“I’ll use the very monsters they mock to bring them to an end.”
Pete Dumond (Robert H. Harris) is the chief make-up artist for American International Studios. After 25 years he is told that the studio will no longer be doing horror movies. They now plan to make musicals so his talents are no longer needed. The new bosses are Jeffrey Clayton (Paul Maxwell) and John Nixon (Eddie Marr). They believe that horror movies have run their course and that the industry is saturated with monster movies. They fire Dumond. The normally mild mannered artist vows revenge on the studio heads for minimizing his talent and value to the studio and to movies in general. Dumond decides to use the monsters these men have rejected to destroy them. Dumond is insane.
The movie Dumond has been currently working on is a teenage monster movie called “Werewolf Meets Frankenstein”. Larry Drake (Gary Clarke) plays the Teenage Werewolf and Tony Mantell (Gary Conway) plays the Teenage Frankenstein. Dumond hypnotizes both young men and mixes a numbing ingredient into his foundation cream. With the use of hypnosis and his special cream Dumond, with the aid of his assistant Rivero (Paul Brinegar), instructs Larry, in werewolf make-up, to kill Nixon. When one of the night guards gets suspicious, Dumond puts on monster make-up and kills him. Next Dumond instructs Tony, made up as Frankenstein’s monster, to kill Clayton.
The police find a maid who describes being knocked down by a monster that looked like Frankenstein's monster and the police lab finds a strange ingredient in make-up found under Clayton’s fingernails during the autopsy. The police are getting suspicious and Rivero is starting to crack.
“How to Make a Monster” was released in 1958 and was directed by Herbert L. Strock. It’s an interesting but little known movie. During the 50’s there was a surge of teenage monster movies, everything from Cavemen to Aliens from Outer Space and AIP was right in the middle of it.
AIP becomes American International Studios for the movie. “I was a Teenage Werewolf” and “I was a Teenage Frankenstein” becomes “Werewolf meets Frankenstein”. Gary Conway, who plays the Frankenstein monster character, also played him in the original “I was a Teenage Frankenstein”.
The props used in the final sequence, that Dumond calls his children, are masks created by Paul Blaisdell for AIP from movies such as “The She Creature”, “Invasion of the Saucer Men”, “It Conquered the World”, and “Attack of the Puppet People”. Nothing like advertising your own movies. The last reel of the movie is in color. This technique was also done in “I was a Teenage Frankenstein”.
As for the movie itself, it’s not exactly typical of the teen flick genre. And by that I mean that there aren’t a lot of teens in it. It’s more of a companion piece to the previous Teenage Frankenstein and Werewolf movies. Again, nothing like advertising your own movies. It adds a finishing touch to your teen movie collection. It’s decent low budget “B” movie fare. I enjoyed it.