Wow! Try this headline on for size, a two-headed freak terrorizes Japan by night with near hilarious results! Retromedia is at it again with another mind-boggling PD (that's public domain to you and I) title that makes a surprisingly... um... good, appearance on DVD. Many will probably remember The Manster from those lazy Saturday afternoon creature double features, now preserved on the digital format forever and ever... god help us all!

American reporter Larry Stanford travels to Japan for a big scoop on some experimental... well umm, experiments. Anywho, our outspoken and boisterous boy Larry meets up with Dr. Robert Suzuki and his lovely assistant Tara. Almost immediately, Mr. Suzuki finds that Larry would make the perfect victim, ummm, I mean patient (yes that will do nicely). Moving along, Larry is drugged only to awaken with a horrible kink in his neck, thinking it's nothing he heads back to Tokyo to finish his story (what story?). The kink in Larry's neck turns out to be a brand spankin' new third eye, and not just any old seein' eye neither, an evil seein' eye at that! Needing to keep a close eye (get it, eye?) on his victim, errr I mean patient, Suzuki befriends Larry and shows him the finer side of Tokyo (hello Geisha gals, reeowrr!).

Larry starts to change and not only physically as he becomes even more abrasive than he started out (if that's even possible) and even begins to grow an abnormal amount of hair on his right hand (how do you think that happened?). Larry's also faced with the decision of staying with his wife or his newly found Geisha mistress, as if he didn't have enough to worry about! Between his overly hairy hand and third evil eye on his shoulder, Larry starts to lose it and as his transformation becomes complete, the third eye turns into a full-blown second evil head (maybe he just needed a Mike's Hard Lemonade?). Larry's rampage continues across Japan (well... in a few local parks and alleys anyway) and culminates with a smash-tastic, side-splitting (you'll see what I mean), if not ultimately uneventful and abrupt finale. Does somebody have a cigarette, cause I'm spent!

Incredibly cheesy and undeniably entertaining, The Manster is sure to please many a cult cinema fan's finicky pallet. I don't think I need to tell you how silly this film really is, but what the hey, I'll do it anyway. This film be silly! There, I feel better now. Full of what I like to refer to as "educational dialogue" or "educational narrative", The Manster does a bang up job of dumbing it down for us simple folk. With lines like "You are my brother, you are an experiment that didn't work!" (do people really talk like this?) and "he's an independently wealthy, wealthy crackpot!" that's a lot of wealthy for sure. Needless to say, the monsters (yup, there are more than one on ocassion) are way cool and even when the action slips to a halt and it all gets a bit too talky we can still revel in the wacky dialogue and bad supporting actors (including that of Larry's wife, holy cow!). Some performance are so outrageously awful, you may just cringe in delight! The Manster is definite late night fare that can't be anything but enjoyed by the cult film masses. So bad it's good, yeah, you betcha and extra points for overuse of the word "globetrotting", good times!

Retromedia certainly gets high marks for releasing such an oddity on DVD, but they get even higher marks for giving us such a respectable presentation. Yeah, it's not perfect (should we have expected perfection?) but in comparison to their cult film competition, Retromedia is certainly holding their own. There is some grain and some slight print damage, which appears heaviest during what probably would have been reel changes. For the most part the print looks pretty damn good. With decent clarity and nice definition between blacks and grays, this is a pretty solid transfer all things considered. I doubt that The Manster could ever look any better than this and I'm not even sure that we would even want it to!

Audio fares quite well also with clear dialogue and an extremely low amount of background noise (during just a few scenes) or minor distortion, if any. The mono audio sounds quite fine considering the title at hand.

Extras are limited to a very brief still gallery. The only element separating Retromedia from the likes of Something Weird Video are the lack of extras. Throw in a few trailers, a short film, etc. and we'd be in business. Although I must admit, the price is certainly right (you can get this disc for as low as 7 bucks online!).

Bottom line here is that for some late night viewing madness you can't go wrong with The Manster. Go in knowing exactly what you're going to get out of it and you're all set. It sure isn't Citizen Kane, but then again... Citizen Kane ain't no Manster neither! Enjoy!