Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

JohnHowardReid Director: SAM NEWFIELD. Screenplay: Martin Mooney, Pierre Gendron. Story: Lawrence Williams. Photography: Robert Cline. Film editor: Holbrook N. Todd. Art director: Paul Palmentola. Set decorator: Harry Reif. Make-up: Maurice Seiderman. Music: Albert Glasser. Music supervisor: David Chudnow. Production manager: Bert Sternbach. Assistant director: Mel DeLay. Sound recording: Ferrol Redd. Producer: Sigmund Neufeld. Copyright 15 April 1944 by PRC Pictures, Inc. No recorded New York opening. U.S. release: 15 April 1944. Never theatrically released in Australia. 7 reels. 62 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Evil scientist discovers a cure for a rare disease but wants victim's daughter in exchange.COMMENT: The unbilled actor in the gorilla suit is one of the better players in this cheapjack picture which has little else to recommend it other than Misses Tala Birell and Wanda McKay. Mr Naish is a boring actor at the best of times. In the lead part, he is super-boring. Only Ralph Morgan can match him for dullness, but his part here is smaller so he has to be content with second place. And in third place, we have Terry Frost. What a trio! Mr Newfield is one of those directors who can shoot a complete movie in two days or less-which is not too bad a drawback when dealing with a reasonably entertaining or exciting script. Unfortunately the screenplay which Messrs Mooney and Gendron have fashioned is one of those talk-talk-talk fiestas in which the characters do plenty of empty posturing but very little-aside from a brief spurt from the gorilla (and even that is disappointingly cut short)-actually happens.

qmtv The story starts OK, we meet the crazy mad doctor and his assistant, and the young woman the doctor is infatuated with, her famous piano playing father (the monster), and her boyfriend. All decent actors. I especially liked some of the crazy acting by the doctor's assistant. The problem here is the story and the dialogue. It's just boring and seriously implausible. The doctor is annoying the young woman by sending her flowers, because she resembles his late wife. Her father goes to the doctor to put an end to it. The doctor knocks out the father and injects him with a serum that turns him into the elephant man. Now the doctor is blackmailing the father, by exchanging a cure for the disease for his daughters hand in marriage. Side not, also, I believe the doctor tells his assistant that he killed his wife because she was having an affair with someone else. And also, the doctor is not a doctor, he actually killed the real doctor and took his place. But he's still doing research on some rare disease that he's the only one that can cure. There's also a man in a gorilla suite. And a gorilla in a man's suite (the doctor's butler).This thing is a freaking mess. There's a scene where the fake doctor explains to his assistant that he killed his wife, and killed the real doctor and took his place. The assistant freaks out and tells him she's going to the police. He tells her to shut up and get back to work. She calms down and goes back to work. Later when she goes to bed, the fake doctor lets out the gorilla from the cage to attack the assistant. We see the gorilla open the assistant's door, she screams. Let's not forget the dog. The lab dog comes to the rescue of the assistant. Next scene the assistant is in the lab with the doctor like nothing happened. This is some full on garbage. I don't care what time period this was made in.OK, the butler gets knocked out while trying to kill or tie down the assistant. The elephant guy is wrestling with the doctor who is holding a gun. The gun goes off. The doctor is dead. The assistant unelephants the piano player. Next scene the piano player is playing a concert, the young woman and her boyfriend, and the assistant are happily watching the show. The Freaking End.I give this movie a D, or 3 stars. Mainly for the acting and the music. The story is garbage. The dialogue goes along with the story, crap. This could have been a decent little film. The film makers had no idea what they were doing. They had a story and ran with it. Nobody said, wait maybe we can find another story or find some other angles.I recommend instead to watch Bela Lugosi's best film "White Zombie", or "Messiah of Evil", "Footprints on the Moon", "Last Man on Earth". Better to watch these films a hundred times than watch The Monster Maker. The only way to watch the Monster Maker and enjoy it is if you approach it as a comedy where the filmmakers are involved in the joke. Thank you, good night.

amosduncan_2000 For fans of the odd, PRC delivers again. In a sort of a preview of his Al Adamson days, Naish plays an obsessed Dr. Markoff (if you want good care, mark him off) with one thing and one thing only on his mind. Actually, what's interesting about this movie is how the low budget forces the filmmakers to boil all the plot down to it's absolute basics. Why does the not bad looking nurse go for Markoff? Well, nobody ever said human beings made sense. If your looking to get silly, as Bob Dylan once sang, you could hardly do better. Speaking of Dylan, the plot is not unlike his song, "Seven Curses." And what did happen to Steve once the movie was over? He was only trying to be a good employee, which is about the closest to a decent instinct anyone character has in this movie.

