A Forgotten Horror Movie Combined The Legal Thriller With Mad Science

From The Man They Could Not Hang to The Walking Dead, the pre-war era saw Hollywood suddenly become preoccupied with the concept of reviving executed criminals. The Monster and the Girl, however, was the only such film in which a convict’s brain was transplanted into a gorilla.

Released 85 years ago today, the black-and-white curio was also the only such film to give as much attention to the courtroom as the laboratory. As mild-mannered church organist Scot Webster (Philip Terry) finds himself accused of murdering a gang member, the first half largely plays out like a conventional legal thriller.

The string of flashbacks that break up the trial confirm that he’s an innocent man set up by head mobster W.S. Bruhl (Paul Lukas) to kill two birds with one stone. The victim was a former associate who needed to be taken care of, while having learned to his horror that his sister Susan (Ellen Drew) had been forced into prostitution by the big city gang, Scot was fast making himself a nuisance.

With 1941 still firmly in the Hays Code years, The Monster and the Girl had to tiptoe around Susan’s predicament. “Doing a little drinking, a little dancing, make the yokels happy” is how Bruhl describes the work she’s forced into. And yet the film still fell foul of the censorship board, which objected to its themes of white slavery and its assumption that juries could be controlled by criminal forces.

Despite clocking in at just 64 minutes, director Stuart Heisler — whose eclectic resume ranges from family-friendly canine flick The Biscuit Eater to a biopic of Hitler — finds the time to flesh out Susan and Scot’s relationship. A candid flashback chat cleverly establishes why the former was so keen to flee small-town life, and why the latter, who’s entirely content with his life, feels so protective.

Susan’s guilt at how her big city dreams led to Scott’s tragic downfall is also palpable, particularly in the opening straight-to-camera monologue where she dramatically emerges from a cloud of mist. "'I'm Susan, the bad luck penny,” she claims. “I bought a million dollars' worth of trouble… for everybody.”

Nevertheless, the majority of cinemagoers had shelled out a quarter for the monster rather than the girl. And after a talkative, relatively grounded first half, the film finally starts leaning into the outlandish when Scot is asked by Dr. Perry (George Zucco) to donate his brain for an experiment that will supposedly “help benefit the human race.” Thoroughly deflated at having just been sentenced to death row, “Help yourself, mister,” is the remarkably nonchalant reply.

It’s never made clear exactly why transferring Scot’s brain into a gorilla will assist mankind. And unlike in the mad scientist flicks that had come before, Perry isn’t presented as a maniacal villain but a benevolent MacGuffin. Yet the crazy scheme did help Paramount Pictures make a rare foray into horror as Scot, now emboldened by his new bestial form, goes on the warpath to avenge his death and save his sister.

Again, Heisler is restricted in what he can show: only one of the gorilla’s multiple killings is depicted on camera, with the rest revealed via police reports (“practically every bone in his body was broken”) that lead to the nickname The Mangled Murderer. But thanks to suspenseful, noirish cinematography by Oscar winner Victor Milner, and a surprisingly convincing — particularly by 1941 standards — costume, his reign of terror still possesses a fear factor, especially during a suspenseful nighttime sequence where he stalks his prey while traversing the city’s rooftops.

An expressive performance from Charlie Gemora, who also portrayed an ape in 1932 chiller Murders in the Rue Morgue, brings an unexpected pathos to an undeniably silly premise: see when the gorilla watches over Susan as she sleeps, knowing that he’s lost that sibling bond forever, or when Scot’s beloved dog appears to recognize his master despite the fact he’s now in the form of a murderous primate, or when the gorilla’s quest for revenge inevitably ends in tragedy.

The Monster and the Girl remains a true one-off. A mad scientist movie that refuses to paint its scientist as mad. A monster flick that waits until the halfway point to even hint at the presence of a monster. A gritty crime drama gatecrashed by an 800-pound gorilla. But whichever form the film takes, it’s always entertaining. The wonderfully verbose prose of Variety’s contemporaneous review said it best: “A chiller-diller that will send fans of goose-pimply melodrama from the theaters amply satisfied.”

The Monster and the Girl is available on Prime Video.