The Neanderthal Man

Ewald André Dupont, an absolutely unknown name in the film business. However, Dupont was a very prolific filmmaker, working in Germany, United Kingdom, Hollywood. As a director, Ewald André Dupont worked also with big names like Charles Laughton, Ronald Reagan, etc. Here are some unknown but very good, very convincing actors. The story is ridiculous, but the quality of the direction and the actors make the movie worthy of being seen. Beverly Garland and Richard Crane they worked together in a much better Horror, Sci-Fi, "The Alligator People" (1959).

A haughty Professor becomes intent on proving that mankind's gradual evolution did not necessarily affect his quotient of intelligence. Despite the distinguished directorial credit, this is a thoroughly routine horror programmer of the 'mad scientist' variety, with more than its fair share of unintended hilarity amid the general tackiness. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, as played by Robert Shayne, the doctor here is the rudest in film history and watching him let rip with insults at his staid, disapproving colleagues was a hoot! Typically for this sort of fare, the all-important serum is first tested on animals or 'lesser' humans – in this case, a perennially terrified domestic cat is turned into a saber-toothed tiger and a mute servant girl into a bushy-eyebrowed ape woman (albeit, apparently, just long enough for her to sit for some photographic evidence of the veracity of his claims) – before applying it to himself. The proverbial redneck hostility to a marauding tiger preying on their livestock and later a simian kidnapper of women is present and accounted for; what is more surprising is that the middle-aged professor has a good-looking and much younger fiancée who still relishes hopes of dragging him from his laboratory off to a church altar and, naturally, once the young urban expert hero comes along, he falls for the charms of the professor's clueless daughter. The TNT-culled print I watched left an awful lot to desire so, in spite of my reservations, I acquired a superior copy of the film the minute it was over!

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.

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 ultra-cheesy '50s monster flick in which we get to see Robert Shayne (Inspector Henderson from TV's ''Adventures of Superman'') shamelessly recite hilarious dialogue and feverishly overact, as a dedicated mad scientist who's found a way to reverse the evolutionary process! It's the treat of the film to watch him rant and rave about his idiotic theories without applying the brakes. First he turns a common house cat into a fierce saber-toothed tiger, accomplished by the effects team utilizing close-ups of a fake model; later, he jabs himself with a serum that transforms him into the title character. You've got to get a load of this ape-man's face; it's one of the most ridiculous-looking of all film monsters, obviously an over-the-head mask you'd buy in any Halloween shop, and completely expressionless with a rubber muzzle and painted set eyes that don't move. For his creature, the filmmaker should have chosen to stay with the crude third or fourth stage appliances during the chintzy transformation sequence.

A real hoot, and a good deal of fun if you go for these types of silly yet entertaining creature features. We also get to see a young Beverly Garland in the cast, although a double for her is blatantly used in a sequence where she dons a bathing suit and models for a photographer. **1/2 out of ****