Everyone knows that makeup artists are expert hypnotists and can make people do things no other hypnotist can do. You must believe this or HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER might make very little sense--as this IS the premise for the film! Let me back up a bit. A long-time studio makeup man who specializes in monsters is fired when his studio is sold. The big-wigs insist that monster films are a dying breed and so his services are no longer needed. So, to get revenge, the makeup man hypnotizes two young men who are in his makeup chair for one final monster film. Made up (very poorly) like Frankenstein and the Wolf Man, they kill studio execs yet have no recollection of it afterwords. That's because as they sit their getting the prosthetics applied, the makeup artist talks to them--hypnotizing them very subtly and giving them the command to forget.
By the way, I really, really wish that hypnosis DID work that way--I'd use it for evil and global domination myself...or at least to get out of traffic tickets and get free stuff. I have a decent amount of graduate training in clinical hypnosis and believe me, if you could do this sort of brainwashing, someone would have done it a long time ago!
This is the sort of silly drive-in movie that American-International excelled at in the 50s. None of these films were brilliant or had great production values, but they were entertaining on a simple level. And, despite the silly premise and bad makeup I mentioned above, you can't help but like HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER. It's a nice behind the scenes look at the studio and it is a pleasant little diversion.
By the way, for a long-time makeup man, you sure think the guy would have done a better job with his Frankenstein. It just looked like some guy who was standing too close to an A-bomb blast and not the famous monster!
Also, interestingly the film changes from black & white to color towards the end. At this point, the makeup man shows the actors his little home gallery of masks--it's really actually very cool, as many of the American-International monsters and aliens are there in this room. Cool stuff.
