The Indestructible Man vs The Man-Made Monster
Table of Contents
So, What’s The Theme Here?
That time in the 1940’s that Lon Chaney Jr. played a good guy turned into a superpowered slave by a mad scientist who eventually breaks free and kills the scientist vs that time in the 1950’s
Good Lon Chaney Jr. with superpowers vs Evil Lon Chaney Jr. with superpowers.
The Indestructible Man
The Indestructible Man was not Lon Chaney Jr.’s best film. Released in 1956, the film sees Lon play gangster Charles “The Butcher” Benton, sentenced to die in the electric chair after being turned in by his old gang. As his attorney brags that he was set up, The Butcher vows to get even somehow, someway.
Enter mad science.
A mad scientist decides to feed the Butcher’s body electricity until he comes back to life. Why he chose a convicted killer to try this on, I got no clue.
300 volts later and the Butcher is back in business. He’s alive, he’s alive! And what’s more he’s got superpowers now. He’s strong enough to knock down locked doors with a light tap of his shoulder, partially lift a car off the ground (and these are 1950’s cars so they’re built like tiny tanks), and as the scientist and his assistant learn, kill men simply by grabbing them by the neck and lifting.
In the next life don’t revive people named “the Butcher,” dumbass.
But as strong as Butcher is, his durability is even better. Syringes break against his skin. Knives bend. Bullets don’t hurt him. Shotgun blasts don’t even knock him back.
Oh, the tradeoff is that the procedure burned out his vocal cords so he can’t talk. Like that’s a big deal compared with being a walking army. “I have to learn ASL, boo hoo, bullets bounce of my chest now.”
With his newfound powers, the Butcher starts going down the list of double-crossing wiseguys…though if you’re hungry for superstrength kills, this film is going to leave you very, very hungry. Most kills features Lon throwing a stunt double. The best kill in the whole movie is when Lon helps a motorist fix his car by lifting up the front so he can fix a tire. Then Lon knocks him to the ground and curbstomps him before taking his car like its GTA.
There’s also a subplot about Butcher’s hidden treasure and his old girlfriend who’s now dating the detective that brought Butcher in, but the film doesn’t go anywhere satisfying with that even though “my gangster boyfriend is a superpowered zombie and I’m dating the lawman that busted him” seems like easy peazy drama. The most notable part of the subplot is that the detective is doing a Dragnet thing where he’s narrating the entire film like he’s Joe Friday. That’s not too surprising. Dragnet was huge in the 50’s, it makes sense to see films copy its style.
Eventually, the cops corner Butcher with and break out some heavier weaponry–a bazooka and a flamethrower. Butcher gets singed and takes a bazooka right to the chest, and though he’s still in one piece he’s wounded and running. The police chase him into an industrial park (shades of White Heat!) where he accidentally electrocutes himself to death.
Yeah, 300 volts may bring you back to life, but the voltage going through a power station is a lotttt higher than that.
As far as MST3K films go, The Indestructible Man isn’t so bad.
I stress that again. As far as MST3K films go.
It’s a stinker, but it’s not Manos bad. The premise has some real potential in it, and not just because it recycles the The Walking Dead.
That’s the 1936 Karloff film, by the way. Not the prolefeed tv series.
A gangster comes back from the dead with superpowers to avenge himself on those who wronged him, and the detective that brought him in is dating his old moll! Sounds exciting, right?
Well, not when most of the film is stock footage of police cars mobilizing and Lon Chaney Jr. running in a city. It’s kind of tolerable for awhile but at the 40 minute mark it really starts to drag.
The worst part of the film is just that poor Lon Chaney Jr. is in it. Dude was Larry Talbot, he deserves wayyyyy better than this.
I’m not sure, so don’t quote me on this, but I think they only had limited access to Lon, similar to how Ed Wood had limited access to Bella Lugosi while filming Plan 9 from Outer Space. Outside the opening scene in the jail, the scene in the lab, and the scene in the dressing room, Lon just runs around a city occasionally bumping and shoving people to death. It really feels like they told Lon Chaney to run around a city for a few hours. They have a closeup shot of his eyes and they keep reusing it and I have no idea why they would unless they had to shoot around Lon’s absence. “Shoot! This scene needs to show Lon reacting to it, but he’s gone now because we could only use him for a day, quick, use that one closeup again!’
