Awesome Movie

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

A curse has haunted the Hammond Estate throughout the centuries. Can Heather Angel (Helga) and John Howard (Oliver) get to the bottom of things with the help of various characters? There seems to be a creature that lurks around the grounds and it is not friendly.Unfortunately, this is not a particularly scary film. It starts well with an atmospheric setting and spooky camera angles and Heather Angel is good in her role. We get a few red herrings thrown in but if you have seen this type of film before you will have no surprise as to the outcome. The whole affair turns into a set for people to run around in a large house. I sat and watched but it never quite gave me the level of suspense that I expected. By the end, it is comical as we have a Benny-Hill type chase by the cliff edge. Only, it's not as good as a Benny Hill chase because, whilst the sequence is indeed speeded up, there is a fatal lack of women in skimpy underwear running about

The Hammond family has been living with some unsavoury history for a long time. The male members most often seem to suffer some horrible fate. One night, Oliver Hammond (John Howard) is on his way home when he and a nurse, Kate O'Malley, are attacked by something that may be man or animal. Soon Scotland Yard detectives Robert Curtis (James Ellison) and his wacky sidekick Christy (Heather Thatcher) are assigned to the case, and Curtis determines to use scientific methods to work the clues.While ultimately fairly average and unmemorable, this is still a reasonably enjoyable B genre picture from 20th Century Fox, a studio not ordinarily associated with B level horror. It *is* competently made from beginning to end, with efficient direction by John Brahm ("The Mad Magician", "Hangover Square", "The Lodger"), an expert in Victorian era melodramas. The atmosphere is wonderfully palpable, with striking use of light and darkness by cinematographer Lucien Ballard. Scripted by Lillie Hayward and Michael Jacoby, from the novel by Jessie Douglas Kerruish, it tells a fairly snappy story that clocks in at a mere 64 minutes.Some hardcore horror fans may not be terribly satisfied, as horror elements don't really come into play that often. The running time is largely dedicated to the investigation of the incident, with an amusingly loopy Thatcher supplying all of the comedy relief. It's not until the final seven minutes when we finally get to see some werewolf action.The cast is very good. Ellisons' bright, charming presence helps quite a bit. The pretty Heather Angel leaves a strong impression as the skeptical and level headed Helga Hammond. Supporting actors Bramwell Fletcher, Aubrey Mather, Halliwell Hobbes, Holmes Herbert, and Eily Malyon all do well. Hollywood tough guy Charles McGraw makes his film debut as the character Strudwick.This should provide some adequate entertainment for fans of 1930s and 1940s horror.Six out of 10.

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.

I think the film is exceptionally moody and sinister—and subtly subversive. Director John Brahm may not have been an auteur, but this German director imported by Fox from England certainly was a master at using light and shadow to induce the creeps. Or was celebrated cinematographer Lucien Ballard the genius? Much has been made of similarities between "The Undying Monster" and "Hound of the Baskervilles" released by Fox three years earlier. But there is more to the similarity than Fox's attempt to cash in on an earlier success. In "Hound of the Baskervilles" Sherlock Holmes debunked the Baskerville curse as a diversion used to cover up a murder attempt. The writers of "The Undying Monster" subverted the audience's belief that there would be a similar natural explanation of an apparently supernatural attack in which a member of the Hammond family is injured. The Hammond curse concerns an ancestor who is supposed to have made a pact with the devil for immortality. The ancient ancestor is still rumored to live in a secret room in the castle's cellar from which he preys on his descendants, thereby prolonging his unnatural life. In this film the murderer is indeed a werewolf.But this astonishing revelation is muted by a curiously unconvincing final scene in which a forensic pathologist from Scotland Yard, who has witnessed the creature's transformation back into human form, tosses off the unprecedented phenomenon as something perfectly natural. Lycanthropy, says the investigator, is merely a person's delusion that he can change into a wolf. The family doctor admits he has been treating the monster for a genetic brain affliction. But we have seen it was much more that a delusion. We remember what the investigator conveniently forgets, that a sample of wolf's fur from the crime scene miraculously disappeared during chemical analysis. The unwarranted insertion of a "logical" explanation for the curse steers the film away from an uncomfortably audacious premise, and toward the inoffensive conventions of an old dark house mystery.But the film began with something much more sinister in mind. When Helga, the mistress of the manor, leads investigators to the Hammond family crypt, we see that near Crusader Sir Reginald Hammond's sarcophagus stands a statue of Sir Reginald and a beast that has a dog's, wolf's, or jackal's face and paws, but human arms and unmistakable female breasts. The pathologist dismisses the beast's odd appearance with the facile comment "Man has always bred the dog into fantastic shapes." There are no further references to Sir Reginald, and the final scene feels as if it had been tacked on in post-production, more so because Heather Angel who played Helga, the investigator's love interest, is not in the scene. My guess is that fear of the Hayes office caused Fox not to carry through with the dark suggestion that Sir Reginald's pact unleashed evil upon his descendants. The otherworldy combination of male and female, human and animal characteristics of the wolf in Sir Reginald's statue suggests at the very least he was involved in an unholy union that may have spawned male descendants genetically tainted with diabolical traits. If detected, such a theme would surely have roused the ire of the censors. Fox's timidity may therefore have cost this handsomely mounted film, that sported more elaborate sets and technique than Universal had at its disposal, any chance to join the A list of B films from the 1940s horror cycle.Nevertheless, it's an entertaining film if you can look past the ending and the comic relief provided by an assistant investigator who comes off as a female version of the bumbling Dr. Watson of the Holmes movies.