It is
Friday so again we must dive into the Fifties for another bit of cinematic fun
from the decade of giant bugs and invaders from outer space. Though this time
we don’t really get either of those. In fact, there really isn’t a monster in the
traditional sense.
Pete
Dumond is an old school makeup man who has spent the last twenty-five years
creating monsters for the studio where he works. But things are about to change
when the place is sold, and he is told that the monster cycle is over. Dumond
gets fired after all of those years and creations! This causes the old guy to
snap and he uses a special makeup foundation that makes the actors under the
Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein makeups suggestable. That means he
can send them out to get rid of the studio honchos that fired him! Murders
follow until the police finally figure things out. It all leads to a fiery
finale where both Pete and his “children” meet their end.
How to
Make a Monster is a decently paced and entertaining bit of fun. The run time is
only seventy-three minutes and it doesn’t waste a second of it. We get to the
monsters and the killing right away. The movie doesn’t break any new ground but
does function as a sort of mad scientist story with the twist of it being a
makeup artist. The cast is decent and filled with a lot of regulars from the
old days of American International Pictures, aka. AIP. All of the makeup is recycled
from earlier movies, I’ll talk about that in more detail later, but it is good
work. This is just a solid bottom half of a double feature from a prolific
studio and producer that knew what they were doing.
Now onto
the good stuff. This movie is without a doubt the cleverest use of existing
materials and locations that I’ve ever seen in a low budget flick. Almost the
entire movie takes place on the lot and in soundstages that producer Herman
Cohen already had on hand. He even worked in a musical number with actor Jon
Ashley who sort of comes across as a bootleg Elvis Presley. Though most of us
probably know him for his exploitation flicks from the seventies Ashley was a
regular in the AIP movies when How to Make a Monster was shot. It makes sense
that Cohen worked in a musical number for this movie under the guise that it
was being shot on the lot.
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| It was awesome to see the Saucerman in color |
Ashley isn’t
the only familiar “face” on display. The two main creatures are Teenage
Frankenstein and Teenage Werewolf. These were both movies that came out the
year before How to Make a Monster and were from the same studio. They just
reused the makeup and wrote that they were making a versus sequel to those
movies as the reason. That is pure genius. Later on, in the big finale we get
to see the inner sanctum of Dumond and are treated to more monsters hanging on
the walls including the creatures from It Conquered the World and Invasion of
the Saucer Men, a personal favorite of mine. What is really special is that
while most of the movie is in black and white the last couple minutes is in
color. This was done as a gimmick but is also the only time that you will see any
of these classic AIP monsters in anything other than black and white. Sure, we
have stills, but this is still cool to see them in a movie in color.
One of the
reasons that I do these reviews every week is to try and turn people onto some
of the movies that I grew up watching. If you have been paying attention to
this series I love these old fifties flicks. How to Make a Monster is one of
those forgotten gems that I want to and need to point out to people. If you
haven’t seen this one check it out. You can find it very easily and it is worth
an hour and thirteen minutes of your life. I recommend it highly.
© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer
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