Well, how do you make a monster?

The ingredients are fairly simple, but differ according to the era you are in.  In the 1950s, creating a monster was as easy as pasting fur to a man's face or applying a latex mask or even painting a few high quality cardboard boxes together, stacking them, and painting them silver.  Nowadays, it's different....you need a computer with at least forty gigabytes, several sound/video software packages that cost in the realm of nine hundred dollars EACH, and a lot of free time.  Both of these methods take time, and still after all the effort in the world may look extremely fake.

Which goes to prove that no matter how much you put into your monster, they are both still judged the same:  on idea alone.  And thus, we go to one of the independent companies of the latter part of this century, American International Pictures.  Or "AIP" for short.

If you have ever stayed up late at night, dared watch a B&W movie, or have ever sat down on Halloween and fell asleep with the TV on, there is a 90% chance that you have seen an AIP production.  Their movies are as infamous for their titles and are often used as examples of pure cheesy schlock:

--The Beast With 1,000,000 Eyes!
--The She Creature
--Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow
--The Amazing Colossal Man
--War of the Colossal Beast
--Earth Vs. The Spider
--Blood of Dracula
--I Was a Teenage Frankenstein
--I Was a Teenage Werewolf (with Michael Landon, fittingly)

And the last two on that list are truly the focus of "How to Make a Monster."  In the 1950s, while AIP was looking for a new trend to base their 'booming' drive-in business with, co-producer Samuel Arkoff took a chance and made "Teenage Werewolf."  Since it was different and quite possibly was related to "Rebel Without A Cause," the film was a hit.  So, the "I Was A Teenage...." trend took off, evolved into a bunch of schlock with teenage themes like "Giant Gila Monster" and "Crawling Hand" and thus the 1950s was truly, truly born.

I think tailfins had something to do with it as well, but that's another tangent to get lost in.

Anyway, "How To Make A Monster" is a mixture.  Part satire of AIP itself, part monster movie in the vein of a "Teenage Frankenstein Vs. Teenage Werewolf," and part murder mystery that somehow works within it's hour and seventeen minutes.  And it's an uneven mixture that probably signals what it portrays: an end to the schlock monster features into AIP's next venture, Roger Corman's Poe flicks.

See?  Roger Corman is in EVERY schlock movie review.  Like I'd lie.

"HTMAM" starts off with a makeup artist getting the sack.  Yup, right after AIP's last monster feature, "Teenage Frankenstein Vs. Teenage Werewolf," it's going under new management.  So, makeup artist Drummond convinces his wimpy sidekick Rivero to help him kill the new management by taking the Teenage Monster actors under hypnosis with a drugged foundation cream, dressing them up in their monster alter-egos and having THEM take out the management.  Which they do.  Except for one case where Drummond himself submits himself to the process, turning himself into a Middle-Aged Hunchback to take out one.  Of course, it would be easier just to shoot them, but what the hell.  I guess AIP wanted the fame of the two "Teenage" flicks to carry this one.

With no proof, the police are stumped but the nervousness of Rivero (who just wants a peaceful life...you know, like a mindless sidekick) makes the police and the increasingly demented Drummond suspicious.  Drummond then takes the two actors and Rivero up to his house in the hills/forest/country.  Suddenly, the film changes to color as Drummond reveals his 'children'--the creatures he's created for all of AIP's flicks, from "It Conquered the World" to "She Creature" to "Invasion of the Saucermen."  Taking Rivero into another room under the guise of getting drinks, Drummond dispatches Rivero in bloody red Technicolor then explains his intentions to the two actors.  Namely, entering their heads into his little exhibits, with their alter-egos's faces.  But, due to his carelessness a candle tips over, sitting the whole place aflame.  The police show up JUST in time to save the actors and Drummond goes up trying futility protect his children.

THE END.  OR IS IT??

No, wait, it is.

"How to Make a Monster" is a mixture, and even through the "Teenage Frankenstein vs. Teenage Werewolf" movie is a McGuffin "HTMAM" works.  Meaning I was able to sit through it without turning it off.  Despite some of the movies of this era being turgid and somewhat dull thanks to padding, "HTMAM" moves quite well.  The last ten minutes in Color is quite a trick by AIP, which was used again in "War of the Colossal Beast" and various others.  This method is quite shocking when you first see it, but it acts like a hologram....bringing characters from two-dimensional B&W to three-dimensional Color, bright as life and possibly twice as ugly.  And the acting, if I may say, is par for the course.  No bad acting necessarily except from the two actors (one of whom, Gary Conway, who went on to be the captain in "Land of the Giants") and kudos to Robert H. Harris, who played Drummond's madness in a steadily increasing performance.  It's almost sneaky but believable at once, from eccentric to downright dementia.  Kudos.

RATING:  Not half bad, but hardly a fitting end to the "Teenage Monsters" trilogy.  Well, at least they could have included the female vampire from "Blood of Dracula."  Three Stars out of Four, that one star missing for dropping the biggest matchup of them all.....TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN VS. TEENAGE WEREWOLF!