Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Nigel P It's entirely possible I am over-familiar with Universal's better known horror films from the 30's and 40's, so watching one for the first time is a doubly pleasurable experience. Tremendous actors like George Zucco, Evelyn Ankers and Turhan Bey often play supporting characters, but in this they take centre stage without a Chaney or a Karloff to share the limelight with. And it impresses what a huge amount of dialogue they are given in each scene, and how convincingly they convey it. Lesser-known David Bruce is the titular creature here, playing Ted Allison, who becomes a slow thinking, shambling zombie-like henchman for Zucco's Alfred Morris and his nefarious activities, a ghoul who is reliant on the life-force from human hearts to avert his death.The film itself is slim, never designed to be a blockbuster, and comes complete with typical wisecracking cops and journalists, luckily only featuring briefly. And so it is Morris we are captivated by, and his machinations. His idle playing of the piano waiting for his student to fall under the power of the deadly steam in the next room is a good example of his evil – he craves the love of Isabelle (Ankers), Allison's disillusioned beau. The 32 year gap between them was more acceptable then than it seems to be now – and Allison is a likable character, not saddled with the bland smugness of hero-types of the time. However, when Morris discovers Isabelle has eyes only for her pianist Eric (a slick and fascinating Turhan Bey), he instructs Allison's alter-ego to kill 'the Turkish delight', as Bey had been dubbed due to his suave ways (at only 21 years old, he was the baby of the picture).'The Mad Ghoul' is reminiscent of 'Man-Made Monster' from a couple of years earlier, wherein Lionel Atwill conducted similarly debilitating experiments on Lon Chaney.The finale, when it comes, is solid and includes just desserts for Morris, who succumbs to the lethal Mayan gas. He transforms into a shambling ghoul and is last seen clawing at a grave in a bid to find a vital life-giving heart, but runs out of time. His death is cut off too quickly by the over-zealous end credits.

snicewanger 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.

GL84 After discovering a strange gas during his work on Mayan burial rites, a professor uses it on his assistant in order to murder for his girlfriend, the woman he loves, only for the trail of corpses left behind to lead the police right to him.This turned out to be quite an enjoyable if flawed effort, mostly through the complete inactivity presented here. Because the main just of the storyline is that he's trying to win his girlfriend over to marry her, a lot of his screen-time is spent running off to find her but never coming out with his feelings once he does find her, making the reason for the journey quite unnecessary when nothing happens and instead it just turns into a tedious drag when it launches into yet another trip around the world as he follows her musical tour with the doctor in tow. Even with his secret romance towards her being as clichéd as it ever is, that these scenes here comprise the majority of the middle section of the film means that the main focus has nothing going on despite ample evidence that something fun could happen as the transformation occurs quite early on in the film due to the running-time constraints which just make this all the more obviously dull and dragging. As well, the finale is so rushed and just completely underwhelming that there's a dramatic lack of urgency over the entire affair and making it just seem all the more ludicrous overall as it transpires. That said, there's still some fun here with the storyline being quite original of utilizing the Mayan nerve gas and the regenerative properties being tied in with actual historical atrocities in a clever bit of retroactive rewriting, and the scenes of him in the laboratory operating on the different subjects early on make for a rather cheesy time with the portrayal of the classic cinematic mad scientist in such films. Several of the murders are quite creepy, and the continued marching off into the cemetery to recover body parts needed for the procedure make for a rather fun time and gets some chilling moments into the effort, and the make-up effects for the transformation look rather nice if pretty cheap overall. While there's problems, it does have some good points about it.Today's Rating/PG: Violence and suggested animal violence.

MARIO GAUCI One of the lesser Universal horrors is a still enjoyable if decidedly silly outing. The former is due largely to the typical low-budget atmosphere (from intermittent graveyard raids, for plot purposes, down to the recycled music cues), George Zucco's equally reliable presence as the obligatory mad scientist (with this in mind, the title – actually referring to the 'human monster' of the piece – has always struck me as kind of desperate) and, to a lesser extent, Robert Armstrong ditto as the fast-talking but ill-fated reporter who cracks the case. The 'monster' (afflicted by sudden 'attacks' which transform him, in a matter of seconds, into a scruffy and wizened zombie) is a student in love with a renowned singer (resident Universal scream queen Evelyn Ankers), predictably also desired by the elderly Professor - deluding himself, a' la the Bela Lugosi of THE RAVEN (1935), that she corresponds this affection - but who has herself fallen for the accompanying pianist (the just-as-ubiquitous Turhan Bey) of her concert tour. Obsessed with the Ancient Egyptian ritual of death-in-life (improbably involving a release of poison gas followed by an impromptu heart transplant!), Zucco first experiments with a monkey but soon turns his attentions to a human specimen…for which his naive assistant (a surgical genius no less) fits the bill perfectly (however, no attempt is made to explain how he manages to operate repeatedly on himself – since, naturally, it transpires the effect of the revivification is only temporary – without being fully conscious of the fact!). As I said, this is standard low-grade fare – not quite as good as even the minor classics among Universal's second outburst within the genre, though certainly nowhere near as bad as the worst of the lot - THE CAT CREEPS, SHE-WOLF OF London and THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK (all 1946).