todmichel wrote:
Yes - you must add the Argentinian movie "Una luz en la ventana" (litt. "A Light at the Window"), directed by Manuel Romero. The great Narciso Ibanez Menta plays Dr. Herman, who lives as a hidden recluse in a house in the woods, being affected by acromegaly. As it was filmed in 1942, it could be the very first horror movie dealing with the subject.
todmichel wrote:
Rick, I think that these early Rondo Hatton movies don't count - none of them was about the subject of acromegaly, they just exploited Rondo's misfortune.

I know it looks like I'm responding to todmichel here, but this is really for the esteemed CHFB panel of experts:

In Forgotten Horrors 3, Price, Wooley & Turner have this quick throwaway line about how THE MONSTER MAKER was probably meant to capitalize on the "horror" of Rondo Hatton: "THE MONSTER MAKER doubtless owes its inspiration to the public profile that Hatton had given his private tragedy." Hatton was a bit player for Uni since the 1930s, so folks in the biz would've known about him and his condition, but how reasonable is it to think that Hatton "inspired" Newfield & Neufeld to do THE MONSTER MAKER?

I tried to build a time-line last night, and it looks like THE MONSTER MAKER finished production two months before shooting began on Rondo's star-turn in THE PEARL OF DEATH. So how plausible is it that THE MONSTER MAKER was "inspired" by Hatton-at-Universal? Tom Weaver in Poverty Row Horrors! surmises that it might be the other way around from what Forgotten Horrors came up with, since Hatton was signed for THE PEARL OF DEATH three days after the release of THE MONSTER MAKER: "It is, of course, just an assumption that THE MONSTER MAKER might have prompted Universal to cast real-life acromegalic Hatton in the murderous role [of the Hoxton Creeper in THE PEARL OF DEATH]... it does seem strange that, after a half-century of filmmaking, the very first film to feature an acromegalic monster should be followed eight weeks later by a second."

If not Hatton, then can UNA LUZ EN LA VENTANA (the Argentinian movie that todmichel mentions above) be put in the geneaology of THE MONSTER MAKER? Could Newfield, Neufeld, or screenwriters Pierre Gendron & Martin E. Mooney have seen or heard about UNA LUZ EN LA VENTANA and have been moved to make THE MONSTER MAKER? (Weaver mentions that the script is based a story by Lawrence Williams & Nell O'Day, but suggests only that plot elements were lifted from THE RAVEN and MAD LOVE). Did UNA LUZ EN LA VENTANA ever get screened in the US prior to 1944? Is UNA LUZ EN LA VENTANA available for viewing on DVD today?

I guess I'm just wondering about how acromegaly got "monsterized" ("horror-ified"?) by the movies in the 1940s... The earliest mention of acromegaly that I can find in a US horror movie was John Carradine's mad endocrinologist in CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (not to be confused with Carradine's mad endocrinologist in THE UNEARTHLY)-- when Evelyn Ankers first meets Carradine's character, she's sitting in the waiting room of his office at the sanitarium and reading a medical journal article about him that mentions his pioneering work in treating acromegaly.

Finally, other than Tom's Poverty Row Horrors! and Forgotten Horrors 3, does anyone know of any writing done on the production of THE MONSTER MAKER? I don't read all of the good monster magazines like I know I should... does anyone know if anyone produced a close examination of this movie somewhere? (SAM33 above mentions "a bit" about it in an old issue of Filmfax...)

Last Edited By: CreepingBride Dec 15 09 10:51 PM. Edited 5 times.