If you couldn’t get Belga Lugosi or Lionel Atwill to play your mad scientist during the 1940s, George Zucco was always willing to step into the breach. This film is a sort of remake of Lugosi’s The Devil Bat with a werewolf instead of a bat. Zucco spends his days in the basement transporting his gardener into a werewolf; originally his intention was to make a super army but now he’s after his former colleagues who laughed at him. (I remember growing up the main impressions I had of academia was of squabbling mad scientists in old horror films.)
Zucco was a different sort of mad scientist, Zucco – more soft spoken, gentle looking. But there’s no denying the gleam in his eye; he’s having a high old time and is the best thing about this movie. It’s also fun to see Glenn Strange, who played Frankenstein’s monster a number of times, in a sort of Lon Chaney Jnr part as a simpleton unknowingly experimented on by Zucco.
Some neat touches – Zucco arguing with imagined versions of his old uni colleagues, the spooky country setting, the fact the werewolf actually kills a little girl. The wolf make up isn’t bad. On the debit side – this is relative, the whole thing is a low budget cheapie – it drags a bit around the two third mark, is a bit long (75 minutes, which is long for this sort of movie)
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