The Monster Maker [PG]

A scientist perfecting a cure for a rare disfiguring disease that attacks the glands becomes enamoured and obsessed with a concert pianist’s daughter, who is the spitting image of his late wife. When the pianist confronts the scientist to stop harassing his daughter, he is attacked and injected with the disease that rapidly disfigures him. Only the scientist has the cure, but he will not administer it until the pianist’s daughter agrees to marry him. 

Back into the vein of generic cult horror movies, The Monster Maker has all the elements of a decent flick but (as seems to be the case with the movies contained in this 50-pack) just lacks the visionary to bring them alive on the screen. The issue that plagues many of these types of generic cult black and white movies is that they are handled by people adhering too stoically to the components of the genre and, thus, losing interest in the project about halfway through (which would explain the movie’s hour-long feature length). 

The story itself is pretty solid; dealing with strong themes of madness that arises out of obsession. There are one or two plot points that are very clumsily thrown in, the biggest being one that involved a gorilla with a personal hatred of the scientist’s assistant, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but aside from that the flick is written relatively well with a solid flow of narrative events. 

Director Sam Newfield displays a working knowledge of mise-en-scene, just not a wholly compelling exhibition of it and many of the shots are uninspired and generic: practically everything is shot in mid-shots aside from the few close-ups we get of pivotal objects or moments (e.g. the strapped down patient struggling against his bindings and the close-up of the hooks and bolts giving under the pressure). 

The performances are all pretty bland with no chemistry occurring anywhere: it does sort of feel as though the actors were all randomly hired and then just thrown in together to do the scenes. There is no romance between the two romantic leads, no connection between the father and daughter, and quite possibly the most boring mad scientist I’ve seen on screen. Whilst not Oscar-worthy, hands down the most invested performance comes from Tala Birell as the scientist’s assistant who really gives the part her all and brings a little bit of complexity to an otherwise generic and predictable plotline. 

Starring J. Carrol Naish, Ralph Morgan, Wanda McKay, Terry Frost, Glenn Strange, Alexander Pollard, Sam Flint, and Ace the Wonder Dog (who sits alongside Tala Birell as delivering the most invested performance) The Monster Maker is a fine, but ultimately generic and bland horror movie; just another cult b-grade black and white flick that doesn’t even deliver fun ridiculousness. Filled with romance, obsession, and drama, it’s really just an ok movie. There’s nothing fundamentally horrible about it, but it’s definitely not a film that I’d be excited to watch again.