Film / The Mad Ghoul

Let me just grab this list of credits for you.

Do you mean to say that your gal and my ghoul have been playing the same circuit?"

—Ken McClure

The Mad Ghoul is a Universal Horror B-Movie that premiered on November 12, 1943. The plot concerns a professor who impulsively turns one of his students into a ghoul under his control. Filming began on May 13, 1943, with the concert sections being shot on Stage 28, which housed the The Phantom of the Opera set that at the time had just been reprimed for the 1943 remake.

The film was announced to be in the works on March 27, 1943 in the Motion Picture Herald and other trades at that time as The Mystery of the Mad Ghoul. It would be the last film directed by James Hogan, who died on November 4 that year. The story came from the pen of Hanns Kräly, who was active in the German film industry until 1923, and this may explain why the suggestible ghoul and the domineering professor resemble the central duos from Imprisoned Soul and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The Mad Ghoul furthermore owes a plot point, namely that its undead needs its handler to prepare special food to ward off unlife, to the The Mummy's Hand.

Dr. Alfred Morris (George Zucco) invites Ted Allison (David Bruce) to assist him with his research into an entrancing gas to which the cure is the consumption of a fresh heart. As a medical student who is skilled with the knife but limited with chemistry, Ted eagerly accepts. Ted is engaged to the songstress Isabel Lewis (Evelyn Ankers), who is booked for a concert tour with the pianist Eric Iversen (Turhan Bey). Evelyn and Eric are in love, but neither know how to tell Ted. Dr. Morris comes to believe that he has a shot with Evelyn and exposes Ted to the entrancing gas to get him to back off from Isabel. Dr. Morris, who is not a surgeon, also takes Ted body snatching for a heart. Ted awakens the next day with little memory and all seems well until Dr. Morris learns that a hearty meal is not a permanent cure. Because Ted insists to follow Isabel on her tour, Dr. Morris struggles to find a true cure, keep Ted's condition a secret, and supply Ted with hearts. He goes off the deep end when he learns of Evelyn's and Eric's relation and instructs Ted to murder Eric. A first attempt is thwarted and ever so slowly Ted's fractured memories of his periods as a ghoul lead him to the truth. Aware that he can't overcome Dr. Morris's control, he tricks him into inhaling the entrancing gas too. Dr. Morris is oblivious to the trap and sends Ted away to kill Eric and then himself. Ted is timely shot down by the police, who had been put on the ghoul's trail by the reporter Ken McClure (Robert Armstrong). Concurrently, Dr. Morris own metamorphosis into a ghoul is finalized and without Ted to cut out hearts he either goes into a coma or perishes.

For Isabel's concert sequences, older recordings of Lillian Cornell are used. Ankers wanted to do the singing herself, but there was no time for that on a B-movie schedule. In order of their usage in The Mad Ghoul, the songs are "Our Love Will Live", based on "Piano Concerto No. 1", "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls" from The Bohemian Girl, and "All for Love", based on "Minuet in G".

On June 7, 1943, The Hollywood Reporter announced Universal's plans for a grand-scale monster rally to be titled Chamber of Horrors, later to be known as House of Frankenstein. The Mad Ghoul was mentioned as being among the monsters included, demonstrating Universal's confidence in the ghoul considering that the The Mad Ghoul had yet to make it to theaters. However, as the project stalled, actors became unavailable, and rewrites were made, half the intended monster cast was removed from the final script. The ghoul was among the cuts and no other attempt at a sequel to The Mad Ghoul was ever made.

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Tropes:

• Above Good and Evil: Ted voices his apprehension when he and Dr. Morris prepare to revive Jocko with another monkey's heart and some herbs. Dr. Morris replies assuredly: "I'm a scientist. To me there is no good or evil, only true or false. I work with one, discard the other."
• Artistic License – History: The Mayan art shown during Dr. Morris's class is at best a crude approximation of what it actually is in real-life. There is a distinct comic book quality to the images, especially the first one that suggests motion by depicting three stages of falling at once.
