An imaginative low-budget movie with a cautionary tale that explores questions of identity and what it means to be human
Produced by George P. Breakston
Screenplay by Walter J. Sheldon
Story by George P. Breakston
Music by Hiroki Ogawa
Cinematography: David Mason
Edited by Kenneth G. Crane
Production company: Shaw-Breakston Enterprises
Running time: 72 minutes
Cast
Peter Dyneley: Stanford
Jane Hylton: Linda Stanford
Tetsu Nakamura: Dr. Robert Suzuki
Terri Zimmern: Tara
Norman Van Hawley: Ian Matthews (as Van Hawley)
Jerry Itô: Police Supt. Aida
Toyoko Takechi: Emiko Suzuki
Kenzo Kuroki: Genji Suzuki
Alan Tarlton: Dr. H.B. Jennsen
Shinpei Takagi: Temple Priest
George Wyman: Monster
A mad scientist!
Experimental drugs!
Two-headed test subjects!
Horribly mutated human guinea pigs!
What on earth is going on?
Trailer
Before the credits even begin to roll, let’s consider the title we have before us: THE MANSTER. Encapsulated within this title we have two concepts which are central to the film – MAN & MONSTER. At what point does a man stop being a man and instead becomes a monster? Does a monster in fact lurk deep within the heart of every man? If so, what forces contribute to bringing that monster to the forefront? These and other questions will be answered in…..
The Manster!
Spoilers follow below.....
Larry Stanford is an American foreign news correspondent working for World Press who has been stationed in Japan for the last few years. Unfortunately, his work has been having a detrimental effect on his marriage as his wife has remained back in the United States.
Larry is a real regular kinda’ guy with a manly name who now finds himself faced with having to make a real manly decision – to decide what is important in his life: his wife and his marriage, or his work. However, before he can return to the US and repair the cracks forming in the façade of his relationship with his wife, Larry has just….one…..more…..assignment….
Larry is to conduct an interview with the world-renowned and somewhat reclusive scientist, Dr. Robert Suzuki who lives and works on a mountain situated in a volcanic region. He has been secretly conducting research that could hold the answer to the cause of evolution on Earth.
What the unsuspecting Larry doesn’t know is that Dr. Robert Suzuki conducts himself in a most unethical manner by having subjected two members of his own family to his experimental enzyme treatment, with disastrous results.
After coming “all the way from Tokyo and halfway up the mountainside in a taxi they saved from the ark, and then by making like a mountain goat,” Larry gets his interview with Dr. Suzuki.
During the interview, Dr. Suzuki begins to explain his work involving the “principles of existence.” Before proceeding, he asks Larry some rather pointed and impertinent personal questions such as how old he is, whether he has had any major illnesses and whether he has sought other companionship while being away from his wife. Suzuki then pours Larry a “local version” of scotch. Boy, you can see where this is all heading – NO, not in THAT way!
While the drugged scotch takes effect, Suzuki talks about cosmic rays coming out of space, and how “every thousand years or so they cause a mutation, cause some animal to give birth to a slightly different species.” Suzuki then goes onto expound his theory “as to the cause of this changing species, this mutation.” He believes that evolutionary change can be produced “not with radiation…. but chemically.”
While the doctor goes off to retrieve some photos of his fungus experiments, Larry falls into a deep sleep. Suzuki informs his (damn, she’s gorgeous!) assistant, Tara that Larry is the ideal candidate for his next round of evolutionary experiments. Tara raises an important ethical question when she asks Suzuki, “Do you have the right to do this to him?” After all, the others had volunteered. Suzuki replies that “this is for science, for human knowledge” and that “what happens to one man doesn't make any difference.” Tara doesn’t object any further as she had forgotten to care about anybody a long time ago. Suzuki then injects an enzyme into Larry's shoulder.
When Larry wakes up, he is unaware of what has transpired. Nor is he aware of what direction his life is about to take when he unwittingly accepts Suzuki’s invitation to spend the next week vacationing with him around Japan, just “filling in time” till he gets back to New York and his wife, Linda.
Forget the not falling for “one more story routine” from his boss or the “no more traveling” and of making “a real start all over again” declarations to his wife. We, together with Linda will learn that Larry “might not be the same person” now that Suzuki’s concoctions are bringing monstrous aspects of his character and personality to the surface.
Ah, yes – Japan! A very exotic location in the minds of mid-20th century Americans. Mortal enemies just 15 years previously. Now a land of inscrutable mystery full of everything that’s dangerously foreign to the unwary upright US citizen. So, watch out Larry, old boy!
The setting of male-centric manga-minded mid-20th Century Japan will also play its part in stoking the fires of malevolent masculinity in Larry as he allows himself to be led about in endless bouts of Saki-saturated womanizing and carousing.
