The insane Dr. Moreau from H. G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr. Moreauis a ruthless scientist performing radical surgeries on animals to create men. Wells’ short novel was written in 1896 as an anti-vivisectionist tract and the three feature films based on the book have all emphasized the extreme sadism of Dr. Moreau. Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) in Island of Lost Souls[Erle C. Kenton, 1932], rules the “manimals” he’s made by their fear of “The House of Pain”— the operating room where he struggles to cut out “the stubborn beast flesh.” The Beast Man Sayer of the Law (Béla Lugosi) confronts the bullwhip-wielding Dr. Moreau with his plaintive, “We are not men. We are not beasts. We are things.” The Beast Men finally revolt, turning Moreau’s gleaming scalpels on their tormentor. Laughton’s screams as he is dragged off to The House of Pain live long in the memory. This truly disturbing movie could be used as an “anti-genetic engineering” brochure in the present day!
The most famous mad scientist would have to be Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) in the classic 1931 Universal Picture, Frankenstein[James Whale]. His experiments to revive with electricity the creature he has pieced together from dead bodies created the definitive movie monster. As portrayed by Boris Karloff, in make-up by the great Jack Pierce, the Monster is both to be feared and pitied. Karloff’s brilliant performance powerfully conveys the Monster’s pain, innocence, and brutality. The tremendous popular success of Frankensteingave James Whale the freedom to create its extraordinary sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein[1935], which gave us not only Elsa Lanchester’s unforgettable performance in the dual role of author Mary Shelley and the Bride of the Monster, but the maddest of all mad doctors, Doctor Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger).
Mad doctors tend to have bizarre obsessions; my personal favorite is the brain transplant. Dracula himself (Béla Lugosi) plans to put Lou Costello’s brain into the skull of the Frankenstein Monster (Glenn Strange) in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein[Charles Barton, 1948]. George Zucco transplants the brain of a young man into a gorilla in The Monster and the Girl[Stuart Heisler, 1941] and Dr. Sigmund Walters (John Carradine) puts the brain and glands of a young woman into the skull of an ape, creating the attractive, yet mysterious Paula Dupree (Acquanetta) in Captive Wild Woman[Edward Dmytryk, 1943].
A “matter transportation device” has tragic results when a common fly is inadvertently dematerialized along with the scientist Andre Delambre (Al Hedison) conducting the experiment. When Andre rematerializes, he has a giant fly’s head and one large claw in The Fly[Kurt Neumann, 1958]. Meanwhile, the little fly now has one tiny arm and a tiny human head! The scene of this little fly trapped in a spider web as a huge and hideous spider bears down on him (his tiny human face squeaking “Help me!”) is one of the silliest, yet most upsetting, images in all of the horror films of the 1950s.
In David Cronenberg’s excellent remake of The Fly[1986], scientist Seth Brundle (a wonderful performance from Jeff Goldblum) is doomed to repeat the experiment, with more profound but equally shocking and tragic results.
The experiments of Dr. James Xavier (Ray Milland) with X-ray vision also go badly awry. His vision grows more and more powerful until he goes mad and tears out his own eyes in X[aka The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Roger Corman, 1963].
In Altered States[Ken Russell, 1980], Dr. Edward Jessup (William Hurt) and his colleagues experiment with sensory deprivation water tanks and drugs to achieve “biological devolution.” Jessup emerges from his tank once as a primitive man and once again as “conscious primordial matter.”
In Swamp Thing[Wes Craven, 1982], Dr. Alec Holland works in the swamps with his sister doing bio-medical research. He is trying to create a plant/human hybrid that can live in extreme environments. It should come as no surprise that Dr. Holland ends up a hybrid plant person himself.
Dr. Stoner (Strother Martin) wants to turn his handsome assistant into a large snake in SSSSSSS[aka SSSSnake,Bernard L. Kowalski, 1973]. In both The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant[Anthony M. Lanza, 1971] and The Thing with Two Heads[Lee Frost, 1972], neither the recipient nor the donor of the extra head is very happy with the results! After his wife is decapitated in a car accident, Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) keeps her severed head alive in his basement lab in the country while he scouts strip joints for the right body to sew it onto! His wife (Virginia Leith), or rather her head, is now The Brain That Wouldn’t Die[Joseph Green, 1962]. She develops telepathic communication with a hideous monster locked in the basement closet—the result of her husband’s earlier failed experiments. Without giving too much away, just let me say that this film has one of the strangest endings in movie history.
The fundamentally conservative nature of the horror film tends to reinforce the reactionary idea that, “There are some things Man is not meant to know.” Intellectual curiosity is punished and those who dare question conventional wisdom suffer the consequences. I think this would be a good place to point out that Galileo was right, and the Church wrong!
Mad Scientists[ Book Contents]
Re-Animator [Stuart Gordon, 1985]
Poster for Re-Animator.
Mad Scientists[ Book Contents]
Frankenstein’s monster [Mary Shelley, 1831]
Frontispiece illustration from the 1831 edition of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheusby Mary Shelley.
Mad Scientists[ Book Contents]
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [Rouben Mamoulian, 1931]
Fredric March’s Dr. Jekyll transforms into Mr. Hyde. March won a Best Actor Academy Award for this performance.
Mad Scientists[ Book Contents]
The Curse of Frankenstein [Terence Fisher, 1957]
Peter Cushing as the ruthless and cold Dr. Frankenstein with Christopher Lee as the victimized monster.
Mad Scientists[ Book Contents]
The Bride of Frankenstein [James Whale, 1935]
Elsa Lanchester as the mate Frankenstein has made for his monster.
Mad Scientists[ Book Contents]
Ernest Thesiger, as Dr. Pretorius, displays his own creations—homunculi he keeps in jars!
Mad Scientists[ Book Contents]
Forbidden Planet [Fred M. Wilcox, 1956]
Walter Pidgeon as Dr. Edward Morbius, a scientist who has partially solved the remarkable secrets of the Krell, a vanished alien race.
Mad Scientists[ Book Contents]
Die, Monster, Die! [Daniel Haller, 1965]
A stunt man doubles for Boris Karloff as the unfortunate victim of radiation from a meteorite in this movie based on H. P. Lovecraft’s story The Color Out of Space[1927].