Rating: 
Summary: Retromedia continues to champion mediocrity with Manster DVD
Review: While never quite as bad as an Alpha or Madacy DVD, Retromedia's titles usually seem to underwhelm for one reason or another (their Faceless Monster transfer is a disastrous must-to-avoid!!). In this case, it's not the movie's fault. The Manster, while hardly a great film, is a perennial sleaze/horror favorite, particularly, it seems, of anyone who was creeped-out by it as a kid on some late-night horror show. The wonderfully nauseating pre-credit sequence sets the tone, as a hairy monster attacks bathing geishas, splattering the rice paper divider with blood. In his mountaintop laboratory, the quite mad Dr. Suzuki keeps his hideously disfigured, slobbering wife Emiko in a cage, and is forced to shoot his ape-like mutant brother Kenji, an "experiment that didn't work out." These opening scenes establish a lurid, unwholesome atmosphere that blankets the entire movie like a sickening cloud. Happily married, responsible foreign correspondent Larry Stanford (Peter Dyneley) arrives to interview Dr. Suzuki, who inoculates him with an experimental serum. Larry immediately goes off the deep end: he stops shaving, starts drinking to excess, acting surly, neglecting his job, and lounging around in hot mineral baths with Dr. Suzuki, his secretary Tara, and a bevy of fetching geisha girls (a scene played for Dean Martin-ish double entendres). Larry starts feeling a strange pain in his shoulder, hair periodically grows on his hand, and his wife shows up to collect him, only to find him hot and heavy with Tara. There is an actually quite effective scene where Larry visits a temple filled with scary demon statues and kills a singing monk. Sliding further downhill, he starts hanging around in the street, randomly assaulting stray women, while back at the lab Dr. Suzuki traces Larry's metamorphosis on a line graph. Finally we get the infamous, unforgettable scene where Larry discovers an eye growing out of his shoulder, which quickly matures into a second head that looks like one of those carved coconuts you see in souvenir shops. The rapidly mutating "manster" arrives at the lab, kills Dr. Suzuki, grabs Tara, and heads toward the active volcano crater at the top of the mountain. I won't ruin the climax; suffice to say it was a real wow when we were monster-crazed adolescents, but packs a bit less punch today. The Manster is a bit serious, perhaps even dry, in tone for a C-movie of its type (some reviewers have suggested a fairly convincing psychosexual subtext), but moves along at a brisk pace, and offers some of the earliest instances of overtly twisted, "gross-out" imagery in a genre that was at the time still heavily dependent on goofy rubber monsters and wholesome heros and heroines. A proto-sleaze mini-classic, prefiguring the full-blown gore movies of just a couple of years later, but enjoyable on a camp level as well.
While this DVD definitely qualifies as "good enough for now," it leaves me feeling like there's still a better version possible (there was an official United Artists laserdisc edition years ago). The good news is that the source print shows very little damage, only some light speckling/blemishing, and the tonal values, brightness, and contrast are generally very good to excellent. But many scenes look a bit washed-out and lacking in highlight detail, especially in comparison to my VHS copies (which are admittedly both rather dark), and the overall image suffers slightly from a grainy, dupey look. Essentially a decent transfer of a pretty clean 16mm TV print. Not terrible by any means, but not as crisp and detailed as we're getting used to (spoiled?) with DVD, and not what I'd consider a definitive, must-have release. Maybe I'm too picky; if you just want to re-live the Nightmare Theatre experience, this will probably do fine. The only extras are six chapter stops and a still "gallery" consisting of four B&W glossies and an ad mat. At least there's no annoying "Drive-In Madness" featurette. I haven't seen Alpha's DVD edition, but would assume it's worse. Haven't seen Sinister Cinema's DVD-R, either, but would assume it's at least this good or better. As they say, you get what you pay for. All in all, OK for the price, but not a definitive, never-need-to-upgrade edition.
Rating:
Summary: 'Raindrops keep falling on my heads...'
