Man Beast (1956)

... aka: El hombre bestia (The Beast Man)

Directed by:

Jerry Warren

One person's filmography I was decidedly not in a big rush to get back to was Jerry Warren's. He holds the distinction here of being one of the only directors to make multiple NO STAR-rated films not even fit for bad movie connoisseur consumption. Furthermore, Warren himself flat out admitted he had zero interest in making good or entertaining films, which I guess makes him a cinematic charlatan of sorts. He was in the business solely to make money, which required cheap as possible investments on what he hoped would be big returns. That's his entire dispassionate career in a nutshell. While I'll never begrudge anyone trying to make an honest living, what Warren was doing ventured more into the realm of hucksterism. Any filmmaker who's worth a damn is either an artist or someone at least attempting to make enjoyable product for consumers. Warren was neither. His usual routine consisted of buying the distribution rights to unreleased-in-the-U.S. foreign films, having them hacked up and re-dubbed (or simply narrated over) and adding cheap, talky scenes featuring American actors so he had names to put on the poster to lure in unsuspecting genre fans. In doing so, he simultaneously destroyed the original director's work, showed genuine contempt for his target audience and became quite possibly the laziest director to have ever walked the face of the Earth.

Though most of his work was pilfered material, Warren did make a handful of his own films. These included the God awful bore TEENAGE ZOMBIES (1959), the almost tolerable THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD (1959), Frankenstein Island (1981), which I've not yet seen, and this one, which was also his directorial debut. Still, even most of these "original" works depended strongly on recycled stock footage to fill in the budget gaps and boost the running time, and this barely hour-long effort is no exception.

 

After a strenuous hike through the Himalayan mountains, determined blonde Connie Hayward (Virginia [Asa] Maynor) and her sourpuss friend Trevor Hudson (Lloyd "Cameron" / Nelson) arrive at a remote outpost. They're there because Connie is searching for her missing brother, Dr. James Hayward, who'd taken an "experimental injection" back in the states and now may die due to a side effect caused by high altitudes. Along with a small team, James had set out to explore the area ten days earlier and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

In the same area, there've been occasional Yeti sightings going back decades. More recent Yeti footprints have been discovered, which merit further investigation. Four previous expeditions to find the fabled creature have turned up nothing though, and every expedition had lost at least one man. Connie manages to sweet talk reluctant expert climber Steve Cameron (Tom Maruzzi) into escorting them to where he believes the brother has set up camp.

From there, it's a dangerous ascent up the mountainside and then a long trek through the snow-covered, rocky terrain. They finally catch up to famous anthropologist and evolutionary scientist Professor Erickson (George Wells Lewis) and his two local guides, who are on their way to meet up with Connie's brother at base camp. Everyone decides to do the rest of the journey together. Like the brother, Erickson's ultimate goal is to try to locate and capture a live Yeti, which he believes to be the missing link. Coming across the previous expedition's camp, they find it wrecked, abandoned and in total disarray. Setting up there for the night, they awaken the next morning to find Erickson's hired help have run off and left them.

Eventually turning up at the camp is the "half-Mongolian" Varga (George Skaff), one of the best and most requested local guides in the area, who's so experienced at what he does that he never runs out of breath and seems almost immune to the freezing temperatures. Varga had brought Connie's brother up to the mountain and claims to have been out scouting for tracks when whatever happened back at the camp went down. Still, Connie and the others are skeptical of his story and find him to be shady. There's a ludicrous, though amusing and, I must admit, original, plot twist here involving the species of Yeti attempting to incorporate themselves into our society. That involves killing human men so they can kidnap and then knock up human women to produce human/Yeti hybrids. Naturally, we never actually get to see anything of the sort in the film itself!

All of the impressive mountain climbing footage and aerial shots seen here have been snatched from an unfinished film of unknown origin (some sources claim it's Mexican). Having that footage in his possession, Warren then had a script fashioned specifically around it, attempting to match up his new footage, using the same amount of characters, trying to dress them all similarly to the climbers, etc. Surprisingly enough, he actually does do fairly good job of splicing it all together! If one were to nitpick specific details they can certainly find discrepancies between wardrobe, gear, locations, cast appearance, etc., but very few things really leap out as being extremely obvious either. And, in a way, this approach is really not all that dissimilar to how major studios work, where they'll send a 2nd unit director and crew off to shoot location footage with stunt doubles while the primary director handles all of the close-ups and actor stuff.

