The Lady and The Monster is a fairly watchable version of Curt Siodmak's novel Donovan's Brain. Siodmak himself, who authored or co-authored such films as Black Friday, The Wolf Man, I Walked With A Zombie and Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man was never much taken with this version of his story from Republic Pictures. True, it takes quite a while to get going, but it's a pretty good movie overall.

Richard Arlen is quite convincing as the research assistant taken over by the mind of a ruthless financier, at times glacial and on other occasions domineering and aggressive. Eric Von Stroheim plays the scientist who keeps Donovan's brain alive after the businessman's body dies in a plane crash. He's a pretty obvious villain from the start without an ounce of sympathy; and headlining is Vera Hruba Ralston as his assistant. She delivers an almost expressionless and deadening performance, and as the direction and cinematography are no great shakes it's left to the story itself to hold the interest. Thankfully it does.

The best part of the movie for me is when Arlen's character goes into high gear. Controlled by Donovan, he will stop at nothing to get his unacknowledged son off a murder conviction (it was the financier himself who did the killing), including attempting to run down a school girl witness in the street.

This is not really a horror movie despite the title but it does have some of the trappings of the genre - a laboratory sequence slightly patterned after the Frankenstein movies, the mad scientist, Arlen as a sort of monster etc. Perhaps it might have worked better with superior handling and budget. At 90 minutes the pace occasionally slackens but it's well worth a look.