Horror Classic 39 of 50: THE MONSTER WALKS
Check it out: the only image I can find online of a poster for 1932's The Monster Walks is this one in Spanish. The movie's not in Spanish. But check out that monster! It's a giant, partially-evolved man-beast that eats people! This movie's gonna rock! I just know it will... I've never been wrong about any of these "horror classics" before, have I?Synopsis
One of the first things I noticed was that the credits included a character named "Exodus" played by an actor named "Sleep 'n' Eat." This gave me an uneasy feeling... the kind of feeling you get when you suspect that you're about to see a cringe-inducing stereotypical African-American character in a movie from the early 1930s. You know that feeling.
Anyway, the movie starts with the death of Mr. Nelson. Various associates of his are gathered at his house on this stormy night, including Dr. Nelson's friend and lawyer Mr. Wilkes, Mrs. Krug the servant and her son Hans, Dr. Nelson's wheelchair-bound brother Robert, Dr. Nelson's daughter Ruth, and Ruth's fiance Dr. Clayton. We meet one other important character in the early minutes of the film: Dr. Nelson's pet chimpanzee Yogi, who lives in a small cage in the basement. Dr. Nelson used to perform experiments on Yogi, and as a result, he's not the most amiable ape around. He also really hates Ruth, in a weird case of sibling rivalry.
Okay, so there's a chimp in the movie. He can't be the titular monster, can he? That would be totally lame. Surely there's something else going on here... like, Dr. Nelson actually transferred his brain to Yogi's body before he died, so now he can run around and wreak havoc in ape form. Oh! Or one of Dr. Nelson's final experiments exposed Yogi to radiation, and now he's going to grow larger and stronger over the course of the movie, until at last he's as big as the house! Yeah, that must be it.
Okay, so everyone's in the house, and everyone wants to know what's in Dr. Nelson's will, so Mr. Wilkes reads it. The entire fortune is going to Ruth, with Mrs. Krug and Hans getting a few leftover bucks to keep taking care of the house. Robert gets nothing, unless Ruth dies, in which case he's next in line to the inheritance. Everyone's pretty chagrined (except Ruth, of course; she seems just vaguely happy to be wealthy), so it's not a huge shock when somebody attempts to kill Ruth as she sleeps later that night.
Slightly more shocking is the method of the attempted murder: a hairy paw reaches to strangle her from INSIDE THE WALL of her room! Now, halfway through the movie, the monster finally walks! Ruth is so terrified by the ordeal that she can't go back to sleep, so Mrs. Krug offers to keep her company for the rest of the night.
Yogi the chimp, of course, is the only one in the house with a hairy paw, and we all know how much he hated Ruth, so it must be him, right? But he's still locked in his cage. So who could it be? Mrs. Krug and Hans, right? Well, that seems likely... until Mrs. Krug is strangled by the same hairy paw as she dozes in Ruth's bed.
And then a bunch of other stuff happens, and it turns out that the killer was Hans after all, wearing a fake chimp arm and taking orders from Robert the wheelchair-bound uncle. Hans killed his mom by accident, see. Hans is so shaken up he grabs Ruth and takes her downstairs, preparing to throw her to the wild ape in the cage... and this is one Yogi who's not interested in peaceful meditation.
(If you don't like that final sentence, try this one: "This is one Yogi who won't be satisfied with pic-a-nic baskets.")
Is It Scary?
No, although I did appreciate the fact that it sticks with several tried and true scary story/murder mystery conventions.
Lessons I Learned
- Chimps are psychic. Yogi could sense Ruth was coming to the house before she arrived.
- There were no regulations on animal treatment in movies in 1932. I felt really bad for that chimpanzee in the cage. He paces and stomps and jumps up and down and rattles the bars... he's stir crazy, and it's obviously not acting.
- Dr. Clayton: (flirting with Ruth) "You're going to have to take something for your nerves, young lady."
Ruth: "Shall I take an apple a day, doctor?"
Dr. Clayton: (Grinning lecherously) "Apples are strictly forbidden in your diet." [Is that innuendo? A pun? I don't get their foreplay at all.] - Yogi: "Eeep eep eep eep EEEEEP EEEP EEEEP!!!"
Three.
Comments
• This was a pretty bland murder mystery, and there was really no monster in it at all. What a ripoff. It should have been called Some Guy Wearing a Hairy Glove Walks.
• As I mentioned, an actor called Sleep 'n' Eat played Exodus, the driver. He was not important to the plot at all, serving only as the most unenlightened, stereotypical kind of comic relief. Here's a question that might be weird: How terrible is this? In 1932, would it be better to have a) No African-Americans in movies at all, or b) Over-the-top, stereotypical portrayals like the one in this film, assuming those were the only two options at the time?
• Dr. Clayton is Ruth's fiance. Because of the storm, he ends up staying at the house, but of course morality dictates that he sleep in his own separate room. But there are a few scenes where he sees her to her room, and every time, he kind of lingers there and stares at the door after she closes it. You can tell he'd love to do some things not permitted by the Hays Code.
• In one scene Dr. Clayton goes to his room and puts a robe on... over his suit. Isn't that less comfortable than wearing either the robe or the suit? Shouldn't he have taken off the suit before putting on the robe? Am I thinking about this too much?
• Speaking of chimpanzee actors, did you know that one of the most prominent chimps to play Cheeta in the Tarzan movies is still alive and living a luxurious life of retirement? I've recently seen and heard stories about him in Entertainment Weekly and on NPR. Check it out.
Letter grade for The Monster Walks: D-
Next film in the 50-movie set: Monster from a Prehistoric Planet. Oh, sure. I suppose it's just some guy wearing half an ape suit walking around in a desert somewhere. I'm not even going to get my hopes up for seeing some awesome stop-motion creatures terrorizing humans via rear projection.
Say, wait a minute... The monster never even walked!
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