If you get a Hollywood legend like that in your film, you better utilize him as much as possible. Instead, he’s treated like Tor Johnson. He gets a few lines in the opening scene as he promises that one way of the other, he’s going to get the crew that betrayed him…and that’s it. He’s essentially Frankenstein’s monster gangster version for the rest of the film. He’s completely silent, and that’s a shame because he’s a great actor. I know he, like his father, is celebrated for his nonverbal acting skills, and rightfully so, but Lon’s good at dialogue, he’s really good, and if they were just hellbent on post-revival Lon being silent, they could have incorporated flashback scenes.
When you have silent actor, you need a good cinematographer to capture their expressions. A bunch of flat shots of Lon running around does not work and does not show what he’s really capable of. There’s one good scene where the Butcher meets back up with his old girlfriend and Lon has to communicate everything without speaking and it works really well…but that’s the only scene with the two of them together. They gave her more scenes with the crappy Joe Friday knock-off than Lon. Why do that? Did they forget which character had their name in the title? There was so much potential in the gun moll angle. But she and Lon have one scene together, it’s kind of good, he goes “You betrayed me nooo,” walks off…and that’s it. No showdown with knockoff Joe Friday as the girl watches, no him suddenly having a change of heart and shielding her from bullets, no him trying to kill her out of jealousy as Joe Friday kicks him into lava or something, nothing.He doesn’t even have Joe Friday on his list of people to get even with. Now I appreciate the Butcher maybe thinking that Joe isn’t someone to kill, because he understands there are two sides to the cops and robbers game and Joe was on the other team, so it’s not like Joe betrayed him, good for the Butcher, he’s got a code of honor I guess, but it makes for really crappy drama. We don’t get any substantial drama. The police chase the Butcher until he electrocutes himself. Big flash, now we’re done, roll credits.
And that’s pretty much the film in a nutshell. Big flash, now we’re done here, move along.
…Okay, a little more.
To be kind, the film is only an hour and ten minutes long, so it’s easy viewing, and what’s more, it’s public domain! So you can watch it all on the Internet without feeling the shame and guilt of piracy!
Because we all feel that.
The Indestructible Man’s Powers and Abilities
After his corpse was exposed to 300 volts of electricity, the Butcher became one of those “back from the dead with a vengeance and superpowers” bad guys like Horace Pinker, or if you prefer your references more child friendly, the Metalikats.
The superscientific reason for the Butcher’s powers is that the electricity thickened his cellular structure. The mad scientist remarks that he’s “nearly solid cells!”
Think of it like a Luke Cage deal. In fact, given how much classic Marvel borrows from 50’s B-movies, he may have inspired Luke Cage.
The Butcher is strong enough to lift two men by their necks, lift the front of a car, knock down a locked door with a tap of his shoulder, and lift a man over his head and toss him. He is strong enough to kill other men simply by punching them or shoving them (the film saved a buck by using Kickassia tier stuntwork). His durability is even more impressive. Handgun and shotgun fire doesn’t even slow him down. Needles and knives break against his skin.
But he does have limits. He can’t survive a nuke (the budget obviously wouldn’t allow it) and while he survived being singed by a flamethrower and taking a bazooka to the chest, he was wounded by the weapons and fled from his pursuers clutching his chest and in obvious pain What finally did him in was electrocution via power plant accident.
Live by the electricity, die by the electricity.
