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How to Make a Monster / Teenage Caveman; July, 1958
Topic Started: Jun 18 2017, 07:07 AM (316 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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How to Make a Monster (1958) Dir. Herbert L. Strock
American-International Pictures
73 min. / B&W with color sequence / 1.66:1

ITB Shock Theatre #205

Teenage Caveman
(1958) Dir. Roger Corman
American-International Pictures
65 min. / B&W / 1.85:1

ITB Strange Science Cinema #130

Ah, another time machine voyage, another delightful visit to an AIP drive-in double feature of the halcyon days of the 1950s, and a special treat this week, as the Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein duke it out for acne'd monster supremacy, sort of. First up, though, we have a balding, pushing-30 teenager who asks too many questions of the elders of his tribe: Robert Vaughn as the Teenage Caveman!

The Son of the Symbol Maker (nobody has a name in this movie, probably a good thing for their careers) is bored and restless and thinks all the fun stuff must be happening on the other side of the river, where the Elders of the Tribe constantly do nothing but warn them not to go (it's "The Law," you see). He talks a few of his buds into exploring over there with him, but one death and a lot of recrimination later, they discover a hideous monster that looks like a big, furry dodo bird (well, it DOES) that can kill with one touch. (They also discover some pertinent dinosaur stock footage from One Million B.C., but that's only to be expected.) In the end, it turns out - get this - that they're not REALLY prehistoric cavemen, they're survivors of a nuclear holocaust and the dodo monster is actually an old man in a radiation suit. WOW - didn't see THAT comin'. Bring on the talking apes!

Vaughn's friends and rivals in his tribe include Frank De Kova as the Crummy Evil Guy, Jonathan Haze as the Curly-Haired Naive Guy, Robert Shayne as the Maker of the Fire, and Beach Dickerson as everybody else, including the Prehistoric Grizzly Bear(!).

Million-dollar Dialog:
The Symbol Maker musing on the tribe's rules: "A Law is truth to itself. We must find a NEW Law."

Disdained these days thanks to MST3K's riff on it, but actually, not a bad little picture, all things considered. Too bad that Haze wasn't given the lead, it would've improved the movie a lot.

A little trivia for you movie buffs out there, the monster suit from this film was re-used by Roger Corman for his next movie, Night of the Blood Beast (we'll get to that one soon, no doubt). Oh, and here's what Mr. Corman had to say about this picture: "The film was shot under the title Prehistoric World. I was truly shocked when it emerged as Teenage Caveman. I cannot tell you how horrified I was at that title... With a few more days and a little bit more money, we could've made a genuinely good film instead of a pretty good one."

Anyway, on to the snack bar ads, the coming attraction for next week's feature presentation, The Fly (WOW!), and a pretty good Paramount cartoon called The Kid from Mars, about, well, a kid from Mars who wanders into a circus (remember when they had those? If not, google "circus" - you'll be amazed) and uses his raygun to create havoc. Then on to our much-anticipated second feature, How to Make a Monster.

When American-International's monster-expert makeup man is fired after 25 years because filmgoers don't wanna see monsters no mo', they want pretty girls, dancing, bad rock 'n' roll numbers sung by John Ashley, and chorus lines of not-so-good dancers, the makeup man and his stooge-like assistant use chemicals in the makeup to turn the young actors playing the leads in the new teenage film Werewolf meets Frankenstein into REAL monsters and send them out to kill the studio executives and my GOODNESS do I love this movie.

Million-dollar Dialog:
Director of Werewolf Meets Frankenstein: "This is the big scene of the picture. The audience has been waiting for this. It's a fight to the death, it's a battle of the monsters! And it must be the high spot of the picture. It's got to be the greatest fight we've ever had on the screen! And I've got to get it in one take."

Gary Conway revives his role as the Teenage Frankenstein, newcomer Gary Clarke is very good as the new Teenage Werewolf, and Robert H. Harris ("Broadway's stellar performer," the trailer helpfully explained) is the new Whit Bissell, and since Whit was the new Lionel Atwill, we're sort of passing the torch to a new generation of mad scientists, aren't we? It's fun to see a behind-the-scenes look at what I assume was the actual AIP studio (the sign SAID so, anyway), including posters for the teenage monster movies, Blood of Dracula, and others. Robert Shayne is back as an angry agent (so he's in BOTH halves of our double feature, way to go, Bob) and Morris Ankrum is in it because he's contractually obligated to be in EVERY sci-fi/horror movie of the '50s.

The final reel is in color (not just a few seconds, as with War of the Colossal Beast and Teenage Frankenstein), and includes our only color look at the She-Creature, Saucer-men, and the It that conquered the world. I'd like to think that Arkoff and Nicholson loved this movie. I know I do.

Unfortunately, the DVD releases of these films by Lions Gate leave a lot to be decided. Teenage Caveman (released on one disc with Viking Women and the Sea Serpent) is a real mess, full screen and framed even badly for that. I suspect a good 1.85:1 release of this would boost its reputation a LOT. How to Make a Monster is much better, but also full screen, although its true 1.66:1 ratio means with some tweaking of your set's ratio you can approximate it well enough. And the color sequence looks excellent.

It sure would be nice if somebody would get 'round to presenting films like this properly for the U.S. market before we're all dead.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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The Batman
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I'm in line for proper DVD releases of both. Come on, LG, use your contacts and make it happen.

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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Laughing Gravy
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The four Lionsgate DVD releases of these films were a huge mess. Recently, we've seen big upgrades of a plethora of 1950s indie sci-fi/horror releases, yet little of the AIP catalog. If you've been following along my Strange Science Cinema weekly postings (and I know you have, you devils, you) you know that I've been using VHS tapes, official releases, British releases, and occasional grey market releases to compile a complete set. I frankly gave up following the trail of these things; most are owned by Orion Pictures and thus by MGM (I think), although a handful, notably the first Teenage Werewolf and Frankenstein films, It Conquered the World, and Invasion of the Saucer-men, are owned by the Arkoff estate. I have no idea if good prints/original materials survive (we struggled with that for the 25 British releases I worked on). If Scream! Factory and Kino can release I Bury the Living and The Vampire (1957), you'd think they'd jump at the chance to do Attack of the Puppet People or The She-Creature.

Allied Artists are WB properties, mostly, so heck, we got From Hell It Came on Blu. Hopefully good material still exists on the Corman AA films like Attack of the Crab Monsters, but I think those rights belong elsewhere (the film was released on DVD by Shout!, not Warners).

The GOOD news (for ME) is that I religiously bought any 1950s-60s monster pictures that came out on DVD, and in the early days, there were a LOT of them every month I'm looking over at my shelf right now and see Rocketship X-M, Plague of the Zombies, Woman who Came Back, Giant from the Unknown, Strangler of the Swamp, Teenage Monster, Tobor the Great, The Womaneater, Man of 1000 Faces, and a ton more, many of which are out of print (somebody told me, for heaven's sake, that the Complete Herman & Katnip disc sells for $85 now).

Anyway, it won't be long before the Halloween 2017 releases start being announced.

"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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The Batman
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Thanks, a little discouraging, but with all these recent releases, like you say, hopefully it opens a floodgate.

I, too, bought as many of those 50s horror and/or sci-fi discs that I could in those early days. Unfortunately nowhere near as many as you've amassed, back then I had to rely on Wal-Mart, etc and DVD specialty shops (remember those? none around here now) and didn't use Amazon, so the selection was a lot more limited.

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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