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The Mad Ghoul

103 statements
19 feature instances
1 referencing feature instances

The Mad Ghoul	type	TVTItem
The Mad Ghoul	label	The Mad Ghoul
The Mad Ghoul	page	TheMadGhoul
The Mad Ghoul	comment	Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })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. The story came from the pen of Hanns Kräly, who was active in the German film industry until 1923, and this could explain why the suggestible ghoul and the professor ordering him around resemble the villainous duo from the 1920 German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The Mad Ghoul also owes some to the The Mummy's Hand, from which it repeats the setup of the undead that needs its handler to prepare special food to ward off unlife.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })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 chemisty, 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 recurring 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 precisely cut out hearts he perishes.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_3'); })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 Gir, and "All for Love", based on "Minuet in G". On a more sorrowful note, The Mad Ghoul has the distinction of being the last film directed by James Hogan, who died on November 4, 1943.The Mad Ghoul stands out as Universal Horror movie with a definable monster that wasn't given any sequels in a decade when sequels were the norm. The Mad Ghoul was announced as one of the monsters to appear in Chamber of Horrors, but they also were among those monsters cut out of the script by the time the project became House of Frankenstein.
The Mad Ghoul	fetched	2022-04-23T11:42:03Z
The Mad Ghoul	parsed	2022-04-23T11:42:03Z
The Mad Ghoul	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Mad Ghoul / int_2f665172	type	Come Alone
The Mad Ghoul / int_2f665172	comment	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 unexpected arrival of Isabel.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_34c3144b	type	Lured into a Trap
The Mad Ghoul / int_34c3144b	comment	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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_411bd9ee	type	Body Wipe
The Mad Ghoul / int_411bd9ee	comment	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 ghoulish form before the story effectively continues by the duo leaving the laboratory.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_4e3d253b	type	Downer Ending
The Mad Ghoul / int_4e3d253b	comment	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 cying out for Ted, who is now truly gone, to help him.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_56515a39	type	Artistic License â€“ History
The Mad Ghoul / int_56515a39	comment	Artistic License – History: The Mayan art shown during Dr. Morris's class is obviously not authentic even when one disregards what they depict. 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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_60547993	type	I Want My Beloved to Be Happy
The Mad Ghoul / int_60547993	comment	I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Once Ted figures out 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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_694da243	type	At the Opera Tonight
The Mad Ghoul / int_694da243	comment	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 hearts 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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_86968c96	type	Above Good and Evil
The Mad Ghoul / int_86968c96	comment	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.”
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The Mad Ghoul / int_ab5eea65	type	Dramatic Irony
The Mad Ghoul / int_ab5eea65	comment	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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_acecb17d	type	Chekhov's Skill
The Mad Ghoul / int_acecb17d	comment	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. In the end, Morris loses Ted and perishes while desperately trying to obtain a heart.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_b7c312ff	type	Cacophony Cover-Up
The Mad Ghoul / int_b7c312ff	comment	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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_b7e0c5ff	type	Love Triangle
The Mad Ghoul / int_b7e0c5ff	comment	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. As an older man, he considers himself a suitable match for her and from a conversation wrongly gets the impression that she likes him too. He is not happy when he learns he's not and tries to get Ted to murder Eric and then himself. Ted doesn't survive, but would've been happy to know no harm came to Eric and that Dr. Morris paid for his crimes.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_bdbfdf8a	type	The Dying Walk
The Mad Ghoul / int_bdbfdf8a	comment	The Dying Walk: The 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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_c66cb5a9	type	Human Sacrifice
The Mad Ghoul / int_c66cb5a9	comment	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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_c6fe99cf	type	Creepy Cemetery
The Mad Ghoul / int_c6fe99cf	comment	Creepy Cemetery: The second time Dr. Morris and Ted go out to fetch a heart from the local cemetery, 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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_ebb57e1a	type	Duet Bonding
The Mad Ghoul / int_ebb57e1a	comment	Duet Bonding: Isabel and Eric have fallen in love while performing music together. She sings, he plays the piano.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_f6f2ff1	type	Insult Backfire
The Mad Ghoul / int_f6f2ff1	comment	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.
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The Mad Ghoul / int_ffc3ced9	type	Voodoo Zombie
The Mad Ghoul / int_ffc3ced9	comment	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 while it does not in itself make the ghoul a slave to anyone, it does make the ghoul susceptible to suggestion. Someone who knows this, like the person who unleashed the ghoulifying gas, can therefore exert control over the ghoul.
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The Mad Ghoul

hasFeature

Our Ghouls Are Creepier / int_ace4df2c

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