The Man-Made Monster
Man-Made Monster is one of those films that’s highly influential yet no one knows about it. I think the reason for that is because for Lon Chaney Jr. fans and general horror film fans it occupies a niche in which its overshadowed by what’s around it. For Lon Chaney Jr. fans, it’s Lon’s warm-up before he gets his big moment in The Wolfman. Both films were released in 1941, Wolfman a few months after Man-Made Monster, and Wolfman is well and truly the superior work. How can Nightlight Lon even compete with “Even a man who is pure at heart…”? He can’t. And general horror fans see Man-Made Monster as a retread of Frankenstein. They do have a point. Man-Made Monster is like Frankenstein with the morality made as stark as possible. The mad scientist outright admits to being a mad scientist (and he is wonderful to watch, Lionel Atwill gives a phenomenally hammy performance, he is the quintessential mad scientist) and is directly responsible for every wrong in the story. The monster is a nice, normal man who is turned into a living weapon by the mad scientist. In the end, the monster, almost like Superman, breaks into the mad scientist’s lab and saves the girl from his death trap. Man-Made Monster is Frankenstein with the shades of gray arranged into pure white and pure black.
It’s very clear Man-Made Monster owes a lot to Frankenstein, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t influential in its own right. Think of all the characters that rely on a supersuit to keep their powers from leaking out. Wildfire, Iron Man (originally, back when his suit also functioned as life support), the Human Bomb, Captain Atom, and Sentinels of the Multiverse’s Absolute Zero all owe a debt to old Dynamo Dan.
I’d even go as far to say that Dynamo Dan is the first horror hero. Before Morbius, before Deadman, before Specter, before any of them, you had Dynamo Dan.
Now that we’ve talked about the importance of Man-Made Monster, let’s talk about the plot.
Dan McCormick, a circus performer with an electric act under the name Dynamo Dan, the Electric Man, is the sole survivor of a bus crash into power lines. Everyone on the bus was fried to a crisp–everyone but Dan who not only survived but survived without a scratch.
So you can add Unbreakable to the list of things influenced by Man-Made Monster.
When Dan is interviewed in the hospital, he’s just as surprised about his survival as the doctors. He does an electric act, but its just an act. He doesn’t actually put thousands of volts through his body. Dr. John Lawrence offers to pay Dan for letting him study him and take readings, and what’s more he throws in room and board at his cool mansion-lab. That’s pretty much the deal Professor X gives his student/subjects, so add X-men to the list.
Dan befriends John’s niece June and reporter Mark Adams who wants to chronicle the story of the man who survived, but he doesn’t trust Dr. Lawrence’s assistant Dr. Paul Rigas, and he’s totally right not to. Never trust anyone played by Lionel Atwill in a horror film, the dude was Dr. X in Dr. X, he’s the ultimate mad scientist actor.
Dr. Rigas is a complete looney tune and the best character in the whole film. He outright admits to Dr. Lawrence that he’s mad and dreams of creating a race of electric powered superhumans that obey his every command and rely on electricity instead of food and water to win. He ponders converting the ‘useless” of society into zombies that will obey geniuses like himself and do all the manual labor like robots.
So yeah, Dr. Rigas is obviously pure evil, and Dr. Lawrence doesn’t like him, yet keeps him on because he’s very smart.
I know some of you are saying its unrealistic for the good doctor to keep an obvious psycho as an assistant just because he’s useful, but that’s not unrealistic. What’s unrealistic is Dr. Rigas not being plastered with awards. If you ever want a big red pill on how corrupt and evil the powers-that-be are, look up Edward Teller, the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove.
Look up all the award Edward “it’s unreasonable to make such a big deal over the death of a fisherman” Teller won and prepare to vomit.
Edward Teller was like Anthony Fauci but instead of pushing vaccines and lying about their side effects, Edward Teller pushed hydrogen bombs and lied about the dangers of fallout. He also lied with the support of the media behind him. History really doesn’t change. Look up Edward Teller’s debate with Linus Pauling sometime. Pauling brings up how an article in Life on nuclear weapons misleads the public:
Teller’s response:
He said this while the fishermen of Lucky Dragon 5 were vomiting blood. He said this while the hibakusha were socially ostracized as modern lepers. He said this while thousands of innocent people suffered health effects from nuclear testing that he would continue to push for until the day he died and went to Hell.
Governments and their pet mad scientists have always been lying scumbags. And they always will be. I wanted to bring you this notice this Halloween to remind you that mad scientists are very real, very well connected, very respected, very well-paid, and far more destructive than the ones in movies.
