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The
Hideous Sun Demon
A nuclear fission accident exposes dedicated, albeit inebriated, scientist Gilbert McKenna (Robert Clarke, who also produced, co-wrote and co-directed) to a dangerous strain of "newly-developed radioactive isotopes". Whenever he's exposed to the sun's now-deadly rays, he reverts into a carnivorous, bipedal reptile monster that becomes inexplicably famous and begins dating Elizabeth Taylor and Imelda Marcos. Whoops...that's George Hamilton I'm thinking of. Actually, he's transformed into a carnivorous, bipedal reptile monster that looks like a (low-rent) cross between the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, runs around without a shirt and chokes people. Complicating matters are the two women in his life--his concerned colleague and loyal girlfriend Ann, (Patricia Manning) and Trudy (Nan Peterson), the cheap, busty blonde piano player he falls for in a dive bar. A cop (William White, later in Jerry Warren's Attack of the Mayan Mummy & Face of the Screaming Werewolf) pursues the Sun Demon all over Los Angeles (at least that's what he says he's doing as he stands in his office and sticks pins in his map), and to the eventual riveting climax at the top of a water tower. Clarke starred in Edgar Ulmer's The Man from Planet X (1951) and Ronald V. Ashcroft's The Astounding She-Monster (1957), thought, "hey, I can do this!" and decided to write and finance his own star vehicle, using Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" as a jumping-off point. Image Entertainment's full-screen dvd transfer is perfectly ordinary, with occasional heavy scratching, especially around reel changes. The film looks better than it ever has, and barring a full-scale restoration (fat chance), this is as good as we're ever gonna see. The Dolby Digital mono soundtrack is excellent, and you'll certainly recognize some major music cues (by John Seely, who wrote the Davey and Goliath theme!) later re-used in George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The boozy love theme "Strange Pursuit" sounds like something Chet Baker might've cranked out just before nodding off. Co-director and editor Tom Boutross went on to direct the drive-in classics The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)andThe Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976). Is The Hideous Sun Demon a cautionary fable regarding toxic hazards? Nah. Is it a chronicle of Man's desire to sublimate his animal inclinations? Uh...not really. It's just an hour-and-fifteen minutes of good, old-fashioned Atomic-Age
monster-cheese, that despite some long talky stretches, delivers
everything a"man-in-a-zippered-monster-suit" flick should.
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"Whisky and soda mix...not whisky and science!" 