Review: Written, directed and produced by George P. Breakston, who's probably more known for his role as Beezy in the Andy Hardy movies throughout the 30's and early 40's, The Manster (1962) aka Kyofu, aka Nightmare, aka The Split, aka The Two-Headed Monster, has the distinction, as far as I know, of being the first film to deal with the issues associated with a man having two heads, appearing some ten years before the better known and definitely more schlocky vehicle starring Ray Milland and Rosie Grier, The Thing with Two Heads (1972).Starring the runner up in the Lon Chaney Jr. look-a-like contest Peter Dyneley, whose other notable roles include the voice of Jeff Tracy in the Supermarionation Thunderbirds series from the 60's, also appearing in such films as Chato's Land (1972) and K is for Killing (1974), as foreign news correspondent Larry Stanford. Also appearing is Jane Hylton, whom I recognize from Circus of Horrors (1960) as Linda Stanford, Peter's somewhat wooden and estranged wife, Tetsu Nakamura as Dr. Robert Suzuki, and, in her first and only role, the comely Terri Zimmern as the doctor's assistant, Tara. The film plays out in Japan, and starts off by showing some women bathing and such, oh yeah, and then being attacked by a mysterious, extremely hairy man-creature, oh no. Now, we don't actually get to see the attack, but given the blood-curdling nature of the screaming, we can assume things didn't end well for these ladies. Segue way to what appears to be a hunting shack on a mountain where Dr. Suzuki and his assistant Tara are discussing an experiment that escaped the previous night and has now returned. The good doctor acknowledges that his man-thing is too dangerous, and proceeds to the cavernous basement of the shack (it's built on a mountain, so I guess he's utilizing the caves for his laboratory) and shoots the man-beast and dumps the body into a convenient lava pit. Now here comes foreign news correspondent Larry Stanford, trekking up the mountain to the shack. Apparently his boss arranged a meeting with the doctor, fishing for a juicy story of sorts. The doctor informs Larry that he's working on theories of evolution, and takes a keen interest in the reporter, as he decides that Larry has just the right characteristics for his experiments (if that includes smoking like a chimney and drinking himself silly, yes, doctor, he's your man). Anyway, the doctor slips Larry the proverbial mickey, and then injects him with something. Larry awakens with a doozy of a headache, and leaves, but not before agreeing to meet up with the doctor again in Tokyo. Next we cut to Larry at his newspaper, and we learn that his days of traveling the world, reporting on various events are coming to an end as he's soon leaving to return to New York to settle down with his wife, Linda. Peter gets a call from the doctor, and they hang out in a Geisha house, where Larry gets schnockered good on saki and has a grand old time. Larry has so much fun he puts off his returning home to New York to hang out with Dr. Suzuki and pitches a little woo with the doctor's assistant, Tara. Larry also begins suffering from pains in his shoulder and arm, and we know this has something to do with the secret enzyme shot the doctor administered not too long ago. Soon Larry's wife shows up from New York, worried about his not coming back when he was supposed to, and she finds that Larry is not quite himself. Larry tells her they're through, and that he's going to stay in Japan with the much more attractive Tara (who is beginning to feel a bit guilty about her involvement in Dr. Suzuki's part of the experiment on Larry). Soon Larry's hand and arm changes, getting all hairy and claw-like, and his shoulder begins to hurt more and more. What's with this pain in the shoulder? How about the fact that he has an eyeball growing out of there? Wouldn't that be something worth getting checked out? Maybe it's not covered in the HMO...anyway, we learn from the doctor that Larry is evolving into a species never before seen on Earth...this should be fun...given what I've seen, I think devolving would be the more correct term. Larry begins to flip out, sprouting a second head, and murdering a few Japanese locals along the way, while the police become involved as they start hunting this homicidal manic haunting the streets of Tokyo. Things eventually come to a...ahem, head (pun intended) as the chase for Larry and his permanent buddy increases. What happens next? Let's just say Larry and his new buddy come to a 'parting of ways'... I rather enjoyed this movie, despite a few shortcomings...the most noticeable being given the dangerous and secret nature of Dr. Suzuki's experiments, I am unsure why he let Larry run around Tokyo during his transformation...I would have probably kept him locked up, but then, what do I know? And there's a pretty clunky sub-plot about Dr. Suzuki, displaying classic mad scientist symptoms with his cold and calculating methods, later feeling remorse and regret about his deeds, based on nothing more than the continual harping from his assistant Tara...but whatever, this movie was still a lot of fun. With its 72 minute run time, the pacing was pretty quick, and the makeup wasn't too bad. I didn't get to see as much of it as I would have liked, but since this was a lower budget production, it was probably best not to highlight it too much, as it may have displayed inherent flaws. Retromedia Entertainment presents a passable print, with some noticeable deterioration, but given the price of the DVD, I wasn't expecting a whole lot in this area. There is also a special feature included in the form of a rather meager photo gallery (three or four photos). Cookieman108
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