The Manster

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source: Manster

A super derivative horror movie of the early 60s, the Manster has a title that should go down in history. Not the actual motion picture itself- for all mansters out there, this should be the pioneer. Once there was a man who dreamed himself a manster, and loved it, but now that's gone and the man is awake again...Whoops, had a Fly flashback. At any rate, The Manster is cheesiness indeed, but oddly enough there isn't a good quota. Of course it's funny watching Dynegly cut a rug doing Japanese dance, and seeing the eye pop out of the shoulder (accompanied, whenever there's an itch, by the sound of a whiny harp), or the occasional glimpses of the doctor's ex-wife-*-womanster. But these are only glimpses of the cheesy and over-the-top like "LEAVE ME ALONE!" The rest is just old hat: Frankenstein doctor just wanting to make the world a better place with his mansters; Jekyll and Hyde situation (with a little innuendo thrown in as adultery is at least suggested with the 'geisha'); police in pursuit as the manster goes on, back to Frankenstein monster all over again. So it is fun, from time to time, but it's also become turgid over 45 years time, and it's star actor (come to think of it, ALL of the actors) haven't aged well either, with Dynegly coming off like some everyman who doesn't have a lick of conviction in his voice. Still, it should be required viewing for B-movie buffs, or just those who wonder why this isn't (or is it) included in the MST3000K series. It's got a second head that makes the Zaphod Beeblebrox head in the Hitchhiker's Guide miniseries look like it came from Rick Baker, it's got a climax on a volcano where the split half of the manster is a gorilla (and our hero Larry turns back to normal in a flash!), and it did inspire one of the funniest sequences in the Evil Dead series. Se la vie, Manster!

The Manster in the 46 years since I first saw it in theaters as the lower half of a double bill has become quite the cult item. It's that bad it would almost have to be. On the slopes of Mount Fujiyama is the laboratory of Doctor Tetsu Nakamura who's conducting some kind of experiments in human evolution. Or possibly both since at one point in the film both events do occur. Anyway one fine day up pops wire service reporter Peter Dyneley who hears there might be a story. The doctor decides in a piece of sheer brilliance that a newspaper reporter is definitely not a guy who will be missed and he slips him an enzyme mickey during cocktails. The enzyme is something the good doctor developed to speed up the evolutionary process. I think the doc got his formula mixed up because what we see here is a retrogression into something primeval. Not only that, Dyneley starts growing a second head. And he goes on a homicidal rampage. Of course his strange behavior is worrying his wife Jane Hylton who just thinks maybe Pete's just playing around. Not to mention his reporter colleagues. Peter Dyneley and Jane Hylton were husband and wife in real life as well and were British, but playing Americans with the proper accent. I'm always fascinated when I hear non-Americans try to talk with our accent. It's always interesting to hear what others think we sound like to them. My guess is that Dyneley and Hylton signed on for The Manster to get a nice free Japanese trip. It certainly didn't do either of their careers any good. I don't know about others, but I split a gut when I see Doctor Nakamura give Dyneley that last shot and then later on he splits like a paramecium reproducing. Watching it 46 years ago and now, I'm still not sure what the doctor was trying to accomplish. What the producers accomplished was, tax write-off.

Until tonight, I hadn't seen this movie in more than 35 years--and all I remembered were three things: the title, the "separation," and that the "separation" scared the s**t out of me. Well, so much for time. It's still a fun horror movie--a variation on Jekyll and Hyde (and the Wolfman, which is also a J&H variant). But I don't recall the "separation" (I keep putting it in quotes so those of you who know the film will know what scene I'm talking about, without spoiling it for others) taking place behind a tree--I remembered it happened in the a forest, though. (I don't remember the "eye" quite as much as the rest of you do, though.) Oh, how the mind plays tricks on memories. As some other poster has said, in so many words, this is a remake "waiting to happen."

I can't understand why 'The Manster' isn't better known! It's often unfairly lumped in with 'The Incredible Two Headed Transplant' and 'The Thing With Two Heads', but 'The Manster' is much more than a kitschy gigglefest. It is closer to another forgotten Japanese 60s movie, 'The Human Vapour', made around the same time. Both movies use horror/sf trappings to explore questions of identity and what it means to be human Philip K. Dick style. Neither reaches the giddy, hallucinogenic heights of PKD's best work, but they are both a cut above your average "monster movie" of the era. 'The Manster' concerns a cocky American journalist who befriends a charismatic Japanese scientist. The scientist's lifestyle seduces the journalist who goes off the rails and ignores his job, wife and responsibilities. He thinks he's just letting his hair down after several years of hard work, but doesn't realize that he is the unwitting guinea pig in an ambitious scientific experiment which turns out horribly wrong. Try and see 'The Manster', and if possible make it a double bill with 'The Human Vapour'. You'll see that was a LOT more going on in Japanese fantastic cinema that Godzilla, Mothra, et al. 'The Manster' is a low key, imaginative movie just waiting to be rediscovered!