We now return to your death battle.
When Dr. Rigas inevitably gets tired of simply taking readings, he poisons Dr. Lawrence to keep him in bed and out of the way as he exposes Dan to more and more electricity. Dan starts to transform. He loses his appetite for food. Sparks fly from his hand. He becomes sullen and withdrawn. He doesn’t know what is wrong. And what’s worse, he can feel his mind going. His thoughts are becoming slower and slower.
And here is where the film kind of drops the ball. The film is very short, only an hour long, and it makes the drama very truncated. We get a few scenes of Dan acting withdrawn while Dr. Rigas’ notes inform us of his transformation from man to man-made monster. That’s a sadness, because if we had thirty more minutes to show Dan’s descent into zombie-hood, the movie would have been a lot better. Look at Wolfman and how well-known and well-regarded it is today. It gave plenty of scenes to showing Lon’s existential suffering as he realizes what he’s become. Think that but with a little Flowers for Algernon and you would have had something very poignant and very atypical for a horror B-movie. And Lon can depict the mentally retarded with nuance and skill, he did a great job in Of Mice and Men.
It’s unfortunate, in light of what could have been, that Lon goes from normal to zombie in an unsatisfying flash.
Dr. Rigas shows up the fully zombified, obedient, and glowing Dan to Dr. Lawrence who threatens to call the police. Dr. Rigas orders Dan to subdue Dr. Lawrence, but with his newfound monster-strength he accidentally kills him. But Dr. Rigas sees possibility in his old “friend’s” death. He frames Dan for the murder and orders him to confess and take full culpability. He knows Dan will get the electric chair, and he wants to see what would happen when Dan gets shocked.
Mad scientists get curious about the strangest things. I guess when you lose human empathy, you start to wonder about things normal people don’t. Edward Teller wanted to nuke Alaska to see if he could make a harbor–a radioactive harbor. Given his comments on the lives of fishermen, he probably didn’t give a damn over who had to work his harbor.
Dan’s future looks bleak. June Lawrence believes he didn’t do it, but with him confessing under Dr. Rigas’ mental domination, there’s nothing she can do. But there is a slight glimmer of hope–while a court psychologist goes over Dan’s abusive childhood, Dan defies Rigas’ mental control by screaming NOOOOO! It’s not enough to save him from a conviction, but it does show that the mindcontrol has a limit.
When Dan’s electrocuted, he blows out the entire prison and walks out with the warden as an unstoppable, glowing, supercharged man. He kills several guards on his way out, but its clear these are unintentional deaths. It’s hard not to kill when your merest touch means death. The police are after Dan. Their scientists estimate that with his charge, he has about three hours of life before he runs out and dies. But Dan’s no longer a mindless monster. He’s got his humanity an discretion back. Even while the police are hunting him down, he’s careful to avoid harming innocents. When he encounters a couple, he’s careful not to harm them as he steals a pair of rubber boots to help mitigate his seeping energy.
Dan goes to se Dr. Rigas and make him pay for everything he’s done. Meanwhile, June’s found his notes which can help clear Dan and put Dr. Rigas away. Dr. Rigas finds her and to punish her decides to torture her to death with electricity–just as he used to do with animals as a child. But suddenly, like a superhero, Dan burst through the door, kills Dr. Rigas, and saves June.
He even finds a rubber suit Dr. Rigas created to prevent Dan’s life-giving electricity from seeping out of his body. You think for a moment that this might have a happy ending. Dan gets cleared by June, gets a steady supply of batteries to eat, and goes on to live a happy albeit weird life.
Nope! This is a Long Chaney Jr. flick. You know how it is. “The way you walked was thorny, though no fault of your own, but as rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end.”
And in this case, a predestined fencepost. Poor Dan runs into a metal wire fence that tears his suit as he runs from the mob and dies as the electricity is sucked out by the metal wire. Laurie’s dog howls over his body.
So it goes.
In some ways, Dan’s fate is even more tragic than Larry Talbot’s. Larry was doomed from the start. The best he could hope for was to die. But Dan had a spark of hope, a spark that quickly faded.
