THE NEANDERTHAL MAN (1953)
Tagline: What primitive passions...what mad desires drove him on...? He held them all in the grip of deadly terror...nothing could keep him from the woman he claimed as his own!
(Sci-Fi, Horror, Stuffed Tiger) [PG]
Note: The MPAA did not give a rating for this movie, but I am guessing it would have been a [PG].
Let me assume you, for want of your own understanding, that man's boasting pride in his alleged advancement is based on one hollow precept that is his ego.
In this one Professor Groves is so anxious to prove his theories that man is still basically primordial that he develops a serum that regresses his subject back to primal versions of themselves. After experimenting on a cat and turning it into a saber-tooth tiger, clearly, the only thing for a mad scientist to do is move on to bigger things. Can Dr. Ross Harkness stop the madness before an unknown creature kills again?
First off this movie is a lot more involved and well-acted than I expected it to be. In fact, aside from the weird ending, this is a pretty twisted sci-fi romp into madness in more ways than one.
With excellent performances throughout, we have a couple of sci-fi icons show up in this movie. The first is Beverly Garland who plays a waitress but is famous for THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE and IT CONQUERED THE WORLD among other sci-fi flicks. She doesn’t get a ton of screen time in this though. We also have a Doris Merrick sighting as Ruth Marshall who is engaged to Prof. Groves. She is solid in this and it was cool seeing her in a role that differed greatly from Sandra in UNTAMED WOMEN. Tandra Quinn (MESA OF THE LOST WOMEN) and Richard Crane (THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE) are also pretty good. Joyce Terry who plays Jan Groves (Prof. Groves's daughter) in the movie got the female lead but wasn’t in any other films that I am familiar with. Robert Shayne by the way plays the male lead, Prof. Clifford Groves. I didn’t like his character in this but only because he played him so well. Shayne is famous for the sci-fi films THE GIANT CLAW and WAR OF THE SATELLITES.
If I had issues with this it would be the ending. It seemed extremely un-resolved almost like they just ran out of time. Typically, in 50s movies you at least get a “now the [insert lobster head guy, fly head guy, eyeball man, furry spatula, giant radioactive bug, etc.] is dead” THE END, moment. In this, you never really get that. For a sci-fi movie, they did a pretty good job of giving us a healthy supply of cheese and cheese theories. Oddly one of the examples they give of the evolution of man was debunked the same year the movie came out. The Piltdown Man turned out to be a hoax like the rest of the examples presented in the movie, but that one was probably the most famous debunking. Another example is the movie's namesake Neanderthal man, which was based on just ONE skull that was found by Professor Reiner Protsch, who deliberately falsified the age of his findings (he's a 'carbon dating expert') and was forced to retire in disgrace in 2005. Other alleged findings have been manipulated to support the hoax of Neanderthals, many of which have also been exposed* and are being exposed. Given that there are at least 10 fatal flaws in evolution, for a few examples, (the extremely complex content of DNA, the issue of spontaneous generation, we haven’t seen mutations increase information enough for anything to evolve, we don’t see any transitional forms in the fossil record, the problem of symbiosis, etc., etc.) I think at some point perhaps schools will just stop teaching it all together, but that is a debate to be had outside of this review.
Anyway back to the movie. Sometimes you can actually have an ending so unsatisfying that it ruins the entire movie but that isn’t the case here. What ruins it is how off the rails Professor Groves is and how completely aloof his daughter is when the final revelations start rolling out.
I have to give this thing a 4 out of 7. It is well-acted and I would probably watch it again just for the stuffed saber tooth tiger scenes.
*"Buried Alive - The startling truth about Neanderthal man" Dr. Jack Cuozzo
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