Docteur Satan

In the early seventies there were two late night horror movie shows where I lived: NIGHTMARE THEATER on channel 7 and SUSPENSE THEATER on channel 8. My dilemma was that both programs were on simultaneously(around midnight on Fridays),and I always had to decide which one I wanted to watch. On one particular Friday I chose the NIGHTMARE THEATER movie, opting to check out the other channel during the commercials. During one of those breaks I switched over just in time to see the infamous "eye-growing-on-the-shoulder" scene. A while later I looked again and saw that eye growing into an entire head! I left it on that channel until the show was over. I have no memory of what the other movie was.

As one poster put it... this is the film you saw as a kid but never remembered its name. I did!!! It is kinda cheesy...but I've seen much worse. But for its time, I gotta hand it to the make up folks and the actor's reaction for that scene with the eye on his shoulder. Gosh! Ya gotta guess that most of the budget went into that, and what fun! There isn't one person I have shown this film to that hasn't gasped at it! I just wished the rest of the film was that way. This is one film that HAS to be in your Halloween collection...your "low budget" vintage B movie horror collection...you know you've got one. Set it right between the William Castle films and the Hammer Films!! Get this film, get it now. It's a hoot!

Everyone has already commented on their (mostly happy) childhood memories of The Manster, but the film actually has aspirations beyond those of the typical monster fest. The film is surprisingly bold about sexuality, hinting frankly at both rape and adultery. The Manster could be posited as a film that anticipated the free love of the late 60s, the 'split' as psycho-sexual as it is physical. Larry is, after all, a happily married average joe until his libido is aroused by a serum introduced via Mickey Finn by a 'mad' doctor. It's a bit like George Harrison being introduced to LSD by his dentist. As his desire for rough and raw sex increases, his body begins to mutate, leading to the infamous shoulder eye and second head. A cautionary tale, well told and ultimately very conservative, but thoroughly enjoyable on more than one level.

I can't understand why 'The Manster' isn't better known! It's often unfairly lumped in with 'The Incredible Two Headed Transplant' and 'The Thing With Two Heads', but 'The Manster' is much more than a kitschy gigglefest. It is closer to another forgotten Japanese 60s movie, 'The Human Vapour', made around the same time. Both movies use horror/sf trappings to explore questions of identity and what it means to be human Philip K. Dick style. Neither reaches the giddy, hallucinogenic heights of PKD's best work, but they are both a cut above your average "monster movie" of the era.

'The Manster' concerns a cocky American journalist who befriends a charismatic Japanese scientist. The scientist's lifestyle seduces the journalist who goes off the rails and ignores his job, wife and responsibilities. He thinks he's just letting his hair down after several years of hard work, but doesn't realize that he is the unwitting guinea pig in an ambitious scientific experiment which turns out horribly wrong.

Try and see 'The Manster', and if possible make it a double bill with 'The Human Vapour'. You'll see that was a LOT more going on in Japanese fantastic cinema that Godzilla, Mothra, et al. 'The Manster' is a low key, imaginative movie just waiting to be rediscovered!

I watched this last night for the first time in 30-something years. From childhood, three scenes were indelibly stamped on my memory: the gibbering woman with the nightmarish melting face in a cage, the eye in the shoulder, and the infamous 'separation'. But what also was stuck in memory was the horrible screaming that accompanied some of these (not my own, but that of the characters ;>). Well, the movie's not *quite* as scary to my jaded sensibilities as it was then, but those scenes still had a kick; the unearthly howling, tearing sounds when the Manster 'separates' still chilled.

While it'll never be mistaken for great moviemaking, this film deserves a bigger 'cult' status than it has.