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The Neanderthal Man
USA 1953
produced by Jack Pollexfen, Aubrey Wisberg for Global Productions
directed by Edward André Dupont
starring Robert Shayne, Joyce Terry, Richard Crane, Doris Merrick, Beverly Garland, Robert Long, Tandra Quinn, Lee Morgan, Eric Colmar, Dick Rich, Robert Easton, Frank Gerstle, Anthony Jochim, Marshall Bradford, William Fawcett, Tom Monroe, Robert Bray, Crane Whitley
written by Aubrey Wisberg, Jack Pollexfen, music by Albert Glasser, special effects by David Commons, Jack Rabin
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Called in by a local game warden (Robert Long), biologist Dr. Harkness
(Richard Crane) visits a backwoods village to investigate the freak
sightings of a sabre toothed tiger - and to his amazement, he eventually
finds and kills the creature ... but before he can show it to anyone else,
the carcass disappears. Nobody questions Harkness's theories more than
local scientist professor Groves (Robert Shayne), and even his own
daughter (Joyce Terry) - who has long fallen in love with Harkness - is
surprised by his insistence - but what neither she nor anybody else knows
is that the professor has secretly developed a serum that will return
creatures to an earlier state of their evolution, a serum which he has so
far tested on cats ... with success, obviously. Now of course, it doesn't take the professor long
before he gets the idea to test his serum on himself, and suddenly he
turns into a Neanderthal, and not only that but a murdering one. When
going through the professor's things, his daughter and Harkness find out
that he is indeed the Neanderthal man killing neighbourhood folks, and
they figure he might have gone after his fiancée Ruth (Doris Merrick) ...
but when they arrive at the hotel she stays in, the Neanderthal professor
has already abducted her. Soon enough, a hunting party has cornered the
Neanderthal professor and his fiancée in a cave, but she and Harkness can
help him escape ... but of course, he runs right into one of his sabre
toothed tigers and is killed. So-so drive-in fare - on one hand
it's got a crazy concept that features many leaps of reason, a monster
that looks much more like an ape in clothes than one would expect a
Neanderthal to look like, and a very formulaic plot ... which are all
things one has come to expect and love from 1950's monster movies. On the
other hand though, the film is slightly on the dull side, fails to fill
its formulaic plot with any real highlights to make it stand out. Fans of
the genre will of course still like it, but it's quite a few feet short of
being a cult classic.
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