Monster on the Campus starts as biology teacher professor Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) takes shipment of a crate containing a preserved prehistoric coelacanth from Madagascar to study, while moving the fish Blake cuts his hand on one of it's sharp teeth & then plunges his hand into the muddy, blood stained water the specimen had been preserved in. Blake undergoes a transformation into a prehistoric man whom he has no control over, in this state Blake kills a woman & the police become involved. Blake returns to his normal state but soon realises that he is the killer & decides to prove his theories at an isolated cabin in the mountains but his worried fiancé Sylvia (Nancy Lockwood) turns up unexpectedly...Directed by Jack Arnold this silly 50's monster film doesn't have a whole going for it, sure it's relatively short as it clock's in at just under 77 minutes but I can't say I was particularly impressed with it. The main problem with Monster on the Campus is the basic plot which fails to convince & is hard to take seriously, even if we are to accept that blood from a dead fish can cause massive evolutionary regression in a matter of minutes it's harder to believe some of the coincidence's & daft happenings that mean Blake is infected a couple of times with the blood. Are we to believe a scientist would cut his hand on an ancient dead fish (he wasn't even wearing glove's) & then plunge his hand into dirty water while the wound is still open & not be concerned at all? Blake doesn't even have a medical kit in his laboratory. The sequence of events in which he becomes infected for the second time involving a Mosquito & a pipe is ridiculous. The character's are all really dumb & passive, the police are idiots & let Blake wander off on his own at the end while Sylvia is nothing more than your standard woman in peril that these films have to have. Blake is a pretty poor scientist too, instead of testing his theory on another Dog or Cat or something in a laboratory under controlled conditions with which he could prove his outlandish idea to other's he decides to infect himself again, remember the last two times he became the monster he killed people so what was he expecting the outcome of the experiment to be? Blake also knows the only reason he becomes the monster is when he is infected by the fish blood so why not just take more care not to be exposed to it? That way he will never turn into the monster again & live the rest of his life happily with Sylvia & maybe have a couple of kids with her, right?Monster on the Campus looks alright, it's all a bit bland & dull looking but I doubt the makers had much money to work with. The monster isn't seen until nearly the hour mark & when he does first make an appearance you can clearly see the mask doesn't join the actor's neck & looks pretty fake. Anytime there is a close-up on the monster it's pretty poor but the medium shots don't look too bad & what's with the big shoulder's? Not much ion the way of action or incident but a Ranger does get an axe in the face at the end & there's a minor car crash. There is also a giant Mosquito that looks like it's made of card.Partly filmed at Occidental College in Los Angeles & I wouldn't be surprised to discover the climax was shot at the infamous & much used Bronson Canyon. The acting is fairly wooden, no-one is going to win any awards.Monster on the Campus is a pretty forgettable black and white 50's monster film with a silly plot that goes too long without showing the monster & has one of the stupidest scientists in cinematic history who makes one bizarre illogical decision after another. There are better monster films out there.

Professor Blake has a new toy. It seems that his university has just purchased a coelacanthe--a primordial fish species that was discovered to still be alive in the 20th century. Unfortunately for the Doc, he doesn't realize that the fish was preserved using Gamma rays!! This combination causes the fish to have horrible properties--if anyone touches the blood of this dead creature, they, too, become primordial--and dangerous! First, a dog licks the water that the fish came in when it arrived on campus. Because there was blood in it, the dog became vicious and its teeth elongated--almost like sabre-teeth. Later, the professor scrapes his hand on the teeth of this dead fish and he becomes....well, we really don't see exactly what he becomes until later in the film--but we do know he's mean and looks a bit like Lancelot the Missing Link.Oddly, while this professor is supposed to be super-smart, it took him a long time to figure out what was happening. You see, after becoming a monkey-man, he would later turn back to himself--with no memory of his bestial transformation. Later, when he did seem to understand what was happening, he actually deliberately injected himself to see if it was true--without really providing much in the way of safety of others. Sure, he went to a lonely mountain cabin to conduct this experiment, but sure enough, someone was nearby and ready to be killed. And, by the way, the killing was a dandy (pretty cool stuff) but sadly the makeup job wasn't. The monster we'd been waiting so long to actually see consisted of a cheap rubber mask and rubber gloves and lots of hair. It was very disappointing and showed that the budget for makeup must have been about $9.99--which is sad because the basic story idea and much of the acting was actually very good. Oddly, while the mask was cheap and crappy, the transformation process at the very end of the film was excellent--who'd have figured?Overall, a decent story idea as far as 50s horror films go. It's very creative and unusual. It's just too bad the creature looked so stupid and the professor behaved, well, like an idiot on multiple occasions.By the way, in a clever bit of writing, the Professor makes a phone call to a "Dr. Moreau" who lives on an island. This is obviously a reference to the H.G. Wells story about a crazy doctor who dabbles in making primitive creates very human-like (and vice-versa).

Monster on the Campus (1958) *** (out of 4) Entertaining Universal Sci-Fi about a college scientist who turns into a monster after his blood is mixed with that of a prehistoric fish. I've been wanting to see this for quite some time but never got around to buying the VHS since it was released just as I was jumping on the DVD format. The wait was certainly worth it even though the film isn't really anything other than your typical Jekyll and Hyde story. The film goes by at a very quick pace and the monster looks great, although it's a shame we only get to see him twice. I was somewhat shocked at the rather violent third death scene. The film also contains one of the dumbest girlfriends in sci-fi history.

Blood of an ancient fish transforms those infected with it into a vicious dog, giant dragonfly or monstrous Neanderthal entity. Arthur Franz is very convincing as an archaeological college professor, teaching Troy Donahue and Nancy Walters, while romancing Joanna Moore. Jack Arnold ably directed this somewhat maligned film; it's actually creepy and well-shot, succeeding in delivering the shocks, especially in the last act, where we finally see the title creation and it's a startling effect. Helen Westcott is memorable in only two scenes, as the school nurse, conveying some romantic attraction to Franz, all with a dose of humor. It was recently released to DVD as part of the "Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection", which includes "Tarantula" (1955), "The Mole People" (1956), "The Monolith Monsters" (1957), and "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957), all on par: great title sequence, fine musical score (some patchwork), beautiful monochrome photography, well-scripted, capably acted, always intriguing, with "Shrinking Man" the jewel of the crown.