Monster Movie Memories - The Manster
The Manster from 1959 was one of those movies I saw during my first wave of horror exposure in the early ‘90s, thanks to the help of the legendary MonsterVision from TNT. The images I remember specifically were from the Should You Be Afraid of the Dark promo where you see an eye growing out of the shoulder of some poor victim, then later in the promo, a two-headed monster can be seen in shallow lighting. These two images are the first ones that I remember when thinking about The Manster due to the number of times I saw the promo and how much they scared me as a 4-year-old; I don’t even think I remember being able to sit down and watch the movie due to how much it scared me.
Of course, being 4 years old, you’re practically scared of anything, especially something that looks abnormal, and without knowing how these creatures were made, it gave you a very frightening realization that things like this COULD happen in the real world. People could turn into two-headed beasts, goat-legged demons were real, and they were coming for the children, Godzilla really lived in the ocean surrounding Japan, and trolls would turn you into a wooden doll. As silly as this seems today, those fears were genuine at one point, and once learning that these things could not happen, a whole new can of worms was opened by figuring out how to make monsters come to life like Dr. Frankenstein and thus turning into a lifelong obsession for films and filmmaking.
Back to The Manster, I didn’t re-visit the film until roughly 20 years after initially watching it in the early ‘90s, and it is pretty hilarious to think about how much this movie scared me as a child; that’s not to say that the film itself is funny; instead, it’s funny to think about how scared it made me as a child after being exposed to the movies I’ve seen in between that time. One of the best things about The Manster is that the film appears to be in the public domain, considering there are at least 4 versions that have been uploaded to YouTube, or you can buy a Blu-Ray copy from the always tremendous Shout! Factory and add a nice piece of camp to your horror collection.
The story is about an American reporter tasked to interview a famous and reclusive Japanese scientist; fans of the Godzilla series would recognize the scientist as the main henchmen of the character Nelson in Toho Studio’s 1961 Kaiju classic, Mothra; he is portrayed by Tetsu Nakamura. Unbeknownst to the reporter, the scientist secretly uses him as a guinea pig for unnatural experiments to bring about evolutionary change by man-made chemicals harnessed from the cosmic rays in the atmosphere. Slowly the reporter begins to feel unlike himself until the killing sprees start, and he becomes a grotesque two-headed abomination that japan just didn’t need cinematically at the time due to the recent awakening of giant monsters on the island nation.
The movie itself is pretty basic, obviously made for the drive-in market when American International Pictures was reigning supreme with movies like I Was A Teenage Werewolf and How To Make A Monster. During this period, numerous other producers and distributors were trying to capitalize on the generation that “wasn’t necessarily looking for a good movie,” as Roger Ebert once said, often preferring the quantity over quality approach to releasing their movies. The Manster is one of those movies made for a quick buck, but surprisingly, it still holds entertainment value when watching the film today.
The acting of the main cast is solid, the story is interesting enough to keep an audience interested, and the horror element of The Manster is actually pretty unsettling. The movie is an excellent example of early body horror in its early stages with the reporter being experimented on and his body slowly changing is very much in the same vein as The Quatermass Xperiment released in 1955 by Hammer Studios and The Fly from 1958, which would be remade in the 1980’s as a body horror classic by David Cronenberg. The idea of your body being invaded without your control or consent is always an unsettling thought, and it’s even worse when it’s causing your body to change and become a murderous monster trying to be controlled by a deranged scientist. No matter how cheesy or campy the story may be, this concept of a lack of control over your body will always be an unsettling one, and this uneasy aspect is present in The Manster and is what I feel gives the movie a unique quality to its otherwise forgettable sci-fi/horror story about a mad scientist.
Is The Manster for everyone? No, not by a long shot; this movie is not one of those horror movies that you can just turn on and even non-horror fans would enjoy; even horror fans might not enjoy this product of its time. The Manster is for a niche audience within a niche audience; however, if you love black and white horror/science fiction from the late 1950’s and have an interest in finding the roots of modern-day body horror, then The Manster might just be worth checking out.
