“Monster on the Campus” (1958) / Z-View

Monster on the Campus (1958)

Director: Jack Arnold

Screenplay by: David Duncan

Starring: Arthur Franz, Joanna Moore, Joanna Moore, Troy Donahue, Phil Harvey, Helen Westcott, Helen Westcott, Whit Bissell, Ross Elliott, and Eddie Parker.

Tagline: Co-ed beauty captive of man-monster! Campus terror! Students victims of terror-beast!

The Story:

Professor Donald Blake (Franz) accidently cuts himself on the teeth of a well-preserved million-year-old fish fossil. Right after, while putting the fossil away, his injured hand dips into the water holding the specimen.  Later Blake learns the fossil had been preserved using gamma rays.

That evening a woman is savagely attacked.  Her corpse is found hanging from a tree.  Professor Blake is found barely conscious on the ground nearby.  He has no memory of what happened.  When the police find a huge deformed handprint they believe it to be the killer’s.  While the police begin a hunt for the monster, Professor Blake worries that he is devolving into a creature from the past.

Thoughts (beware of spoilers)

At the start of the movie on a shelf in Professor Blake’s lab is a series of molds showing the evolution of man’s face.  The very first mold looks a lot like The Creature from the Black Lagoon.  Jack Arnold, who directed Monster On the Campus, also helmed The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Jack Arnold was the go-to director for horror/sci-fi movies in the 1950s.  He helmed It Came from Outer Space; The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Revenge of the Creature; This Island Earth; Tarantula; The Incredible Shrinking Man; The Space Children and Monster on the Campus.

Monster on the Campus was Troy Donahue’s last film for Universal.  The following year he signed a contract at Warner Bros. and soon became a top name star.