Thursday, June 9, 2011

The Directors: Jack Arnold. Monster on the Campus (1958)

Back at the beginning of the 2000's, AMC had a Saturday night section of programming called American Pop, where they would show old movies as well as clips from an old 60's, Ed Sullivan-like variety show called Hullabaloo. Each month, they would usually pick a theme and run with it. One month, they picked the theme of 1950's teenage exploitation films and Monster on the Campus was one of the films it showed. I knew nothing about this film when I first sat down and watched it, just that, judging from the trailer they showed, it looked like a fun, if silly, monster movie. I was even more surprised to see that it was directed by Jack Arnold, since I didn't think it looked like something he would do. This film is kind of the end of two eras: not only was it Arnold's last science fiction film but it was also the last in Universal's cycle of 1950's monster flicks.

Dr. Donald Blake, a professor of biology at Dunsfield University, receives a perfectly preserved coelacanth for study. However, the day that it arrives, the dog of the student who delivered it drinks some bloody water dripping from the thawing fish and suddenly turns vicious, forcing Blake to lock him in the kennel. Shortly afterward, Blake cuts his hand on the teeth of the primitive fish and accidentally dips the cut in the water. After he becomes ill and passes out, a nurse drives him back to his house and is killed by an unknown person. The police and Blake try to figure out who killed her, and Blake discovers that the coelacanth has bizarre properties, which could explain what happened to the dog... and expose Blake himself as the monster who killed the nurse.

By the late 1950's, the cycle of monster movies that had been popular throughout the decade was beginning to peter out (it would be pretty much over by the mid-1960's). Suffice to say, this movie was very low budget because of that and you can tell. The special effects and makeup designs aren't terrible but they are below most of the quality standards for Universal. Jack Arnold does work his magic, however, and manages to turn in an entertaining monster movie despite the lack of resources and silly premise. But inevitably, when compared to his past sci-fi flicks, this movie doesn't even compare and it's kind of sad that this was his last science fiction film.

Our lead, Dr. Donald Blake, is played by Arthur Franz. As with most scientists and doctors in Arnold's films, Blake is not a mad scientist but rather an inquisitive man interested in evolution. He's absolutely obsessed with the coelacanth that's been delivered to him as well as figuring out what caused the dog Sampson to go crazy for a brief period of time. When the possibility of a half-human throwback roaming the campus is presented, he's eager to prove that it exists and disprove old theories. Even though he often neglects her due to his work, he does clearly love his fiance, Madeline, and he's good enough to resist the advances of the school nurse. Eventually, he discovers that the coelacanth's blood can cause a reversion of the evolution process due to its being preserved with gamma radiation and that also leads him to discover that he is in reality the creature that killed the nurse after he became contaminated with the blood. Franz's performance may not be the absolute best but he does seem like he's trying. The only really problematic part is how dense Blake is about him being the monster. Even though he loses consciousness twice and wakes near each murder site with his clothes torn, it doesn't occur until very late in the game that he himself is the monster. Even most people who are werewolves in movies figure it out after the first transformation!

There's not much to Joanna Moore's role as Madeline Howard, Blake's fiance. She honestly doesn't know if she believes his theory about there being a prehistoric monster roaming around and even does suggest that he may be overworked. But other than her obvious caring for Blake, she doesn't do much and is the typical bland woman in these types of movies, ending up being carried off by the monster and screaming at him. Judson Pratt plays Lieutenant Mike Stevens, the head of the murder case. I don't know why but I just like this guy, even though his investigation doesn't turn up anything useful and his theories about the murder end up being completely wrong. I guess I like him because he does come across as a good cop determined to figure out what's going on, even if he has the completely wrong idea. There's also Troy Donahue as Jimmy, the student who delivers the coelacanth to Blake and whose dog becomes affected by the blood, as well as Nancy Walters as his girlfriend, Sylvia. Honestly, neither of these kids are that interesting, especially Donahue, whose performance is really monotone and bland. The other actors are okay but nothing special, with Helen Westcott as Molly Riordan, the nurse who tries to make a pass at Blake and is ultimately killed by his monster half; Alexander Lockwood as Prof. Gilbert Howard, head of the institute and Madeline's father; the ever reliable Whit Bissell as Dr. Oliver Cole, the campus' physician who's ever the skeptic; and Ross Elliott from Tarantula as a bodyguard signed to protect Blake.

