Eddie Holden Movies
Bland former child actor Johnny Downs earns top billing in this low-budget horror film, but the real star is that most psychotic of all the mad doctors George Zucco. The British-born character actor plays Dr. Lorenzo Cameron, a discredited -- and quite mad -- medico who has discovered a way to turn his helper, Pietro (Glenn Strange), into a wolf man. The lycanthropic experiments succeed only too well and although Dr. Cameron spouts plans of turning his discovery into a weapon in defense of the civilized world ("men who are governed by one collective thought, the animal lust to kill without regard for personal safety! Such an army will sweep everything before it," Dr. Cameron promises), he instead unleashes his creation on those fellow scientists who had engineered his ouster from academia in the first place. Before long, however, the good doctor is unable to control the wolf man, who threatens to kill everything in his past, and only newspaper reporter Tom Gregory (Johnny Downs) and Lenora (Anne Nagel), Cameron's innocent daughter, may be able to stop the monster. A perennial cult favorite, The Mad Monster was released on the heels of The Wolf Man (1941), but cost a fraction of Universal's elaborate lycanthropic exercise. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi
- Starring:
- Johnny Downs, George Zucco, (more)
Torture Ship is a strange amalgam of crime thriller and horror chiller that can't quite make up its mind what it wants to be. Irving Pichel plays Dr. Herbert Stander, a well-meaning physician who becomes a little too much the single-minded visionary. Convinced that criminality is a result of a glandular condition, he assembles an array of escaped convicts -- from small-time grifters to murderers and psychopaths who have nothing to lose (or so they think) -- and takes them out to sea. The doctor begins performing nasty operations and other (usually lethal) experiments on them. The ship's captain (Lyle Talbot) allows this to go on, believing in the doctor's better nature. The criminals know what's going on, but between the doctor's own strong-arm men and the unwillingness of the crew to intervene, they're not able to protect themselves. It's only when Talbot's character gets a first-hand glimpse of the doctor's work that he raises a hand against him, ordering the crew, working in tandem with the wanted men and women, to take control of the ship from the doctor, who is destroyed by his own intended victims. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lyle Talbot, Irving Pichel, (more)
- 1938
The titular battle is the one that noisily rages between American legionnaires Big Ben Wheeler (Victor McLaglen) and Chesty Webb (Brian Donlevy). While attending a convention in New York, the two friendly enemies are ordered by their boss Homer C. Bundy (Raymond Walburn) to break up the romance between Bundy's son Jack (Robert Kellard) and showgirl Marjorie Clark (Lynn Bari). In the course of their merry misadventures along the Great White Way, our heroes get mixed up with nightclub entertainer Linda Lee (Louise Hovick, aka Gypsy Rose Lee). When their boss shows up, he is immediately smitten by Linda and forgets all about his son's "scandalous" affair. It ain't art, but it's fun. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Victor McLaglen, Brian Donlevy, (more)
