Paul Andrews Monster on the Campus starts as biology teacher professor Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) takes shipment of a crate containing a preserved prehistoric coelacanth from Madagascar to study, while moving the fish Blake cuts his hand on one of it's sharp teeth & then plunges his hand into the muddy, blood stained water the specimen had been preserved in. Blake undergoes a transformation into a prehistoric man whom he has no control over, in this state Blake kills a woman & the police become involved. Blake returns to his normal state but soon realises that he is the killer & decides to prove his theories at an isolated cabin in the mountains but his worried fiancé Sylvia (Nancy Lockwood) turns up unexpectedly...Directed by Jack Arnold this silly 50's monster film doesn't have a whole going for it, sure it's relatively short as it clock's in at just under 77 minutes but I can't say I was particularly impressed with it. The main problem with Monster on the Campus is the basic plot which fails to convince & is hard to take seriously, even if we are to accept that blood from a dead fish can cause massive evolutionary regression in a matter of minutes it's harder to believe some of the coincidence's & daft happenings that mean Blake is infected a couple of times with the blood. Are we to believe a scientist would cut his hand on an ancient dead fish (he wasn't even wearing glove's) & then plunge his hand into dirty water while the wound is still open & not be concerned at all? Blake doesn't even have a medical kit in his laboratory. The sequence of events in which he becomes infected for the second time involving a Mosquito & a pipe is ridiculous. The character's are all really dumb & passive, the police are idiots & let Blake wander off on his own at the end while Sylvia is nothing more than your standard woman in peril that these films have to have. Blake is a pretty poor scientist too, instead of testing his theory on another Dog or Cat or something in a laboratory under controlled conditions with which he could prove his outlandish idea to other's he decides to infect himself again, remember the last two times he became the monster he killed people so what was he expecting the outcome of the experiment to be? Blake also knows the only reason he becomes the monster is when he is infected by the fish blood so why not just take more care not to be exposed to it? That way he will never turn into the monster again & live the rest of his life happily with Sylvia & maybe have a couple of kids with her, right?Monster on the Campus looks alright, it's all a bit bland & dull looking but I doubt the makers had much money to work with. The monster isn't seen until nearly the hour mark & when he does first make an appearance you can clearly see the mask doesn't join the actor's neck & looks pretty fake. Anytime there is a close-up on the monster it's pretty poor but the medium shots don't look too bad & what's with the big shoulder's? Not much ion the way of action or incident but a Ranger does get an axe in the face at the end & there's a minor car crash. There is also a giant Mosquito that looks like it's made of card.Partly filmed at Occidental College in Los Angeles & I wouldn't be surprised to discover the climax was shot at the infamous & much used Bronson Canyon. The acting is fairly wooden, no-one is going to win any awards.Monster on the Campus is a pretty forgettable black and white 50's monster film with a silly plot that goes too long without showing the monster & has one of the stupidest scientists in cinematic history who makes one bizarre illogical decision after another. There are better monster films out there.

