Ladies & gentlemen we interrupt our program to bring you the tragic news of a sudden death of J Stanley McMasters.
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘You back again’
You know, I like my popcorn like my women
‘2, heaped high and heavy on the butter’
Just thought I’d mention it.
The Monster and the Girl opens as a low end film noir.
‘I seen plenty’
with 5 flashbacks in its first 15 minutes.
‘I wonder how things would be if…’
painting a pretty standard picture of a woman who fell in with a bad crowd.
‘I’m Susan, the bad luck penny’
and a brother who, in trying help her, ends up accused of murder.
‘I never killed anybody’
As noirs go this is pretty turgid stuff, only made more so by the least engaging hero of all time,
'About two months ago I came to town.'
and the fact that entire movie seems to have been scripted in hardboiled clichés.
'Now you listen to me blue britches.'
‘This is not the parole board,'
'The world is full of trouble.'
‘You never budge unless a bullet’s prodding you’
'There's one doctor who couldn't give me asprin.'
‘Worry is bad for a man, shortens his life’
'And you don't have to worry about being late for school.'
The dreary hero is sentenced to death & you’re probably wondering what makes this worthy of Dark Corners
‘I need the brain of a man’
Well that came completely out of nowhere, halfway through the film but okay. Why?
‘Your help could be of infinite importance to the human race’
Interesting...
‘He should be proud when he wakes up with a human brain’
Right, I’m not clear on how this is going to help the human race.
On the other hand it does help the hero acquire a personality.
‘There’s almost a human understanding’
and helps him make good on a promise to the men who framed him.
‘But somewhere, somehow you’ll get yours’
Can’t even make a threat sound interesting, I’m a glad he’s a gorilla now.
Now, dramatically this is a bit of a tonal shift from courtroom drama.
To gothic horror.
To whatever you call a gorilla with a canine sidekick re-enacting scenes from the Godfather part 2.
Now it lurches back towards crime as we watch the Gorilla picking off the real killers who are too dumb to notice the ape in the room.
And the inept police trying to figure this out
‘There’s no marks on the body, a 10 storey fall might bruise a fella’
So might a 30 stone gorilla, but apparently not.
‘Stop that fool talk’
It’s inconsistent, it’s all over the place
and it’s very hard to care about because nothing seems to have any motivation!
‘I’m not saying you’re wrong.’
We never know why George Zucco puts a man’s brain in a gorilla.
'This night's dream will step him up a million years of evolution.'
We never know why a large crime syndicate went to such extraordinary lengths to recruit Susan Webster as a prostitute
‘Specially as I happen to know where there’s a good job waiting’
But above all we never know why anyone would think those 2 plotlines belong together!
‘I just wasn't thinking.’
There’s no denying the social realist credentials of Susan Webster’s predicament,
women really were tricked into prostitution and shamed into not going to the police
but very few men, I might even guess none, had their brain put in a gorilla.
'The whole thing is a plot against us.'
and once that’s happened, it does sort of dominate the plotline.
‘There I go preaching again.’
Crossing film noir and horror must have seemed a good idea,
they share a visual aesthetic derived from German expressionism but their plots don’t mix.
That’s why you don’t get Dracula in Double Indemnity!
And why the Bride of Frankenstein doesn’t ask Humphrey Bogart if he knows how to whistle.
‘Yes sir!'
I seem to have got a little off track here…
Yeah the film doesn’t really work.
‘Well I’ve been suspecting that for over an hour’
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