After sitting through four of these distinctly lacklustre 'Creature Feature' movie remakes that were made for television back in 2001, it pained me to watch the last, HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER. Each film has an interesting premise and plenty of potential, but these elements were usually wasted in favour of the mundane. HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER isn't a perfect film by any means but the key difference is that it's actually entertaining for once. From the word go, the story of computer nerds accidentally bringing a monster to life is a lot of fun, with plenty of larger-than-life characters and humour to keep things amusing; I went through a video game stage myself as a teenager (and have probably never really grown out of it) so much of the on-screen antics are also appealing.
Ironically, the first half, which is as usual the set-up, is the most interesting, before the second turns into a traditional monster-on-the-rampage flick. The low budget is evident in the use of one single set and the lack of any CGI effects, but the monster itself is a fantastic-looking beast that manages to scare. It assimilates body parts in a similar way to the Jamie Lee Curtis-starrer VIRUS and looks horrendous, which is the point. I loved the sword-and-sorcery edge the film has to it with the use of swords and axes rather than the weaponry which the usual clichéd soldiers-vs-aliens flicks have. The climax plays out as you might imagine, with a moral epilogue of a twist as well, and I sat through it all and found it amiable enough.
The cast is fairly interesting and wide-reaching for what is, in essence, a B-movie. Clea Duvall, who I found intensely irritating in the likes of THE FACULTY, is actually passable here; Steven Culp is the established actor of the piece but makes little impact. The three guys playing the nerds are having a lot of fun and are all fine in their parts, with particular note going to Tyler Mane, he of the massive build; Mane later went on to play the hulking hero Ajax in TROY and Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN remake. There's also a topless cameo from scream queen Julie Strain, which is the closest this film gets to modern-day B-movies. It's no masterpiece, but I think it achieves what it set out to achieve, which was to create a B-movie for our times with similarities to '50s flicks with added here-and-now updates.
Ironically, the first half, which is as usual the set-up, is the most interesting, before the second turns into a traditional monster-on-the-rampage flick. The low budget is evident in the use of one single set and the lack of any CGI effects, but the monster itself is a fantastic-looking beast that manages to scare. It assimilates body parts in a similar way to the Jamie Lee Curtis-starrer VIRUS and looks horrendous, which is the point. I loved the sword-and-sorcery edge the film has to it with the use of swords and axes rather than the weaponry which the usual clichéd soldiers-vs-aliens flicks have. The climax plays out as you might imagine, with a moral epilogue of a twist as well, and I sat through it all and found it amiable enough.
The cast is fairly interesting and wide-reaching for what is, in essence, a B-movie. Clea Duvall, who I found intensely irritating in the likes of THE FACULTY, is actually passable here; Steven Culp is the established actor of the piece but makes little impact. The three guys playing the nerds are having a lot of fun and are all fine in their parts, with particular note going to Tyler Mane, he of the massive build; Mane later went on to play the hulking hero Ajax in TROY and Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN remake. There's also a topless cameo from scream queen Julie Strain, which is the closest this film gets to modern-day B-movies. It's no masterpiece, but I think it achieves what it set out to achieve, which was to create a B-movie for our times with similarities to '50s flicks with added here-and-now updates.