My take: It’s a blatant copycat film but it somehow still works.
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars
The Monster Maker is the 30th movie in Studies in Terror, and it is a total copycat. It blatantly copies its plot from previous successful films.
- A pianist loses his ability to use his hands (Hands of Orlac and Mad Love)
- A mad doctor causes injury to others for his own ends (The Return of Doctor X)
- The doctor is obsessively in love with a woman, and is willing to kill to get her (Mad Love and The Mad Ghoul)
- There is a caged, violent ape (Island of Lost Souls)
But somehow, the whole thing works. Even though it stole ideas from previous films, I enjoyed it from beginning to end.
Poster for The Monster Maker
In this movie, Doctor Igor Markoff spots a woman at a piano recital who is the spitting image of his dead wife. He is instantly obsessed and believes he must marry this woman. The woman in question is the daughter of the pianist, and she has no intentions of marrying this strange man. But Dr. Markoff will go to great lengths to win her favor, including inflicting her father with a terrible disease of which only he knows the cure.
While the characters are extreme, and the tropes and cliches abound, this film somehow comes together to make a fun story that is easy to follow. It would make an excellent candidate for a horror marathon with friends. This is because the movie puts the viewer in the position of knowing everything, including things the characters do not know. This easily lends itself to exclamations of “Do not go in there!” and “Oh no, he’s going to get you!” For that reason, it is utterly fun.
I’d recommend this to people who like classic monster-style movies (though I wouldn’t call this a monster movie) or creepy crime stories.
I found The Monster Maker on YouTube:
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