Larry’s work, his marriage and other responsibilities are quickly washed away by copious amounts of alcohol and soothing mineral baths, and altogether forgotten within the embraces of the alluring Tara, an” exceptionally beautiful woman” who’s “not unwilling to have a little adventure now and then.”
Can we just simply blame Larry’s behaviour on Suzuki’s experiment? One moment he is proclaiming his love to his wife and the next moment he’s up to his armpits in all things decadent without any thought to his job or his wife. Is the change merely the result of the enzyme treatment or is there something within Larry that would have caused him to behave so abominably despite the injection he received?
Any empathy we may have had for Larry is quickly obliterated when he sexually assaults Tara at the bathhouse, and this is achieved simply by implication rather than the unnecessary graphic details that would be offered up to audiences these days in modern films. Perhaps biological and evolutionary factors may play their part in determining how people behave, but you have to wonder at what point does personal responsibility come into the picture.
Another factor that plays a part in shaping the way people are is presented by the character of Tara. It is almost inexplicable why Tara develops feelings for this brute of a man. What we do know is that she was traumatized as a child, which adversely warped her emotional makeup.
Meanwhile, Larry's wife has traveled to Japan to bring him back home with her and save their marriage. When confronted, Larry brazenly and cold-heartedly refuses to leave his newfound carousing life.
That night, Larry heads off to soak his liver some more with a few drinks. Experiencing pain in his shoulder area, Larry examines it only to discover that a large eyeball has grown at the spot of Dr. Suzuki's injection. (I guess he can truly say that he can look over his own shoulder!)
Later on, back at Tara’s place, Larry tries to tell her where he had been. To him it was “like a dream, a sort of nightmare.” He had a memory of a temple and he had in his possession prayer beads.
We already know that Larry had been wandering the streets of Tokyo late that night where he murdered a woman and then a Buddhist monk. Like a monster or devil of violence and sin, Larry invades the sanctuary of peace and prayer and desecrates it with an act of wanton murder.
Back at the lab, Dr Suzuki considers the results of the experiment and concludes that Larry has now become part of “a different species of men” and is in fact “entirely a new being.”
Tara expresses concerns about what they are doing to Larry and Suzuki wonders if she has developed feelings for Larry. She responds by telling him that she no longer is capable of having feelings for anyone and that she has only stayed with Suzuki out of fear of winding up back where he had found her. Was she involved in prostitution? Perhaps she was tied to or was the property of some Yakuza-style crime gang? It’s never really explained to the viewer.
Suzuki thinks that he knows Tara only too well by claiming that she likes “to pretend to be a woman without a soul” and that his work really bothers her. He points out to her that when Larry changes “he'll be an alien thing, a species that's never walked this earth before” and that she will not be able to fall in love with a “monster” like Emiko, the woman who was his wife. It begs the question of how his own wife had fallen for such a monster as Suzuki!
Larry’s next victim is psychiatrist, Dr. Jennsen who Ian had earlier asked to accompany him to meet with Larry at the latter’s place. Larry refused to have anything to do with Jennsen and ordered both men out of his apartment.
Meanwhile, Larry is undergoing a metamorphosis in which he is growing a second head. Seeking a cure, he climbs the volcano to Dr. Suzuki's laboratory.
Suzuki concedes that he shouldn’t have embarked on his experiment but holds on to the belief that he has given something worthwhile to science and that “it's all in this notebook. The whole case history, except for one detail. The formula for the enzyme.” Suzuki does not want the experiment to be repeated – “Ever.”
Suzuki appeals to Tara to try and bring Larry back and that with his new injection “on heat, lots of heat” Larry “might separate completely, split into two human beings.” Any residual sympathy or understanding for Suzuki is wiped away completely when he callously responds to Tara’s decision to leave him by asking her if she wants to go back to where he found her and that he would give her ‘” the illusion of respectability” by marrying her.
Entering the lab, Larry kills Suzuki and sets the building on fire. He then splits into two completely separate bodies. One is the “normal” Larry while the other is the monstrous Larry. It is the latter who grabs Tara and throws her into the volcano.
As Linda and the police arrive, the “normal” version of Larry pushes the monstrous version into the volcano.
As Larry is being taken away by the police, consideration is being given as to how much moral or legal responsibility he has for his violent actions. Determining the extent of an individual’s personal responsibility is something that is often grappled with in our legal system when crimes of an evil nature are committed. All that can be said with any confidence in Larry’s case, is that “There was good in Larry and there was evil. The evil part broke through, took hold.” The best that can be hoped for would be to “have faith in the good that's still in Larry” and by implication, most of the rest of humanity…..
The Manster was an American production filmed in Japan using a mostly Japanese crew and a number of Japanese actors.
The Manster had various working titles including, Nightmare and The Two-Headed Monster. In the United Kingdom, the film was released as The Split.