Warren has also lucked out that the footage he acquired is actually excellent and features some thrilling moments, imaginative camera shots and beautiful locations. That said, most of what Warren himself brings to the table is, as expected, not very good. He's shot mostly dialogue scenes here but, unlike some of his other films, at least he put some effort into finding snowy / rocky outdoor locations to use instead of filming scenes of people sitting around on some porn-grade set talking to each other as he'd later do. The Yeti suit, which is (supposedly) the same costume used for White Pongo and The White Gorilla (both 1945 releases), also isn't too bad.

Most of the performances are pretty lousy, with the actors sometimes randomly looking off to the side as if searching for cue cards, stumbling over lines or even looking directly at the camera as others are speaking. The sole standout here is Skaff, who puts in a good campy turn as the mysterious guide. His hilarious facial expressions alone almost make this one worthwhile all by themselves. Skaff would go on to a decent career as a character actor and later appeared in some good movies, like Michael Ritchie's Smile (1975) and John Carpenter's Someone's Watching Me! (1978). Warren's soon-to-be wife Brianne Murphy, who'd go on to a respected career as a cinematographer, plays the Yeti in some scenes and was also the script supervisor. 

Top billed above everyone else in the cast is one "Rock Madison," who plays, well, nobody! This was a fake name added to the credits for some reason, though I'm not exactly sure what that reason was. Perhaps attempting to confuse fans of Rock Hudson and Guy Madison?

This was, I believe, only the third genre movie made about the Yeti / Abominable Snowman. It was preceded by the dreadful THE SNOW CREATURE (1954) and the decent Japanese BEAST MAN SNOW MAN (1955), which later became the basis for an "Americanized" version called Half Human (released in 1957). Amusingly, Man Beast wasn't even Warren's only Yeti movie. He also purchased the rights to a 1959 Swedish / American co-production called Rymdinvasion i Lappland (given many English titles like TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN), did his usual butcher routine on it (adding boring new scenes and narration from John Carradine) and released it as Invasion of the Animal People in 1962.

 

In theaters, this played on a double bill with Prehistoric Women (1950). There were numerous VHS releases here in America, two from Rhino in 1985 (paired with 1948's Human Gorilla / Behind Locked Doors for their release "Saturday Night Shockers: Volume 2") and 1988, and another from Acme (a subdivision of Rhino) in 1996. Rhino also released a DVD in 2002. In 2013, Kit Parker Films released three multi-disc DVD sets of Warren's work. Man Beast is included on the first volume along with Curse of the Stone Hand (1965), which was mostly bastardized footage from several 1940s Chilean films, and The Wild World of Batwoman (1966).

★★

Attack of the Mayan Mummy (1964)

... aka: Mummy Strikes, The

Directed by:
Rafael Portillo (uncredited)
Jerry Warren

"I was in the business to make money. I never, ever tried in any way to compete, or to make something worthwhile. I only did enough to get by, so they would buy it, so it would play, and so I'd get a few dollars. It's not very fair to the public, I guess..." ~ Jerry Warren.

Now that you know you're in capable hands, here's a little lesson in how to quickly turn a profit at the audience's expense. THE AZTEC MUMMY (1957) was a mediocre Mexican film trying to capitalize on the Bridey Murphy past life regression via hypnosis craze of the late 50s by injecting that scenario into a horror film plot. In order to get more bang for their buck, they made three Aztec Mummy films back-to-back-to-back. The first sequel, THE CURSE OF THE AZTEC MUMMY (1957), used a fairly long chunk of the previous film as flashback footage to push the running time to over an hour. The second sequel, THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY (1958), went a step further by using ample footage from both the original and Curse to make it to an hour. In fact, around half of Robot's running time was reused footage! While K. Gordon Murray ended up with the U.S. distribution rights for the sequels, Jerry Warren got his hands on the first film and used ample footage from it in two of his own movies: this one and FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF (1964), plus incorporated shorter snippets into his The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)! Unlike Murray, who mostly left the originals intact outside of having them English dubbed and re-scored, Warren re-edited them, added stock music in place of the original score, had them dubbed, added his own new footage and gave himself sole director credit.

In order to get these films both out at around the same time without being detected, Warren had Face released theatrically; by itself, on a double bill with another Warren cut-n-paster called Curse of the Stone Hand (1965) and even on triple bills with both Curse and the British horror comedy My Son, the Vampire (1952) starring Bela Lugosi. All were then distributed by Warren's own company Associated Distributors Pictures Inc.. Meanwhile, the Mayan Mummy cut was sold into TV syndication. Wholla! Money in the bank with minimal effort! Makes you wonder though if anyone back in the day actually caught the Attack version on TV and then went off to a drive-in to see Face only to have to sit through much of the same exact footage!

