The Mad Ghoul

THE STORY: Wow! This is the Inferno's first Black and White movie!  (The first one I watched for this site..."The Day the Earth Stood Still" was posted first.) For weeks I saw it on the shelves of the local video store and finally I just said what the hell, and rented it. This is supposedly a "classic" in Universal's Horror Collection. Hmph. its more like one of those movies that used to come on "Creature Feature" on a saturday afternoon when I was a kid.

Ted, a young medical student gets a job working with his mentor and teacher, Dr. Morris. Morris has discovered an ancient Egyptian gas that turns its victims into walking dead zombies. Only a serum made from a newly dead heart can return the zombie to a temporary state of normalcy and keep it "alive". Ted is engaged to an opera singer named Isabelle and Morris secretly longs for her.

Morris, ambitious and ruthless, tricks Ted into going into the lab, where he is exposed to the gas. Ted becomes an obedient zombie. Morris uses him to go cemeteries and dig up fresh graves to procure the heart serum. Ted wakes in the morning and doesn't remember what has happened, but Morris tells him he passed out and that he is ill from working too hard.

Isabelle goes on a tour singing her opera songs. Ted, who wants to marry her goes along too, over Morris' objections. Morris accompanies him to "take care of him" since he's ill. At night when Ted becomes a zombie Ghoul again, Morris takes him to cemeteries to get hearts from the recently dead. Unfortunately, digging up graves in every town Isabelle sings in is leaving a trail and a newspaper reporter, McClure, is hot on it. McClure sets a trap for the Ghoul by posing as a newly dead body, but Morris overpowers him and Ted kills him.

Morris'  hope for the lovely Isabelle are dashed when it is discovered that she is in love with Eric, her pianist. Morris orders Ted, when he becomes the Ghoul again, to kill Eric, but the attempt fails. (Its even more amazing that Eric doesn't SEE the Ghoul coming after him in a well lit alley)

When Isabelle's tour returns to their home city Ted discovers what Morris has done to him and what he has been doing. Enraged he exposes Morris to the gas also then says he is going to send the secret back to the darkness where it came from. He smashes the formula, but becomes a Ghoul again. Following his last instructions from Morris, he sets off to kill Eric who is playing the piano that night in a concert with Isabelle. Morris, becoming a zombie-like ghoul himself tries to stop him from going. Now that he has been exposed he needs Ted more than ever to help get hearts and extend their own lives!

But its too late. Ted has written a letter explaining the horror and when he arrives at the concert hall and walks onstage intent to kill Eric, the police shoot him. They find the note, where Ted wishes Eric and Isabelle happiness and explains Morris' crimes. Morris goes to a cemetery and begins to dig up a corpse, but expires before he can do so.

Did anyone find this movie scary way back when? By today's standards its remarkably NOT scary. But then if you watch the old black and white Frankenstein movie or even Dracula its almost laughable. I'm not saying those movies aren't classics in their own way and that they didn't set the stage for horror movies, but if you watch them today you have to admit...they ain't scary compared to things produced today. On the other hand they aren't as cheesy either.

Best Lines: "Remember, for goodness sakes, whatever you do, don't mar this coffin."-  Mr. Egan, a mortician, helps McClure set a trap for the Ghoul.

1.) After the desecration of a grave the police sergeant says to the reporter, McClure "How does our department get along without you?" I was wondering the same thing. After all, McClure only pointed out the obvious clues. I mean really obvious clues that a six year old would have figured out.

2.) I have never once seen a real life cemetery with an all night caretaker. I just find it kind if strange that 90% of the graveyards in the movies have a guy in overalls that seems to patrol the premises at night.

3.) So there's only one mortuary in the city of Cranston? Or was McClure fantastically lucky (or unlucky as it turned out) to pick the right place for the Ghoul to strike?

4.) Um, what was Morris ultimate plan? To get Isabelle for himself? Why not just kill Ted and make it look like a lab accident? Using him to dig up graves to get hearts to make the serum that keeps him alive is kind of counter-productive. Plus he must be horny as hell. Turning a guy into a living dead Ghoul and graverobbing is a long way to go to get a woman!

NUDITY AND SEX:  Oh, hell no! This movie was made in the 50's!

HUH? : If Dr. Morris is such a bigwig doctor, can't he get fresh hearts from wherever university doctors and big time surgeons get hearts? Digging up graves is a really goofy idea in the first place!

Speaking of grave-robbing, if Morris wanted to get away with desecrating newly dead corpse, why not re-inter the coffins once he and the Ghoul have got what they wanted? By leaving a trail of dug up graves he just invited capture! This guy is a doctor? I'm suprised it took the cops the whole movie to track him down. (and to be honest they never really caught him)

I don't know a lot about the mortician business or being a coroner or anything, but don't they remove organs from corpses before burial? Would there even be a heart in the dead bodies? I don't know, but if you do email me!

THE TALLY: If ya like old classic horror movies or you just want to blow an hour and six minutes, check this one out. Its not scary, and if it does scare you then you must be hog heaven when renting modern horror movies.