Rating: D+
Dir: Tom Leahy.
Star: Ralph Seeley, Dick Welsbacher, Suzanne Farrar, Tom Leahy.
This was considered a lost movie – or, at least, a forgotten one – until it was rediscovered in the early eighties. I think it’s safe to say we’d have been fine if it had remained lost, since it largely deserves to be forgotten. It was made by a TV station in Wichita, KARD-TV, using mostly its own staff. For example, director Leahy, who also plays the creature of the title, was a horror host on the channel, and the interiors were filmed in the station’s studio and offices. This does help the technical aspects, and if not at all good, it’s competent enough not quite to be down in the same depths as certain other sixties monster movies.
An archaeological dig uncovers the body of a neo-Neanderthal. Except, it’s not just the skeleton, but a perfectly preserved corpse. It’s also in a geological formation dating many millions of years before such proto-humans should have existed. A lightning storm resuscitates the caveman, and he promptly kills one of the two men working the dig; the other one’s explanation is (understandably) dismissed, and he is quickly convicted of first-degree murder. He seems to go from homicide to conviction in about 48 hours; justice was truly swifter in the sixties, I guess. It’s up to Dr. John Crawford (Seeley) and Prof. Bernard Maury (Welsbacher) to find and defeat the revived hominid, who just so happens to be impervious to all modern weapons, because reasons.
Despite the running time of an hour, this is far too chatty. Witness the second scene, which includes an extended discussion on the Professor’s personal hygiene habits. We don’t even glimpse the beast until the final act. Amusingly, there’s an entire conversation which takes place with it literally inches out of sight beneath the frame. I was honestly beginning to wonder if this was some kind of situationist prank, and we would never get to see it. Then we did, and I wished this had been some kind of situationist prank, and we had never got to see it. I’m going to steal a line from an IMDb review, which describes it as like a “vagrant transvestite who just got thrown from a mechanical bull.”
Though I must say: I was impressed the monster is aware of modern technology, and knows about cutting the phone lines to stop people calling for help. Before we get to that, you will have to sit through further unwanted conversations, such as the two dig workmen deciding they might steal the discovery for their own personal gain. Quite how that would work is unclear, and the matter is not pursued, because one of them gets impaled by a shovel (top, in a half-decent manner, I will admit). There’s also an unexpected severed arm, albeit with gore at the level you would expect in a film made by a Kansas TV station for ten grand. Indeed, most elements operate at the same level. You have been warned.