The World of the Mad Scientist
When you think of a mad scientist, you're bound to conjure images of a be-speckled, manically laughing, slightly hunched over crackpot in a laboratory surrounded by beakers full of bubbling, fizzing solvents and crackling electrical machines.
The mad scientist is evermore obsessed with ranting monologues about being misunderstood by the world.
He's not mad, he's misunderstood and now the world has to pay for not supporting his megalomaniacal wish to play God.
Every culture has its individual mad scientist: Victor Frankenstein, Doctor Jekyll, Rotwang, Dr.
Steel, Griffin, Doctor No, The Invisible Man, Dr.
Phibes and, of course, Dr.
Moreau.
They have all been exiled form conventionaltypical science and are forced to experiment in secret until that fateful day, when they will unleash their creation on the world.
A multitude of bad experiments and bad special effects could have been kept from the world, if only reasonable scientists had listened to their stark, raving mad associates.
For our lack of faith, we have been inundated with a multitude of Saturday matinees and worn, thumbed-through paperback novels chronicling their exploits.
Comic books and posters alike encapsulate famous line like, "They all laughed at me.
But I will show them.
One day it will be the one who laughs last!" And so the voyage to the center of madness continues, with us, the audience, grinning from ear to ear.
There have been many great actors who have made their names playing mad scientists.
Luminaries like Bela Lugosi, Charles Laughton, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and the indomitable, Vincent Price have all reinforced that powerful archetype.
Price, in particular, surprised audiences with his depiction of the disfigured Dr.
Phibes, in "The Abominable Dr.
Phibes" (1971).
So twisted and entertaining a tale was woven by the filmmakers that audiences demanded a sequel, "Dr.
Phibes Rises Again" (1972).
In "The Island of Doctor Moreau," written by H.
G.
Wells in 1896, our mad scientist is the eponymous Dr.
Moreau.
He uses an array of medications and solvents [http://www.
spectrumchemical.
com/retail/browse.
asp?catalog_name=CHEMICALS&category_name=solvents] that turn animals into humans, which have managed to populate his lost island.
Moreau is lord of these man-beasts, and though he has caused tremendous pain and suffering, he has no intention to stop his experiments.
As the story unfolds, the protagonist, Prendick, the archetype of the English upper-class, slowly begins to understand that indeed Moreau is onto something concerning the nature of man.
Indeed it seems that something is our never-ending fascination with the misunderstood and the incomprehensible.
The mad scientist is evermore obsessed with ranting monologues about being misunderstood by the world.
He's not mad, he's misunderstood and now the world has to pay for not supporting his megalomaniacal wish to play God.
Every culture has its individual mad scientist: Victor Frankenstein, Doctor Jekyll, Rotwang, Dr.
Steel, Griffin, Doctor No, The Invisible Man, Dr.
Phibes and, of course, Dr.
Moreau.
They have all been exiled form conventionaltypical science and are forced to experiment in secret until that fateful day, when they will unleash their creation on the world.
A multitude of bad experiments and bad special effects could have been kept from the world, if only reasonable scientists had listened to their stark, raving mad associates.
For our lack of faith, we have been inundated with a multitude of Saturday matinees and worn, thumbed-through paperback novels chronicling their exploits.
Comic books and posters alike encapsulate famous line like, "They all laughed at me.
But I will show them.
One day it will be the one who laughs last!" And so the voyage to the center of madness continues, with us, the audience, grinning from ear to ear.
There have been many great actors who have made their names playing mad scientists.
Luminaries like Bela Lugosi, Charles Laughton, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and the indomitable, Vincent Price have all reinforced that powerful archetype.
Price, in particular, surprised audiences with his depiction of the disfigured Dr.
Phibes, in "The Abominable Dr.
Phibes" (1971).
So twisted and entertaining a tale was woven by the filmmakers that audiences demanded a sequel, "Dr.
Phibes Rises Again" (1972).
In "The Island of Doctor Moreau," written by H.
G.
Wells in 1896, our mad scientist is the eponymous Dr.
Moreau.
He uses an array of medications and solvents [http://www.
spectrumchemical.
com/retail/browse.
asp?catalog_name=CHEMICALS&category_name=solvents] that turn animals into humans, which have managed to populate his lost island.
Moreau is lord of these man-beasts, and though he has caused tremendous pain and suffering, he has no intention to stop his experiments.
As the story unfolds, the protagonist, Prendick, the archetype of the English upper-class, slowly begins to understand that indeed Moreau is onto something concerning the nature of man.
Indeed it seems that something is our never-ending fascination with the misunderstood and the incomprehensible.