In the US, The Manster was released as a double feature with Eyes Without a Face.
Director, George Breakston was wise to have Larry Stanford's hideous, two-headed transformation kept partially concealed by shadows and near-darkness thereby avoiding the horror of Larry's predicament being reduced to the level of unintended hilarity. Well, at least not too much.
The Manster does contain a somewhat racist subtext. In a variation of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, we have a decent ordinary American white man struggling with his dark side and being tempted by the carnal pleasures of a foreign culture to stray from the supposed moral decency of his own culture. At the end of the film, the two polar opposite halves of Larry split. It is the corrupted evil half along with the Japanese temptress who are consumed by the volcano, while Larry is able to return to this wife and the kind of morally upright and racially pure kind of life that supposedly typifies their own culture.
“Larry Stanford, the brilliant and highly underpaid foreign correspondent”
Larry is a real regular kinda’ guy with a manly name who now finds himself faced with having to make a real manly decision – to decide what is important in his life: his wife and his marriage, or his work. However, before he can return to the US and repair the cracks forming in the façade of his relationship with his wife, Larry has just….one…..more…..assignment….
Larry is to conduct an interview with the world-renowned and somewhat reclusive scientist, Dr. Robert Suzuki who lives and works on a mountain situated in a volcanic region. He has been secretly conducting research that could hold the answer to the cause of evolution on Earth.
His wife, Emiko has undergone a horrific mutation and is confined in prison-like conditions in Suzuki’s lab. Also, before disposing of his brother, Genji, Suzuki declares to him, “you were my brother. You're an experiment that didn't work out.”
“I don't think there's much of a story here, but if there is I wanna get it.”
After coming “all the way from Tokyo and halfway up the mountainside in a taxi they saved from the ark, and then by making like a mountain goat,” Larry gets his interview with Dr. Suzuki.
While the drugged scotch takes effect, Suzuki talks about cosmic rays coming out of space, and how “every thousand years or so they cause a mutation, cause some animal to give birth to a slightly different species.” Suzuki then goes onto expound his theory “as to the cause of this changing species, this mutation.” He believes that evolutionary change can be produced “not with radiation…. but chemically.”
When Larry wakes up, he is unaware of what has transpired. Nor is he aware of what direction his life is about to take when he unwittingly accepts Suzuki’s invitation to spend the next week vacationing with him around Japan, just “filling in time” till he gets back to New York and his wife, Linda.
Forget the not falling for “one more story routine” from his boss or the “no more traveling” and of making “a real start all over again” declarations to his wife. We, together with Linda will learn that Larry “might not be the same person” now that Suzuki’s concoctions are bringing monstrous aspects of his character and personality to the surface.
“Please, let me be your host, and let me show you things you have never seen before in Japan.”
Can we just simply blame Larry’s behaviour on Suzuki’s experiment? One moment he is proclaiming his love to his wife and the next moment he’s up to his armpits in all things decadent without any thought to his job or his wife. Is the change merely the result of the enzyme treatment or is there something within Larry that would have caused him to behave so abominably despite the injection he received?
Linda is left standing there in Larry’s apartment with the resolve to fight for him while at the same time realizing that “he's changed, he's so different” and that if he doesn’t return by midnight then she may well have “lost the battle.”
One has to wonder if good old Ian is poised to move in on Linda judging by his manner! Is he just a good supportive male friend or would he if given the chance take advantage of her vulnerable emotional state?
We go now to Tara’s place where Larry confides to her that he feels comfortable with her but that something inexplicable has been happening to him lately. Tara, seeming to be laying an emotional / sexual trap for Larry, then says to him, “when I belong to a man, no one else does. If it can't be that way, then I don't want him.” She tells Larry that he must go to Linda and tell her that their marriage is finished. (It would be good if more cheating scumbag spouses would at least have the cojones to do that much!). If Larry does this then that would be one less complicating factor to get in the way of the experiment.
Larry’s confrontation with Linda back at the apartment highlights the underlying tension in their marriage. It is something that has never been given voice to. Instead, it has been hidden under sweet saccharin sheets of loving platitudes as was evident from their earlier telephone conversation.
The injection of serum has removed Larry’s moral, social and emotional inhibitions and allowed him to speak his mind, but in a more brutal and callous way than he would have likely done in normal circumstances. The essence of what they have to say to each other should have been voiced much earlier and not allowed to quietly fester as so often happens in relationships.
Larry suggests that Linda knew what she was getting into when she married him. For her “living in hotels, places not even on the map” and “picking up and moving every time there's a new war or a revolution” is not having a life. She believed that he would one day settle down. Settling down for Larry would be tantamount to adopting a life of boring routine with “bridge on Wednesdays, cocktail Thursdays. PDA Fridays.”
