The Mad Ghoul

George Zucco plays University professor Dr. Alfred Morris, who has discovered an ancient Mayan gas that was used to control the human sacrifices made in their rituals. David Bruce plays his student Ted Allison, who is recruited to be his assistant for the summer. Unfortunately for Ted, his professor is quite ruthless, and uses him as an experiment to try his recreation of the Mayan gas on. He succeeds, but Ted turns into the "mad ghoul" who helps the doctor rifle graves to cut out their hearts for more experiments in overcoming the gas, though this won't do poor Ted much good... Evelyn Ankers has a small role as his girlfriend. Good "ghoulish" premise, but film is strangely meandering and unconvincing, not to mention overly talky and dull. Good cast makes it semi-watchable, but film still fails, though does have a poetic final fade-out.

The Mad Ghoul is one of the many horror movies Universal made during the Second World War and like most of the ones I've seen, is quite good.

In this one, of the regular stars to appear in these, George Zucco is a mad scientist experimenting with an ancient nerve gas and is a success on a monkey, but only for a short while. To keep his experiments a success, he has to rob graves and kill people to obtain a fluid from their hearts and he turns one of his pupils he teaches into a ghoul to do this.

The Mad Ghoul is creepy in parts, especially the foggy graveyard scenes shot in the dark.

Joining George Zucco in the cast are other sci-fi/horror regulars: Robert Armstrong (King Kong), Evelyn Ankers (The Wolf Man), Milburn Stone (Invaders From Mars) and David Bruce.

The Mad Ghoul is a good way to spend just over an hour one evening. Enjoyable.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

Lovely concert singer Isabel Lewis (Evelyn Ankers) is engaged to marry medical student Ted Allison (David Bruce.) When she unexpectedly falls in love with her pianist Eric Iverson (a very suave Turhan Bey), she turns to Ted's laboratory boss Dr. Morris (George Zucco.) But it happens that Dr. Morris is in love with Isabel himself, and he decides to get rid of his assistant by subjecting him to ancient Mayan gas! Unfortunately for Ted, this gas is of a particularly nasty sort: it transforms him into a zombie-like creature. Under the control of Dr. Morris, Ted then participates in gathering the human hearts he must have for injections that allow him to return, temporarily, to normal.

The idea for this story seems to arise from a number of sources, most particularly the silent classic THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, the various versions of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, and THE RETURN OF DR. X--the latter a particularly peculiar B-flick featuring an unexpected Humphrey Bogart as a lab-created vampire of sorts. It other hands, the concept might have worked quite well, but although the cast is accomplished and the production values are generally quite good, the make-up effects are hardly up to the Universal standard, the pace is slow, and the script is quite dire.

The film makes no effort to create any sort of "transformation" when actor David Bruce goes from golly-gee lab assistant to shambling zombie; it is a straight cut-away, cut-back-to shot, and the latter finds him in uninspired make-up and with very untidy hair. Director James P. Hogan maintains a pace every bit as leaden-footed as the zombie, and as for the script... well, it is probably this sort of script that Evelyn Ankers, the studio's "Scream Queen" of the 1940s, had in mind when she walked away from Universal a year later. Given the talents of the cast and the overall look of the film, which (make-up effects aside) is handsomely mounted, I find it difficult to give this film less than three stars. All the same, I greatly doubt that THE MAD GHOUL will have any appeal for those outside the circle die-hard Universal horror fans.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

"The Mad Ghoul" is the only one of its kind. George Zucco gives the best performance in this film as a mad professor. (how often did he play those??)

David Bruce as the luckless student is OK, Evelyn Ankers does her usual and Turhan Bey is about as wooden as they get. Not longer after "The Mad Ghoul," his career came to an end and he was forgotten. Robert Armstrong as the journalist is good and he livens up the proceedings. A shame he couldn't have had more screen time.

The production values are pretty much what you would expect. The make-up used to make David Bruce look ghoulish works very well. The film has a fair bit of incident and being only on for about 65 minutes, works to the films advantage.

Of all the Universal stars and stock character actors, the one that seems to get lost in the shuffle the most is George Zucco. It is a shame as I can never say I saw him give a bad performance despite the lack of depth in the cinematic vehicle he was appearing in. Zucco is the star of Mad Ghoul and does a wonderful job playing a man obsessed with a pretty singer played by Evelyn Ankers. Zucco works with the fiancee of Ankers, both scientists working on what keeps life after death..in a zombie form at least. Ankers, however, is not quite sure she loves David Bruce still, and is having a relationship with the pianist touring with her, Turhan Bey, who has little to do in his role. Zucco somehow induces Bruce to become a zombie/ghoul at times...thus telling his pretty fiancee things that cool down the relationship so old George can have a crack at her..or so he thinks she might be so inclined toward him(not knowing about Bey of course). The Mad Ghoul is a wonderful film because it has some great scenes and dialogue for George Zucco. Zucco shines as a sinister man with a battle between moral conscience losing to his base desires. The rest of the cast is good(look for Robert Armstrong of King Kong fame), the scenes and graveyard sets in particular are very appropriate. Don't forget the Mad Ghoul when catching up with your list of Universal horror films. It is worth seeing if for no other reason than seeing Zucco in one of his finest performances.