 Frankenstein is experimenting
again, this time on a "giant neanderthal-type". They say this movie has
"beautiful women, some angry village ignorants, and a demented dwarf." It's an
"explosive combination fit to grace the shelves of any sickie's video vault." 1973, 89 minutes, VHS
First off, let me tell you that this is not a review of the special edition DVD
that Something Weird Video has recently released of this film. While we
applaud their dedication to releasing such fare in sweet packages, it is still
difficult to flush, I mean spend, about $25 for a movie such as this that
probably will be watched about half-way through once. (Uh, I mean all the way
through once, over the course of several different days.)
How then did your
intrepid MonsterHunter get his hands on his own personal copy for less than the
price of about 75 cans of Keystone? Well, I was at my local video store,
checking to see if anything other than a used copy of The Hideous Sun Demon DVD
was on sale, when I grew bored and wandered over to the used video section.
Generally I shy away from this crud, because it usually contains thousands of
copies of stuff like Big Mamma's House and Mission Impossible 2. But as I scanned the tattered and sometimes sticky boxes of stuff like Death Wish 3 and some awful Don "The Dragon" Wilson Bloodfist fiasco, I noticed several scary black boxes with really funky artwork on them.
They were all Something Weird Videos and were only $3.99 each to own forever
and ever (the MonsterHunter would never review anything he didn't own - just
not ethical). I quickly checked my video store to see if they had any shopping
carts (no go) and then decided to just pile them all up in my now sweaty palms
and hope that I could make it to the checkout line without spilling my
treasures and breaking the soon-to-be-my-copy of The Invisible Dr. Mabuse .
Anyway, I bought all these crap tapes
and the college-aged punk at the register makes some comment about how those
are really cool movies. I tried to contain a sneer as I said, "kid, how many
times have you seen Red Planet Mars? Have you ever had to watch a copy of The Beyond bootlegged off a Japanese Laser Disc? Can you tell me the difference between
Im-Ho-Tep, Kharis, and Klaris? Do you have any idea who Rondo Hatton was?
Have you ever driven around a city teeming with three million people for two
days looking for the last video to complete your William Powell/Myrna Loy
screwball comedy collection (Love Crazy) to no avail so that you had to bide your time until a local PBS station tried to sneak it by you late one Saturday night (good try, boys, but I am the BEST)?
You work at a store that regularly stocks fifty copies of whatever Sandra
Bullock garbage has just come out, while failing to stock a single Anchor Bay
title, only a few Criterion titles, and a single MGM Midnite Movie DVD. You
don't even stock EuroShock or (gasp) Mario Bava DVDs! So what are you going to
tell me about Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks that I would ever want to hear?
So just shut up and sell you stupid Magic cards and your overpriced Janet
Jackson CDs (who still buys CDs?) and let the MonsterHunter worry about cool movies!
Whoooooo! 
Right off the bat you know this movie is going to be one of those ugly, dirty,
and cheap 70s flicks where the special effects consist of junk just half-assed
glued to somebody's head. I thought I was watching the wrong movie at the
beginning when things just kind of fired up with a bunch of people attacking a
caveman. These people were supposed to be villagers from a few hundred years
back, but one time I was watching them attack a caveman (there
were a couple such scenes in the film) and I saw a guy wearing a pair of blue
jeans (probably the Italian version of Wranglers from the cut of the leg) and
some type of button down work shirt, like he'd just got off work at the meat
packing plant and decided to stop off in the woods to help some fellow
townspeople beat up Neanderthals.
These guys were thumping the caveman pretty
good and eventually get the best of him by bashing him over the head with a
rock several times. Then the titles come up and I relax because this is in
fact Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks. Rossano Brazzi who was supposedly in South Pacific and who us Kate Hepburn fans remember as the Italian Stallion in the David
Lean old-maid epic Summertime stars as Count Frankenstein (Hmm, I always thought it was Count Dracula and
Baron Von Frankenstein) and he comes off throughout the movie like a gone to
seed Ricardo Montalbon looking to parlay his job as mad scientist into getting
some nookie from the sex-ay friend that his daughter brought home.
Of course,
the movie isn't really his, so much as it belongs to the character of Genz.
Genz was played by Michael Dunn who's chief acting talent was that he was a
dwarf. Genz and some of Frankenstein's other employees are robbing a grave and Genz
sees that the corpse is that of a recently deceased babe and he gets this look
in his eye that says he likes 'em a little stiff if you catch my meaning (but
then don't all dwarves?) and the other guys have to tell him not to do anything
because Frankie doesn't want her all cruddied-up with dwarf cooties.
