"The Neanderthal Man" is a very, very bad film. But it's also very campy and kitschy...and is fun to watch, albeit very, very stupid! It's a variation on "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"...but a very badly made one.A very strange and enormous cat-like creature has been spotted in the Sierras in California. It's mostly strange because for most of the shots, you see a normal everyday tiger...but in closeups it's got a silly fake head with enormous Sabre-tooth Tiger-like fangs. But it's hilarious that in many scenes you don't see the fangs at all and in others they are there. This special effect must have cost at least $4! Eventually, it's difficult to deny that something is out there...but despite more and more evidence, Professor Groves acts angrier and angrier. He's also fond of telling everyone (particularly the other professors) how stupid and short-sighted they are for not agreeing 100% with him and his wacky theories--though he's offered zero proof! Could this nutty professor (and not of the Jerry Lewis variety) have something to do with the strange sightings as well as a murderous caveman that soon appears as well?The Sabre-tooth Tiger is hilariously bad...as is the getup the Neanderthal guy sports. But, despite being really, really stupid the film is fun to watch because Robert Shayne is wonderfully silly as Professor Groves. He is obviously imbalanced...and hilariously so. Heck, he makes Dr. Strangelove look totally normal by comparison! By the way, fans of 1950s TV will likely recognize Shayne as the Inspector from "The Adventures of Superman". Also, while the sign language they use in the film isn't perfect, it's not too bad...better than most you see in films. And, I should know as we use sign language regularly in my home.

A haughty Professor becomes intent on proving that mankind's gradual evolution did not necessarily affect his quotient of intelligence. Despite the distinguished directorial credit, this is a thoroughly routine horror programmer of the 'mad scientist' variety, with more than its fair share of unintended hilarity amid the general tackiness. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, as played by Robert Shayne, the doctor here is the rudest in film history and watching him let rip with insults at his staid, disapproving colleagues was a hoot! Typically for this sort of fare, the all-important serum is first tested on animals or 'lesser' humans – in this case, a perennially terrified domestic cat is turned into a saber-toothed tiger and a mute servant girl into a bushy-eyebrowed ape woman (albeit, apparently, just long enough for her to sit for some photographic evidence of the veracity of his claims) – before applying it to himself. The proverbial redneck hostility to a marauding tiger preying on their livestock and later a simian kidnapper of women is present and accounted for; what is more surprising is that the middle-aged professor has a good-looking and much younger fiancée who still relishes hopes of dragging him from his laboratory off to a church altar and, naturally, once the young urban expert hero comes along, he falls for the charms of the professor's clueless daughter. The TNT-culled print I watched left an awful lot to desire so, in spite of my reservations, I acquired a superior copy of the film the minute it was over!

A most interesting and weakly executed Sci-Fi diversion, where we have a somewhat unbalanced scientist proposing a theory that brain size is indicative of intelligence. A theory laughed at by fellow scientists in this film, but now recognized as accurate.Of course, in the film, the scientist promotes as fact that brain size of the neanderthal is perhaps even larger than modern man, when it was not. That's the flaw here, but still we get to see him revert himself back to a neanderthal with violent tendencies, probably also pretty far-fetched. I'd expect a neanderthal in today's world to be more bewildered and frightened than overtly violent for no reason.Also of notable fun is the "reversion" of house cats to sabre-tooth tigers. Pretty unlikely as they're not really evolutionarily that closely related in any line. But still fun and in one case, ironically deadly.This is mild low-budget 1950s science fiction, short enough to not be tedious, although the excessively prose dialog is annoying. It's almost like writing in a period stage-drama style of the 1900s, and applying it to a 50s B-movie.While merely okay, this film could have been so much better in the hands of Jack Arnold and the sci-fi effects wizards at 1950s Universal-International. Oh, wait, I just remembered they did it as Monster on the Campus.

An ultra-cheesy '50s monster flick in which we get to see Robert Shayne (Inspector Henderson from TV's ''Adventures of Superman'') shamelessly recite hilarious dialogue and feverishly overact, as a dedicated mad scientist who's found a way to reverse the evolutionary process! It's the treat of the film to watch him rant and rave about his idiotic theories without applying the brakes. First he turns a common house cat into a fierce saber-toothed tiger, accomplished by the effects team utilizing close-ups of a fake model; later, he jabs himself with a serum that transforms him into the title character. You've got to get a load of this ape-man's face; it's one of the most ridiculous-looking of all film monsters, obviously an over-the-head mask you'd buy in any Halloween shop, and completely expressionless with a rubber muzzle and painted set eyes that don't move. For his creature, the filmmaker should have chosen to stay with the crude third or fourth stage appliances during the chintzy transformation sequence. A real hoot, and a good deal of fun if you go for these types of silly yet entertaining creature features. We also get to see a young Beverly Garland in the cast, although a double for her is blatantly used in a sequence where she dons a bathing suit and models for a photographer. **1/2 out of ****