BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Ploydsge just watch it!

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Hitchcoc Many films thrown together in this era don't do a very good job. This one is quite atmospheric. It involves a family curse where people have died over the years at the hands of a vicious monster. A couple of Thin Man type sleuths are brought in to investigate what is going on and are stopped at every turn by the people most affected. While it has its sappy moments and a whole bunch of characters jumping out of the dark, it keeps our attention pretty well. There is a butler and a house maid who seem to be at the center of things and lots of red herrings, but the production value is decent. Often, in other 1940's offerings, the horror aspect is there to be the distraction from a romantic comedy. In this one, attention is paid to the crime itself. Oh, there is some bad science, but what the heck.

bsmith5552 "The Undying Monster" was an attempt by Darryl F. Zanuck to replicate the success that Universal Studios was having with horror movies for his studio 20th Century Fox. What we get here is a sort of horror/mystery mix with a tip of the hat to Sherlock Holmes and "The Hound of the Baskervilles".The story surrounds the Hammond family who have lived in a drafty old house for centuries just outside of London England. The current owners are a brother, Oliver Hammond (John Howard) and his sister Helga (Heather Angel). Also in residence are a creepy old butler Walton (Halliwell Hobbes) and his sinister wife (Elly Malyon). It seems that a family curse has befallen the Hammonds once again.When Oliver and a local girl are found savagely attacked in the foggy old moors, fear spreads throughout the house. When the girl dies a murder investigation is begun by Scotland Yard. Heading up the investigation are the Holmes/Watson like team of Bob Curtis (James Ellison) and his assistant "Christy" (Heather Thatcher). The family doctor, Doctor Jeff Colbert (Bramwell Fletcher) seems to know more than he is telling and the Waltons are lurking about in the shadows.I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that the culprit turns out to be a werewolf whose identity is not revealed until the end.The film was directed by John Brahm a German who fled his country in the 1930s and had made mostly "B" movies (of which this is one) to date. He injects mystery and horror into his "B" budget in an imaginative way both through his direction and the atmospheric photography of no less than the legendary Lucien Ballard. I was disappointed though at a couple of tacky rear projection shots involving characters riding in a coach.It's odd that everyone in the cast has a British accent except for the "star" James Ellison. Ellison had recently graduated from being second banana to Hopalong Cassidy but never progressed beyond a "B" picture leading man. Heather Angel and John Howard had starred together in the "Bulldog Drummond" series from 1937 to 1939. And yes that was Charles McGraw playing Studwick who battles Curtis in the basement tombs.Brahm would soon be rewarded for his efforts with a pair of "A" budget films with "A" list casts in "The Lodger" (1944) and "Hangover Square" (1945) both starring Laird Cregar.

The_Void The Undying Monster was apparently a second feature; and that's not really surprising as there's nothing particularly great about it and the running time is also very short. The film takes more than obvious influence from the classic Arthur Conan Doyle novel 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' in that it focuses on a family curse; but the style and execution of the film is also very similar to the 1939 film version of said classic novel. The story featured is actually really good; it has several interesting themes and director John Brahm provides a foreboding atmosphere; but unfortunately the suspense is constantly abated via a very unwelcome dose of humour. The film takes place in Wales and focuses on an aristocratic family plagued by an ancient curse; which takes the form of a monster that prowls around their property at night and has already claimed the lives of several family members. After the latest incident, it is decided that there is reason to call in Scotland Yard; and a young detective and his assistant begin to investigate.The film is really good for about the first twenty minutes and it looks like it might build into something special; but when the detective and his assistant are introduced, things start to go downhill. It's obvious that the pair of them are there to add some comic relief to the proceedings; but the problem is that it's really not needed. Occasionally, some slight comic relief will come in to help even out a film with some real scenes of trauma; but here the trauma amounts to a shot of a dead dog, and the humour is all encompassing. It's not even very funny either and I barely cracked a smile at all. Once the detectives come in, the film takes on more of an investigative approach and the plot is not as interesting. The clues given to the detective's don't leave much to the imagination either (a scene that sees the detective realise that a room has been recently entered by the way of the huge set of footprints down the centre of the room being case in point!). The ending does come as something as a surprise as the film felt like it was going to head in the same direction that Conan Doyle's novel did; but it's not enough to save it and overall I have to say that I'm really disappointed considered that I had heard good things about this one!

Robert J. Maxwell It's hard to imagine that this was a product of 20th-Century Fox because it looks so much like a B feature from Universal Studios -- the isolated mansion, the absence of daylight, the ground-covering fog, the spooky music, the family haunted by a curse, the dark figures slinking through the shadows, and most of all the werewolf. I haven't read the novel but the writers have used every cliché in the monster book. I could hardly sit through it -- wouldn't have sat through it except that I'd bought the DVD.There's nothing wrong with John Brahm's direction except that it's flat and unimaginative. He's done much better work elsewhere, as in "The Lodger." Really -- in a dark corner of the room, a hairy hand sneaks out from behind a heavy curtain while the musical score tells us to notice it and be frightened. There is not only no poetry here; there's very little effort at all. The script sucks. The dialog not only lacks sparkle but is predictable from moment to moment. There is even one of those ancient proverbs that serves as a warning, "Even the man who is wholesome and sane must cover his rear as he walks by wolfbane." Something like that. (Repeated twice, and also displayed on a plaque.)And the score, by the way, so stereotypical, is by David Raksin, who was to go on two years later to produce the pretty little suspenseful and romantic theme for "Laura." Heather Angel is okay. She has the proper delicate features. But what is James Ellison doing as a Scotland Yard scientist assigned to investigate a death and mauling at the estate of an upper-class British family? He brings to the part the broad vowels of an American cowboy from Iowa. And the director doesn't help him in the least. Ellison rushes through his scenes as if the film were a one-hour quickie from Monogram Studios.As it turns out, one of the family members suffers from "lycanthropy" -- the belief that under certain conditions he turns into a wolf. The problem is that in this instance he really DOES turn into a werewolf. We see him looking like hairy Lawrence Talbot until he's shot, and then as he dies he assumes his normal human form. A sample of his wolf hair disappears in the lab while under analysis. And yet, at the end, the whole business is treated as a quirk of the victim's mind, a kind of insanity, even by the family's doctor. It makes no sense. Either lycanthropy is a delusion or it's real. The movie gives us both, contradicting itself and papering over the plot holes.The most interesting scenes involve the spectrograph and the centrifuge. Both the instruments had been around for a while so they're not anachronisms.