The Mad Ghoul (1943) – Review

Decades before George Romero would turn the zombie film into a horror genre unto itself, Hollywood was still trying to figure out how to utilize this particular shuffling dead menace. The 1932 Bela Lugosi film White Zombie was the closest representation at the time but with Universal Pictures’ The Mad Ghoul we get a mindless ghoul searching for the fluid of human hearts to survive, which is just one step away from “More brains!”

A scientist trying to create life from death was nothing new even in 1943, Universal’s own Frankenstein being the flagship of such a blend of science fiction and horror, but it was in The Mad Ghoul that the studio took a rather interesting turn with the subject matter as it dealt with archaeology, mad science, jealousy and murder in this bizarre take on the zombie in films. The plot of this film is just as unusual as the zombie subject matter as it deals with a scientist named Dr. Alfred Morris (George Zucco) whose discovery of an ancient nerve gas used by the Mayans during rituals of human dissection leads him to recreate the gas and begin his own experimentation – what scientific use a gas that can kill and then later allow a resurrection is never made clear, but that’s science for you – and he turns to one of his students Ted Allison (David Bruce) to help with his experiments, of course, things in the name of science rarely go well.

“Doctor, you’re not going to turn me into a zombie, are you?”

What is rather interesting in The Mad Ghoul, as opposed to numerous other mad scientist movies, is that while the motivation of Doctor Morris starts out as the typical “We must uncover the mysteries of the universe” it quickly shifts into a more libido-driven direction with the introduction of a pretty face. Turns out that Ted has a fiancée named Isabel Lewis (Evelyn Ankers), who is a beautiful and talented opera singer, unfortunately for Ted their romance has become decidedly one-sided, having gone on tour and seen the world Isabel has now outgrown her homespun boyfriend. Now, this would be bad enough, relationships being a fragile thing and things tend to happen, but Morris notices Isabel’s discomfort about her relationship with Ted and he confides with Isabel, saying that she does indeed need a man more involved with her love of music, of course, he means himself but he has read the signals all wrong because she is actually in love her piano accompanist Eric Iverson (Turfan Bey), and thus the stage is set for tragedy.

“What is your opinion on balding older scientists?”

Morris comes up with a diabolical dumb plan that involves destroying Ted by exposing him to the lethal Mayan gas the next day, and in effect, making him a mindless ghoul who he can control, apparently, a side effect of being a zombie/ghoul is that you are very susceptible to influence and are basically a mind-controlled puppet. To get Ted back to looking normal, as in not an emaciated-looking corpse, the poor sap has to have the fluid of human hearts and this is obtained by performing cardioectomies on the freshly dead, which leads to some fun grave-digging moments and the occasional murder. This sets the rest of the movie up for the two of them going on a grave-robbing spree through several towns where Isabel is also performing on her tour – Ted chasing after her like a lovesick puppy while Morris keeps insisting that he’s too sick to be a proper husband for Isabel – and that’s the dynamic for much of the film.

“Ted, I’m sorry, but I don’t think Isabel is into marrying the undead.”

Stray Observations:

• Watching all these horror films of the 40s and 50s has left me wondering “Just how many scientists had personal laboratories in their homes?” Do real estate agents have special listings for such places?
• Being exposed to nerve gas and becoming an undead creature is pretty much the inciting incident of 1985’s Return of the Living Dead.
• Doctor Morris and Ted Allison break into a cemetery for some good old fashion grave robbing, which has been a standard operating procedure for mad scientists dating back to the original Frankenstein.
• Ted is a rare zombie who can perform rather complicated tasks, such as cardioectomies, while your typical zombie simply shuffles around looking for a snack.

Who needs an operating theatre when you’re a zombie?

The plot of The Mad Ghoul is a fairly silly movie and ends with your standard “villain gets his comeuppance” endings, and while George Zucco is great at this type of over-the-top villain – he was great in The Cat and the Canary and The Mummy’s Hand – he was the only notable performance in this outing as David Bruce, playing the ill-fated lover turned zombie, is tragically boring and all the zombie make-up in the world can’t make him interesting.  Not that Turhan Bey is much better as the rival love interest, but he’s not the title character so he gets a pass, and the lovely Evelyn Ankers wasn’t given much to do other than be the object of everyone’s affection. The only time I got invested in the story was when ace reporter “Scoop” McClure (Robert Armstrong) entered the picture because nobody can play this kind of fun character as well as Robert Armstrong – he nailed it as the charismatic Carl Denham a decade earlier in King Kong – and he really killed it as the tenacious reporter, unfortunately, he exited the movie almost as fast as he entered when a plan to apprehend the “grave ghoul” ran into an undead snag.

If only Scoop hadn’t lacked peripheral vision he’d have survived this.

This is one of the forgotten Universal horror films, and it’s not surprising when considering that despite the horror pedigree of having George Zucco, Evelyn Ankers and Turhan Bey in the cast this outing gave us a lacklustre “monster” and a very contrived and messy love quadrangle.  It should be noted that The Mad Ghoul was developed to support Son of Dracula as a double feature and paled in comparison to that film as it was one of the better Dracula sequels, and even though this film does give us an interesting take on the zombie genre, the story itself was decidedly less than captivating.

You can check out my other reviews here: Universal Classic Monsters: A Cinematic World of Horror.