Monster on the Campus

A professor at a college university suffers a peculiar bite from a prehistoric fish that arrives at his laboratory from Madagascar. The wound, accidentally soaked in "radioactive" water doesn't help matters. What this bite does (and blood that drips in his favorite smoke pipe) is change the professor into a beast man, causing a physical and mental return to what man once was when the prehistoric fish was alive instead of a fossil. Turning the professor into a homicidal monster, with deathly consequences, what will he do to stop it? Will he be able to prove it to the police and his scholarly colleagues?

**½

I’m a Jack Arnold guy. Love his movies. He was quite a talent when it came to B-movies. But as his work continued, eventually Arnold made Monster on the Campus. I did notice The Space Children was made right before this in the same year, 1958. Hard not to see The Wolf Man (1941) all over this film. A bite on the hand (the first time someone has been “bitten” by a prehistoric dead fish!) while a professor scientist is moving a fish from one location to another causes him to turn into some type of primeval human beast, reverted back to a primitive form that kills and tears everything apart in front of him. A nurse dies of fright when driving him home after the fish teeth prick his hand, injecting him with its gamma radiation (to preserve the fish, this was used before it was sent to his school lab) and making him ill, eventually transforming into the monster of the title.

The scientist, Dr. Donald Blake (Arthur Franz), is found by his fiancé, Madeline (Joanna Moore), seemingly awakening from unconsciousness. His home is tattered, disheveled, and wrecked, with her eventually finding the nurse up against a tree with her dead eyes wide open and her body frozen in fear (this is a great scene, I thought). Donald is on a mission to find the beast responsible for the murder of the nurse, soon discovering that the prehistoric fish is the root cause of a dog (that drunk fish blood that pooled from the truck carrying it to the university lab for Donald) going mean with two distinctly long teeth and a giant dragonfly which took from it while it was laying on a table in his lab. Attempts to convince a colleague, Dr. Cole (Whit Bissel), that his findings are monumental, often unable to prove what were available *before* he was notified, fail, with him growing more and more frustrated. Crystallized bacteria, a giant dragonfly with a flight sound similar to an airplane, a dog that seems to have went from violent and aggressive to playful and friendly, and proof that the killer on campus is a monster resulting from the fish in his lab are very real but fate continues to derail Donald’s pursuit of verifiable evidence.

The monster leaves much to be desired. The rubbery ape mask and how it moves with the face behind it is laughable. I guess if you can get past that there’s fun to be had. Maybe even the laughable ape mask adds to the fun for some, but Arnold once had the Gillman and a shrunken man prior to this. He isn’t the kind of director associated with bad B-movies. That this turned out to be better than it had any right to be is contributive to Arnold’s talent as director. The plot couldn’t be more silly…a fish’s blood and bite could cause those on the other end to turn into monsters. It is hard to take seriously although the direction wears a straight face. The cast do their due diligence to make this all work. Franz is a strong actor with a sincere portrayal, trying to underlie scientific curiosity and how it leads to his tragic undoing. He has a lot to live for, but his need to investigate history leads him down the dark path towards destruction. Certainly Joanna is crazy about him and tries to humor him. His potential father-in-law is a big kahuna at the university. But the damned fish and his need to continue to research it are charting him on a course to a voyage where nothing good awaits. That he purposely injects himself knowing all too well that he’d be shot kind of makes him suicidal…but he just needs to prove his point, even if doing so results in his demise.

I did enjoy the little things. Like the aftermath of the initial death at Donald’s home, with the hand and finger print proving something extraordinary was on the premises. The nurse coming on to Donald and his referring to her as “scary”. The comments about man possibly succumbing to our base natures and beastiality, not too far removed from the animal we once were. The demolished property of Donald and Joanna searching for him through the wreckage, with the threat of danger possible. The monster actually right in front of the police the whole time and them clueless that it is Donald. It is not all bad, I guess.