• At the Opera Tonight: Dr. Morris and Ted follow Isabel and Eric on their concert tour because Ted wants to stay close to Isabel and Morris has to stick with Ted to ensure that he periodically snacks a heart and that no one figures out that Ted is a ghoul now. This means that whichever town the performers go to, a corpse is robbed of its heart and so as not to make their absence noticeable Morris always goes heart harvesting during a concert. Isabel is frustrated that her concerts are overshadowed by the grisly crimes, but it's only the reporter Ken McClure who believes that the pattern is more than a coincidence. When he pays for it with his life, everyone else sees it too, which gets some police in the audience in time to prevent Ted from murdering Eric.
• Body Wipe: When Dr. Morris fetches the ghoulified Ted, he leads him out of the laboratory by means of a body wipe. It allows the audience a good look at the unsettling ghoulish form to kick off the main plot.
• Cacophony Cover Up: Dr. Morris plays the piano while Ted is locked up in the laboratory and gets exposed to the ghoulifying gas. He does this to make it plausible to Ted later on that the whole affair was an accident and he just didn't hear him scream for help because he happened to feel like playing a tune.
• Chekhov's Skill: It's Dr. Morris's lack of surgical skill, as casually mentioned during his class, that allows Ted a chance to stop him. Ted's surgical know-how is crucial in obtaining the hearts to keep him alive, so when he tricks Dr. Morris into undergoing the same ghoulifying process, Dr. Morris becomes dependent on him to harvest hearts. But by his own earlier machinations, Morris loses Ted and perishes while desperately trying to obtain a heart.
• Come Alone: Upon learning that Isabel loves Eric, Dr. Morris has Ted write a note to Eric to meet him alone at midnight by the stage door. The predictable murder attempt is thwarted by the arrival of Isabel, who wanted to make sure Eric wouldn't be harmed.
• Creepy Cemetery: One night, Dr. Morris and Ted go out to fetch a heart from the cemetery at Camden City. It's a cemetery that's visibly old, overgrown with vegetation, and the fog that night is thick. That said, it's a lot less creepy for them than it is for the lone caretaker who catches them trying to break into a mausoleum and gets murdered for his vigilance.
• Crime After Crime: Dr. Morris turns Ted into a ghoul to make him break up with Isabel, reckoning that he can cure him thereafter with a helping of one fresh corpse's heart. This is an incorrect assumption. Anyone turned into a ghoul has to regularly consume the heart of a fresh corpse to retain their consciousness and sense of self. Now responsible for Ted, Morris continues to snatch hearts to buy time to find a real remedy and in the process twice kills someone who disturbs his thieving. With no improvement for Ted in sight and Isabel's reveal that she's in love with Eric, Morris final plan is to make Ted kill Eric and then himself. This would rid Morris of his romantic rival by making it seem like Ted was taking revenge on a romantic rival and therefore make neither death look like Morris's work.
• Deadly Gas: The Mayan gas Dr. Morris investigates is (possibly) not deadly, but it would be more harmless if it were. What it does is turn anyone who breathes it into a ghoul. A ghoul's health is cyclic. Immediately after being turned, they are obedient to any and all commands given to them and cannot think for themselves. Slowly, the vitality drains from the ghoul until eventually they collapse. To prevent this and turn them back to their human selves, they need to be fed a herbal mixture containing the heart from a fresh corpse of their own species. The human self is active for one day, two at most, and then falls back into the ghoul state, a process that may be accelerated by stress. Rinse and repeat. It is unclear if a ghoul that isn't fed a heart eventually perishes or goes into a coma until fed another heart mixture.
• Downer Ending: The two most sympathetic characters perish under grisly circumstances. And for what? It all started with a misunderstanding between Isabel and Dr. Morris and severe but non-malicious overconfidence on the latter's part that spiraled out of control. Morris's death isn't even a comeuppance as he's depicted desperately clawing through the earth for a heart to retain his humanity and crying out for Ted, who is now truly gone, to help him.
