Monster of the Day #1242

Updated on November 16, 2015 By Ken Begg 23 Comments

Have to admit, I didn’t love this, or the two Hensen puppet movies, but hey, different strokes for different folks.

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  • For a while, this guy got quoted a lot at my house.
    Good movie. Not a patch on The Dark Crystal, but a good movie.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I remember seeing this once and being impressed by the ambition, but the story struck me as one of those 1980’s quest-type movies where it was just one thing after another.

  • Flangepart

    Hummm…is this the sequel to the wizard of OZ? With Nicole Williamson as the weird psych doc who wants to give Dorothy electro shock?

  • Morgan Champion

    The rock giant’s from The Neverending Story.

  • Marsden

    Lionel Hutz had a legal action against this movie.

  • The Rev.

    I enjoyed this movie as a kid. I showed it to the girls a few years ago, since they’d never seen it. I found myself thinking that it hadn’t held up that well, but they liked it. It did have some cool critters, though, like this guy.

  • Eric Hinkle

    This isn’t the right place for this, and I apologize, BUT… Does anyone reading this know why you had so many ‘mad scientist wants to give a gorilla a human brain’ stories in 40’s and 50’s comedy films like the Three Stooges and the Bowery Boys? I’ve watched a lot of those films lately and it seems like every time a scientist shows up, he’s both mad and has a gorilla that he wants to implant some moron’s brain into. I’m serious, were gorillas with human brains some big theme in SF and horror back then? The only one I can remember hearing of is ‘The Whispering Gorilla’ which was some obscure novel from the time.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    There’s a Three Stooges short from around the same time with the same theme (I think it was “A Bird In the Head”). And no, I have no idea why the idea was so prevalent.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    No, although that’s a pretty interesting movie in its own right.

  • The answer is probably one of economics. Which cost less? Making up your own creature costume, or reusing an ape suit from some jungle picture?

  • Luke Blanchard

    According to Brian Stapleford, “Neurology”, SCIENCE FACT AND SCIENCE FICTION: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA, the theme appeared as early as 1920 in a film called GO AND GET IT. He calls it “one of many such fantasies to implant a human brain in the body of a gorilla”. Google found me the reference (at Google Books).

    THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN had plots based around the idea of transplanting another brain into the monster, which is similar.

  • Luke Blanchard

    That should be Brian M. Stableford; my apologies.

  • And then there’s this, too.

  • bgbear_rnh

    I guess it is for keeping a human being alive while not having to murder (or wait for) a human donor to do it.

  • Eric Hinkle

    This may be the answer to my question, because from what I saw the writers for that short, Ed Bernds and Elwood Ullman, ended up writing for the Bowery Boys too. They even had Stooges stalwarts Philip van Zandt and Emil Sitka in various roles. Maybe those two just loved the idea of gorillas with human brains.

    Bernds and Ullman also share the distinction of having produced the only Bowery Boys movie ever nominated for an Oscar.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Thanks for the information on just how early this idea was around.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Yeah, I imagine that would have been important for Columbia shorts and Poverty Row studios like Monogram.

  • Flangepart

    Which opens another can of invertebrates; If you kill a perfectly good body, yet keep the brain (And therefor the person) alive…what heading does that go under, legally speaking?

  • Grievous bodily harm, I’d imagine.

  • bgbear_rnh

    Brain and brain… what is brain?!

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Since the “transplanting a brain” was a part of the Frankenstein film, it may be the producers thought they could do the same without stepping on any rights or running into a lawyer.

  • Rodford Smith

    _Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein_ came out in 1948. Copying that without the Monster means using another kind of monster and gorilla suits are just lying around. :-)

  • Eric Hinkle

    True. The Bowery Boys films needed to save every penny they could (as you’ll know if you watch any of their DVDs), and it seems like there was a whole army of gorilla-suit actors in Hollywood back then willing to work cheap.