alexanderdavies-99382 "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.

snicewanger George Zucco is my favorite horror movie actor. He made the most of any crappy script he was handed and always turned in a great performance. His trademark sinister stare could even give Boris Karloff the shivers. He was always a standout in any movie cast he was a part of. The Mad Ghoul is Zucco's movie. Even though David Bruce plays the title monster it's Zucco who is the true monster and he is delightfully evil as Dr Alfred Morris.David Bruce was probably the least intimidating monster in any of the Universal horror movies.He plays Ted Allison. Ted is dumped by Isobel and screwed by Dr Morris so he is the chump of the month in this movie In his ghoul make up , he looked like he had stuck his finger in an electric plug at a flour mill.He had kind of a baby face anyway so he was more pathetic than scary. The beautiful Evelyn Ankers portrays Isabel Lewis the singer who seems to be the object of everybody s sexual desires and is Ted's fiancé. Evelyn was Universals top scream queen and she was in top form in The Mad Ghoul. The fact that for awhile Dr Morris is under the delusion that Isabel loves him reveals his personal conceit and how out of touch with reality he really is. Dr Morris apparently exposes Ted to the lethal gas just to remove him from contention for Isabel...truly rotten.Turhan Bey is Eric Iverson, Isabel's pianist and the guy she actually digs. Bey had the look of a Latin Lover although he was actually a Turk. During the war, when the top stars in Hollywood were fighting the war, Bey got work as a romantic lead and occasional villain.He had the acting range of the average pine tree. When the war ended and the top star returned Beys career disappeared.Anyway Zucco turns Bruce into a zombie with an ancient Mayan gas. Bruce has to ingest the serum of the heart of a newly dead human corpse to keep living. Zucco tries to get Bruce while he is in his zombie state to kill Bey and himself so the way will be cleared for Zucco to have Ankers.And so on. Robert Armstrong,yeah Carl Denham himself ,has the role of a newspaper man. Milburn Stone, yeah Doc Adams on Gunsmoke.plays a police detective. Addison Richards, Rose Hobart , and Charles McGraw all have Featured roles. Its Zucco, however, who makes the movie watchable.

bkoganbing In between the films with Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Wolfman, Universal Pictures occasionally turned out the oddball horror film not belonging to anyone of the series they did. Such a film is The Mad Ghoul and it stars a whole lot of players most familiar with the Gothic horror genre.Head of the cast is George Zucco who gets control of the mind and soul of David Bruce who was a former medical student of his before Zucco turned to ghoulish experiments. He's discovered an ancient gas used by the Mayans to turn people into mindless and soulless killing machines who obey commands by whomever controls the gas flow.In this case Zucco has a mad case of ghoul type lust for Bruce's fiancé Evelyn Ankers who is a concert singer on tour with her accompanist Turhan Bey. And Bruce is jealous of Bey being around Ankers and working so close with her.Later on in the Forties Zucco did some horror films for poverty row Monogram Pictures. This one is far from as bad as those were, but compared to other Universal fright fests it's second rate.Others in the cast are cops Milburn Stone and Charles McGraw and reporter Robert Armstong whose quest to find the Mad Ghoul ends in tragedy. They all make The Mad Ghoul better than a typical Monogram product, but that's not saying much.

dbdumonteil As an horror movie,well,it's pretty silly ,blending zombies stories with Incas' nice traditions (the excision of the heart of the unfortunate victim: we "learn" that they did not offer life in sacrifice to their gods,they had found a way to bring the dead back to life and vice versa).The interest lies elsewhere: the love story is rather unusual ,since Ted ,the good boy with a great heart ,is sacrificed and his girlfriend prefers a bland buck who accompanies her on piano .The nasty professor 's motive is more his desire for the girl than the triumph of "science" .