• Dramatic Irony: The hastiness with which Dr. Morris turned Ted into a ghoul comes back to bite him when the morning after he learns by checking up on the monkey Jocko that the supposed cure is only temporary. In so many words, by talking about Jocko's condition, he tries to convince Ted to stay at his place and continue the research until they find a permanent cure and to make sure Ted doesn't have any more spells. Ted playfully counters that he's fine; after all, he hasn't gone through what Jocko's gone through.
• Dropping the Bombshell: Ted realizes he's been cutting out hearts of corpses and been involved in murder at the same time he realizes that Dr. Morris been making him do that. Morris makes a believable case that what he did, he did for Ted and that Ted's current state was an accident. Ted tries to calm himself down by noting that whatever is happening to him, he gave Isabel his blessing to be with Eric so she won't be involved in this dangerous situation. Morris can't help but note that that's only true "as long as Eric is safe from [Ted]." It's then that Ted realizes that Morris wants Eric dead, remembers that Morris has already attempted to get Ted to kill Eric once, and deduces that Morris will send Ted after Eric again.
• Duet Bonding: Isabel and Eric have fallen in love while performing music together. She sings and he accompanied her on the piano.
• The Dying Walk: The Camden City cemetery caretaker who catches Morris and Ted trying to break into a mausoleum receives a lethal strike to the head. He staggers some distance away, then collapses.
• Faking the Dead: Ken McClure takes the place of a corpse which had been mentioned in the newspapers to be laid out in a funeral home in the hopes that the heart-snatcher has read about it and will come to get its heart. His plan then is to perform a citizen's arrest. The plan is solid, except that he didn't count on more than one thief and didn't bring back-up.
• Gas Chamber: Dr. Morris's laboratory is twice used as a gas chamber: a planned one by Morris himself and an impromptu one by Ted, both for each other. Morris lures Ted into the lab while the odorless ghoulifying gas is forming and locks the door while he wanders off, all making it seem like a harmless accident. Ted eventually discovers what's been done to him and rushes to the lab to set the same trap for Morris, only he can stay in there with the doctor because he's already been turned into a ghoul. To lure him, Ted trashes the place to make it look like he's merely having an impotent tantrum Morris can handle with a reprimand. Morris doesn't realize he's inhaling the gas until it's too late.
• Grave Robbing: To undo the ghoul state, a ghoul has to eat the heart of a fresh corpse of its own species. Morris thought it would be a one-time deal, but it turns out that a ghoul is a ghoul permanently and always in need of hearts to retain their humanity and life.
• Human Sacrifice: During his class, Dr. Morris discusses the human sacrifices the Mayans used to perform. Specifically, he proposes that the Mayans didn't cut out hearts to appease their gods, but to feed their ghouls, which they created by exposing people to a gas he's trying to recreate. Morris is proven right insofar that his own two ghouls, a monkey and a human, become normal again upon consuming hearts of the recently deceased.
• The Ingenue: Ted Allison is set apart from the other main characters by his youthful, generous, innocent, idealistic, and naïve disposition. He is bright and hopeful and while he notices strain in Isabel's behavior towards him, he is oblivious to the fact that she's outgrown him and keeps trying to be near her and mend the rift he doesn't understand. When finally he learns that she has fallen in love with Eric and that Dr. Morris wants Eric dead, he sacrifices himself to thwart Morris's scheme, leaving a note for Isabel wishing her and Eric the best.
• Insult Backfire: While investigating the disappearance of Mr. Bailey's heart, McClure gives Sgt. Macklin some non-insights, prompting Macklin to rhetorically ask how the police department would get along without him. McClure coolly quips that they wouldn't.
• Intrepid Reporter: Ken McClure prides himself on his sleuth skills and by his own words has played a crucial role in solving three out of the five biggest murder cases the district has faced in the past two years. He throws himself on the case of the heart-snatcher with greater determination than anyone else, police included. Due to a colleague's coverage of Isabel's tour, he is the first one to notice that the schedule of Isabel's tour neatly lines up with the corpse desecration cases. As such, he's able to deduce where the heart-snatcher will strike next, but with no police backing he takes it upon himself to confront the crook. This leads to his death, which at least causes the police to finally acknowledge they've been slacking.
