Very well executed

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A Scotland Yard inspector (James Ellison) investigates an attack on a wealthy man named Oliver Hammond (John Howard) at his family's estate. Turns out there's a werewolf curse on the Hammond family but the inspector believes there's a more scientific explanation. Rare '40s horror film from 20th Century Fox. It's obviously meant to capitalize on Universal's success with The Wolf Man. It even has its own werewolf poem. Not exactly as catchy though. It's a good B horror-thriller. Director John Brahm and cinematographer Lucien Ballard create a beautiful-looking film, full of shadowy atmosphere and some great sets. Ellison and Howard are good, as is the lovely Heather Angel. Nice support from Halliwell Hobbes, Holmes Herbert, and Bramwell Fletcher. It's barely over an hour so there's no excuse not to try it out. It will be well worth the effort.

"B material given A execution" is how film historian Drew Casper describes 20th Century Fox's first horror movie, 1942's "The Undying Monster," in one of the DVD's extras, and dang if the man hasn't described this movie to a T. The film, a unique melding of the detective, Gothic and monster genres, though uniformly well acted by its relatively no-name cast, features a trio of first-rate artists behind the camera who really manage to put this one over. And the film's script isn't half bad either. Here, Scotland Yard scientist Robert Curtis (James Ellison) comes to eerie Hammond Hall, a brooding pile on the English coast, sometime around 1900, to investigate some recent attacks ascribed to the legendary Hammond monster. Viewers expecting this legend of a voracious predator to wind up being explained in an anticlimactic, mundane fashion may be a bit surprised at how things play out. Ellison is fine in his no-nonsense, modern-detective role (he uses a spectrograph to analyze various clues!), and Heather Angel (who does have the face of one), playing the house's mistress, is equally good. But, as I've mentioned, it is the contributions of three men behind the scenes that really turn this little B into a work of art. Director John Brahm, who would go on to helm Fox's "The Lodger" and "Hangover Square," and DOP Lucien Ballard have combined their formidable talents to make a picture that is noirish, moody and fast moving, with superb use of light and shadow. And composer David Raksin, who two years later would achieve enduring fame for his score for that classiest of film noirs, "Laura," has co-contributed some background music here that is both mysterious and exciting. Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck apparently had hopes that "The Undying Monster" would be the opening salvo in his studio's bid to challenge Universal's monster domination, and in retrospect, it does seem like a fair way to start. This DVD, by the way, looks just fantastic, and sports more "extras" than you would believe capable of accompanying a minor B. All in all, a very pleasant surprise.

Lykanthropia or the werewolf-syndrome is one of the most seldom diseases which is considered belonging to schizophrenia by a part of psychiatry. However, in the legendary versions, the werewolf-motive is often combined with other forms of splitting of personality - like the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-Syndrome. Originally, the werewolf-syndrome is just the believe that the biological border between human and animal can be transgressed. However, the one person who is split at once in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is not transgressing any biological borders, but the ethical border between Good and Evil. For mythological (as well as most common) thinking it is impossible to assume that two exclusive and contradictory logical categories can apply in one and the same individual. If this would be possible, than one person would either split into two different persons, or the two categories would neutralize one another. Since the latter is obviously (according to everyday's experience) not the case, but since the former is neither the case, because we know that one and the same person is either himself and a werewolf or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a horror complex of first rate is born: For the mythological thinking it is completely unacceptable that one body can be the house of two exclusive categories like human and beast or good and evil - like a logical sentence cannot be true and false at the same time."The undying monster" is according to my knowledge the first horror movie that treats the werewolf-motive as a disease. We hear about a "neurological pain" and that the physician and friend of the sick lord tried to treat him with a special "poison". However, Hans Brahm's movie is insofar also indebted to the legendary tradition as it sticks with the idea that the disease breaks out only under specific atmospheric constellations and that is shows the inner change from human to werewolf as an outer change from animal to beast (and back).

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!