Dr. Robert Suzuki (Tetsu Nakamura) has been experimenting with an enzyme that's supposed to duplicate the mutation effects caused by bursts of cosmic rays that bombard the Earth every thousand years.  So far, his track record hasn't been good.  His wife Emiko was the first to take the enzyme, and now she's locked in a cage in his basement, a hideously deformed monster that will never again see the light of day.  His brother Genji volunteered to take it next, with similarly bad results.  Genji turned into a violent, hairy beast and Dr. Suzuki had no choice but to kill him and dispose of his body in the fires of the volcano that fed his lab's basement furnace and provided his power.

Larry Stanford (Peter Dyneley) is a reporter for the World Press on assignment in Tokyo.  His latest story is about Dr. Suzuki's work, which he thinks, and is led to believe, has been limited to only botanical research on mushrooms and the like.  After a long journey to the mountain lab and some pleasant conversation with Dr. Suzuki and his assistant Tara, the doctor slips Larry a mickey in his drink and then, fresh out of volunteers, proceeds to inject his enzyme into Larry.  After that, Larry starts to change.  A once happily married man, Larry starts to learn the joys of drinking and womanizing in Japanese bath houses with Dr. Suzuki, who goes with him, not only to enjoy himself, but to observe the progress and the effects of the enzyme as well.

Soon, about the same time that he starts going out with Dr. Suzuki's assistant Tara, who's also observing, Larry starts to notice that something's wrong, and over the next several days, it becomes progressively worse.  First, his hand starts to shake and claw up, and he develops an itch on his shoulder. His behavior becomes more aggravated.  Eventually, he notices that where his shoulder was itching, a patch of scarred looking skin is developing, and suddenly his right hand has become hairy, with claw like fingernails.  Eventually, the patch of scarred skin becomes an eye, and as Larry sinks deeper and deeper into the effects of the mutation, he starts killing people and eventually grows a second monstrous head, which his own head becomes hairy and he takes on an appearance not unlike The Wolf Man from the classic film of the same name.

After killing a noted Psychiatrist, Larry heads back to the mountain lab, where Dr. Suzuki has altered the enzyme in hopes that, once injected with it, Larry will split into two different creatures, though the results will be unpredictable. It was hoped though, that the beast would separate from the man and that Larry would return to normal.  Dr. Suzuki did manage to inject him, which leads up to a rather interesting separation of the two, in an exciting climax on the top of a volcano that's starting to go through an active phase.

This film I suppose, in its own way, is rather famous in certain circles. It's certainly famous enough to have been paid tribute to in other films, and yet, it's not one that you hear all that much about. In the realm of classic b-movies, this film has, at least from what I can tell, gone largely unnoticed and, if not for the DVD releases from Retromedia and Alpha, may have eventually become forgotten all together, buried under the mountains of other modern and classic film releases that have come about since the advent of the DVD.

This film has many great aspects to it, but there were a few things that kept me from giving it a five bee rating.  First, the dialog could have used a little work.  There were a couple of spots where Dr. Suzuki could have gone off on longer monologues, full of deep meaning about man's evolution and his work in general, but sadly, he's usually cut off before ge gets the chance.  He had also apparently taken Tara from...somewhere very unpleasant that she doesn't want to ever have to go back to, but they never say what it was.  Was it a whore house?  Was it an orphanage?  Was she living on the streets?  Who knows?  They were deliberately vague on that point, and I don't know why, but it annoyed me a little.  It's like, if it was important enough to hint at, then at least bring it out at some point in the story.  It was mentioned more than once without ever revealing where she came from that was so horrible.

I found the whole thing with Larry and his wife a bit boring to be perfectly honest.  She was incredibly annoying and that whole part of the story felt like little more than a distraction that was used as filler.  If they had left her out completely and simply written him in as a bachelor, the story would have worked just as well.  I suppose its purpose was to show how much his true nature had changed by having him dump the wife that he loved, but still, there were other ways that could have been done.

Where this movie really shined was with the monster make-up.  Dr. Suzuki's brother Genji turned into a creature that was very similar to what developed in Larry and eventually separated from him.  It looked like kind of a monster you'd see on some planet somewhere in the original Star Trek.  Sort of ape-like, and yet, more humanoid than that, but not human at all.  Dr. Suzuki's wife Emiko, who you can see in the first screen shot above, basically looked like her face was melting off her head and had some really bizarre looking teeth and wild hair.  The effect of seeing her in that cell in his basement was almost terrifying to be honest, though I couldn't tell you exactly why.  Then you have the two-headed Larry monster, which was just awesome.  Why?  Because the second head wasn't just a stupid looking dummy head.  It was actually somewhat animated, which made it a seriously creepy sight to behold.  They weren't shy about showing him like that either, as some films so annoyingly are.  He was running around killing women, killing doctors, killing cops.  Basically, anyone he felt like killing, he killed, and they showed him doing it.  Well, not directly most of the time, but I mean you saw him in full make up going after them, fighting with cops, etc....  This went miles toward making the film a more fun and enjoyable experience for the viewer.  There's nothing I hate more than watching a b-monster movie where the monster gets a minimal amount of screen time.

Tetsu Nakamura's portrayal of Dr. Suzuki also played a large part in what made this such a great movie.  He had an easy style about him, and what he lacked in ethics, he made up for with his style and easy going manner.  Despite the things he had done, he was actually rather likeable, which is a strange thing to see in any film.  Peter Dyneley didn't manage to make his character likeable, though it would be too much to say that he wasn't, at least at the beginning.  After he came under the influence of the enzyme and the changes it was causing in him mentally, he turned into a sleazy ass, and that's when he really started bringing out the more interesting, and even fun aspects of the character, especially with his drinking and womanizing, and eventually the disrespect he showed his wife when he broke up with her, which I actually found rather amusing because she was such an annoying character.  Jayne Hylton, his real life wife, played his wife Linda in the film, and I can't help but wonder if he wasn't having a bit more fun with the way he was verbally, and eventually physically abusing her because of it.  It's probably a lot easier to do those sorts of things with someone you're married to than with someone you just met when they started filming, but that's just speculation on my part.  Seriously though, I'm surprised he didn't go deaf from that scream she let out when she saw him with the two heads.  Hell, I'm just sitting here watching it and it almost deafened me.  He was standing right in front of her!

So, in the final conclusion, I have to say that this film actually surprised me in a way with how good it was. If not for the few problems with the loose and unnecessary aspects of the story, it would have gotten five bees. This really is a great film, and I highly recommend it to any fan of classic b-monster movies.  I really wish I could give it five, but sadly, because of a few problems, I'm forced to give this film the slightly reduced rating of...