• I've Come Too Far: Everything Morris has done to Ted, the heart-snatching, and one case of murder, was done in the belief that Isabel was interested in him and they could be a couple once everything would be resolved. One lunch, he learns that he was mistaken and that Isabel is in love with Eric. He goes off the deep end at this point and resolves to use Ted to kill Eric and then get Ted to kill himself to be rid of both romantic rivals and his obligations to Ted's health.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Once Ted realizes that Isabel no longer is in love with him and has gotten romantically involved with his friend Eric, it hurts him, but at that time he's also coming to terms with his poor health and believes that Isabel deserves more than he can offer. Shortly after, he learns that he is a ghoul and that Dr. Morris already once ordered him to murder Eric. His last moments as himself he spends on a scheme to stop Morris and to write a note for Isabel declaring his hope that she and Eric will be happy.
• Look Behind You: While held at gunpoint, Dr. Morris tells Ken McClure that his associate is behind him. Ken, of course, thinks it's a lie meant to distract him. Unfazed, Morris orders Ted to attack Ken and Ken doesn't live to reflect on his miscalculation.
• Looks Like Cesare: Ghouls look like haggard versions of their human selves with heavy dark circles under the eyes and messy hair. This look is innate to the ghoul state and not a consequence of poor grooming.
• Love Triangle: Ted Allison is engaged to Isabel Lewis, but she no longer returns his love. She's fallen in love with her pianist, Eric Iverson, to whom Ted introduced her in the first place. Neither know how to break the news to Ted. Meanwhile, Dr. Alfred Morris fancies Isabel too and can tell from her demeanor that she's outgrown Ted. From a conversation about maturity, he wrongly gets the impression that she likes him too. He is not happy when he learns about Eric and tries to get Ted to murder Eric and then himself. Ted doesn't survive, but would've been happy to know that no harm came to Eric and that he successfully stopped Dr. Morris from causing any more harm.
• Lured into a Trap: The ghoulifying gas is both colorless and odorless. So to make Ted inhale it, all Dr. Morris has to do is set up the source of the gas in his laboratory, let it spread for a bit, ask Ted to fetch some research papers, and then lock the door.
• Mood Whiplash: After Ted's first murder attempt on Eric fails, itself already an unsettling scene, three newspaper close-ups follow. One is about Isabel's tour, the other two about the heart-snatcher's ongoing desecration spree, with the final close-up being "City Horrified as Grave of Anthony Loomis Despoiled". The next scene focuses on comedic hero Ken McClure, who, accompanied by an upbeat tune, steps into a lively lounge and meets up with his colleague Della for a drink.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Once Morris learns that Isabel loves Eric, Ted's ghoul state goes from something he's reponsible for and genuinely concerned about to something that would be very useful to sic on Eric and see him dead. It doesn't go as planned the first time around and the second time Morris specifically instructs Ted to kill Eric and then himself. This also doesn't go as planned, because while Ted dies, he ensures Morris goes down too and Eric remains alive.
• Murder-Suicide: Morris instructs Ted in his ghoul state to murder Eric and then kill himself. The three men are romantic rivals over Isabel and Morris aims to be the last man standing by making it look like Ted murdered Eric as revenge for taking Isabel from him and then killed himself in desperation. It doesn't work out.
• Ominous Fog: A thick fog lies over the graveyard where Morris takes Ted heart-snatching in Camden City. They end up killing the caretaker and taking his heart.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Exposure to a Mayan gas that affects both humans and animals subdues the inhaler's will, whereafter they follow any instruction according to their skill set's offering. One limitation is that an instruction can't readily be taken back or overridden. Another is that after two days tops, the inhaler needs to eat a relatively fresh heart of its own species mixed with certain herbs to stave off a coma and possible death. Eating a heart returns the inhaler to their own self for about a day and then they become a mindless creature again. Morris uses the gas on Ted and from then on takes him corpse-snatching in cemeteries to procure hearts, which Ted's surgical skills make easy to extract. The news is soon all over the ghoul desecrating graves and corpses. With investigations closing in, Morris plans to rid himself of Ted, but while Ted can't save himself, he does expose Morris to the mind-numbing gas and leaves him without master to keep him going.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Once Ted realizes that Morris has enslaved him and is intending to use him to kill Eric and could use the ghoulifying gas on more people in the future, he knows his window of opportunity is short and promptly sets up a trap to trick Morris into becoming a ghoul too. It is a cruel fate, but all Ted can do to stop him. For as long as he's still himself, Ted's very proud of his accomplishment-to-be.
