THE MAD GHOUL - "A New Sensation In Horror" (1943)

Tonight's Weird Wednesday presentation just keeps the Universal madball rolling with "The Mad Ghoul" from 1943.

He's not really mad or a ghoul, but "The Mad Ghoul" sounds better than "The Poor Sap Who Was Lied To And Manipulated By His Evil Professor."

 

The always phenomenal George Zucco is Chemistry Professor, Dr. Alfred Morris. He's got some different ideas about how the laws of nature work.

David (The Smiling Ghost) Bruce is the Professor's best student Ted Allison. The professor likes him so much, he decides to just ruin his life!

 

Ted's girlfriend Isabel is a singing sensation on her way up, and his friend Eric is her accompanist. Isabel was played by the enchanting Evelyn Ankers, and Eric is played by the always great Turhan Bey!

Dr. Morris is not only insane, he's also a back-stabbing manipulative bastard. He's telling Isabel how he's watching over and out for Ted, while draining the life out of him. It's no secret that Dr. Morris would also really like to get into Isabel's panties!

Seventy-seven years ago, but with that mask on, this looks like it could have been filmed yesterday! The Prof is handling some serious substance that when ignited has this zombie effect. First he tried it on monkeys, and now it's Ted's turn. Unfortunately, Ted is not in on the deal. The tube on the mask stops him from inhaling the crap!

Dr. Morris ignites the shit, and then calls Ted into the room and locks him in, and this is the result! I just can't get over how it affects his hair!

Hey Doc, I don't really feel that great!

One of the original 'Queens of Horror,' if the world was a fair place, Evelyn Ankers would be as well known as Marilyn Monroe, but who said the world was a fair place?

I found this cool shot on Pinterest, that shows just some of the classic horror films Evelyn was in! A couple years later, and they could have added "Weird Woman," "The Frozen Ghost," and "The Invisible Man's Revenge" to that uncanny list!

For obvious reasons like "The Mummy's Hand," "The Monster And The Girl," "The Mad Monster," and "The Flying Serpent," just to name a few, George Zucco was, is, and always be a core member of The Dungeon Hall Of Fame!

So, let's see, when he's not busy being a ghoul, Ted wants to marry Isabel, and the Doctor is also hot for her, but she's actually in love with Eric, so it is a bit of a cluster! 

Turhan Bey as Eric is always awesome no matter if the role is classy like this, or creepy like in "The Mummy's Tomb," another film that also had George Zucco in it.

Dr. Morris just keeps on stoking the fire of deceit! The lies that flow from his lips make you wonder why he was not a politician, instead of a Professor!

The Professor has given the order to Ted, "Kill Eric, then kill yourself!"

Just being a ghoul wasn't enough. A ghoul with a gun takes it to a different level!

Everything ain't so merry in Merryville tonight!

Isabel is on a small tour thrilling audiences from one town to the next with her warbling!

The Doctor has Ted cutting hearts out of bodies left and right, and all over the place! In order to keep him going, he needs a full tank of juice. Eventually somebody puts two and two together and notices that the killings and heart extractions are happening in the same exact places and times that Isabel is performing.

This reporter figures it all out, and sets up a ruse with himself as bait acting like a corpse. As smart as he was to figure it all out, he wasn't smart enough to see Ted standing there with a scalpel in his hand!

The hour and a minute this film runs is almost over, so there's no more time for any more made up stories.

When he was in a normal state, Ted figured out what the Doctor was doing to him, so he turns the tables on him, and Dr. Morris inhales a big bunch of the stuff, and ends up suffering the same fate as Ted, but since he no longer has anybody to cut out hearts for him, his fate is sealed!

The 1940's HORROR And SCI-FI MOVIES Of JOHN CARRADINE

Today we check out the horror and sci-fi movies of John Carradine in the forties. Prior to that, John had smaller parts in THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE BLACK CAT, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. All we can say here at The Dungeon is, we love John to pieces with his amazing 351 acting credits and all...

First up is the horror comedy, WHISPERING GHOSTS, from 1942, starring good old Milton Berle! The story's about an actor who plays a detective on a radio show and his sidekick try to solve a murder that had been committed a few years earlier.

In 1943, John stars in CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN along with Acquanetta in a story about a mad scientist doing experimentation in glandular research (shades of THE UNEARTHLY) and becomes obsessed with transforming a female gorilla into a human!..

Also in 1943, John is back in REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES, this time, a man and his hired detective arrive at an old mansion in the middle of a Louisiana swamp to meet his brother-in-law, John as Dr. Max von Altermann, a Nazi who has been creating zombies for the armies of the Third Reich!

Then, in 1944, John stars in a pile of movies, the first being VOODOO MAN, which also stars Bela Lugosi. Dr. Richard Marlowe (Bela) uses a combination of voodoo rites and hypnotic suggestion, attempting to revive his long-dead wife by transferring the life essences of several young girls he has kidnapped and imprisoned in his Dungeon!!

Jon (MONSTER FROM THE SURF) Hall heads up the cast in THE INVISIBLE MAN'S REVENGE from 1944. In this story, an eccentric scientist helps a fugitive become invisible, unwittingly giving him the power to exact revenge on his former friends!