Linda refuses to give up fighting for their relationship and puts Larry’s behavior down to Tara’s influence or a moment of weakness on his part. Larry’s anger mounts when he hears her reference to him being weak as in his mind it would amount to an attack on his sense of manhood. It triggers a violent verbal reaction from him as he blurts out, “or maybe it's because I never put you in your place before, never slapped you down when you needed it.” The confrontation ends with Larry blatantly informing Linda, as if he were some petulant, overgrown, immature teenager, that no-one will tie him down anymore or tell him what to do.
“I'll wait for you to come back, if you'll come back.”
“I just became my real self for once.”
The injection of serum has removed Larry’s moral, social and emotional inhibitions and allowed him to speak his mind, but in a more brutal and callous way than he would have likely done in normal circumstances. The essence of what they have to say to each other should have been voiced much earlier and not allowed to quietly fester as so often happens in relationships.
Larry suggests that Linda knew what she was getting into when she married him. For her “living in hotels, places not even on the map” and “picking up and moving every time there's a new war or a revolution” is not having a life. She believed that he would one day settle down. Settling down for Larry would be tantamount to adopting a life of boring routine with “bridge on Wednesdays, cocktail Thursdays. PDA Fridays.”
Linda refuses to give up fighting for their relationship and puts Larry’s behavior down to Tara’s influence or a moment of weakness on his part. Larry’s anger mounts when he hears her reference to him being weak as in his mind it would amount to an attack on his sense of manhood. It triggers a violent verbal reaction from him as he blurts out, “or maybe it's because I never put you in your place before, never slapped you down when you needed it.” The confrontation ends with Larry blatantly informing Linda, as if he were some petulant, overgrown, immature teenager, that no-one will tie him down anymore or tell him what to do.
Later on, back at Tara’s place, Larry tries to tell her where he had been. To him it was “like a dream, a sort of nightmare.” He had a memory of a temple and he had in his possession prayer beads.
“Larry Stanford right now is going through the metamorphosis.”
Back at the lab, Dr Suzuki considers the results of the experiment and concludes that Larry has now become part of “a different species of men” and is in fact “entirely a new being.”
Tara expresses concerns about what they are doing to Larry and Suzuki wonders if she has developed feelings for Larry. She responds by telling him that she no longer is capable of having feelings for anyone and that she has only stayed with Suzuki out of fear of winding up back where he had found her. Was she involved in prostitution? Perhaps she was tied to or was the property of some Yakuza-style crime gang? It’s never really explained to the viewer.
“He was conceived in the mountain,
he'll return to the mountain.”
Suzuki concedes that he shouldn’t have embarked on his experiment but holds on to the belief that he has given something worthwhile to science and that “it's all in this notebook. The whole case history, except for one detail. The formula for the enzyme.” Suzuki does not want the experiment to be repeated – “Ever.”
Suzuki appeals to Tara to try and bring Larry back and that with his new injection “on heat, lots of heat” Larry “might separate completely, split into two human beings.” Any residual sympathy or understanding for Suzuki is wiped away completely when he callously responds to Tara’s decision to leave him by asking her if she wants to go back to where he found her and that he would give her ‘” the illusion of respectability” by marrying her.
“There are things beyond us, things perhaps we're not meant to understand”
As Linda and the police arrive, the “normal” version of Larry pushes the monstrous version into the volcano.
As Larry is being taken away by the police, consideration is being given as to how much moral or legal responsibility he has for his violent actions. Determining the extent of an individual’s personal responsibility is something that is often grappled with in our legal system when crimes of an evil nature are committed. All that can be said with any confidence in Larry’s case, is that “There was good in Larry and there was evil. The evil part broke through, took hold.” The best that can be hoped for would be to “have faith in the good that's still in Larry” and by implication, most of the rest of humanity…..
Points of Interest
The Manster was an American production filmed in Japan using a mostly Japanese crew and a number of Japanese actors.
The Manster had various working titles including, Nightmare and The Two-Headed Monster. In the United Kingdom, the film was released as The Split.
In the US, The Manster was released as a double feature with Eyes Without a Face.
Director, George Breakston was wise to have Larry Stanford's hideous, two-headed transformation kept partially concealed by shadows and near-darkness thereby avoiding the horror of Larry's predicament being reduced to the level of unintended hilarity. Well, at least not too much.
The Manster does contain a somewhat racist subtext. In a variation of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, we have a decent ordinary American white man struggling with his dark side and being tempted by the carnal pleasures of a foreign culture to stray from the supposed moral decency of his own culture. At the end of the film, the two polar opposite halves of Larry split. It is the corrupted evil half along with the Japanese temptress who are consumed by the volcano, while Larry is able to return to this wife and the kind of morally upright and racially pure kind of life that supposedly typifies their own culture.
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