The Manster

What we have here is a different type of mutant monster. It's not a giant ant from the sewers of Los Angeles or a humongous scorpion from Mexico. It's a manster. You know, part man, part monster. The unlucky title creature is Larry Stanford (Peter Dyneley), a brash American reporter who hopes to land a front-page story about some startling new developments in the field of medical experimentation. Yeah, well he gets his front-page story all right. You could say he IS the story. Ol' Larry becomes an unwitting guinea pig for the evil Dr. Suzuki (Tetsu Nakamura) who drugs his tea and injects him with a mutation serum. First, Larry experiences a personality transformation. He becomes a surly alcoholic with an insatiable lust for women. Another side effect is worse; he develops a hairy right claw that wants to kill, kill, kill.....and does. Even Larry's own wife, Linda (Jane Hylton), isn't safe from her husband's crazed behavior. Then, things really get weird. Is that an eyeball emerging from Larry's left shoulder? Pretty soon he's sporting an extra head that looks like an angry pineapple but his own head ain't so pretty either unless you like fangs and excessive facial hair. The slobbering is a nice extra touch. We won't reveal anything else except The Manster proves two heads AREN'T better than one. The Manster followed in the wake of such successful Japanese science fiction thrillers as Godzilla: King of the Monsters (1956) and Rodan (1956) and may very well be the first Japanese-American co-production. The film was a collaboration between producer/writer George Breakston, director Kenneth Crane (Monster From Green Hell, 1958), and uncredited co-director Akira Takahashi who later moved into acting and made a name for himself in a Japanese movie genre known as "pink films" (soft-core pornography like Boko!, 1976). As a result, The Manster was filmed in English, using a mixture of American, Japanese-American and English speaking Asian actors. The star of the film, Peter Dyneley, has one of those faces you've seen before but just can't place. He's been in everything from MGM costume epics like Beau Brummell (1954) to Bob Hope comedies (Call Me Bwana, 1963) to Charles Bronson westerns (Chato's Land, 1971) to blaxploitation films like The Split (1960). But he's an unlikely choice for a leading man and in The Manster he comes across like a sleazy used car salesman, not an international reporter for a major newspaper. Whether he's insulting his boss or furiously repelling his concerned wife, Larry deserves that second head and all the trouble it causes. But Dyneley's performance actually works better if you think of him as a man having a mid-life crisis; his boozing, whoring and general don't-give-a-damn-behavior seems perfectly right for a man going through a major change of life. That usually happens when you sprout a second head. By the way, another two-headed protagonist also figures prominently in How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989), a black comedy about the you-know-what profession starring Richard E. Grant as the mastermind behind a pimple cream campaign. But even if The Manster didn't have Dyneley's hilariously off-the-mark performance, it would be required viewing for fans of exotic schlock. It's the bizarre makeup effects, the unpredictable plot turns, and the space age pop soundtrack by Hiroki Ogawa (is that a theremin under the title credits?) which gives the film an unearthly quality. Our favorite scenes are the touching farewell between Dr. Suzuki and his former wife who is now a failed experiment (nice makeup!) in his basement laboratory and the climactic battle between the "two heads" which ends in the most startling sequence in any grade B horror film. The Manster was originally released in the U.S. on a double bill with Georges Franju's macabre masterpiece, Eyes Without a Face (1959), which was re-titled The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus in its English dubbed version. The Franju film is pure poetry while The Manster is slapdash surrealism making the double bill the weirdest two-headed creature of them all. Producer: George P. Breakston Director: George P. Breakston, Kenneth G. Crane Screenplay: William J. Sheldon Art Direction: Noboru Miyakuni Cinematography: David Mason Makeup: Fumiko Yamamoto Special Effects: Shinpei Takagi Film Editing: Kenneth G. Crane Original Music: Hiroki Ogawa Principal Cast: Peter Dyneley (Larry Stanford), Jane Hylton (Linda Stanford), Tetsu Nakamura (Dr. Robert Suzuki), Terri Zimmern (Tara), Norman Van Hawley (Ian Matthews), Jerry Ito (Police Superintendent Aida), Toyoko Takechi (Emiko Suzuki). BW-7em. by Jeff Stafford