The Mad Ghoul (1943)

George Zucco is my favorite horror movie actor. He made the most of any crappy script he was handed and always turned in a great performance. His trademark sinister stare could even give Boris Karloff the shivers. He was always a standout in any movie cast he was a part of. The Mad Ghoul is Zucco's movie. Even though David Bruce plays the title monster it's Zucco who is the true monster and he is delightfully evil as Dr Alfred Morris.David Bruce was probably the least intimidating monster in any of the Universal horror movies.He plays Ted Allison. Ted is dumped by Isobel and screwed by Dr Morris so he is the chump of the month in this movie In his ghoul make up , he looked like he had stuck his finger in an electric plug at a flour mill.He had kind of a baby face anyway so he was more pathetic than scary. The beautiful Evelyn Ankers portrays Isabel Lewis the singer who seems to be the object of everybody s sexual desires and is Ted's fiancé. Evelyn was Universals top scream queen and she was in top form in The Mad Ghoul. The fact that for awhile Dr Morris is under the delusion that Isabel loves him reveals his personal conceit and how out of touch with reality he really is. Dr Morris apparently exposes Ted to the lethal gas just to remove him from contention for Isabel...truly rotten.Turhan Bey is Eric Iverson, Isabel's pianist and the guy she actually digs. Bey had the look of a Latin Lover although he was actually a Turk. During the war, when the top stars in Hollywood were fighting the war, Bey got work as a romantic lead and occasional villain.He had the acting range of the average pine tree. When the war ended and the top star returned Beys career disappeared.Anyway Zucco turns Bruce into a zombie with an ancient Mayan gas. Bruce has to ingest the serum of the heart of a newly dead human corpse to keep living. Zucco tries to get Bruce while he is in his zombie state to kill Bey and himself so the way will be cleared for Zucco to have Ankers.And so on. Robert Armstrong,yeah Carl Denham himself ,has the role of a newspaper man. Milburn Stone, yeah Doc Adams on Gunsmoke.plays a police detective. Addison Richards, Rose Hobart , and Charles McGraw all have Featured roles. Its Zucco, however, who makes the movie watchable.

As an horror movie,well,it's pretty silly ,blending zombies stories with Incas' nice traditions (the excision of the heart of the unfortunate victim: we "learn" that they did not offer life in sacrifice to their gods,they had found a way to bring the dead back to life and vice versa).The interest lies elsewhere: the love story is rather unusual ,since Ted ,the good boy with a great heart ,is sacrificed and his girlfriend prefers a bland buck who accompanies her on piano .The nasty professor 's motive is more his desire for the girl than the triumph of "science" .

"You mean to say that your girl and my ghoul are playing the same circuit?!"Professor of chemistry, Dr. Alfred Morris(George Zucco), has perfected a type of poison gas derived from a native Mayan culture who used such methods to not only kill but to use the victims after death as slaves for their own diabolical reasons. He includes a student in his research, Ted Allison (David Bruce), a wunderkind with a scalpel, with tragic results for the pupil because of the insidious acts of the professor.Both men adore a popular soloist, Isabel Lewis( Evelyn Ankers), on the verge of her first country-wide tour and this motivates him to use Ted as a weapon to potentially kill the man she secretly loves, her pianist, Eric Iverson (the debonair Turhan Bey). While following Isabel on tour, Dr. Morris desecrates graves, forcing Ted, a zombie under his hypnotic spell, to despoil corpses for their hearts!The story is truly depraved if you think about it. I just delight in how fiendish Zucco is. I mean Zucco was just a wiz at depicting sociopathic mad scientists willing to use their brains to terrorize. It's the classic example of using your smarts for malicious intentions instead of contributing to society in a more beneficial manner. The reprehensible actions of Morris certainly adds emphasis on Ted's unfortunate fate as he must obey when induced in the zombie state, which often occurs when he is under extreme duress.One scene has a reporter, "Scoop" McClure(Robert Armstrong, given the "determined and wisecracking newsman" role), working the ghoul grave desecrations (the story truly heats up when a cemetery guard is killed by a crushing blow to the skull by Morris who, in turn, has Ted mutilate the fresh corpse with the surgical knife, extracting the heart), with a bright idea—working in concert with a funeral owner—of hiding in a coffin inside a funeral parlor hoping that the culprit will show up so he can catch him in the act, not knowing that Morris had an accomplice, resulting in a grisly demise (not only is the surgical knife used to incapacitate him, but Morris then strangles him!). The film utilizes the *puppet-puppeteer* angle where Dr. Morris uses Ted for his own twisted purposes, a gifted scientist, abusing his genius in a sordid fashion to, or as he would believe, have Isabel all to himself (an obsessive, delusional desire for a woman who respects him, but doesn't have a single, solitary clue that this well-renowned scientist is the madman behind the grave mutilations). Evelyn Ackers, a Universal beauty used in a lot of the B-movies for the studio, as always, is the woman of interest for all three male stars, her impressive figure once again costumed by those fabulous Vera West dresses. This movie uses the terrific sets Universal Studios always provided, such as foggy graveyards, Morris' laboratory, and lavish apartments (including the noisy newsroom where McClure works).This movie is all about Zucco; he just had a knack for portraying the cunning, menacing, cerebral maniac, who appears gentlemanly, polite, and cultured, masking a savage, homicidal mind without the moral compass or conscience needed to prevent the events which transpire in THE MAD GHOUL. Bruce effectively convinces as a victim who not only loses the love of his life to a friend (Ted introduced Eric to Isabel), but is unknowingly helping a man he trusts defile the dead of their hearts. The reason for the desecrations is that Morris uses ingredients the heart provides to return Ted to a more human state after each zombie attack.

I first saw this film at age 12 in 1943, having played hookey (truant) from school (7th grade) -- a great show for a 12 year old in the middle of WW2.Here's the fun part of the story. Later, when I was 42 or so, I saw a re-run of The Mad Ghoul on TV. Much to my surprise, I discovered a FRIEND in the movie: Milburn Stone, who played "Doc" in the Gunsmoke TV series, and who I had met and visited with at the CBS Studios in California. Doc and I met when we were both visitors at the home of William "Bill" Anders, Apollo 8 Astronaut in Houston, TX during the Apollo 11 Mission. Doc and I hit it off immediately, and he turned out to be a great friend. When I discovered him in the film of my mis-spent youth, I had to tell him about it. We both had a good laugh, and Doc explained that when you are a young, starving actor, you can't be too particular about the parts you take. Doc was a very popular regular in the Gunsmoke series with James Arness, Amanda Blake and Ken Curtis.