Theme: Amok and Illicit Scientific Experiments

Amok and Illicit Scientific Experiments refers to scientific experiments that take place outside mainstream science. Mad Scientist cinema is littered with these – scientists of dubious sanity or ruthless morality who operate in isolation in mansions or Gothic castles, creating experiments that almost always have catastrophic results, producing monsters or mutations that inevitably go amok.

Mad Science cinema died away by the mid-1950s as movie scientists became the engineers of the Space Age and the heroes fighting Atomic Monsters. Thereafter, Mad Science Cinema continued in a different form, what we might call Illicit Science cinema.

Amok and Illicit Science Cinema usually achieves the same results as Mad Scientist films do but is conducted with less Gothic focus. It offers the approximation of real scientific process (if not exactly anything that could be considered peer-reviewed) and takes place in modern laboratories. The threat is less the scientist’s sanity than unforeseen side effects and accidents made by well-intentioned individuals or due to the ruthlessness of corporate or military overlords.

It should also be noted that many Superhero and Super-Villain origin stories also result from illicit scientific experiments or accidents.