The Undying Monster (1942)

Sadly Over-hyped

How sad is this?

Brilliant and touching

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

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

My family, the Hammonds, first saw this movie on Million Dollar Movie on channel 11 KPIX NYC. We were fully alerted when we heard our name called out in the synopsis. We must have seen it ten times back then as the movie was shown for one week, 3 or 4 times daily. It scared us kids while our parent just rolled their eyes when we watched it again and again. It's a very atmospheric mystery/thriller, with outstanding cinematography. The actors are all good although the attempts at comedy were winch-inducing as others have mentioned. A few plot holes and stretched-thin character motivations round out the negatives but that atmosphere still carries the film and I really enjoyed seeing it again . . . and again.

20th Century Fox never went in for the Gothic horror films that Universal specialized in. But when they did one it was a quality product even as a B picture. Such is the case of The Undying Monster. I wish it had a better story though because the mood captured by director John Brahm is completely right for this kind of film.In a film story line that borrows quite liberally from Arthur Conan Doyle's Hound Of The Baskervilles, the Hammonds seem to be as cursed as the Baskervilles. For several hundred years a male Hammond falls victim to a curse because an ancestor sold his soul to the devil.I can't believe that none of the English colony was available here. The Scotland Yard Inspector who is using science to try and catch the murderer is American James Ellison. John Howard is the last of the male Hammonds is also American. His sister however is English Heather Angel and the key role of the coroner is played by Bramwell Fletcher.Fletcher's a scientist too, but he's real tuned into the whole occult business concerning werewolves though he thinks that science can do the trick to cure them. In that he's got an agenda all his own.The Undying Monster is a decent try at Gothic horror, but I have a feeling it would have been done better at the studio which knew how.

The Undying Monster was apparently a second feature; and that's not really surprising as there's nothing particularly great about it and the running time is also very short. The film takes more than obvious influence from the classic Arthur Conan Doyle novel 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' in that it focuses on a family curse; but the style and execution of the film is also very similar to the 1939 film version of said classic novel. The story featured is actually really good; it has several interesting themes and director John Brahm provides a foreboding atmosphere; but unfortunately the suspense is constantly abated via a very unwelcome dose of humour. The film takes place in Wales and focuses on an aristocratic family plagued by an ancient curse; which takes the form of a monster that prowls around their property at night and has already claimed the lives of several family members. After the latest incident, it is decided that there is reason to call in Scotland Yard; and a young detective and his assistant begin to investigate.The film is really good for about the first twenty minutes and it looks like it might build into something special; but when the detective and his assistant are introduced, things start to go downhill. It's obvious that the pair of them are there to add some comic relief to the proceedings; but the problem is that it's really not needed. Occasionally, some slight comic relief will come in to help even out a film with some real scenes of trauma; but here the trauma amounts to a shot of a dead dog, and the humour is all encompassing. It's not even very funny either and I barely cracked a smile at all. Once the detectives come in, the film takes on more of an investigative approach and the plot is not as interesting. The clues given to the detective's don't leave much to the imagination either (a scene that sees the detective realise that a room has been recently entered by the way of the huge set of footprints down the centre of the room being case in point!). The ending does come as something as a surprise as the film felt like it was going to head in the same direction that Conan Doyle's novel did; but it's not enough to save it and overall I have to say that I'm really disappointed considered that I had heard good things about this one!