up. Whoever could it be?
Well, we know because it’s blindingly obvious but regardless of the thin plot Monster on the Campus is a joy, featuring every trope (or cliché) you can think of but delivered in the carefree manner of a filmmaker – in this case Jack Arnold, of The Creature From the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space fame – who knows exactly how to handle the material, keeping things moving and containing plenty of light and shade. It does get a little heavy-handed with its themes of man’s inhumanity to man, we’re only going to destroy ourselves, etc. but, again, the movie does pay homage to the classics – it is basically a remake of The Wolf Man – and the actor playing the monster (because we’re not supposed to know who the monster actually is as it will spoil the surprise, even though we do and don’t care anyway) does his best Lon Chaney, Jr. impression as he runs around, swinging his arms and growling whilst wearing a mask that looks like a slightly melted Planet of the Apes costume (even though it looks better than some of the masks from that franchise). There is also some quite brutal violence for a 1950s B-movie, including one character getting an axe thrown in their face. Not very graphic but surprising as it comes out of nowhere and adds some danger to the admittedly daft but entertaining plot.
All three movies come with audio commentaries featuring the knowledgeable likes of Kim Newman and Stephen Jones (for Man-Made Monster and Monster on the Campus), and Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons (for The Monolith Monsters), plus trailers and a collector’s booklet featuring writing by scholar Craig Ian Mann, and whilst this trio of B-movies might not have the budgets or legendary status of Universal’s more celebrated monster movies there is still something comforting about sticking on some monochrome terrors and spending a few hours in a bygone era, and thanks to Eureka Entertainment you can.
Flickering Myth Rating – Man-Made Monster – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Flickering Myth Rating – The Monolith Monsters – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Flickering Myth Rating – Monster on the Campus – Film: Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
