Man Made Monster

(1941) ***

Lon Chaney Jr. plays ‘Dynamo’ Dan McCormick, a carnival performer who uses electricity in his carny act. Unbeknownst to Dan, the small doses of voltage he absorbs during his act have slowly inoculated him against electricity (think snake venom treatments). After the bus he is traveling in strikes a power transformer killing all others onboard, Dan finds himself still alive with nary a scratch. It seems that his little carny act saved his life. Chaney, playing the same lumbering, aw-shucks, big-lug character he plays in all his films, becomes involved with Dr. Rigas, yet another mad scientist this time bent on harnessing Dan’s abilities to create his own master race. Huh? Under the guise of trying to understand Dan’s ability to absorb electricity, Dr. Rigas gives him increasingly high “doses” of electricity, which causes a twofold problem for Dan; he becomes addicted to the daily doses and the daily doses are slowly killing him. After Dr. Rigas frames Dan for murder, Dan is sentenced to the electric chair. Rather than killing him, the electricity only invigorates him, sending him on a murderous rampage.

While watching this film I kept wondering, “Why is this so familiar?” At the time I concluded that it reminded me of Wes Craven’s horrible, Shocker (1989). However, I later realized that it was familiar because I had just watched Lon Chaney Jr. in The Indestructible Man (1956), which is virtually the same plot! Of course Universal’s Frankenstein (1931) preceded all of these films. Although not overly original, Man Made Monster is a lot of fun, which has a lot to do with the whole “mad scientist” complete with large lab full of Van de Graaff generators. What is it about Van de Graaff generators that are pathoneumonic for “mad scientist laboratory”?