How to Make a Monster

In 1957, American International Pictures had a big hit with their I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Immediately following its heels came I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, and then this film. This film is in many ways an inside look at the workings of the movie business and its thinking in the 50s as well as the ending chapter in the Teenage Trilogy cycle at AIP. It is not a great horror picture by any standards, yet it is fun to watch. It has a pretty good story about a make-up man who gets the pink slip and then promises to kill the execs who fired him and bring the studio to its knees. Mild-mannered Robert Harris plays the vengeful artist with restrained aplomb. He effectively captures the insanity that courses through his mind with great subtlety. In the end, we see Harris for what he real was...not just an innocent artist but a monster obsessed with his works and his creations in much the same vein as Vincent Price's character in The House of Wax. The rest of the actors are acceptable, and the ending scene where we see the works of the artist is a walk down memory lane. On the walls one can see the head mask of the She-Creature, the It from It Conquered the World, one of the saucer men from Invasion of the Saucer Men, and many others. The colour sequence that is suppose to be in the final 8 minutes of the film does not exist on any version of the video presently out. Hope it is remastered.

It can never be said that American International Pictures doesn't have a sense of humor. The studio that gave us such classics as I Was A Teenage Frankenstein and I Was A Teenage Werewolf joins the two teen monsters in a cute satire of the genre.

A new day is dawning at American International, the new studio heads want no more monster pictures that were the bread and butter of its existence and paid a nice living for makeup artist Robert H. Harris. They want lighter fare for the public and give poor Harris the old heave ho.

But Harris isn't taking it lying down. A new makeup base applied to the skull allows Harris to control those he applies it on and he takes his two teen stars from Teenage Frankenstein and Werewolf and starts sending them on a murder spree and bringing back trophies.

Gary Clarke and Gary Conway were Harris's two subjects and they and Harris went along with the fun. A whole lot of familiar character actors get involved.

It's American Internation so don't expect any high production values. But it actually isn't too bad.

How To Make A Monster is made up in fact with tongue firmly in cheek.

Monster makeup man Pete Dumond (Robert H. Harris) is told the studio is closing down his shop because they've decided to stop making horror films. He vows revenge. The final film he's on has a teenage werewolf (Gary Clarke--not Michael Landon) and a teenage Frankenstein (Gary Conway reprising his role from the original). He puts a drug in their makeup that make them obey him and orders them to kill the studio heads.

Pretty much forgotten horror movie--for good reason! The plot is sort of interesting but it's basically a 30 minute plot stretched out to 74 minutes! A lot of talk but little action. There's also a pointless (and pretty funny) musical number by John Ashley squeezed in (purportedly he had some hits in the 1950s).

Some of the acting is good. Harris is enjoying himself and Clarke has some good moments. Conway however seems uncomfortable. The best part of this movie is the final 11 minutes--they're done in color (the rest of the film is in b&w). We get to see a good bunch of AIP monster masks, some blood, and Harris, Clarke and Conway in full color. Fans of AIP monster movies will get more of a kick out of this than anyone else. For the color ending alone I give this a 7.

Be aware--most TV prints have the whole film in b&w--the DVD has the color.

This is another solid entry in the teenage monster genre, starring the durable Robert H. Harris, one of the finest character actors of his era, familiar to fans of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series,.

Like the other entries in this cycle, including Teenage Werewolf and especially Teenage Frankenstein, this entire cycle might have been renamed "Make Room For Daddy," although "Daddy" in this case is a terrible authority figure whose only goal is to control his children, dominate them, and ultimately destroy them.

The entire cycle is a deconstruction of the myth of a paternal authority that dominates the social sciences of the day (parodied in Stephen Sondheim's "Gee, Officer Krupke" from West Side Story and in teen rebellion films, especially the Nicholas Ray-James Dean film, "Rebel without a Cause"), but also familiar in the idealized Daddy roles in numerous sitcoms of the era, especially, of course, Father Knows Best.

This series might have punningly be called Father Knows Beast. The entire cycle is a brilliant deconstruction of paternalistic authority. This is not to say it doesn't work on its own narrative level, though much of the plot is hokum. Still it's well done combining horror and detective genres quite well, and excellently directed as well.

Though generally consigned to the teen and drive-in genre, few films of the 1950s more seriously challenged the myth of parental authority as well as the films in this cycle did.

American International Pictures, that famed home of countless delightful B flicks, takes self-referential aim at its own filmography with this knowing script (by the legendary producer Herman Cohen and his frequent collaborator Aben Kandel). It can work as a follow-up to the two A.I.P. "Teenage Werewolf" and "Teenage Frankenstein" classics, with two young actors, Gary Conway (the actual Teenage Frankenstein) and Gary Clarke ('The Virginian'), working on the studios' final monster movie. You see, the new regime at the studio have decreed that the current monster movie cycle is over, and they want to concentrate on upbeat diversions like musicals.

This doesn't sit well with veteran makeup effects designer Pete Dumond; unsung character actor Robert H. Harris ("Valley of the Dolls"), in a rare case of top billing, plays the unstable Dumond. He can't abide the thought of his career possibly being over, so he takes revenge on the new executives, using a new formula in his makeup to make Tony and Larry (Conway and Clarke) very suggestible. Once they are all made up, they make for handy murderers. Dumond and his weak-willed longtime assistant Rivero (Paul Brinegar, "High Plains Drifter") must then dodge frequent questioning by some very determined police.

The landscape is dotted with a variety of familiar character actors - Harris, Brinegar, Malcolm Atterbury ("The Birds"), Morris Ankrum ("Earth vs. the Flying Saucers"), Paul Maxwell ("Aliens"), Thomas Browne Henry ("Beginning of the End"), and Robert Shayne ('Adventures of Superman'), as well as the various creations of real-life monster maker of the era, Paul Blaisdell. These creations also figure into a final sequence that is filmed in color in order for us to properly appreciate them. John Ashley (the later "Blood Island" film series) does a brief musical number.

Overall, the movie offers quite a bit of fun. It is capably directed by Herbert L. Strock, who'd done "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein", as well as other flicks like "Gog", "Blood of Dracula", and "The Crawling Hand". It will have the most resonance for "monster kids" of all decades, but particularly those who originally got to see these efforts in theaters. No, it doesn't sport a lot in the way of atmosphere, suspense, or major scares, but it's pretty hard to resist, just the same.

Seven out of 10.