Man-Made Monster (1941)

Load of rubbish!!

Captivating movie !

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

This is written from an English perspective, not an American one. This film in the main deals with capital punishment, and at the end, shows the equivalent of it. To most English sensibilities this is nauseating. In 1941 when this film was released we had the death penalty in the UK, but since the 1960's mercifully we have not inflicted this on anyone. In 1941 this film was given an 'A' certificate which meant a child could see it with an adult. It would have been more appropriate for it to have had an 'H' (horror) certificate for Adults Only, but during the Second World War 'H' certificates were not given, the logic being that what was happening in the UK with bombings etc was tame in comparison to what was happening on the screen. To my knowledge it has not been released in the UK on DVD and I am glad of it. The normality of executions is prevalent throughout this film and without questioning or irony. It is available to see on You Tube which again is unfortunate. The film in its way is well acted and Anne Nagel is excellent. But for those of us who abhor Capital Punishment this is a flippant and nasty film. I do not believe in banning films, but I would make an exception for this one. This is not 'I Want to Live' or 'Yield to the Night' which were given 'X' certificates here, but which showed the true mental agony of 'eye for an eye' reasoning among uncivilized people.

Lon Chaney, Jr. plays the title role in Man Made Monster, a man who through electricity is turned into a killer. The doer of this evil deed is Lionel Atwill playing the part of the mad scientist with the usual relish he brings to these kind of roles.It all starts out when Chaney is the sole survivor of a bus crash which hit a power line. All the other passengers are electrocuted when the downed power lines hit the bus. But Chaney emerges with a few cuts and bruises.Turns out he has a carnival act of sorts in which controlled amounts of electricity pass through his body and it's given him a certain tolerance level. Chaney agress to live with Dr. Samuel Hinds and his niece Anne Nagel to be a human guinea pig for some relatively benign experiments. But Hinds's associate Atwill has other ideas and his experiments turn Chaney into a walking dynamo who can electrocute at a touch and needs those jolts of electricity from Atwill to stay alive.As I said before Atwill is the real star of this film. He must have chewed two living room sets of furniture in Man Made Monster, but it all works beautifully for his performance. Frank Albertson is also around as a wisecracking reporter and love interest for Nagel.Chaney seems always cast as the good, but doomed soul, a part played well in Of Mice And Men and the original Wolfman movie. In Man Made Monster he's not simple minded like Lennie Small, but he's a happy go lucky sort when we first meet him. He does change and horribly.In the end its not humans who do him in, but rather the properties of electricity itself. Watch this good horror flick from Universal to see what I mean.

1941's "Man Made Monster" is noteworthy for a number of reasons, chiefly that this was the Universal feature debut for Lon Chaney Jr. (previously used only in a couple of serials). Having scored an acting triumph just twelve months earlier in "Of Mice and Men," the Chaney name had become a bankable one for a studio hoping to replace the departed Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi never even considered. Intended to be a Karloff-Lugosi followup to "The Invisible Ray" (John P. Fulton's glowing effects retained from that film), Chaney plays the sympathetic role earmarked for Boris, but tailored more to Lon's strengths, while top billing was accorded to Lionel Atwill, essaying Lugosi's role, in what Forrest J. Ackerman astutely described as 'the maddest doctor of them all.' So frequently shunted aside in supporting parts thereafter, Atwill truly revels in some ace scenery chewing; in one scene, Lon asks about the now missing test rabbit: "oh, he worked yesterday!" It would be difficult to imagine Boris Karloff as an ordinary Joe performing electrical tricks for 'yokel shockers,' so completely does Chaney inhabit this good natured, unsuspecting dupe, Dan McCormick, having survived an accident that left all other passengers dead, now utilized as the perfect guinea pig for the power hungry experiments conducted by Atwill's Dr. Paul Rigas. This would be the last time Atwill enjoyed top billing in any Hollywood picture, and though he did future mad doctors in "The Mad Doctor of Market Street," "The Ghost of Frankenstein," and "Pardon My Sarong," he never again showed such a devious glint in his eyes. Perfectly cast are lovely Anne Nagel, female lead opposite Lugosi in "Black Friday," and dependable Samuel S. Hinds, always believable no matter what the dialogue. Still, after nearly a decade in Hollywood, mostly in bit parts, this must have been a revelation for Lon Chaney, who had done only "One Million B. C." and "North West Mounted Police" since his triumph as Lennie Small; apparently studios were still unsure of his overall talent. Luckily, Universal allowed him to broaden himself as their resident horror star during the prolific WW2 years, the busiest period of his career, and one where he made many lifelong friends. Included in Universal's popular SHOCK! package of classic horror films issued to television in the late 50s, "Man Made Monster" surprisingly appeared only four times on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater- July 29 1967 (preceded by 1935's "Bride of Frankenstein"), Mar 17 1973 (followed by 1962's "The Horrible Dr. Hichcock"), July 27 1974 (preceded by 1965's "Women of the Prehistoric Planet"), and Jan 21 1978 (following 1955's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers").

