The Manster (1962)

I knew it was too good to be true.  After the excellent Hands of Steel, here comes Pure Terror with another one of those boring, talky early 60s sci-fi horror/sci-fi flicks.

Larry, an American foreign news correspondent, is in Japan on his latest assignment to interview the eccentric Dr. Suzuki.  Before you know it though, Dr. Suzuki has injected Larry with some experimental drug and Larry is growing an extra head out of his shoulder and going around killing people.

Don't get me wrong.  That part is cool.  The problem with this movie is that I have pretty much summed up everything worth mentioning about this movie in just under 50 words.  And yet the movie is, like, 70 minutes long or something.

So in between what passes for action or even plot in this movie, you get the standard scenes of people standing there in a room expositionin' at one another.  There's also this subplot about how Larry's marriage is on the rocks, so you get some heated phone conversations.  Rather than being some comical misunderstanding where Larry is cleared in the end, actually he is over in Japan getting drunk and cavorting with women, the slug.

So I don't know if you are supposed to relate to Larry, or feel bad for him or what, because he is kinda sleazy (and murders people and has a monster head growing out of his shoulder).  Who are we rooting for here?

Well, this movie was terrible, and now a picture is forming in my mind to explain why I gave up watching this set for so long.  Disc 2 was a complete wash, with garbage like The Thirsty Dead and (shudder) The Werewolf of Washington, and Disc 3 is not looking much better.