(1942)
Overall: MEH
Director Sam Newfield was one of the busiest during Hollywood's Golden Era, using a slew of pseudonyms for various production studios in his three decade long career. He largely worked in the Western genre, (which includes the infamous The Terror of Tiny Town from 1938), with few horror entries on his resume. The Mad Monster is an exception, features Glenn Strange as a dim-witted man who gets turned into a werewolf due to a serum concocted by George Zucco's megalomaniacal mad scientist, the latter of whom chews the scenery even more than his bestial creation does. Strange turns in a Lon Chaney Jr.-esque performance; a gentle giant who becomes ferocious through means that are neither his fault nor under his control. He also gets plenty of dialog, which is something that Universal never bothered trusting him with for his three Frankenstein monster portrayals. There is not much to the story, (crazy asshole doctor guy wants to make beastmen to get revenge and take over the world, the end), the pacing drags, and Strange and Zucco are the only thespians on screen who try and elevate the cheap proceedings.
(1943)
Overall: MEH
Featuring one of the last appearances from Dwight Frye and released the same year that he died of a spontaneous heart attack, Dead Men Walk also serves as a rare vampire vehicle for George Zucco who gets a double roll as identical brothers, one a noble doctor and one a diabolical fiend. As was common with director Sam Newfield's horror works for Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation, (PRC), the film suffers due to its low production values and merely competent presentation. Newfield's direction is flat, Jack Greenhalgh's cinematography is bare-bones and lacking in proper atmospherics, and the pacing lulls as Fred Myton's script goes through a series of cliches that offer nothing unique to the undead mythos. While it is always nice to see Frye on screen busting out the lunacy, his role here just comes off as another Renfield variation, calling Zucco his blood-sucking "master" and playing lackey to him in his small handful of scenes. On that note, even the top-billed Zucco comes off as bland, spouting threatening dialog in his vampiric form that seems like it was cherry picked from better movies. He also makes a dull protagonist as the good sibling in what is otherwise an already dull film.
(1944)
Overall: MEH
Scoring both J. Carrol Nash and Glenn Strange who also appeared together in Universal's comparatively more prestige House of Frankenstein from the same year, The Monster Maker is a Poverty Row cheapie from Producers Releasing Corporation. While the premise is ghastly enough with Nash's brilliant acromegaly specialist deliberately inflicting a famous pianist in order to force him into marrying off his daughter, director Sam Newfield seems incapable of making the material either thrill or chill. Once the plot gets fiendishly underway, the pacing loses any sense of urgency and it just becomes a series of tedious and repetitive scenes. Strange has a minuscule role as Nash's muscle butter and as he did in The Mad Monster from two years previously, (also directed by Newfield), he actually gets a few lines of dialog, plus the script even manages to shoehorn in a gorilla because what well-respecting mad scientist in a 1940s horror movie can go without one of those? There is no atmosphere, no humor, and the only monstrous aspects come in form of Ralph Morgan wearing some unflatteringly bulbous make-up, but he does little besides isolate himself in his house and thrash around in a hospital bed anyway.
(1946)
Overall: WOOF
Another collaboration between director Sam Newfield and actor George Zucco for Producers Releasing Corporation, The Flying Serpent, (Killer with Wings), is a nature horror monster movie that manages to work in Aztec folklore and the famed Montezuma treasure legend. In this universe, the Quetzalcoatl reptile/bird hybrid of the title guards said treasure and Zucco's unhinged archeologist has captured it, sticking it on anyone who upsets him in typical bad guy fashion. Zucco delivers expository dialog to himself and hams it up accordingly, plus the Quetzalcoatl makes a lackluster impression. It is neither imposingly large nor convincing, instead being about the size of a hand puppet and getting tossed at people via a wire. John T. Neville's screenplay bares similarities to his own for the Béla Lugosi vehicle and PRC's initial horror film The Devil Bat, but that one was also subpar and Zucco is no Lugosi. In effect, this is a mediocre retread of an already mediocre movie and it makes the same Poverty Row missteps of being overtly talky, predictable, and directed with no sense of style or agency by Newfield; a man who was too busy being behind the lens on and cranking out thirteen other movies in 1946 alone.
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