Aside from a new title card and new credits for four of the pseudonymous top-billed actors, this opens with the same exact credits on top of the same skull, woolly mammoth skeleton and window backdrop as Screaming Werewolf. We then visit the office of a nameless newspaper editor, played by portly Roger Corman movie regular Bruno VeSota. Scientist Frederick Munson (George Mitchell, who has the impossible task of trying to drag this entire film along) shows up to give the editor the scoop on a strange and unusual case that he was a part of while working with Cowan Research Incorporated. Now wanting to give up his latest gig as TV talking head ("A scientist is best suited to sit in front of a microscope, not a camera!"), he'd rather relay this particular story to the print press.

Munson's sister, who owned C.R.I., was married the one Dr. Edmund Redding (Ramón Gay) before her untimely death in a jet crash. As a stipulation of her will, she left the foundation to be split between her husband and brother. However, Redding won full control during a court battle. He then had Munson expelled from the staff while helping himself to his research papers and his primary guinea pig Ann Taylor (Rosita Arenas), who has the amazing ability to recall her past life as a Mayan princess under just the mildest of hypnosis. You could say Frederick's a little bitter about the whole experience. We then go into flashback mode as Munson narrates right over characters during a scene from the original Aztec Mummy explaining that Redding was not yet ready to reveal the nature of his research to colleagues at a "Scientist's Association" meeting, which angers everyone.

In more new footage (a positively grueling scene that lasts over eight minutes with very few camera changes), Munson goes to shoot the shit with friend Dr. John Janney, who was one of the attendees of the association meeting. John talks about his ulcer flare up, bad hotel food, flying in from Hong Kong, how he gave up being a practicing physician and researcher to become an administrator and a bunch of other stuff that doesn't have much to do with anything. With a cigarette in one of his hands and a glass of scotch in the other, Dr. Munson lectures him about his health before the two discuss the possibility of swaying Ann back to their side. After all, she was first discovered by Munson so it's only fair. Because John is having financial problems and Munson is out of work, they're mostly interested in getting their hands on a treasure "that could actually affect the gold standard," which is rumored to be hidden somewhere in the pyramids.

To help him keep tabs on what Redding and Ann Taylor are up to, Munson has enlisted the aid of a spy: his teen nephew, Timmy (Jaime González Quiñones). Timmy, who's now unhappily living with Redding, is much closer to Munson and more than willing to stab his stepdad in the back. Once Timmy finds out new information, he then passes it along to his girlfriend and her friend Lynn, who then come and relay that to Dr. Munson, which is exactly what we see during one hilarious scene where the teen girls yap on and on to the flustered doctor at a soda fountain while a bunch of dancers gyrate all around them.

We then return to more Aztec Mummy footage as Redding and his assistants (Crox Alvarado and Jorge Mondragón) hypnotize Ann and she flashes back to her former life as a maiden set to be sacrificed. That's interrupted by a TV broadcast from newsman Douglas Banks (Chuck Niles), who announces that Redding and his team have decided to solidify their research by visiting the pyramids. And that they do, eventually discovering their activities have aroused a 2000-year-old mummy, which manages to kill Dr. Redding. We then go back to new footage as Banks interviews Dr. Munson, Dr. Munson talks and talks some more with John, a couple of detectives (Fred Hoffman, William White) snoop around and a thief (Steve Conte) is hired to steal the mummy. We only cut back to one more scene from Aztec Mummy where it sneaks into Ann's home and carries her off, which is cut with a scene of the thief fleeing and (we're to assume) running the two over. Back at the newspaper editor's office, Bruno then delivers the heavy-handed "moral" of our little story. The last image is, fittingly enough, the shot of a trash basket.

After watching this and Screaming Werewolf back-to-back, I pretty much now want to die. But I did learn a valuable lesson here, and it's not that lead and pulp can be re-purposed into printing ink and paper as Mr. VeSota intones. It's that next time I'm in the mood for a little self-torture on a Sunday, I'll skip on a Jerry Warren double feature and just go to church instead. It's far less painful!

This was released on home video by most of the big cult movie distributors of the 80s and 90s, like Something Weird, Sinister and Rhino. In 2013, VCI Entertainment released six of Warren's 'B' bombs on DVD in two sets. The first collection contains Man Beast (1956), Stone Hand and Batwoman. The second volume has this one, Creature of the Walking Dead (1965) and HOUSE OF THE BLACK DEATH (1965). The best thing about these VCI releases is that now a few of the films have nice new poster art.

NO STARS!