Again in 1944, John stars along with Lon Chaney, Barton MacLane and George Zucco in THE MUMMY'S GHOST. In this one, an Egyptian priest travels to America in search of the bodies of an Egyptian princess and her living, mummified guardian.

And again in 1944, John is back with Bela and George Zucco in RETURN OF THE APE MAN, a story about an Arctic expedition, two scientists find the frozen body of a prehistoric caveman. They bring the thing back to their laboratory and decide that in order to fully utilize and control him, they must transplant a more developed brain into his skull...

John scores the role of BLUEBEARD in 1944, here, an artist in Paris hires models to pose for him, and after he finishes their portraits, he strangles them!

Then, John stars in his last movie from 1944, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, ending with a string of six productions from that year, WOW!!.. Here, an evil scientist and his hunchbacked assistant escape from prison and encounter Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster!! It also stars Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, J. Carrol Naish, Anne Gwynne, Lionel Atwill and George Zucco.

John is back in 1945 to stars along with Lon Chaney and Lionel Atwill in HOUSE OF DRACULA. Count Dracula and the Wolf Man seek cures for their afflictions, but, a hunchbacked woman, a mad scientist and Frankenstein's Monster have their own probs...

Last on our list is THE FACE OF MARBLE from 1946. John stars in this story about a doctor who's engrossed in a project to bring the dead back to life, but fails to notice his wife's interest in his young lab partner.

So, there you go, the horror and sci-fi movies of the great John Carradine!! Tune in again on Wednesday when Eegah!! will have more cool junk, here, at The Dungeon!..

LURED - "Killer Bait" (1947)

 

Tonight's Saturday Night Special is a fun and very interesting film from 1947 that features Lucille Ball in a non-comedic film noir, with an all-star cast!

 

"Lured" was directed by Douglas (Written On The Wind) Sirk, and that in itself should be enough to make you want to see it, and I seriously doubt you will be disappointed when you do!

Lucy is an American named Sandra Carpenter who has come to London searching for a better life. She works as a hostess in a dance club full of lonely men willing to pay anything just to dance with a woman.

She doesn't really like her job, but then, who does? One of her fellow dancers has just become a victim of a weird serial killer who meets his victims through the personal columns, and then sends the police cryptic Baudelaire styled poems before each murder happens, just to mess with them!

 

So Sandra is enlisted as bait to try and flush out the killer. She is to be watched all the time by members of the force to guarantee her safety.

Sandra has to meet all kinds of strange men under strange circumstances in strange locations.

One of her first encounters is with a very odd old dude named Charles van Druten as played by Boris Karloff. I've seen a lot of films with Boris Karloff in them, and I'll tell you one thing........

............I think this is one of the most bizarre roles Boris has ever had!

Charles is a fashion designer, and this is an outfit from one of his finest hours!

He has a mini-theater set up in his flat with a dog and a mannequin as his audience.

Sandra decides that Charles is off his nut a little, but is not a serial killer by any means!

The mood changes quickly, and it appears that Charles night be a little more than just eccentric!

Sandra is saved by a stranger who has a big tussle with Charles who then falls down some stairs and we never see or hear from him again!

Sandra is then shuffled off into a car with another weirdo in it!

The weirdo turns out to be George Zucco as Police Officer H.R. Barrett, who was also the one who saved her from Charles. It was really refreshing to see George Zucco in the role of a quasi-comedic crossword-puzzle-junkie police officer instead of some dour and menacing villain!

After that, every one of the gentlemen that Sandra meets has the potential to be the killer, and if they are not that guy, they are usually into something equally against the law, or just losers in general.

Alan (Terror By Night) Mowbray is the creepy butler Lyle Maxwell who is up to his elbows in graft, but he's not a serial killer!

Sandra is sent a note and a ticket to a concert by an admirer called Music Lover, and in a pretty funny scene she waits for the seat next to her to fill up. When this guy sits down she slyly tries to find out if he's the guy, but it turns out he's in the wrong seat!

 

I should be showing you shots of some of the other great actors in this film like Charles (Around The World In 80 Days) Coburn as Inspector Harley Temple, and the star of the film, George (Village Of The Damned) Sanders as Robert Fleming, and Sir Cedric (Uncle Simon, The Forms Of Things Unknown) Hardwicke as Julian Wilde, but there's not room for everything, and I just really like this shot of Lucy and George better! It's such an odd pairing!

Joseph (Touch Of Evil) Calleia as Dr. Nicholas Moryani is an extremely likely suspect, but despite all the nefarious activities he's into, he's not a serial killer! Joseph was in two very cool gorilla movies, "The Monster And The Girl," and "The Gorilla."

It's very mysterious that Lucy was 5' 7½" but Sandra's I.D. card shows that she was only five foot six.

Sandra is just about to get married to Peter Fleming when she finds this photo of her dead friend who had been abducted in the drawer of her future husband's desk, so they finally have a suspect. Too bad he's not the serial killer either! Tanis (Spook Busters) Chandler had the role of Lucy Barnard.

In the end, the serial killer makes a move on Sandra Carpenter, but Police Officer Barrett is there too, and the case is finally solved, the murderer is revealed, and Lucille Ball gets to go on to entertain us for years in "I Love Lucy!"