There are actually three monsters in this movie. As I said, the first is Sampson, the German shepherd who becomes a throwback to an ancient species of wolf after drinking the coelacanth blood. What's weird about him is that, other than becoming extremely ferocious, the only thing that happens to him is that his canines become very long. After what Blake discovers about the coelacanth, you would think that Sampson would have actually turned into an ancient wolf. The second monster is a dragonfly that absorbs some of the coelacanth blood when it lands on it and shows back up after growing two feet across. The model they use for the giant dragonfly is not very convincing and you can clearly see the wires that are holding it up. Still, it is a bit more in line with the properties of the blood, unlike the dog's transformation.

Finally, there's the half-human, half-ape anthropoid that Blake becomes when he's contaminated with the blood. The first two times he changes, we don't see what the monster looks like. Also, both times are accidental; the first happens when he cuts his hand and puts it in the water surrounding the coelacanth and the second happens after he kills the dragonfly. Some of the dragonfly's contaminated blood accidentally drips into his pipe and he transforms when he later smokes it. After that, he discovers that the colecanth was preserved using gamma rays, which, through an arbitrary theory I can't even begin to comment on, cause whomever or whatever ingests the blood to devolve into a primitive form. It's not until Blake describes how someone could have become infected by cutting themselves on the coelacanth's scales or teeth that it hits him that he could be the monster. Franz does a great bit of acting when the realization hits him and he becomes momentarily calmed when he suggests it couldn't happen twice accidentally. That's when he looks at his pipe and remembers a foul smell coming from it right before blacking out the second time and realizes it's the smell of the coelacanth's blood. That's when he goes to Prof. Howard's summer cabin to try an experiment by injecting himself with the coelacanth blood and seeing if he changes. Needless to say, he does and this is when we finally get to see what the real monster looks like.

The monster is a bizarre looking half-man, half-ape creature played by stuntman Eddie Parker. His face is rather silly looking to be honest but I can't help but like watching this weird creature fumble around the cabin and run around attacking people. Some of the noises he makes are hilarious and sound like retarded speech, whereas most of it is yelling. When he first transforms, he curiously picks up an axe and starts swinging it around like a little kid who discovered something new. He also seems to still have feelings for Madeline because just when he's about to kill her, he stops when he sees her pretty face and instead tries to carry her off. He does brutally kill a forest ranger who tries to save her by hitting him right in the face with the axe. He's ultimately killed by the police and that's when everybody realizes that not only that there really was a monster but that it was Blake all along. To show Blake transforming into as well as back from the monster, they use the good old Wolf Man technique of lap dissolves, which always makes me smile just because it's so classic.

The clearest sign that this was a low budget, last minute cash-in on a dying trend is the music. There is not one bit of new music composed for this movie. It's all music from previous movies. Most notably, the music for the opening and ending credits are the same from Tarantula, as well as most of the music from that movie overall being used. You can also hear some music from The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Monolith Monsters, and even some music from horror films as far back as the 1940's. While it's all good music and used very well, it does make it even clearer that this was a really cheap movie.

All in all, Monster on the Campus is a fun, silly monster movie but it's hardly a classic. Most of the characters and actors are a bit bland, there's no original music, and the special effects, while not horrible, are awfully dated. There's no other way to view it other than as a movie that came near the end of the road for a beloved cycle of movies and was more than likely outdated even by that time. As I've said before, Jack Arnold kept on directing after this movie but never again returned to science fiction. While he himself never explained why, one can guess that, after The Incredible Shrinking Man, he probably had nothing else to give in that genre. Or since Monster on the Campus was when Universal decided to stop making sci-fi movies, he could never find another studio that was interested and he just stopped trying. Either way, it was the end of a really great era for monster movies, as well as that of a man who made sci-fi a great genre.

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