THE MANSTER (1959)
Tagline: Half-Man, Half-Monster!
(Horror, Sci-Fi, Two Heads Are Better Than One) [PG]
Note – This movie was never given an MPAA rating, but I think it would fall in the PG category just due to some of the horror elements. The movie was shot in Japan by an American company with many Japanese actors, actresses, and crew.
You're an experiment that didn't work out. I'm sorry Kenji.
Oh man, in this one, a reporter named Larry Stanford is sent to Japan to talk to a Japanese mad scientist named Dr. Robert Suzuki. This dude hangs out in a creepy laboratory on a mountain just messing with people’s lives. Larry is no exception and it doesn’t take long before Larry realizes he’s been drugged and injected with a serum that is slowly growing a creepy little friend out of his shoulder.
First off, this movie is sufficiently creepy but does feel more like a crime drama than a horror flick for most of its run time. There is even a bit of a weird romance thrown in and just a series of terrible decisions by Larry once he’s got this affliction going on.
Acting-wise, I wasn’t terribly excited about Jane Hylton’s role as Linda Stanford, but Jane herself was actually quite an accomplished actress starring in over 75 projects in her career. I also didn’t like Peter Dyneley’s character in this as Larry Stanford. He does play a jerk really well though. Dyneley was most famous for his voice work in several of TV’s “Thunderbirds” series in the ’60s. What does work is the casting of Terri Zimmern who plays Tara. She’s a bit of a seductress in this and ends up in a bit of a love triangle with Larry (who is married). This was Zimmern’s only film. We also get a good but creepy performance from Tetsu Nakamura who plays Dr. Robert Suzuki. Tetsu by the way was in a few other cool flicks including MOTHRA and 1977’s THE LAST DINOSAUR among others.
Pacing wise the first half of this has a really nice setup, but there are about 35 minutes in there towards the end that are mostly in the dark and just a lot of running around. The final 10 minutes though are actually pretty cool and having never seen this before, it actually caught me off guard as to how awesome it was.
Overall what we end up with is a movie that manages to be crazy, a bit dark, a bit campy, a bit emotionally draining, and all-around pretty good without having really a single likable character. This movie is pretty memorable and I was actually able to wait months after watching it to write a review because I remember it so vividly.
For me, this checks all the boxes of 1950’s sci-fi that I look for. Goofy monster, check, mad-scientist, check, a decent score, check, a relationship starting or ending, check and an over-the-top ending that satisfies, check. I have to give this one a 5 out of 7 for the middle section and some wildly terrible dialog at the very end, but this is one I will be watching again.
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