That was an excellent one.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

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

The story starts OK, we meet the crazy mad doctor and his assistant, and the young woman the doctor is infatuated with, her famous piano playing father (the monster), and her boyfriend. All decent actors. I especially liked some of the crazy acting by the doctor's assistant. The problem here is the story and the dialogue. It's just boring and seriously implausible. The doctor is annoying the young woman by sending her flowers, because she resembles his late wife. Her father goes to the doctor to put an end to it. The doctor knocks out the father and injects him with a serum that turns him into the elephant man. Now the doctor is blackmailing the father, by exchanging a cure for the disease for his daughters hand in marriage. Side not, also, I believe the doctor tells his assistant that he killed his wife because she was having an affair with someone else. And also, the doctor is not a doctor, he actually killed the real doctor and took his place. But he's still doing research on some rare disease that he's the only one that can cure. There's also a man in a gorilla suite. And a gorilla in a man's suite (the doctor's butler).This thing is a freaking mess. There's a scene where the fake doctor explains to his assistant that he killed his wife, and killed the real doctor and took his place. The assistant freaks out and tells him she's going to the police. He tells her to shut up and get back to work. She calms down and goes back to work. Later when she goes to bed, the fake doctor lets out the gorilla from the cage to attack the assistant. We see the gorilla open the assistant's door, she screams. Let's not forget the dog. The lab dog comes to the rescue of the assistant. Next scene the assistant is in the lab with the doctor like nothing happened. This is some full on garbage. I don't care what time period this was made in.OK, the butler gets knocked out while trying to kill or tie down the assistant. The elephant guy is wrestling with the doctor who is holding a gun. The gun goes off. The doctor is dead. The assistant unelephants the piano player. Next scene the piano player is playing a concert, the young woman and her boyfriend, and the assistant are happily watching the show. The Freaking End.I give this movie a D, or 3 stars. Mainly for the acting and the music. The story is garbage. The dialogue goes along with the story, crap. This could have been a decent little film. The film makers had no idea what they were doing. They had a story and ran with it. Nobody said, wait maybe we can find another story or find some other angles.I recommend instead to watch Bela Lugosi's best film "White Zombie", or "Messiah of Evil", "Footprints on the Moon", "Last Man on Earth". Better to watch these films a hundred times than watch The Monster Maker. The only way to watch the Monster Maker and enjoy it is if you approach it as a comedy where the filmmakers are involved in the joke. Thank you, good night.

This is a fairly good entertaining film concerning a conceited mad scientist named Dr. Igor Markoff.Dr. Igor falls for a woman named Patricia who resembles his dead wife. Patricia rejects the doctor's advances and enlists her father (Anthony) to help stop the doctor from coming on so strong to her. Dr. Igor insists that Patricia marries him and will stop at nothing for her to become his new bride. Surprisingly, the doctor is actually well respected in the medical community and hides his wicked ways well from others. Dr. Igor hides the fact he will inject his enemies with Acromegaly to get what he wants.The movie is fun, a bit corny and has some fairly good horror moments in it. This is a good afternoon film - it's not the really good creepy horror film that is good for a late night viewing but it's fun to watch.5/10

For fans of the odd, PRC delivers again. In a sort of a preview of his Al Adamson days, Naish plays an obsessed Dr. Markoff (if you want good care, mark him off) with one thing and one thing only on his mind. Actually, what's interesting about this movie is how the low budget forces the filmmakers to boil all the plot down to it's absolute basics. Why does the not bad looking nurse go for Markoff? Well, nobody ever said human beings made sense. If your looking to get silly, as Bob Dylan once sang, you could hardly do better. Speaking of Dylan, the plot is not unlike his song, "Seven Curses." And what did happen to Steve once the movie was over? He was only trying to be a good employee, which is about the closest to a decent instinct anyone character has in this movie.

It's obvious that there was a fixation in this era with the whole concept of the mad scientist who conducts evil experiments. At its best, this was a genre that produced classics like "Frankenstein" or "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." "The Monster Maker" is not the genre at its best - although admittedly it's also not the genre at its worst.My impression has always been that this was an era of transition in movie-making. Some movies from the era have a very "old" feel, as if they come from a bygone era. Others feel very fresh and modern and stand up well today. This is an example of the former. It would have fit into the early 30's well enough. The performances were passable, as was the story, which revolved around Dr. Markoff (J. Carrol Naish) who injects his hapless victim Anthony Lawrence (Ralph Morgan) with a dreadful disfiguring disease for which only he has the cure, the price for which is that Lawrence has to convince his beautiful daughter (Wanda McKay) to marry Markoff. It's not a very frightening movie; it's not even all that suspenseful. The title overstates Markoff's work. Lawrence is certainly disfigured, with swollen hands and a mis-shaped head, but he's hardly a "monster," so those looking for a monster movie will find this disappointing.It's nothing noteworthy, but it's also not awful. (4/10)