The late Bill Warren in his classic history of fifties sci-fi 'Keep Watching the Skies!' characteristically astutely observed that "The story of the production of 'The Manster' would almost certainly be more interesting than the film itself." For starters, the leads Peter Dyneley and Jane Hylton (best remembered by me as a kid as respectively the urbane voice of Jeff Tracy in 'Thunderbirds' and as Frank Spencer's anxiety-stricken mother-in-law in 'Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em') were both British - Dyneley was raised in Canada and held dual Canadian & British nationality - and were in real life married to each other. I expect they got a nice expenses-paid holiday together in Tokyo out of making this. (Dyneley also spoke the opening narration of the 1963 film version of 'The Day of the Triffids'.) I knew years ago about the famous 'eyeball' shot, and have just been dismayed to have had to sit through 45 minutes of Dyneley shuffling about getting boorishly drunk and attacking people before finally getting to see what all the fuss had been about; and then had to endure another half hour of him shuffling about some more, now with two heads and the Japanese police in pursuit. Jerry Ito is personable and reassuring as the police superintendent, while many before me have commented on how seriously Hot the mysterious Terri Zimmern is as Dr.Suzuki's assistant (or rather accomplice) Tara. I was on the verge of expiring from boredom when finally, minutes from the end, the film suddenly regained my attention with the genuinely touching farewell between Dr. Suzuki and his deformed wife Emiko, whose sad, drooping left eye generated actual pathos; followed soon afterwards by the spectacular final split which earned the film it's British release title.

This is an unusual film because it's a Japanese-American co-production. Unlike a few films from American-International Films (such as the American version of GODZILLA), this one really did feature an all-star cast--not a few scenes with American actors that were added later. Now considering THE MANSTER is about a two-headed murderous freak, it's actually a pretty good two-headed murderous freak film!! Sadly, however, the best parts of the film all occur before the second head starts to form. From this latter portion on, the film drops greatly in quality--mostly because there wasn't much reason to make this crazed American two-headed--he was handling his murderous rampage just fine without it! The film starts with a crazy Japanese scientist working in a tiny lab next to a volcano. When an American reporter visits to ask him about his research, the doctor does what any mad scientist would do--drug the guy and inject him with an evolutionary serum while he's sleeping. At first, the reporter seemed fine but later in the film his personality began to change. No longer was he a nice guy but was evolving into a selfish jerk. Instead of returning home to his wife in America, he stays in Japan to have an affair and drink like a fish. The film handled this all in a rather frank manner. Everyone who knows him is concerned--this just isn't his usual personality. Little do they know that he's slowly evolving into a freak with murderous impulses. Over a period of just a few days, he kills about a dozen folks--just for the heck of it! As I said before, all this is actually very well handled and convincing. The acting job of the American (Peter Dyneley) as well as the rest of the cast was good. Sadly, the film makers couldn't leave good enough alone. This Jeckyl and Hyde-like idea worked so well. When suddenly he developed an eye on his shoulder, it really got pretty silly. A bit later, when a 3/4 size ape-like head sprouted, it got ridiculous. At the end of the film when he split into two beings, I was laughing because it was so dopey. Also, very oddly, once he split in two, the evil side was killed but what happened to the rest of him? This was never explained and it looks like about two minutes more of the film was needed to wrap everything up right. After all, he was nabbed by the police and it didn't look as if they knew the truth. Did they let him go? Did he survive? Was he put on trial for mass murder? This seemed like an important thing to consider. By the way, Peter Dyneley sounded and looked a bit like Alan Ladd circa 1959. May attention and see if you think there's a resemblance.

This could actually be considered a Japanese version of "Bride of the Monster". The silliness begins before the credits when an apparent group of Japanese bathing beauties are massacred by what appears to be an ape. After the credits, the Japanese scientist is seen disposing of the creature in a hysterical manner that is beyond belief. From then on, there really isn't much in the way of either sci-fi or horror until the end. An American reporter is seen talking with the scientist, drinks some alcohol that the scientist gave him, and ends up turning into what appears to be a human male and some mysterious homicidal creature attached to one body. There are some genuine moments of gut-wrenching laughter in both the drama of the reporter's wife coming to Japan to see him and finding him with the scientist's beautiful assistant (who looks more like Rita Moreno than any Japanese girl I've ever seen!) and the revelation of the scientist's experiments on the reporter. Once the monster does finally appear (keep an EYE out for it!) you will start laughing at this movie and hope for Elvira to pop in to make her comments. They say two heads are better than one? Not in this case!

It seems EVERYBODY here remembers seeing this on TV as a kid. I remember a local station that showed two horror films every Saturday afternoon for years. There were a lot that they showed constantly (mostly the stupid Godzilla films) and this was one of them. I saw it when I was in high school and, like everybody else here, was completely grossed out by the eye in the shoulder scene. But I HAD to laugh when you saw the second head "growing"--it takes place in almost total darkness and looks just like a balloon being blown up (which it probably was). I also remember the deformed woman in the cage and the ape-like creature the scientist shoots at the beginning. And I really liked the scene when you saw the Manster split in half with both heads screaming! Not a good movie at all but a prime example of a 1960s exploitation flick. Haven't seen this in years--the video version seems to have disappeared. It should be on DVD.