How to Make a Monster

This is another solid entry in the teenage monster genre, starring the durable Robert H. Harris, one of the finest character actors of his era, familiar to fans of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series,.

Like the other entries in this cycle, including Teenage Werewolf and especially Teenage Frankenstein, this entire cycle might have been renamed "Make Room For Daddy," although "Daddy" in this case is a terrible authority figure whose only goal is to control his children, dominate them, and ultimately destroy them.

The entire cycle is a deconstruction of the myth of a paternal authority that dominates the social sciences of the day (parodied in Stephen Sondheim's "Gee, Officer Krupke" from West Side Story and in teen rebellion films, especially the Nicholas Ray-James Dean film, "Rebel without a Cause"), but also familiar in the idealized Daddy roles in numerous sitcoms of the era, especially, of course, Father Knows Best.

This series might have punningly be called Father Knows Beast. The entire cycle is a brilliant deconstruction of paternalistic authority. This is not to say it doesn't work on its own narrative level, though much of the plot is hokum. Still it's well done combining horror and detective genres quite well, and excellently directed as well.

Though generally consigned to the teen and drive-in genre, few films of the 1950s more seriously challenged the myth of parental authority as well as the films in this cycle did.