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After several men have disappeared near the Marsh lake, police chief Robbins
(Harvey Dunne) and detective Dick Craig (Tony McCoy) get mighty suspicious
about possible sinister goings-on in the nearby abandoned mansion (and
rightly so, as it would turn out), so they seek advice from scientist Strowski
(George Becwar), who agrees to visit the mansion with Dick the next morning.
However, Dick's girlfriend Janet (Loretta King), a girl reporter always
eager to land a big scoop, is already ahead of them and prepares to visit the
mansion the same night ... when a carcrash renders her unconscious.
However, she is saved from her carwreck by sinister doctor Vornoff (Bela
Lugosi) and his own private strongman Lobo (real life wrestler Tor Johnson) - which is pretty
much coming out of the fire into the frying pan ...
For the longest time, Vornoff has used the abandoned mansion to secretly
conduct his experiments to make superstrong giants out of ordinary humans (or
kill them trying), and to ward off curious passers-by, he has his spooky
guard Lobo, and for those who aren't frightened off by him, Vornoff also has
let a giant octopus loose in the Marsh lake, which likes to strangle people to
death ... but now that Janet is here, Vornoff figures why not make her a
superwoman ?
But first Vornoff has to deal with Strowski, who has somehow managed to part
ways with Dick and who now turns out to be an Eastern European spy, who wants
to get Vornoff to return to his home country, where he was once banned from,
but now that he is making all these experiments in monstermaking ...
Vornoff though has long grown megalomaniac and wants to conquer the world
on his own, with his very privte race of giants ... and he subsequently
throws Strowski to the octopus.
Then he prepares to experiment on Janet, but Lobo, who has fallen in love
with Janet, fails to obeye his master ... at least long enough for Dick to
arrive at the mansion too and force Vornoff to let Janet loose at gunpoint.
Lobo however, experiencing conflicting allegiances, knocks out Dick and chains him up, but when Vornoff again prepares to experiment on Janet, Lobo
beats him up too, and exposes Vornoff to his own atomic ray in Janet's stead
... which makes Vornoff grow to gigantic size and he battles and defeats
Lobo. Then he heads off to the lake, where the police has already posted its
snipers ... but mere bullets can't stop super-Vornoff, neither can a large rock
Dick rolls onto him ... but when he falls into the lake, the giant octopus,
Vornoff's own creation, kills him.
By the way, Paul Marco here made his first appearence as the unfunny Ed
Woodian comic relief Kelton the Cop.
Ed Wood's first venture into drive-in science fiction proves to be a
maserpiece of cinematic schlock. As Wood didn't have even remotely enough money to
handle his effects-laden script, he more often than not had to revert to
apparently cheap solutions, like Vornoff's unimpressive lab with fake brick
wallpapers, Vornoff''s growth to giant size resulting in Bela wearing plateau shoes (!),
and the giant octopus that is - after some nice stock-footage-shots - reduced
to a plastic toy lying in a puddle, with the actors trying desperately to wrap
its tentacles around themselves.
However, all these inconsistencies and Wood's (desperate) conviction to not just make
another drive-in quickie but a work of (pulp-)art - which clearly translates
into the movie - make this one great fun.
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