• Plot Hole: The notebook Ken McClure shows Della Elliot does not match the newspaper shots spread across the film or McClure's own words when he argues for the resources to investigate the heart-snatcher. Up until the notebook is shown, the first corpse is desecrated in Fairview, which must be close to University City, the second heart taken is from the cemetery caretaker in Camden City, and Merryville and Mt. Greenlow are also visited. In the notebook the first city where a grave was dug up is given as University City, followed by Camden City, Valleydale, Jamestown, Waterville, and Midcity. The seventh entry does not mention a place and could be Merryville, while the eighth entry on Mt. Greenlow specifically states that the graverobber has upped his game to include murder, suggesting that this is when the caretaker was killed even though that does not match anything else in the film nor what McClure knows.
• Police Are Useless: All the actual detective work to capture the heart-snatchers is done by Ken McClure, a reporter with the right insights and the right connections but no foothold with the police. Once he's proven right but pays for it with his life, that's when the police realize they're underperforming and need to take action. Even then, they cast the wrong guy as their prime suspect and only because he's the actual heart-snatcher's main target do the police get a chance to be useful.
• Shadow of Impending Doom: Ted's looming shadow falls on the wall of the Merryville Opera House as he approaches Eric to kill him. Eric doesn't see it, but Isabel, who had come after Eric because she didn't trust the situation, does and lets out a scream that causes Ted to retreat. Neither Isabel nor Eric notice Ted himself and Eric convinces Isabel her mind is playing tricks on her.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Ken McClure is solely responsible for the film's humorous elements with his excitement and confidence about going after the heart-snatcher. He is correct at every turn except that it never occurs to him the heart-snatcher might be more than one person. This gets him killed when he lays his trap, leading to the most austere scene in the film when the police have to acknowledge how they messed up. As Morris at this point is trying to get Eric killed, the weight of the plot coalesces from here on out.
• Shout-Out: When Morris is held at gunpoint by Ken McClure, who pretended to be a corpse to lure the heart-snatcher into a trap, Morris cracks a joke that "reports of your death, it seems, would be greatly exaggerated." Here, Morris quotes the embellished version of one of Mark Twain's lines: "The report of my death was an exaggeration."
• Skewed Priorities: Mr. Eagan, the mortician in Cranston, agrees to let McClure take the place of a corpse in his funeral home to catch the heart-snatcher. Eagan realizes that McClure is doing something terribly dangerous, but still emphasizes that he should be careful not to mar the coffin when he apprehends the heart-snatcher.
• Spinning Paper: There are four shots of a newspaper. The first is the paper Morris reads to finds a suitable corpse for heart harvesting. The other three are responses to the heart-snatching cases and reviews of Isabel's concert tour.
  • The first shows the front page of the [...] Chronicle with the headline "Bailey Rites Held Today". The sub-headline reads "Noted Lawyer Will Be Laid to Rest in Fairview Cemetery". It's placed amidst articles on various subjects: "Committee [...] To Help Advice Group", "Mercury New X-Ray Source, Two Scientists Report", "Board Head to Speak", "No Precedent for Handling Certificates", "Mayor Seeks Budget Boost", and "Jury System Denounced".
  • The second shows the front page of The Morning Sun with the headline "Ghoul Despoils Grave". The only other headers readable are "Britain and U.S. Sign Trade Pact" and "Victory Sighted In Fight Against Yellow Fever".
