L'Homme de Néanderthal

Professor Groves theories about the brain capacity of Neanderthal man is viewed as heresy by his fellow scientists. To prove his theories, professor Groves experiments with a de-evolution serum. His early experiments on cats results in one turning into a sabre tooth tiger. He then tries the serum on himself where he is transformed into a Neanderthal man and goes on a killing rampage.

THE NEANDERTHAL MAN is a rather blah horror film with indifferent performances, grainy black and white photography, and scant thrills. The film was directed by E.A. Dupont, the same man who directed VARIETY, one of the greatest films of the silent period. Apparently, by the time THE NEANDERTHAL MAN was made, E.A. Dupont had slipped down to just another hack director, as which this film is evidence of. Even some much less experienced directors working under flimsy circumstances like this showed more inventiveness than Dupont shows here. The best scenes in the film are those with the sabre tooth cat and the one where the hero finds the photographs of an early experiment Groves had conducted on his deaf mute house maid. Overall, THE NEANDERTHAL MAN looks and plays more like a poverty row horror film from 1943 than a low budget horror/sci fi film from 1953.

Of interest to fifties horror/science fiction movie fans is the presence of a very young Beverly Garland as Nola. Unlike her later films where she played a tough fiesty heroine, she plays the standard frightened female who screams and faints.

Cranky scientist experimenting on transforming animals and people into their prehistoric selves (sorta), tries it out on himself and becomes a Mr. Hyde-type Neanderthal. Robert Shayne (Inspector Henderson from The Adventures of Superman) plays the would-be Jekyll and he's great fun. His character gets upset with everyone and insults them at the slightest provocation. He's a real bitch and I love it! The rest of the cast is solid, with some interesting character actors like Robert Long and Dick Rich helping to keep things moving. The script doesn't give them a lot to work with but they bring their lines to life with conviction. Richard Crane is a bit annoying as the stiff protagonist and just about every woman in the movie is insufferable, save for the great Beverly Garland in a minor role. Working with an obviously limited budget, director E.A. Dupont and cinematographer Stanley Cortez craft a pretty polished-looking B picture. Of course only so much can be done special effects-wise on a small budget but there is some nice camera-work and a decent level of atmosphere in some of the night scenes. Better than some of the other reviewers are giving it credit for but nowhere near a classic. Worth a look for fans of '50s B horror and sci-fi.

Wheeler (Frank Gerstle), a tourist-hunter in the California High Sierras, is not believed by the patrons of Webb's Cafe when he claims to have run across a live tiger with tusks. Among the scoffers is game-warden George Oakes -- until he is driving home later that night and the critter hops on the hood of his car.

The general idea of this film is pretty standard -- you have a mad scientist who wants to turn people into Neanderthals and cats into saber-toothed tigers. There are plenty of scientific arguments that can be made against this being possible, but let us just ignore that...

He gets especially upset when his theories are presented to the local natural history society and they scoff at him. Interestingly, he includes Piltdown Man as part of the evolutionary chain of man -- a fossil that was determined to be a hoax in November 1953, around the same time as this film came out...

What could be considered really sad about this film is that it comes from director E. A. Dupont, who used to be somebody. Once upon a time, he was a big name in the world of German silent cinema, writing and directing "Variete" starring Emil Jannings and with Karl Freund operating the camera. A classic film. And now, at this point, he is directing cheesy science fiction with cheesy makeup and no real directorial flair. This is your average science fiction film of the 1950s, with almost no notable names (besides Dupont). He could have done better...

The one possibly notable name is Beverly Garland, who played the waitress. Although not A-list, she did go on to appear in multiple Roger Corman films and continued acting up through the 2000s on shows such as "7th Heaven". Some could say Robert Shayne was notable, but aside from bit parts in "North By Northwest" and "Invaders From Mars" he hardly left his mark.

Although perhaps talking this movie down, I am not saying you should avoid this film, but just be prepared for the average 1950s flick, probably not something you will tell your friends about. For those who really must see it, Scream Factory has released a nice blu-ray of the film, with a fairly decent transfer (though no special features).

Neanderthal Man, The (1953)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Poor horror film about a mad scientist (Robert Shayne) trying to bring man back to the stone age. He turns his pet kitten into a saber-toothed tiger, he then injects himself with his magical serum and turns into the title character. This film only runs 78-minutes but it felt like three hours considering not too much ever happens. The neanderthal man looks silly but the makeup is certainly memorable. The only problem is that he's not on screen enough. Some of the close ups of the tiger gets a few laughs since you can tell it's just a toy. It's also interesting that most horror films from this period try to play the scientist in a sympathetic view point but that's not the case here. The scientist here has got to be the biggest jerk ever to grace a horror film.

An awful lot of people don't like this film but it has some wonderful things in it and some off the wall things too. Robert Shayne plays the mad scientist with the ever-adoring fiancee in a truly over the top fashion. In one sequence while he is ranting about being left alone (a sequence straight out of the original Frankenstein), she tousles his hair so that it goes in all directions at once and seems a total send-up of the would-be dramatic moment at hand. In addition, every time the scene shifts to the mountains and countryside an incredibly lush theme is played that seems like something out of an old Lowell Thomas documentary travelogue! In the beginning of the film there is an inexplicably jazzy score playing while a man is attacked in his car by a sabre-toothed tiger. At times we glimpse the tiger who has ordinary teeth and yet when we see it in extreme close-up after being killed or in a kind of freeze frame as it attacks a car it has its sabre teeth. In another sequence we are to believe that an ordinary cat can be turned into a sabre-toothed tiger through use of a regressive serum that takes it back to its ancestors-- at least I think that's what's going on! Despite all of these oddities the film has a clear narrative and is lively enough to hold one's interest, if just in watching out for the next oddity. One is left wondering why the neanderthal man's teeth are so bad for example when in fact ancient peoples had fine teeth when we find them usually because of their ability to chew and tear with them and keep them well honed. But this fellow seems to have set on by demented dentists. Then there is the whole theory of regression into our ancestors using an argument that brain SIZE is what is most significant, not considering that development of smaller, more effective portions of the brain might evolve over time. Instead, we get here an anti-evolution theory that is so bad it is scoffed at even by the semi-literate faculty in this film. And then Mr. Shayne tells us that in "regressing" to the neanderthal state he will be going back "one million years" when in fact neanderthalers flourished 100,000 years ago, not a million, and it is never explained why he is regressing to the neanderthal state and not some other pathway of human evolution. I had a lot of fun attempting to find what I thought were staggering gaps in the overall presentation of this film BUT I enjoyed the various goofy characters, the narrative clarity and the ability of director Dupont to keep the low-budget proceedings moving about briskly. I think if you are not too demanding, have a puff of anthropology in your background and enjoy movies made solely to entertain you'll enjoy this one. By the way, the movie was HEAVILY influenced by the Bridey Murphy phase the whole country was going through at the time this movie was made!!! An American housewife named Virginia Tighe, through hypnosis, claimed to have regressed to becoming a 19th century woman named Bridey Murphy. The whole country was taken up with the belief that we could all regress to earlier lives...and that formed the inspiration for the screenplay and the outrageous theories presented in this film.