ferbs54 In the five-year period 1953-'57, director Jack Arnold brought forth five sci-fi/horror classics that are still beloved by psychotronic-film fans today: "It Came From Outer Space" ('53), "Creature From the Black Lagoon" ('54), "Revenge of the Creature" ('55), "Tarantula" (also '55) and one of the all-time champs, "The Incredible Shrinking Man" ('57). Following up Arnold's string of crowd-pleasing entertainments came the lesser-known "Monster on the Campus" in 1958, a picture that, as it turns out, is just as much fun as the others. In the film, we meet a likable and soft-spoken professor at fictitious Dunsfield University, in California; a biologist named Donald Blake (a name that perhaps influenced Stan Lee four years later when selecting a moniker for Thor's alter ego!). When we first encounter Blake, he is very excited about the arrival of the school's latest prize acquisition, a preserved coelacanth from the seas off Madagascar. (It should be remembered that the coelacanth, a fish believed to have gone extinct 65 million years ago, was initially caught off the coast of South Africa 20 years previous to this film, in 1938.) But problems arise when it turns out that this fish had been preserved with pesky gamma radiation, and that its blood has a tendency to revert those who touch it or drink it (or, as happens in the film, even smoke it!) to their earlier evolutionary form. Thus, before long, a prehistoric dog, a giant dragonfly and a decidedly simian maniac are all terrorizing the area around Dunsfield U...."Monster on the Campus," cheaply made as it is, is an efficient little thriller, compactly told (the whole thing clocks in at 77 minutes) and often fairly exciting. Arthur Franz is very ingratiating as Blake, and the creature that he turns into both looks and sounds pretty frightening. While some have complained about Blake's overly slow realization of his own transformations, this fact did not bother this viewer as much as the film's ending; without giving anything away, let me just say that I wish the picture could have concluded otherwise. Joanna Moore, future mother of Tatum O'Neal, is quite good as Blake's fiancée here, and displays convincingly real terror when confronted by the titular killer. The picture boasts any number of memorable scenes, my favorite being the initial appearance of that giant dragonfly as it beats against a windowpane; somehow, this sequence brought to mind the scene with the giant bugs on the supermarket windows in Frank Darabont's 2007 horror masterpiece "The Mist." Director Arnold keeps his film moving along nicely, and if the picture's FX don't match those in some of his earlier sci-fi films (especially those to be found in "The Incredible Shrinking Man"), they are nonetheless cheesily endearing; I love the look of that dragonfly in repose! In all, a wholly likable '50s sci-fi/horror outing, surely deserving of a greater renown. I would like to add here that 1958 also saw the release of another Jack Arnold sci-fi film, "The Space Children," which I have never seen, as well as the Arthur Franz sci-fi picture "The Flame Barrier," which I haven't seen since the early '60s on NYC television. Both have never appeared on either VHS or DVD and both are films that really ought to see the light of the digital day soon. Studio heads, please take note!

gavin6942 The blood of a primitive fish exposed to gamma rays causes a benign research professor (Arthur Franz) to regress to an ape-like, bloodthirsty prehistoric hominid.I cannot believe how daft Professor Blake is. He does not realize that all the evidence points to one man for the murders, and he even knows how, but fails to recognize it. I am also sort of surprised how light this film is given the subject matter -- a deranged killer is loose on campus and no one seems too terribly upset.I liked the idea of the de-evolution blood. Even if it made a dog wear fake teeth. And even if the professor's name is Donald Blake, which means that he was also the Norse god Thor...

mlraymond This movie has some good performances and suspenseful sequences, alternating with unintentionally funny moments. There's something irresistibly humorous about the scene where earnest college professor Arthur Franz's lovely fiancée confides to her college president father, in what sounds like a genuine Southern accent, " I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn't help overhearing him talking to Madagascar about a fish!" The scenes where the partially glimpsed monster stalks people are effectively done, especially the moment when a horrified couple discover the body of a victim hanging from a tree by her hair. The darkened campus at night as a place of potential terror is contrasted effectively with the opening daytime scenes of students strolling around. There are plenty of nicely done character roles such as the genial grounds-keeper, Helen Westcott as a nurse who has a thing for the Professor, and Judson Pratt as a worldly-wise police detective. Whit Bissell as a disbelieving colleague and the grumpy university president are also effective.Arthur Franz carries the movie as the dedicated scientist who can't get anyone to believe in his strange discoveries, or his theory about a prehistoric man being the killer the police are searching for. He plays his role so seriously that it risks becoming unintentionally humorous at times, especially the moment when he puffs on his pipe without realizing he's ingesting some pretty strange stuff that got into it by accident.This movie isn't too bad, taken all together. It's a bit dull in spots and could have used some more action of the monster, but there are compensations in the form of classic Fifties automobiles on display ,along with beautiful women wearing very becoming Fifties fashions. Good fun for fans of Fifties science fiction and those who enjoy a bit of camp humor.