The Neanderthal Man

Poster tagline: WHAT PRIMITIVE PASSIONS… WHAT MAD DESIRES DROVE HIM ON? HE HELD THEM ALL IN THE GRIP OF DEADLY TERROR… NOTHING COULD KEEP HIM FROM THIS WOMAN HE CLAIMED AS HIS OWN!!! A kind of B-movie variation on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The "doctor" here is Professor Groves, who tries to prove to the scientific community, with general ridicule, that the ancient Neanderthals had a more developed brain than the present-day homo sapiens-sapiens, while Mr Hyde is his alter ego – a primitive Neanderthal in trousers, white shirt and a funny mask – into which he transformed after the injection of a special serum. The real fun starts after the middle, when the hairy Groves runs through the mountains, knocks out three men and a dog, kidnaps a screaming woman and finally fights a sabre-toothed tiger (his former cat, which he also transformed by injection). Location shots of the Sierra make up about five percent of the film, with the rest wandering around cheap sets with fake trees and the professor's house. Groves's prehistoric mask is not very good, and the illusion of a sabre-toothed tiger is created by shots of an ordinary tiger, probably borrowed from the circus, combined with about five close-up shots of a head mask with artificial incisors, and the two views don't fit together at all. (13.03.2012)