…You know, if Universal ever wants to try the whole shared universe thing again, why not bring back Dynamo Dan? He screams “superhero-esque face character.” Imagine him tag-teaming with Frankenstein’s monster. You know how later films in the Frankenstein series played around with the creature swapping out brains? Like how the creature wanted to give up his body to save the life of a little girl and how Yegor eventually put his brain inside the creature’s body? Well, what if during the big Avengers team-up film, Dynamo Dan dies, but the creature absorbs enough of his electricity to preserve Dynamo Dan inside his head. They become headmates and the creature gets new electricity powers.
Come on, you can’t say my ideas are any worse than the Chinese mummy thing they tried to do…
The Man-Made Monster’s Powers and Abilities
Dan the Dynamo’s powers develop throughout the film. At the start, he’s got enough power to be the lone survivor of a bush crash into some powerlines. He lives, everyone else doesn’t, and Mr. Glass no doubt took notice. After Dr. Rigas starts overcharging him to the tune of 50,000 volts, he finds that he uncontrollably projects electricity with his touch, enough to kill two goldfish by sticking his fingers in their bowl. He’s got the Midas touch but instead of gold its corpses. Think of this as Dan form 2.
As Dr. Rigas keeps overcharging him, he becomes sullen and withdrawn. His mind starts to decay. He starts to rely on electricity for sustenance over food. Finally, poor Dan becomes Dr. Riga’s ideal electrical man–a superhuman tool who followed Dr. Rigas’ commands with zombie like obedience. He had enhanced strength, Dr. Rigas believed he was the first in what would be a breed of superworkers and supersoldiers, and when commanded to stop Dr. Lawrence he accidentally killed him with his strength. He also glows, which is cool.
After blowing out the prison and escaping, Dan becomes Dan form 4, which is 3 but with his mind back–but perhaps not all the way. It’s questionable how much intelligence Dan has. Form 3 was basically a zombie and just did and said whatever Dr. Rigas told him to outside shouting NOOOOOO when psychiatrist brought up his abusive childhood, a foreshadow of his future rebellion. Form 4 had enough brains to use the warden as a hostage to get out of the prison and steal a pair of rubber boots to slow down his energy leakage. He knew to rescue June and kill Dr. Rigas. But on the other hand, he couldn’t speak for whatever reason. Nerve damage? Speech centers of his brain fried? Post-traumatic stress disorder? Something must be preventing him from speaking, because why else wouldn’t he spare June a few words? It was also kind of a brainless death for him to put on the rubber suit and then blunder into a fence. The dude is glowing. He should be able to see where he’s going.
But whether or not Dan suffered reduce intelligence in form 4 is a moot point. In most circumstances, Dan’s intelligence shouldn’t be a handicap. He knows “fry the badguy, save the girl,” and that’s really all anyone needs.
Dan form 4 is the one with the cool feats. He kills a guard by catching the metal pole swung at him, sending an electric current through the pole and into the guard. He blasts open a gate lock. And coolest of all, he kills Dr. Rigas when he tries to runaway by sending a current through the doorknob.
Dr. Rigas gave Dan form 3 a rubber suit designed to prevent Dan from leaking electricity. Dan naturally uses up the electricity in his body. He needs to recharge like normal people need to eat food. But without his suit, Dan leaks electricity fast. Scientists estimated that Dan form 4 had about 3 hours of life. Without his suit, Dan’s electricity is drawn to nearby metallic objects, even if he doesn’t want it to be. The electricity is “sucked” out of him by metal. This is how he tragically died–his suit got tied on a metal cattle wire fence. The metal cut into his rubber suit, cut into his body, and drew the electricity right out of him, killing him in seconds.
The gloves are removable, because Dr. Rigas didn’t intend for his superhuman servant to just be a night light. If Dan needs to fry someone, he just needs to shake the glove off.
So, Who Wins?
Dan fries the Butcher.
The Butcher is stronger and way way wayyyyy more durable than Dan, but it’s all moot against Dan’s electricity. Consider how the Butcher’s durability works.
