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.

Monster...Out!

Monster in the Closet (1987)
Director- Bob Dahlin
Starring- Donald Grant, Denise DuBarry, Paul Walker

A rash of murders taking place in closets has people terrified to look for their own clothes. An obituary writer who wants to get his big break investigates and discovers that a monster is to blame. I cut this movie slack because it's meant to be funny, and most of the time, it is. The monster is actually kind of cool-looking, and I was surprised to find a pre-megadouchebag Paul Walker (remember Fast and Furious?) playing 12-ish year old, oddly named Professor Bennet (that's right his mom named him Professor), boy genius and contributor to the monster's eventual demise.
The movie hits its apex of absurdity when the monster has Richard, Professor and his mom cornered in their attic. As the monster looms over them, Richard's glasses are knocked off, and his handsomocity, which makes Professor's mom turn into a mesmerized idiot, has a paralyzing effect on the monster. The monster then picks him up and carries him off to a closet, which we have by now found out it uses to rejuvenate itself. Unfortunately, they won't both fit, so the monster carries Richard out into the street, where it dies.
The line is then quoted by one of the crowd, "'twas beauty killed the beast."
Rating: That line alone helps to earn this one 4/5 Bonedaddies.