  • The third shows the front page of the Merryville Daily Monitor with the headline "Mad Ghoul Invades Merryville". The sub-headline reads "Kermit Bond Grave Is Desecrated". It's placed amidst articles on various subjects: "Part Of Credit Rise Wiped Out In Week", "Stock Prices Drop In Heavy Trading; Commodities Down", "Driver Freed In Death Case", "Forced By Weather To Cut Radio Programs", "Reception Monday Evening Honors Betrothed Couple", "American Mining Expert Asks British Citizenship", and "City Will Ask Bids For Operation Of Motor Bus System". To show how the heart-snatcher overshadows Isabel's tour, the second page is shown too. Its central headline is "Isabel Lewis Delights Local Music Lovers" and its surrounded by such articles as "Poll Tax Payment Check is Under Way", "Bicycle Race Margin Of Inch", "Baby Mastodon's Bones Dug Up In Bloomfield Hills", "Data On 8,000 Antarctic Meteors", "Quin Memorial Award Winner To Be Named", "Bar Renews Fight On Judicial 'Deals'", and "Fire In Everglades Put Under Control".
  • The fourth shows the front page of the Mt. Greenlow Guardian with the headline "Mad Ghoul In Mt. Greenlow!". The sub-headline reads "City Horrified As Grave of Anthony Loomis Despoiled". It's placed amidst articles on various subjects: "Tariff Fight On", "Dane Rites Today", "Nominate Ely", "Fire Whistle Sticks To End Quiet Evening", "Fifteen Million Beet Profit Seen", and "Byers Retracts".
• Split Personality: Erroneously referred to in the film as schizophrenia, both Eric and Ted are accused of suffering from a split personality when people assume either of the two is the ghoul. This accusation is meant to explain how one could be as kind and gentle as they are while also going out and about digging up corpses and occasionally making out to get access to hearts. It isn't entirely wrong, as Ted's human state and ghoul state are well divided physically and mentally, but his ghoul state is devoid of personality. It's only because there's someone else telling the ghoul to do something that the ghoul does anything.
• That Was Not a Dream: Ted remembers the things he experiences and does as a ghoul, but only in dream-like shreds. Therefore, he thinks he's just having nightmares brought on by illness. When he learns that the heart-snatching, the (attempted) murders, his lack of control over himself, and everything else are memories of things that actually happened, he gets to be in shock only for the few minutes it takes for him to become a ghoul again for the last time. He makes it count.
• There Are No Coincidences: Isabel, Eric, and Della all notice how the ghoul keeps striking in the city's where Isabel and Eric perform, but none of them thinks of it as more than a coincidence. They are very wrong, as Ken McClure fatally proves.
• Throwing the Distraction: Once Ted has set up the ghoulifying gas in Morris's lab, he smashes various glass containers to pieces. The first use of this is that Morris comes looking what's happening. The second use is that Ted then can throw the bottle with the gas's fuel that he's not using to the ground to make it look like he couldn't think of anything better to do than rampage through the lab. This distracts Morris long enough that he doesn't notice the gas filling up the lab until he's inhaled an adequate dose.
• Title Drop: For the most part, the heart-snatcher is referred to as just the "ghoul". McClure refers to the heart-snatcher as the "mad ghoul" in his notebook and some of the newspapers do so in their headlines.
• Voodoo Zombie: Ted's consumption of the hearts of the recently deceased is a ghoul trait, but everything else about him is in line with Hollywood's adaptation of the folkloric zombie. The ghoulifying gas is of Mayan origin and it makes the inhaler deeply susceptible to suggestion. Someone who knows this, like the person who unleashed the ghoulifying gas, can therefore exert control over the ghoul.
• Working the Same Case: Della Elliot has been assigned to report on Isabel's and Eric's tour as upcoming musicians. Ken McClure has demanded the resources to investigate the heart-snatcher. After some days apart out on their assignments, they bump into each other and discover that all the instances of a corpse's heart being cut out correspond in time and place with Isabel's and Eric's performances. It's McClure's first clue and one he's happy to pursue.