Moving into the Universal section, we take a look at 1941's Man-Made Monster, which was the first pairing of Lon Chaney, Jr. and director George Waggner.
On a rain slicked road a bus crashes into power lines. Everyone on board is killed instantly, save for one passenger. Dan McCormick (Chaney) is the sole survivor. Dan's line of work may have something to do with it, as he is billed as 'Dynamo Dan the Electric Man' in the carnival circuit. Dr. Lawrence (Samuel S. Hinds) is very interested in Dan's case and persuades Dan to live with him so he can study his condition.
The good doctor doesn't live alone though. There's his daughter June (Anne Nagel), her beau and newsman Mark (Frank Albertson) and finally his partner Dr. Rigas (Lionel Atwill). Rigas is clearly the crackpot of the two, as he is convinced that man can be altered via electrical current to live entirely on energy. When Dr. Lawrence heads out for a week long conference, Rigas figures this is the perfect opportunity and proceeds to turn Dan into an electric zombie.
This presents a problem when the good doctor returns, so Rigas has his new zombie slave kill his old partner. He turns down the juice enough to let the police haul him away, but he didn't figure on what would happen to Dan when they find him guilty and sentence him to the electric chair...
By the numbers and generic. Atwill does the mad scientist bit perfectly as he usually does, but Chaney mostly sits around and glows occasionally. Utterly forgettable save for the rubber suit Dan slips into near the end.
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