Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Irene Hervey An awful lot of people don't like this film but it has some wonderful things in it and some off the wall things too. Robert Shayne plays the mad scientist with the ever-adoring fiancee in a truly over the top fashion. In one sequence while he is ranting about being left alone (a sequence straight out of the original Frankenstein), she tousles his hair so that it goes in all directions at once and seems a total send-up of the would-be dramatic moment at hand. In addition, every time the scene shifts to the mountains and countryside an incredibly lush theme is played that seems like something out of an old Lowell Thomas documentary travelogue! In the beginning of the film there is an inexplicably jazzy score playing while a man is attacked in his car by a sabre-toothed tiger. At times we glimpse the tiger who has ordinary teeth and yet when we see it in extreme close-up after being killed or in a kind of freeze frame as it attacks a car it has its sabre teeth. In another sequence we are to believe that an ordinary cat can be turned into a sabre-toothed tiger through use of a regressive serum that takes it back to its ancestors-- at least I think that's what's going on! Despite all of these oddities the film has a clear narrative and is lively enough to hold one's interest, if just in watching out for the next oddity. One is left wondering why the neanderthal man's teeth are so bad for example when in fact ancient peoples had fine teeth when we find them usually because of their ability to chew and tear with them and keep them well honed. But this fellow seems to have set on by demented dentists. Then there is the whole theory of regression into our ancestors using an argument that brain SIZE is what is most significant, not considering that development of smaller, more effective portions of the brain might evolve over time. Instead, we get here an anti-evolution theory that is so bad it is scoffed at even by the semi-literate faculty in this film. And then Mr. Shayne tells us that in "regressing" to the neanderthal state he will be going back "one million years" when in fact neanderthalers flourished 100,000 years ago, not a million, and it is never explained why he is regressing to the neanderthal state and not some other pathway of human evolution. I had a lot of fun attempting to find what I thought were staggering gaps in the overall presentation of this film BUT I enjoyed the various goofy characters, the narrative clarity and the ability of director Dupont to keep the low-budget proceedings moving about briskly. I think if you are not too demanding, have a puff of anthropology in your background and enjoy movies made solely to entertain you'll enjoy this one. By the way, the movie was HEAVILY influenced by the Bridey Murphy phase the whole country was going through at the time this movie was made!!! An American housewife named Virginia Tighe, through hypnosis, claimed to have regressed to becoming a 19th century woman named Bridey Murphy. The whole country was taken up with the belief that we could all regress to earlier lives...and that formed the inspiration for the screenplay and the outrageous theories presented in this film.

MartinHafer "The Neanderthal Man" is a very, very bad film. But it's also very campy and kitschy...and is fun to watch, albeit very, very stupid! It's a variation on "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"...but a very badly made one.A very strange and enormous cat-like creature has been spotted in the Sierras in California. It's mostly strange because for most of the shots, you see a normal everyday tiger...but in closeups it's got a silly fake head with enormous Sabre-tooth Tiger-like fangs. But it's hilarious that in many scenes you don't see the fangs at all and in others they are there. This special effect must have cost at least $4! Eventually, it's difficult to deny that something is out there...but despite more and more evidence, Professor Groves acts angrier and angrier. He's also fond of telling everyone (particularly the other professors) how stupid and short-sighted they are for not agreeing 100% with him and his wacky theories--though he's offered zero proof! Could this nutty professor (and not of the Jerry Lewis variety) have something to do with the strange sightings as well as a murderous caveman that soon appears as well?The Sabre-tooth Tiger is hilariously bad...as is the getup the Neanderthal guy sports. But, despite being really, really stupid the film is fun to watch because Robert Shayne is wonderfully silly as Professor Groves. He is obviously imbalanced...and hilariously so. Heck, he makes Dr. Strangelove look totally normal by comparison! By the way, fans of 1950s TV will likely recognize Shayne as the Inspector from "The Adventures of Superman". Also, while the sign language they use in the film isn't perfect, it's not too bad...better than most you see in films. And, I should know as we use sign language regularly in my home.

poe-48833 THE NEANDERTHAL MAN is about as Formula as they come- which isn't necessarily a BAD thing: there are times when Familiarity is perfectly acceptable, when the Tropes of the genre(s) are to be respected (see MARK OF THE VAMPIRE for perhaps the Last Word on Tropes). The Mad Scientist (Professor Groves) berates his thick-headed but thin-skinned fellow (Mad?) scientists in THE NEANDERTHAL MAN: "Stupidity's contagious!" Like TEENAGE MONSTER, THE NEANDERTHAL MAN takes place in a rustic setting, where most of the players are dressed more or less like cowboys and sporting cowboy hats (in TEENAGE MONSTER, the setting is actually The Old West); a number of these type of movies take place or end up in rustic environs (despite its title, MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS also ends in the mountains, and THE MAD MONSTER is set in a backward community in a swamp), all the way up to (DOWN to...?) TROG (which ends in an underground cave). Beautiful Beverly Garland is menaced by THE NEANDERTHAL MAN, as well, although the first 40 minutes or so of the movie are kinda sorta wasted hunting saber-toothed tigers ("kinda, sorta," because all things balance out in the end). With all due respect to Lon Chaney, Jr., and Jack Pierce, I'D like to see some of these unheralded Creatures made available in model kits (or, better yet, action figures like the Universal Monsters series). Start with MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS, TEENAGE MONSTER, THE MAD MONSTER, THE NEANDERTHAL MAN and TROG. Not a bad starting lineup, eh...?

gavin6942 Wheeler (Frank Gerstle), a tourist-hunter in the California High Sierras, is not believed by the patrons of Webb's Cafe when he claims to have run across a live tiger with tusks. Among the scoffers is game-warden George Oakes -- until he is driving home later that night and the critter hops on the hood of his car.The general idea of this film is pretty standard -- you have a mad scientist who wants to turn people into Neanderthals and cats into saber-toothed tigers. There are plenty of scientific arguments that can be made against this being possible, but let us just ignore that...He gets especially upset when his theories are presented to the local natural history society and they scoff at him. Interestingly, he includes Piltdown Man as part of the evolutionary chain of man -- a fossil that was determined to be a hoax in November 1953, around the same time as this film came out... What could be considered really sad about this film is that it comes from director E. A. Dupont, who used to be somebody. Once upon a time, he was a big name in the world of German silent cinema, writing and directing "Variete" starring Emil Jannings and with Karl Freund operating the camera. A classic film. And now, at this point, he is directing cheesy science fiction with cheesy makeup and no real directorial flair. This is your average science fiction film of the 1950s, with almost no notable names (besides Dupont). He could have done better...The one possibly notable name is Beverly Garland, who played the waitress. Although not A-list, she did go on to appear in multiple Roger Corman films and continued acting up through the 2000s on shows such as "7th Heaven". Some could say Robert Shayne was notable, but aside from bit parts in "North By Northwest" and "Invaders From Mars" he hardly left his mark. Although perhaps talking this movie down, I am not saying you should avoid this film, but just be prepared for the average 1950s flick, probably not something you will tell your friends about. For those who really must see it, Scream Factory has released a nice blu-ray of the film, with a fairly decent transfer (though no special features).