Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
Will the real monster please stand up? That’s the question I asked myself last night while watching the 1958 American International film “How to Make a Monster” directed by Herbert L. Strock. The principal players are Robert H. Harris as Pete Dumond (the bully makeup artist); Paul Brinegar as Rivero (Dumond’s servile assistant); Gary Conway as Tony Mantell (teenage Frankenstein); Gary Clarke as Larry Drake (teenage Werewolf).
Dumond is an aging prima donna makeup artist specializing in movie monster creation who gets taken down a few pegs and basically fired by new studio executives who tell him monster movies are passe and they are all in on the new craving audiences have for musicals and comedies.
Dumond takes exception to this and he takes revenge by stealing a mind-control chemical (grape Nehi) that is definitely not FDA-approved and mixing it with makeup for Drake and Mantell while hypnotizing them into knocking off the enemies who are destroying his career.
This, of course, shows overweening pride (also known as hubris) which is a common film attitude we got from Greek mythology. One obvious, relevant connection is the episode in which Odysseus blinds Polyphemus by poking his eye out with a knitting needle and then taunts him for being unable to find his golf balls. This is where the idea came from for the scene in which teenage Frankenstein collides with the film’s only black bit player Paulene Myers (Millie) who remembers him because of a “missing” eye.
Anyway, Dumond is forever cutting down his assistant, Rivero who gets really nervous when the police browbeat him about the 12 or so murders that happen in the studio lot café, which is a mistake because the cook never cleans the grill and most customers die from food poisoning.
The part that puzzled me about this movie was towards the end when Dumond has been evicted from his office and he’s cleaning up. He’s packing a few things and then looks at a couple of items that look like they could be incriminating pieces of evidence that could lead the cops to him.
He just tosses them into a wastepaper basket in his makeup room. Excuse me! The makeup and LSD that he used to hypnotize the teenage monsters to kill for him are in plain sight? Hey, I’m not the only one who thought of that. After I got the idea last night, this morning I saw a full-length YouTube of the movie. See the comments below it. One of them says, “Had Pete not thrown away that stuff he could’ve gotten away.”
So, to return to the opening line of this so-called review, who’s the real monster in this film? Right, it’s the sketch Svengoolie made of his self-portrait, turning it into the face of a werewolf!
I thought the movie was fair. I give it a 3/5 Shrilling Chicken Rating.
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