User Reviews

From the minds of writers / producers Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen ("The Man from Planet X") comes this silly, silly B movie with an irresistibly goofy premise. Unfortunately, it doesn't really deliver on its promise, and can't even work that well on a "so bad it's good" level. It only succeeds in being dull most of the time. That isn't to say that it doesn't have fun moments, though. It will likely come as a disappointment to fans of the German born director, Ewald Andre Dupont, who'd made "Variete", regarded by some as one of the finest silent films ever made. But undemanding fans of this kind of thing may still be amused enough to stick it out.

Robert Shayne of 'Adventures of Superman' stars as Professor Clifford Groves, one of those madder than mad scientists we've all seen who's as crazed as he is because his peers won't accept his theories. (This leads to some absolutely hysterical dialogue as he harangues them.) So what he does to prove he's right is inject a cat in his lab, and later himself, with a formula that turns the cat into a sabre toothed tiger and him into a...well, you can figure it out. His concerned daughter Jan (Joyce Terry) and a stuffy zoologist (an amazingly stiff Richard Crane) do some snooping around while local authorities and citizens vow to do something about the savage killings in the area.

Once again, what prevents this from being more fun is too much talk and too little action. However, it's amusing to watch as an obviously ordinary tiger is used much of the time and then close-ups are done of hilariously unconvincing prop heads. Adding appeal to the proceedings is the impressively sincere acting by a game cast, also including Doris Merrick as Groves's fiancée Ruth, a strikingly attractive young Beverly Garland as waitress Nola, and the late, renowned dialect coach and character actor Robert Easton as a townsman. The cinematography is by the great Stanley Cortez, the original music by Albert Glasser, and the reasonably good makeup by Harry Thomas.

All in all, one could have a decent time watching this with a couple of pals and a lot of beers.

Five out of 10.

A hunter in the High Sierras spots a huge tiger with tusks, and when he tells his tale at the Webb Café in town, he is laughed at, including by the local game warden Oakes. That is, until he drives home that night and the big cat lands on his windshield intentionally. Armed only with the car's blaring horn Oakes scares the big cat away. Oakes makes a clay impression of the cat's paw and goes to see Dr. Harkness, state university zoologist, in Los Angeles. Harkness at first shoos Oakes away as some kind of crackpot, but then suddenly changes his mind and comes back with him. This time, finding a freshly killed deer, they wait for the big cat to return when he gets hungry. They shoot him and go get local academic Prof. Clifford Groves to show him the big cat - a saber tooth tiger that has been extinct since ancient times. The body is gone and Groves asks them to please stop wasting his time.

Meanwhile Groves has gone to a committee of academics with his theories of how Neanderthal man had a much larger brain than current man, and Groves talks about how if somehow man could go back to the Neanderthal state, he would be capable of solving problems he cannot with his current smaller brain. The committee is unreceptive, in part because Groves insults them because they are not jumping up and down with enthusiasm.

There are lots of obvious tip-offs in this film. Groves mood growing worse with time, being rude to everybody, including any guests, his own fiancée, and him calling the committee of academics he is presenting before stupid doesn't do his cause any good either. There is a cat caged in Groves' lab that seems agitated at the sight of Groves syringes. Groves' own fiancée tells him he has changed from the nice guy she fell in love with into a grouchy mean guy and is leaving. And the presence of a passive deaf mute servant girl is always a big red flag for potential victimization.

There really isn't any mystery in this film since the audience sees what is going on most of the time. It is Oakes and Harkness trying to solve the mystery that takes time, although you can see the Jekyll and Hyde ending coming a mile away. Dr. Groves has conveniently forgotten that Neanderthal man had a bigger everything - brain, strength, temper, bloodlust, etc., and that killing picnickers and carrying away their women is not smiled upon in 1950's California. The acting is not wooden here, but motivations jump around a lot with no real reasons given.

I'd say it's a take it or leave it proposition as even the title gives away the plot, but it is by no means boring. Just don't expect to be blinded with science in this one.

A rip off of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", this takes a lot of patience to tolerate Household cats become giant beasts and a moody scientist turns into a prehistoric man, growing more facial hair than the wolf-man. His friends and family suspect that something is up but let him be. When people start being attacked he feigns sympathy. Of course, where there is caveman, there must be cave-woman and that is where the film dissolve s into absolute silliness. Shots of big jungle cats passing as prehistoric cats fools nobody. As the truth of what is going on is revealed, the film moves into melodramatic drivel that seemed more appropriate for the decade before when Lon Chaney Jr. was making films like this by the dozen.

This was way before PowerPoint; back then lecturers used plain old cut-and paste charts as teaching aids: The one in this film, an evolutionary brain size graphic, is liable to jump right off the screen with its inclusion of "Piltdown Man", that classic paleontological fake Missing Link that kept experts guessing for forty years. Until 1954, just after this movie was released. The hoax spawned a few films on its own, including a BBC series based on Angus Wilson's 1956 novel, "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes." In this satire the bogus bones fast forward to the Dark Ages.

By this time in the action, some viewers are likely referencing Ken Russell's 1980 "Altered States," except that in this later iteration the mad scientist is a "psycho-physiologist" who goes bobbing for atavistic apples in a sensory isolation tank. Nobel physicist Richard Feynman maintained that sessions in one of these relaxed him. Relaxation is something the William Hurt character neither seeks nor gets.

