Grave-robbing, desecration of the dead, sacrificial blood rites, inhuman experiments and murder are just a few of the grisly ingredients of The Mad Ghoul (1943), which despite its lurid title is not a poverty row quickie but a polished and unusually classy B-movie from Universal’s low budget unit.
Based on a story by Hanns Kraly – the working title of the movie was The Mystery of the Mad Ghoul – with a screenplay by Brenda Weisberg and Paul Gangelin, the story focuses on the experiments of Dr. Alfred Morris (George Zucco) whose scientific research has uncovered the formula for a deadly poison gas used by the ancient Mayans in their religious ceremonies. The gas, whose deadly vapors put its victims in a living-dead state, is first tested by Dr. Morris on a laboratory monkey. Later, his assistant Ted (David Bruce), who is also a romantic suitor of the beautiful nightclub singer Isabel (Evelyn Ankers), becomes an unwitting guinea pig in the experiments when Dr. Morris exposes him to the gas. The side effects are irreversible, however, without a mixture of herbs and heart fluid obtained from fresh corpses and soon Ted is digging up bodies in the cemetery at night for his master. Dr. Morris’ attempts to cover up his crimes while exercising mind control over Ted eventually leads to murder and increasingly maniacal behavior.
Like Lionel Atwill, George Zucco was a classically trained stage actor who ended up being typecast in horror films as mad doctors and insane scientists. His first official starring role in the genre, though he had already played villains in films such as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), was The Monster and the Girl (1941). Zucco’s wild-eyed stare, flamboyant gestures and imposing voice made him an ideal madman but it also stereotyped him to such a degree that he was mostly only offered low-budget horror films or thrillers by the mid-forties.
Unlike Atwill, he appeared in a large number of low quality pictures for poverty row outfits like Monogram and PRC such as Voodoo Man (1944) and The Flying Serpent (1946). Yet his performance in The Mad Ghoul is a model of restraint and intelligence that gives the movie a distinctive advantage over its competition.
In addition, David Bruce’s performance as the doomed Ted lends The Mad Ghoul a sense of genuine tragedy and the macabre that stays with you. Prior to this movie, Bruce was an attractive leading man in B movies with a busy if undistinguished career. The Mad Ghoul elevated Bruce to cult status among horror buffs, and though he would appear in similar Universal releases such as Calling Dr. Death (1943) and The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), he would never match his creepy, haunting appearance here: “What am I? Alive or dead? Man or beast? What have you done to me?”
Bruce’s gruesome makeup was designed by the legendary Jack Pierce who was responsible for creating the look of some of the most famous Universal monsters including Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy and the Wolf Man. In a later interview Pierce stated that the only direction the filmmakers gave him about Bruce’s ghoul makeup was that he look like a fresh cadaver. Pierce obliged them and not only tinted Bruce’s skin green but also applied a layer of false skin on the actor that proved to be difficult and painful to remove later.
Turhan Bey, who plays Eric, the musician who becomes Isabel’s fiancée in The Mad Ghoul, was a legendary ladies’ man in Hollywood, linked romantically with Lana Turner, among many others, and had an exotic screen presence. Bey later had fond memories of working with George Zucco and with the film’s director James Hogan and producer Ben Pivar, whom he admired as one of the many musician/ producers working at Universal at the time. Other familiar faces in the cast of The Mad Ghoul include Robert Armstrong (King Kong) as reporter Ken McClure, Milburn Stone (he played Doc Adams on the TV series Gunsmoke) as detective Macklin plus Rose Hobart, Addison Richards and Charles McGraw.
By the way, The Mad Ghoul was scored by Hans J. Salter, a six-time Academy Award nominee, who also composed the music for such Universal horrors as Man Made Monster (1941), The Wolf Man (1941), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Son of Dracula (1943) and many more.
As was typical of its era, The Mad Ghoul, being a horror film, was immediately dismissed by mainstream movie critics as junk. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, “Most of the ghouls we’ve met in horror films have been more or less scatter-brained, so there’s really nothing out of the ordinary about the one in Universal’s The Mad Ghoul, which came clomping and goggle-eyeing into the Rialto yesterday. He is just another poor unfortunate who has been turned into a walking fiend by another maniacal scientist who has discovered some peculiar witching-gas. And the nature of his madness is no different from that of any ghoul who has gone clawing around among cadavers and generally making a nuisance of himself. As a matter of fact, we would call him a definitely second-rate ghoul. And if anyone is privileged to be crazy, it’s us poor folks who have to look at such things.”
It might have been unfairly dismissed at the time as an undistinguished programmer but The Mad Ghoul holds up well as a remarkably stylish genre outing that is distinguished by Milton Krasner’s imaginative camerawork and excellent performances from Zucco, Bruce, and Ankers. This was the final film for James Hogan, who spent his entire career helming B-movie programmers including several entries in the Bulldog Drummond and Ellery Queen film franchises. He died of a heart attack at age 53 before this film was even released.
In her introduction to The Golden Age of B Movies by Doug McClelland, Evelyn Ankers recalled her career and her work in The Mad Ghoul, noting it was pleasure “to know George Zucco, David Bruce, and Millburn Stone…All three were great troupers and, best of all, they were gentlemen, quite a unique characteristic in Hollywood in those days.” She also discussed her two musical numbers in the movie, “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls” and “All for Love,” writing, “I was very disappointed that I never got to sing in the picture as originally planned. (A few years before, in Buenos Aires, I had had my own radio program as a singer). I rehearsed for weeks but didn’t have any time off when the recording studio and orchestra were free. Consequently, when it came time for me to sing, there was no recording for me to sing (or mouth) to, except stock recordings made by other artists. Naturally I was very upset and felt it would be much more advantageous for me to do the number live. They explained that there was no orchestra available in the recording studio, and that even in “A” pictures it was not practical to record while actually doing the scene. I had to mouth it to someone else’s voice since we were, as always, behind schedule.” (Ankers was dubbed by singer Lillian Cornell).
The Mad Ghoul has been released on various formats over the years and turned up in the 5-film DVD set Universal Cult Horror Collection, released by TCM in 2009 (now out of print). The set included The Mad Ghoul, House of Horrors, Murders in the Zoo, The Mad Doctor of Market Street and The Strange Case of Doctor Rx. TCM also released single disc DVD versions of each title and you can still find copies of those from online sellers.
*This is a revised and expanded version of an article that originally appeared on the Turner Classic Movies website.
Other links of interest:
https://vocal.media/geeks/evelyn-ankers-the-b-movie-queen
https://www.searchmytrash.com/cgi-bin/articlecreditsb.pl?georgezucco(10-09)
https://cinescores.dudaone.com/the-ghost-of-hans-j-salter
