COMMANDER CODY!! Some day I shall see all these shorts. Maybe even in order!
Mad Monster was one I didn't really recall seeing very well, since it has one of those generic as hell plots. Scientist creates monster to kill those who laughed and called him mad. I think every scientist majors in that at some point. This time out, the guy injects his gardener with a serum created from a wolf he keeps in a cage. So it's basically a werewolf story, but with someone pulling the puppy's strings.
There is some glorious, high-grade lunacy with the mad scientist trying to defend his sanity to his peers that mocked his crazy ideas...defending himself to figments of them in his imagination. Let that sink in. "I'm not mad! You'll see! Each and every last transparent hallucination of you!" That is some pure, uncut wackadoo.
It wasn't until the transformation sequence that I really remembered he movie, since they show it half a dozen times. And for the time, it's okay, although the end results are expectedly laughable. And gives the gang a pile of jokes to make. For a very early episode, they came pretty close to the show we knew and loved, with jokes coming pretty quickly. Still rough around the edges, and I know some later episodes they were still trying to find their voices (In some ways literally, yes), but I'd like to think as they were going along they would point to this episode and go, "Ah yes, this works."
J