Could the Butcher create a double kill scenario by rushing in, snapping Dan’s neck, and then dying from the electricity? If he dies a little after Dan, you could argue that he won the battle, right? Yeah, and it’s a feasible scenario, but I don’t think its the likeliest scenario. While Dan isn’t as strong as the Butcher, he does have a little enhanced strength, and that combined with the padding from his rubber suit should let him survive in a grapple long enough to fry the Butcher. Plus, Dan can extend his electricity a little ways from his body. It’s not a huge ranged advantage, but it does mean the Butcher is eating volts before Dan is eating fists.
The fight is pretty straight-forward. It took 300 volts to get the Butcher off the slab. The mad scientist’s machine had the capacity to go all the way to 600 volts, but didn’t. This implies that while 300 volts are good for the Butcher, anything beyond is a gray area. Dan was exposed to 50,000 volts during his first “power-up” treatment. That’s 50,000 volts well before he started glowing. By the time he was glowing, he was being exposed to measures off the ability of the scale to measure, and the scale went up to 100,000 volts.
Now, caveat that the “power level” of electricity is in watts, which are joules per second, and that watts are found by multiplying amps by voltage, aside, power stations can produce between 44,000 and 750,000 volts.
I don’t think its a stretch at all to argue that final form Dan can produce enough juice to kill the Butcher, especially after he shorted out an entire prison.
The Butcher’s best chance at winning would be to run away until Dan runs out of juice…but that wouldn’t happen for some time. The police gave him about 3 hours of operating time, but that’s plenty of time to conclude a fight, and those three hours rely on Dan not finding a source of electricity to expose himself to. All he needs to carry on would be an outlet or a car battery.
Good Lon kills bad Lon.
Shine on, Dan the Dynamo.
How The Fight Would Go
This fight would be more like a brief encounter. It shouldn’t go on for more than a minute or two not only because of the logic behind the fight (there’s no way it wouldn’t be decided in seconds of the two grabbing each other, and there’s nothing they can do besides grab each other) but because it fits the flavor of the fight. Dracula’s fight with the Wolfman lasted only a couple of seconds.
The Butcher attacks a nightclub to get at one of his old pals. Dan’s friends June and Mark are in the crowd. The Butcher starts a huge scene, knocking over tables, tossing people through walls, and choking the life out of his target victim while his bodyguards helplessly empty their guns into him.
June screams, and as if in answer to her cries, Dan crashes through the door.
Dan and the Butcher circle each other. The Butcher charges, and stops as he’s hit with electricity. He recoils, clothes singed. Then spots a dining cart filled with metal trays and utensils. He picks the dining cart over his head and tosses it at Dan. It crashes on him. Metal objects go everywhere, drawing his electricity away in arcs. The Butcher sees his chance and dives at Dan. They grapple, both glowing. The music builds. The Butcher grabs Dan around the neck and lifts him. Dan sees a metal knife stuck partially in his suit. He grabs the knife and uses it to rip his suit open.
There’s a big burst of electricity. June screams. The lights in the nightclub flicker and explode.
The Butcher is hurled from Dan, a smoking corpse. Dan falls to his knees, then falls to the ground. His light starts to flicker and die.
June sobs. “Oh Mark, Mark! He’s dieing! Dan’s dieing!”
But someone in the crowd comes in with a car battery and cables and tosses the cables to Dan. “Come on! Grab them!”
Someone in the crowd shouts “No! Don’t! He’s a monster!” But another person replies “No you idiot, he saved us from the monster!”
Dan gets jumpstarted back to life and he’s touched to find the crowd cheering for him. Steam rises from his face, and June comments that his tears are evaporating against his aura.
Someone asks Dan what his name is. He looks at June. June mouths for him to go on. With effort, he opens his mouth and in a voice crackling with electricity (my headcanon for why he doesn’t speak in form 4 is that the electricity aura gives him a weird voice he doesn’t want others to hear) answers “Dan McCormick. I’m Dynamo Dan, the Electric Man.”
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM CAPEWORLD COMICS!
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