Man Made Monster

Director: George Waggner George Waggner

Overview

Originally slated as a Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi vehicle, Man Made Monster emerged on screen as a tour de force for Lon Chaney Jr. (in his first horror-film starring role) and Lionel Atwill. Chaney plays Dynamo Dan the Electric Man, a sideshow performer whose talent for absorbing mass quantities of electricity enables him to emerge virtually unscathed when a bus crashes into a pylon. Dan recuperates in the home of Dr. Rigas (Lionel Atwill), a demented scientist ("Mad? Of course I'm mad!") who hopes to create a race of electric-powered supermen. Using Dan as his unwitting guinea pig, Rigas zaps the poor man's energy even as he injects more and more electricity into his system. Suspecting something is amiss when rabbits and goldfish die suddenly at his touch, Dan nonetheless continues to submit to Rigas' treatment. When the doctor's colleague Lawrence (Samuel S. Hinds) figures out what's going on, he confronts Rigas with a "You're mad! I'm going to notify the police!"-whereupon Rigas picks up his cue by ordering the now-zombiefied Dan to kill Lawrence and confess to the murder. The unfortunate fellow is convicted and sentenced to the electric chair, much to the delight of Rigas, who can now put his theories to the ultimate test. Surviving the death-house jolt, Dan absorbs the entire electrical current and becomes a walking, glowing human power plant, killing the warden and the guards and escaping into the countryside. Slowly dying, Dan finally regains a shred of his humanity by rescuing heroine June Lawrence (Anne Nagel) from the clutches of Regas, then puts a permanent end to the mad doctor's evil designs before spectacularly expiring himself. A prime example of Universal's B-picture unit at its peak, Man Made Monster is among the finest of the studio's second-echelon horror product. The film was re-released in the late 1940s under the timely cognomen The Atomic Monster.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/17/2015
UPC:	0025192262876
Original Release:	1941
Source:	ALLIED VAUGHN
Language:	English
Time:	0:59:00
Sales rank:	40,793

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Lon Chaney Jr.	Dan McCormick
Lionel Atwill	Dr. Rigas
Frank Albertson	Mark Adams
Anne Nagel	June Lawrence
Samuel S. Hinds	Dr. Lawrence
William B. Davidson	District Attorney
Ben Taggart	Detective Sergeant
Constance Bergen	Nurse
Ivan Miller	Doctor
Chester Gan	Chinese Boy
George Meader	Dr. Bruno
Frank O'Connor	Detective
John Dilson	Medical Examiner
Russell Hicks	Warden
Creighton Chaney	Dan McCormick
Byron Foulger	2nd Alienist
Douglas Evans	Allen
H.J. Salter	Composer
Charles Previn	Composer

Technical Credits

George Waggner

Jack Bernhard	Producer
John P. Fulton	Special Effects
George Waggner	Director,Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Man Made Monster was one of two collaborations between Lon Chaney, Jr. and director/writer (and sometime producer) George Waggner to reach theaters during 1941 -- the other was The Wolf Man, and together the two movies revealed a winning combination. Where most directors would be hampered by Chaney's limited acting range, Waggner manages to play to the star's greatest strength -- his earnestness -- and effectively glossed over his limitations, and evoked audience sympathy for the actor and the character that he plays. That's essential in a film as fast-paced as this one, and it's one of the major reasons why Man Made Monster has endured in popularity across the decades -- indeed, as part of a B-horror package on television in the 1960s and 1970s, it proved even more popular than it had been in theaters in the 1940s, a factor helped by a brace of colorful and pleasing performances surrounding the two leads (Chaney and villain Lionel Atwill). Waggner and Chaney would pull off a similar trick with The Wolf Man, except that the latter was inherently a more profound film that required more effort from viewers (and, admittedly, gave more in the way of chills, as well) -- Man Made Monster, by contrast, was just plain fun. The movie was good enough to get re-released as The Atomic Monster, and also yielded a quasi-remake of sorts in The Indestructable Man, also starring Chaney, but in a much less sympathetic part. Sad to say, actor and director would not enjoy this kind of success together for too much longer -- Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) could (and should) have been their magnum opus together, but for some unfortunate post-production editing. Chaney would fare reasonably well with other directors for the rest of the decade before personal problems (including alcoholism) wiped out his career, while Waggner would find success producing some notably campy pictures (most especially Cobra Woman) and direct a pair of John Wayne's more popular action vehicles, before he turned to decidedly secondary fare, such as the cautionary political fantasy Red Nightmare (1957). But this picture showed what he could do without a lot of money but with a good script, an actor who was on the same page, and a solid supporting cast.

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder