This movie review was originally written for Unsung Horrors, edited by Eric McNaughton. I have a few more reviews in the book, but there are dozens upon dozens of reviews, written by We Belong Dead magazine contributors, sharing their passions for those neglected horror movies you should know about.
Watch out! The Manster and his mad companion Dr. Faustus are terrorizing (your city). This thrill show will be the shock experience of your life. Suspense like Hitchcock! Mood like Tennessee Williams! See The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus and The Manster at the Bijou Theatre, NOW! (15 second radio spot copy from the Lopert Pictures Corporation Double Bill Pressbook, The Master Suspense Thrill Show! for The Manster and The Horror Chamber of Doctor Faustus)
Okay, so what if Psychotronic described reporter Larry Stanford’s (played by Peter Dyneley) unwelcomed second head as a “carved coconut”? And so what if Bill Warren doesn’t much care for the movie in his so-big-it-could-give-you-a-hernia-reading-it book, Keep Watching the Skies! (He flatly states it “stunk.”) And, well, yes, there’s that dreadful, awfully written monologue given by Matthews (Norman Van Hawley), Stanford’s newspaper boss, who, after the movie should have ended, reflects with “who really did all these things” and “he was just an average joe” musings. Groan.
And I suppose we can’t easily ignore the stagey acting by Larry’s wife in every scene she’s in (played by Jane Hylton, Dyneley’s real-life wife), but especially when she ruins a perfectly good close-up by telling the Police Superintendent (Jerry Ito of Mothra and Message from Space) “when you find him, will you remember something has happened to him, something he can’t control.”
Sure, you bet. Something that makes him kill again and again and grow hair in the worst places, like some Dr. Jekyll strung along for an acid ride with Mr. Hyde. Only this time he’s dressed in a trench coat splattered with blood and has a homicidal second head calling the shots while his first one downs quite a few of the more intoxicating kind.
But let’s ignore all of that and examine the reasons you should see this movie.
The Manster, Half Man-Half Monster (also titled The Split in Britain) was released to U.S. theaters in 1962, on a double bill with The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus (which the so-darn-picky Bill Warren found “evocative” and “poetic”). A science fiction movie with horror overtone, The Manster is a low budget, noir-ish looking schlock propelled by a crazed Japanese scientist meddling with nature-flavored tokusatsu body horror.
Certainly any monsterkid worth his electrodes will vividly remember the impact of seeing that horror’s result: first, the unblinking eye peering up from Stanford’s shoulder; soon after followed by that homicidal, hairy, coconut-head sprouting from the same spot. You can bet monsterkids everywhere reacted to this in either of two ways, of course: (1) wishing for an eye to pop up on their shoulders, too, so they could bring it to show-and-tell at school (Munsters and Addams Family chit-chat could only go so far, you know); or (2), for the more squeamish among them, clapping hands to their mouths, hoping that the screams they promised they’d never make hadn’t awakened their sleeping parents who had warned, in no uncertain terms, to NOT stay up late and watch THOSE movies on television.
Yes, The Manster is one of THOSE movies that epitomizes 1950s horror. …
The Manster (1959)
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