The lovely Beverly Garland (who stole my heart upon my first viewing of It Conquered the World) plays a young nurse who recounts her sad story through hypnosis to a couple of doctors. Newlywed and on a train heading to their honeymoon, a telegram disturbs her husband Paul and when he jumps off the train at the next stop to make a phone call, he vanishes. A distraught Garland spends months looking for her lost husband and finally traces him back to an old address, the Cypresses plantation, found deep in the bayou. There she meets the (obviously hiding something) woman of the house, a kindly “swamp doctor” with a secret and Lon Chaney JR as the gator hating, hook-handed groundskeeper with a constantly faltering accent… you can pretty much smell the booze seeping out of the man’s pores. She comes to find her husband is there but something has gone horribly wrong. A war injury had left him near death and disfigured beyond recognition, the swamp doctor had been experimenting with the healing powers of alligator pituitary glands and, while at first it seemed to be a miracle cure, after about a year a mutation set in. Now poor Paul has the skin of a gator and may be going insane. All is not lost because it would seem radiation is helping to curb his reptilian transformation and a last ditch effort is being made to cure him for good. It seems to be working until some Chaney interference fucks up everything and a boost of gamma rays transforms Paul into something more gator than man. Beautiful settings, rubbery monster heaven and some of the best bullshit science around all combine for some perfect matinee monster madness. A complete joy anchored by the beautiful Garland’s performance.
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