Good, Bad, I haven't met the movie I can't watch.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Manster? Really? MANSTER!?

Manster (1959)
Director- George P. Breakston, Kenneth G. Crane
Starring- Peter Dyneley, Tetsu Nakamura, Terri Zimmern

Reporter Larry Stanford (Dyneley) spends time in Japan and meets up with Dr. Suzuki (Nakamura) who conducts strange esperiments. While there, he is drugged and injected with a serum that is meant to turn him into a monster. Unaware of what the doctor has done, he befriends the doctor and soon turns his back on his wife at home for the doctor's more lascivious lifestyle.

As the days pass, Stanford spends more and more time with Dr. Suzuki's assistant, Tara (Zimmern). As others notice his dramatic shift in personality, Stanford notices an increasing irritation in his shoulder. He gets a tad worried when he discovers an eye on his shoulder, which evolves into a face, then a head. Stanford loses his mind and becomes a monster, going on a murder spree.

The effects are okay for the late 1950's, but what annoys me is the whole good vs. evil concept and the "moral" being that there are things we may not be meant to understand, so we shouldn't mess with them. And whose idea was it to call the movie Manster? It sounds like his mom named him.

One really cool thing about this movie is seeing where Raimi got his inspiration for the Good Ash/Evil Ash scene in Army of Darkness. The eye-in-my-shoulder! concept was immediately recognized.

Rating: 3/5 Bonedaddies.


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