Before they made THE WOLF MAN together, director George Waggner and star Lon Chaney Jr made this Universal "monster movie". Chaney's Dynamo Dan, the Electrical Man was a sideshow charlatan whose specialty for the crowds was acts involving electricity. It seems, however, that he had an actual immunity to electrical shock when Dan is lone survivor of a bus crash into a power line which kills every other passenger but him. Lionel Atwill has yet another plum part as a mad scientist obsessed with his theory that through electricity those members of the human race considered inferior, "doomed to mediocrity", could be used to form an army of "super-men" willing to obey those of superior intellect in exchange for the needed boost said electrical currents provide to exist day to day. The prize human guinea pig for Atwill's Dr. Rigas is Dan , unemployed after the carnival left town while he was "recuperating" in the hospital, accepting an offer from renowned scientist, Dr. John Lawrence(Samuel S Hinds)to work with them in their experiments in understanding "bio-electricity". Rigas takes advantage of Dan while Lawrence is away at a conference, performing electrical experiments which begin to weaken the poor lab rat until he's so dependent on the juice that he can no longer function normally without the appropriate current.When Lawrence returns from the conference, he soon discovers Rigas' diabolical dream come to fruition, and before being able to contact the police, is strangled by Dan(who is no longer in control of his own body and mind, Rigas having used so much electrical current almost all of Dan's humanity has been destroyed), John's neck broken. Dan, obeying Rigas' command, admits to killing Lawrence, and is sentenced to die in the electric chair. The voltage in the hot seat only provide Dan with the electrical power needed to break out of prison, killing anyone he touches, his entire body emanating a bright glow. A walking light bulb, Dan inadvertently terrorizes the countryside while making his way to Rigas' laboratory to get revenge.Anne Nagel is Dr. Lawrence's niece, June, who suspects Rigas when Dan begins to act strangely, zapped of the energy which endeared him to them since his hiring. Frank Albertson is newspaper reporter, Mark Adams, an eager young man with designs for June. Like June, Mark can see that something is wrong with Dan and wants only to help.Like he would do a little later for Waggner in THE WOLF MAN, Chaney elicits sympathy as a tragic victim, a monster not of his own making. Atwill could portray the mad scientist role in his sleep by this point, and is the true villain of the picture..it's because of him that Dan's condition harms others, the rudimentary cause of the heightened electrical powers created in his subject's changed physiology. Chaney's friendship with the Lawrence family dog and subsequent loss of exuberance as Rigas slowly removes Dan of his ability to interact with others are methods included in the screenplay(and through Chaney's performance)to root for him to get his eventual revenge. MAN MADE MONSTER has one of the quickest murder trials you are likely to see(Universal had became good at including trials in mad scientist movies, as was the case with Boris Karloff on several occasions). As a die hard fan of THE WOLF MAN, I owe a debt a gratitude to MAD MADE MONSTER for launching Chaney's career, one of the reasons he landed the role of Lawrence Talbot. When we first see him, Chaney is so happy-go-lucky and jovial, what happens to his Dan mirrors the Talbot tragedy not long after in THE WOLF MAN.