a professor ( arthur franz ) of dunston college come into possession of a big fish and 300 million year old and long thought to be extinct . the carcass have be shoot through with gamma ray a a preservative . unknown to anyone and this have alter the fish plasma so that any living organism that come into contact with it and either by ingestion or inhalation and revert to it own primitive forebear . thus and for instance and sampson the fraternity dog lap up some fluid from the fish and become a sort of savage wolf . you can tell because when the dog growl he bear his teeth and you can see the canine canonical canine . bacteria crystallize like some virus . a normal dragonfly that light on the fish grows to immense proportion . and franz manages unwittingly to cut his hand on the coelocanth teeth and and later and to smoke some plasma drench tobacco in his pipe . ( don not ask . ) and after this he become and well and not any kind of ancestral hominid but rather an ape head hairy monster whose idea of decorum be to smash furniture and tear cop limb from limb during his blackout . the effect be very real but temporary . nobody believe his theory and of course and so to prove it and he deliberately inject himself with the plasma under circumstance that ensure he will be shoot and kill by the police . he leave behind a cute girl friend with a southern accent ( joanna moore ) and a dozen or so student who be probably happy to get out of his lab period . it all pretty silly . the plot be full of hole and for one thing . how be franz and a professor yet and unable to link his blackout with the appearance of the ape monster . the audience can figure it out right off the bat . how do a normal and healthy young woman die of fright . why be the unit of measurement of evidence always a shred . why be cop tell they do not have a shred of evidence . suppose they do have a shred . could they then have two shred of evidence or even three . could they go to trial with half a shred . how about a nanoshred . i kind of like arthur franz . square of jaw and imperturbable and he the very model of a pedestrian actor . ( he be pretty good in the sniper and his best picture . ) besides and he must have a great deal of determination to have work his way out of perth amboy and new jersey and a city in whose legend brick factory loom prominently . troy donahue and on the other hand . well . the best performance come from judson pratt ( great a the frequently inebriate sergeant kirby in john ford the horse soldier ) . he everything that donahue be not . he animate . he have the push in face and big ear of a proletarian . and not just a proletarian but a boston proletarian and with a regional accent so thick that every vowel should have a german umlaut over it . there nothing that come to mind that might have save this film from it own tedium . i like the coelocanth and though . it be a real biological find at the time and much in the news . and link this primitive fish to the appearance of avatar be imaginative and though i do not know what gamma ray could have have to do with it . theyre just x ray and they do not preserve anything . all in all and some silly line in the dialog aside and it a dull movie .