Herman Cohen's "How to Make a Monster" was not truly a sequel to either "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" nor "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein," though both were present for the movie-within-a-movie "Werewolf Meets Frankenstein," Gary Conway again the muscular man made monster, Gary Clarke replacing Michael Landon under the hairy makeup, Thomas Browne Henry the good natured director. Robert H. Harris stars as greasepaint wizard Pete Dumond, delivering the studio's monsters for 25 glorious years, only to be unceremoniously dumped to make way for light entertainment and musicals with pretty girls, which oddly enough actually happened with the Beach Party series (I wonder if Universal's Jack Pierce ever saw this, forced out for his painstakingly detailed methods after 31 years of service). Dumond decides the best way to get even with the two new studio heads is to kill them, using a new compound in his makeup base that makes the young actors subservient to his will. The Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein commit one murder apiece and no memory of what they've done, while the maestro himself (wearing a close facsimile of John Beal's guise from United Artists' 1957 "The Vampire") knocks off an unsuspecting security guard disguised as a caveman. The picture starts off well with a look behind the scenes at a typical 50s studio, similar to 1932's Bela Lugosi mystery "The Death Kiss," but after the initial killing the usual Cohen police procedural takes up most of the screen time and drains away any thrills (the burning question remains what studio was used, looks more like the 1940s). The climactic reel was shot in color, offering a chance to see much of Paul Blaisdell's work go up in flames, but it's not enough to make up for the dull stretches, the promise inherent in the premise going unfulfilled. Robert H. Harris almost walks through his part, never once going over the top, not even when the character obviously loses his marbles at the end, believable but lacking in presence. John Ashley would soon star in Astor's "Frankenstein's Daughter," which padded out its running time with two musical numbers but didn't skimp on monster action (Gary Clarke would feature in Astor's "Missile to the Moon" before joining Conway in television). The ubiquitous Morris Ankrum shows up late as one of the Keystone Kops, and Robert Shayne gets one scene as Clarke's agent. One forward looking line of dialogue alludes to AIP's current production "Horrors of the Black Museum," which would indeed be Cohen's next, relocating to England for October filming, and as was typical of the producer, centers on an older villain manipulating a younger assistant against his will.
Review of How to Make a Monster
