Short Takes

Oh! This fromage soaked Japanese/American collaboration could scarcely be a more shining example of the prototypical CineSchlocker flick! World Press reporter Larry Stanford (Peter Dyneley) clambers to the volcano-side haunt of a mad scientist (Tetsu Nakamura) monkeying with humanity's evolutionary soup. Although, he ain't so good at it, which reduces Doc Suzuki's wife into a grunting sideshow freak kept in a cage and his latest experiment just returned from a murderous rampage. Poor Larry's next. The changes are subtle at first. He starts swilling saki and manhandling geisha gals instead of filing his story and flying home to his wife like a good boy. But then he sprouts an auxillary EYEBALL on his neck, and understandably, Stanford goes full-tilt bonkers at the discovery. As the serum begins to take tighter hold, Larry continues to de-evolve and mutate into a hideous critter that proves TWO HEADS aren't ALWAYS better than one!!! No breasts. 17 corpses. Bathing beauties. Guy in a gorilla suit. Spontaneous (and startlingly icky) binary fission. Mickey slipping. Bolder to the brainpan. Poor ol' Larry doesn't know the half of it, "I seem to have collected myself a kink in the neck!" Given the flick's public domain status, there's also an aggressively discounted version from Alpha Video Distributors. (1960, Fullframe B&W, DD mono, Exclusive photos.)