Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

AaronCapenBanner Jack Arnold directed this inferior science fiction thriller that stars Arthur Franz as college professor Donald Blake, who, after foolishly coming in contact with a recently discovered carcass of a prehistoric fish, transforms into a murderous Pre-human monster that terrorizes the campus, bringing in the local police to investigate, though only Donald can solve the recurrent transformations; that is, if he ever wises up... Film may contain the dumbest scientist in film history, let's see: First he puts his bare hands in the filthy water containing the fish, cuts himself, then sucks on the infected wound! A transformed dog that drank the watery(and irradiated) blood apparently doesn't clue him in any sooner about the change; Later, he carelessly smokes from a pipe also contaminated with the radiated blood, and only puts things together after many deaths, never contacting the police or colleagues, but stubbornly going alone, which leads to more deaths! Oh boy, what an idiot!

Lee Eisenberg "Monster on the Campus" was one of Jack Arnold's horror flicks for Universal that incorporated biology. In this case, a college professor (Arthur Franz) accidentally gets infected with the blood of a coelacanth -- how many movies even mention coelacanths? -- that was preserved with gamma rays, and the guy de-evolves into a murderous anthropoid.Yes, that's how sci-fi/horror flicks were in the '50s: a little radiation screwed everything up! Of course, no need to dwell on that. Just sit back and watch the vicious hominid do his stuff. True, the strings are occasionally visible and the overall plot is improbable, but the point is to have fun, which is impossible not to do. Really cool.And yes, my summary is a reference to the "Simpsons" character Troy McClure, who of course was named after Troy Donahue.

Robert J. Maxwell A professor (Arthur Franz) of Dunston College comes into possession of a big fish, 300 million years old, long thought to be extinct. The carcass has been shot through with gamma rays as a preservative. Unknown to anyone, this has altered the fish's plasma so that any living organism that comes into contact with it, either by ingestion or inhalation, reverts to its own primitive forebear. Thus, for instance, Sampson the fraternity's dog laps up some fluid from the fish and becomes a sort of savage wolf. You can tell because when the dog growls he bears his teeth and you can see the canine's canonical canines. Bacteria crystallize like some viruses. A normal dragonfly that lights on the fish grows to immense proportions. And Franz manages unwittingly to cut his hand on the coelocanth's teeth and, later, to smoke some plasma-drenched tobacco in his pipe. (Don't ask.) And after this he becomes, well, not any kind of ancestral hominid but rather an ape-headed hairy monster whose idea of decorum is to smash furniture and tear cops limb from limb during his blackouts. The effects are very real but temporary.Nobody believes his "theory", of course, so to prove it, he deliberately injects himself with the plasma under circumstances that ensure he will be shot and killed by the police. He leaves behind a cute girl friend with a Southern accent (Joanna Moore) and a dozen or so students who are probably happy to get out of his lab periods.It's all pretty silly. The plot is full of holes, for one thing. How is Franz, a professor yet, unable to link his blackouts with the appearance of the ape-monster? The audience can figure it out right off the bat. How does a normal, healthy young woman die of fright? Why is the unit of measurement of evidence always a "shred"? Why are cops told they don't have a shred of evidence. Suppose they did have a shred. Could they then have two shreds of evidence -- or even three? Could they go to trial with half a shred? How about a nanoshred? I kind of like Arthur Franz. Square of jaw and imperturbable, he's the very model of a pedestrian actor. (He was pretty good in "The Sniper," his best picture.) Besides, he must have a great deal of determination to have worked his way out of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, a city in whose legend brick factories loom prominently.Troy Donahue, on the other hand. Well. The best performance comes from Judson Pratt (great as the frequently inebriated Sergeant Kirby in John Ford's "The Horse Soldiers"). He's everything that Donahue is not. He's animated. He has the pushed-in face and big ears of a proletarian. And not just a proletarian but a Boston proletarian, with a regional accent so thick that every vowel should have a German umlaut over it.There's nothing that comes to mind that might have saved this film from it own tedium. I liked the coelocanth, though. It was a real biological find at the time and much in the news. And linking this primitive fish to the appearance of avatars was imaginative, though I don't know what gamma rays could have had to do with it. They're just X rays and they don't preserve anything.All in all, some silly lines in the dialog aside, it's a dull movie.

mrb1980 This slightly lesser-known Jack Arnold sci-fi/horror film is really a treat to watch, again and again. Arthur Franz plays a college professor whose blood is accidentally contaminated by the blood of a coelacanth. The accident periodically transforms Franz into a primitive, rampaging beast, who simply wants to kill...and kill. The coelacanth also has interesting effects on an ordinary dragonfly and a formerly docile German Shepherd.Good and very original story, tons of action, and some good acting really lift this movie. The always under-appreciated Franz is very good, with fine support from student Troy Donahue and skeptical doctor Whit Bissell. The monster suit and makeup are a little shaky, but the film really benefits from Arnold's sure direction. Pretty brutal hatchet attack toward the end, though.Best exchange: Professor (Franz): "Jimmy, did you know your dog was a throwback?" Jimmy (Donahue): "Throwback? He's a German Shepherd!"