TheFinalAlias If you want to enjoy a film which fills out all criteria for the MST3k treatment, but which still doesn't deserve such a heinous fate, there is nothing better for a rainy night's entertainment than the 1944 Poverty Row anti-classic 'The Monster Maker'.It's cheap, silly, dreadfully Un-PC and I may have seen a picture of it the last time I looked up the word 'derivative'. But it's a joy to watch and has never worn out it's welcome. The film boasts a set-up right out of Freund's 'Mad Love'(1935): A mad surgeon who frequently attends a stage-performance falls madly in love with a woman, begins stalking her and sending her gifts constantly, but she soon is forced into his clutches by a medical ailment befalling a loved one and the Doctor turns him into a monster of sorts. However, whereas in most Poverty Row films they simply dumbed down events they would derive from other, better films, here they make things even more twisted and unpleasant than the original! While the film has nothing as fantastic as 'Mad Love's transplanted hand and impersonation of a resuscitated dead man, it has a truly seedy and unpleasant feel. Here, the Doctor, who calls himself 'Markoff'(played by J. Carrol Naish, giving a performance obviously patterned after Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol in 'Mad Love' but just as enjoyably perverse)is a genuinely twisted individual with no redeeming qualities, he lusts after the daughter of a pianist named Lawrence because she resembles his dead wife(See 'The Mummy' 1932), but this is not a touching or sentimental tragic romance that was not meant to be, no, it turns out his 'wife' was his employer's wife, who he murdered to win her over, she refused, so he disfigured her with Acromegaly so no man would ever want her, so she killed herself and he then impersonated his employer(see 'Maniac' 1934) thereon, making him not a true mad scientist, just a madman who knows how to spread diseases, so you can't even admire him for his scientific genius like you can other evil scientist villains. He is covered up for by his female aide who secretly loves him who is also a mad scientist(see 'The Devil Doll'1936) but whose love he does not return. This is one sick individual.And it gets worse, after 'Markoff' goes too far in his advances, the girl's father(the always reliable Ralph Morgan)goes to see him, and is knocked out and injected with Acromegaly. This causes him to become disfigured(He looks very much like deformed character actor Rondo Hatton, who probably modeled for this) gradually. He spends his days hidden in his room with a locked door, having his dinner brought to him secretly(see 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde', yes, the book and not any of the film adaptations), he still takes joy in playing the piano, though, until he is intruded upon and his hideous face is glimpsed while playing(see 'The Phantom of the Opera') and eventually, Lawrence is forced to bargain with 'Markoff' in return for curing his disfigurement(see 'The Raven' 1935; for both the disfiguring blackmail plot and daughter angle). 'Markoff' also tries to kill his assistant with a gorilla he sets loose(see 'Murders in the Rue Morgue').I could go on, but I think I've made it clear how much of a cornucopia of stolen ideas this film is. But what's also amazing, is how much the film may itself have inspired others. The scenes of Lawrence hiding his face and having his meals brought to him secretly were imitated in 1958's 'The Fly' and the EC comic's story 'RX Death', the 'secretly being injected with Acromegaly' scenes obviously inspired a similar sequence in 'Tarantula', and the 1987 film 'Phantom of Death' also features a pianist who acquires a slowly disfiguring disease. So for a film as derivative as it is, 'Monster Maker' also gives as much as it receives.What's also disturbing is that, ignoring the silly trappings like the Gorilla, the accelerated effectiveness of the Acromegaly and the complex back story for 'Markoff', this is all disturbingly plausible. A man deliberately infecting people with debilitating diseases could easily happen, and in fact, since Lawrence poses no threat to anyone at all, one sees him not as a 'Monster', but as what he would be in the real world; A dying man going through hell at the hands of a malicious madman posing as a doctor who mocks him with hope for a cure. And keep in mind that this was advertised as a horror film with promotional art implying Lawrence was the villain and on a rampage, even though he's a good guy with a disease that infects hundreds of people in the real world. That's sick, and worse if you imagine them actually casting Rondo Hatton in the role. Pretty heady stuff for a Poverty Row film that barely lasts an hour, and more disturbing than most of what Universal was producing at the time. Good acting also helps. Naish is brilliant as the slimy surgeon, probably one of the most irredeemably evil characters in 40's horror films. Morgan elicits pity for Lawrence very easily, as he loses everything he has that makes him happy one by one. The rest of the cast is good too, no standouts, but everyone seems natural and talk like real people(well, mostly).No classic, not even up there with other Poverty Row horror films like the disturbing 'Bluebeard'(1944) or the dreamlike 'Strangler of the Swamp'(1946) but definite proof that Poverty Row could make seedy and tasteless horror films as well as anyone else at the time.~