Critics generally dismiss "The Neanderthal Man" as trash, and as an aberration in E. A. DuPont's respectable career. All the same, it boasts a character-actor parade of faces you've seen many times before, but maybe not all together in one feature. These include Richard Crane as Dr. Ross Harkness, chiefly remembered as TV's space cowboy Rocky Jones. The wizened physician, William Fawcett, has too many screen credits to mention. Crazy anthropologist Clifford Groves is played by Robert Shayne; he might be best recalled as Gotham City's top cop on the 1950s "Superman" TV series. And voice actor-dialect coach Robert Easton has likely been heard more than seen.

If there's another movie that features a monster-human rape scene, it's unknown to me. Beverly Garland's character, Nola Mason was out on a picnic when she slipped into a daring (for the 'fifties) one-piece for some cheesecake poses captured by boyfriend Eric Colman's ("Buck Hastings") camera. The photo-op got the Neanderthal's attention. Buck gets his neck broken, and Nola is raped.

Euphemism straitjacket's the rape victim's lines as she's succored by the neighbors. But word travels fast. When Dr. Fairchild (William Fawcett) completes his examination of the patient, the Dr. Harkness character indulgently hopes she "won't suffer any permanent damage." All depends on what you mean by permanent. The MD replies with a non sequitur: "The shock was about as great as any woman could be asked to bear." This might leave the audience perplexed. So just to dispel all doubts, the doc hints broadly that "word of this has gotten around." And that it'd be best if the state police spotted the monster before some of the local boys do. Murdering ranchers and farmhands is one thing, but raping the local diner waitress quite another.

Nonconsensual female human-male monster coitus is rare enough, even in Hollywood. But what might follow qualifies as an event that dare not speak its name. We're talking "Rosemary's Baby." One must be grateful for a timely conclusion that doesn't explore these consequences. But, golly, talk about material for a sequel! Alas, one must be satisfied with Richard Crane reciting Sophocles at Prof. Groves' deathbed: "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad."

1953's "The Neanderthal Man" emerged from the production team of Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen, also responsible for "The Man from Planet X," "Indestructible Man," and "Daughter of Dr. Jekyll." Robert Shayne stars in the title role of Clifford Groves, a thoroughly belligerent and unlikable scientist wisely scoffed at for his theories on evolution, creating a serum than turns an ordinary housecat into a prowling saber tooth tiger. The escaped beast calls attention to his terrain in the High Sierras, and its death forces Groves to use himself as a guinea pig, having first used his mute housekeeper (Tandra Quinn, "Mesa of Lost Women"). Once he goes through the transformation at the midway point we hardly ever see him in human form again, killing men and assaulting women on the nearby mountain, with so much emphasis on the saber tooth early on that we forget there's supposed to be a monster too. Shayne's crackpot alienates his daughter (Joyce Terry) and drives away his fiancée (Doris Merrick), so perhaps it's no wonder that his monstrous self targets Beverly Garland's luscious waitress! Alternating shots of the tiger's stuffed head with footage of a real one utterly fail to convince, and though the makeup initially looks rather similar to John Chambers' work on "Planet of the Apes" (shaggy wig on top), the eyes look like a poor paint job, coupled with immobile mask, still a commendable effort for workhorse Harry Thomas ("The Unearthly," "Frankenstein's Daughter"). Nowhere near as much fun as Universal's "Monster on the Campus," which had Arthur Franz as a more sympathetic scientist rather than this total jerk. Robert Shayne had co-starred with John Carradine in Monogram's 1946 "The Face of Marble" but lacks the presence to carry a movie himself, Richard Crane essentially taking the reins.

Robert Shayne plays an unhinged scientist who manages to turn a housecat into a saber-toothed tiger. Too much film is wasted as the authorities hunt down the creature. Mostly we get stock footage of a tiger, and a few close-ups of a stuffed animal with fangs. As usual, Shayne's peers don't understand that he is on the verge of greatness. So he experiments on himself, and becomes the title character. He knocks off a few sundry characters before another cat knocks him off.

Richard Crane portrays one of the dumbest scientists in the history of dumb scientists on film. He is called into the case, promptly shoots and kills the tiger (with the help of the game warden), and then these two clowns go off to find a witness on the theory that if just two people saw the tiger, no one would believe them. But if three saw it - yes, that's more credible. So they leave the carcass, come back with Shayne, and find the stuffed animal has vanished. I guess we're supposed to believe that Shayne hauled off the carcass by himself, but let's face it - he ain't Superman, although he did play in the television series. Crane also inspects Shayne's lab, finds a hypo, and decides to inject it into another cat, just to see what will happen. This is called the scientific method. The cat turns into another saber-toothed tiger and crashes out of the lab. Crane does not seem too concerned about this.

The story is supposed to take place in the High Sierras, but half of the cast talk like they are from the hills of Kentucky. Beverly Garland has a bit as a waitress. Tandra Quinn, best known for her seductive dance in "Mesa of Lost Women," plays a deaf mute, which at least spared her the indignity of having to recite stupid lines or hear the nonsensical dialogue. Crane (and every other member of the cast) wears the same clothes from start to finish. In the finale, he delivers a dull soliloquy, which he could have just shortened to "don't screw with nature." Or better yet, "don't screw with the audience."