Man Made Monster

The Elec-Strickfaden Man

Man Made Monster
aka The Electric Man
aka The Atomic Monster
USA 1941
Directed by George Waggner
Universal/Eureka Masters Of Cinema
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Man Made Monster, directed by George Waggner, was adapted from a short story, The Electric Man, by Harry Essex, Sid Schwartz and Len Golos and was originally intended to be a vehicle for Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi before being put on hold for a little while. It stars Lon Chaney Jr as Dan, the titular horror and, well, it was a very important movie, despite it not being one of the best remembered horrors from Univeral at the time. Not only was it important to the careers of Chaney and director Waggner... it also was important, ultimately, to a famous comedy team of the 1940s and 1950s... I’ll get to all that in a minute.

So the film starts out with a bus crashing into an electrical pylon, killing the driver and five of the six passengers. That surviving passenger is Dan, played as I said by Lon Chaney Jr in what was pretty much his first starring role in a Universal picture, although he gets second billing behind the mad scientist character Dr. Rigas, played by Lionel Atwill. Anyway, Dan survives the crash and is invited by kindly Dr. Lawrence, played by Samuel S. Hinds (who played George Bailey’s dad in It’s A Wonderful Life, reviewed here), to stay with him at his laboratory/home for pay and food so he can study the condition that Dan seems to have. Dan had a sideshow carny act involving electricity... or rather electrickery, much like the shows I suspect Ken Strickfaden was involved with in real life, many years before. And, certainly, Stirckfaden’s marvellous machines feature prominently in this movie (you can read my review of a biography of Strickfaden and find out his importance to mad science movies everywhere here).

However, while Dr. Lawrence is away for a science conference, Rigas starts experimenting with Dan and gives him daily charges of superhuman amounts of energy. Eventually Dan becomes a shadow of his former self because he comes to depend on the electric treatment for his strength. Of course, a side effect is he can shoot electricity from his fingers and so on... so another movie which I’m sure comic book gurus Stan Lee and Steve Ditko would have seen and been influenced by back in the day. Of course, when Lawrence twigs what’s been going on, with a little insight from his daughter played by Anne Nagel and her newspaper man boyfriend Mark, played by Frank Albertson (who would go on to play... Hee Haaaw... Sam Wainwright in It’s A Wonderful Life), things turn sour and Rigas gets Dan to kill Frank and uses hypnotic powers over him, to make him confess to the killing (and forget everything else about it). But, when he is given the electric chair for his perceived crimes, of course, thing take the expected turn, leading to one of those ‘Just’ but, tragic endings that Universal did so well with some of their horror pictures.

And it’s great. A really nicely put together slice of ridiculous pseudo-scientific gobbledy gook played for drama and a cautionary tale (the Second World War had just started and Rigas wants to build an army of such electric supermen). It’s well acted by all the principal cast but the outstanding actor in the crowd is Corky... as Corky The Dog. He’s Lawrence’s canine who takes a shine to Dan and does funny, doggy things throughout the movie, including some clever tricks. He’s the one character I was most afraid might come to harm but, spoiler, he survives the movie to give a touching performance as he rests his arms and head on the lifeless body of Dan at the finale. The only problem with his performance was that you can occasionally catch him looking off screen to see what his owner wants him to do next but, this is something many porn actresses have also been caught doing on camera over the years in many productions so, I think I can cut the four legged thespian some slack here.

It’s an entertaining film and clocks in at just under an hour. It also has some nice shot compositions in it too, which is something I always find astonishing considering the 4:3 aspect ratio of these pictures. For instance, there’s a scene where Lionel Atwill is standing over Lon Chaney Jr’s body on a medical table, using his stethoscope to figure out if he’s accidentally killed him or just made him faint. A loop of wire from one of Strickfaden’s marvellous machines loops down from above into the foreground of the shot just above Chaney’s horizontal slab and, of course, Atwill is perfectly framed within the loop. Some nice noirish moments too, where the shadow of the police guard is seen only as a bold silhouette against the wall, as it approaches the lever for the electric chair. Yeah, there’s some nice stuff in the movie, for sure.

And, like I said, it’s also important. In that it was well liked enough that it gave director George Waggner and star Lon Chaney Jr their next picture together, released later that same year. That picture was, of course, The Wolf Man (reviewed by me here) and without it, the Universal werewolf movies that followed (if there had been any at all), would certainly have turned out a little differently. Would they have contributed to the later ‘monster rally’ movies and therefore, at the end of the 40s, have contributed significantly to saving the career of two comedy stars on the wane, Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, when their combined project Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein (which included Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and The Wolf Man, reviewed by me here) took in big bucks at the box office? Who knows what would have happened if this director and actor hadn’t done this picture together.

Man Made Monster is part of Eureka Masters Of Cinema’s recent(ish) Blu Ray set Three Monster Tales Of Sci Fi Terror, alongside The Monolith Monsters and Monster On The Campus. It’s treated as well as all the other sets they’ve recently been releasing in a similar vein, which means it has some nice commentaries and, frankly, is about as good a transfer and print as you’re ever going to see it in. So, yeah, lovers of Universal Horror might want to check this set out and I’m very pleased to now have these wonderful films on the shelf, so to speak.