Kindly, absent-minded professor Emmanuel Hildren (Peter Cushing) brings home the skeleton of what he thinks was a prehistoric man. His evil brother James (Christopher Lee) runs an asylum. Things get complicated but by the end of the movie there are two maniacs and a monster running around loose!
This is a slow but OK horror movie. The script is kind of silly. Most of the first hour is all talk and the revelation of what the skeleton really is is absolutely ridiculous--but Cushing manages to put it through. It's more of an old-fashioned horror movie than the blood and gore movies Hammer was putting out at the same time. The rating is PG and there are only two bloody (but tame) throat slashings. Also the look you get of the monster actually made me jump. I loved it the first time I saw it on TV (edited) back in the early 1980s but, unfortunately, it doesn't hold up on a second viewing. The plot was a whopper. I could handle it the first time but the second time around I thought it was just dumb.
Good acting all around helps. Cushing and Lee (playing brothers!) are just great--but I think those two were incapable of giving a bad performance. Lorna Heilbron was also good as Cushing'd daughter Penelope. She has do a complete turnabout with her character halfway through the movie and she pulls it off.
Worth seeing for horror fans--especially people who like old-fashioned ones.
This is a slow but OK horror movie. The script is kind of silly. Most of the first hour is all talk and the revelation of what the skeleton really is is absolutely ridiculous--but Cushing manages to put it through. It's more of an old-fashioned horror movie than the blood and gore movies Hammer was putting out at the same time. The rating is PG and there are only two bloody (but tame) throat slashings. Also the look you get of the monster actually made me jump. I loved it the first time I saw it on TV (edited) back in the early 1980s but, unfortunately, it doesn't hold up on a second viewing. The plot was a whopper. I could handle it the first time but the second time around I thought it was just dumb.
Good acting all around helps. Cushing and Lee (playing brothers!) are just great--but I think those two were incapable of giving a bad performance. Lorna Heilbron was also good as Cushing'd daughter Penelope. She has do a complete turnabout with her character halfway through the movie and she pulls it off.
Worth seeing for horror fans--especially people who like old-fashioned ones.