Once back at the castle
Frankenstein takes a look at the corpse and immediately asks who touched her.
If you are under three feet tall, please raise your hand. Eventually, Genz
gets himself fired by Frankie and Hans the butler takes great
pleasure in throwing Genz out and telling him what an awful little person he
is. I should also tell you at this time that Genz also liked to peek in on
some the castle's hornier inhabitants. Okay, so far, Genz is a peeper and a
necrophiliac. So far so good.
In the meantime, Frankenstein's daughter and
her female friend come back to the castle for some R&R. Frankie's daughter is
going to be married to some ugly, sissy guy. Her friend, Krista likes to take
milk bathes and so she and the Frankenstein girl go off to the old, deserted
caves to take a gratuitous dip in the hot springs that's inside
one of the caves. They also decide to rub mud on one another, but don't let
that trick you into buying the movie. Oh and while they're doing this, Genz is
hiding behind a rock watching them.
You see Genz has rebounded from his recent
dismissal from Frankenstein's employ and has teamed up with a caveman he found.
Genz tells him that since he doesn't know his name he will call him Ook. Wow,
that's pretty catchy. The opening credits list Ook as being played by somebody
named Boris Lugosi (giggle), but other sources credit the role to a dude named
Salvator Baccaro. You make the call. Genz decides that Ook will
be perfect in his scheme to take revenge on the Count for firing his ass. I
think I smell some caveman-inspired workplace violence brewing!
The Count though has his own caveman and he's called...Goliath! The caveman that we saw getting waxed in
the opening credits was rescued by Frankenstein and pals and his carcass was
hauled off to the castle so that Frankie could revive him. He did some
operation on him that involved cutting his head so I'm assuming that it was
your standard brain transplant and maybe that's what the dead girl was there
for. I must confess that whenever Genz wasn't on doing something midget-like,
I was reading the letters to the editor in TV Guide.
The Count keeps hitting on Krista and
actually pretends to conduct some experiments as a way to french her and
manhandle her. They're in the secret lab with Goliath, who's strapped down
(for now) and he tells her that Goliath responds well to her and that he wants
to see if Goliath is protective of her when he kisses her! And when he shakes
her! And when he lays her down to make sweet love to her! Well, Goliath
grunts and groans and the Count is like, "see, my experiments were a success."
What's really gross is that Krista actually is turned on by this icky old dude
that likes to stick his hands in dead bodies! I can understand the middle-aged
and still single Kate Hepburn thinking he's a prime slice of Italian sausage,
but this Krista, she could do so much better, like with Genz. Ah, Genz.
What's he up to?
Well, he and Ook go out to somebody's house club a pretty
maiden on the head and drag her off their secret cave (that Krista and friends
take bathes at during the day) where Genz explains to an understandably
confused Ook, that you rape them, then you kill them. So Genz and Ook do their
thing and the girls mangled body is found next morning.
This is a Frankenstein
movie, so you're probably wondering about angry mobs. Yes, periodically , an
angry mob of about eight friends of the producer show up and demand that
something be done about Frankenstein, but they don't do a whole lot until the
very end of the movie. Don't worry, you'll get your fill of mob violence when
it's all said and done. 
Genz decides that it's now time to kick the revenge plan in the butt so he
waddles off to the castle and sneaks into the secret lab. There he wakes up
Goliath and convinces him to follow the diminutive devil out of the castle.
Along the way Goliath beats the crap out of several castle employees. Then
they run into the Count and choke him out. Eventually, Genz and Goliath go
back to the cave where Genz tries to introduce Goliath to Ook and make them be
friends. It doesn't work out and Goliath kills Ook after a very lackluster
fight. Genz tells Ook that he's sorry and then the villagers show up and burn
Goliath up.
As you can see, this movie isn't really a story so much as a
collection of cliches and conventions. Count Frankenstein is a poorly drawn
character who is portrayed as a horny old man who has a whacky hobby and
runs a halfway house for circus freaks. (There was also a hunchback named Igor
working there - he was having an affair with Hans' nasty wife.) Genz is
entertaining because he is so over-the-top, not because he's smart or what he
does makes any sense. Why were there two cavemen? Ook didn't really do
anything important except provide cannon fodder for Goliath at the end of the
movie. Why were there cavemen running around this village where people wore
blue jeans?
If you're trying to put some novel spin on the Frankenstein mythos
that's great, but are a couple of Neanderthals and a necrophilic dwarf the way
to go? Well, I guess when I put it like that, it does sound like a good idea. In any event, the end result is a cheap-looking movie that
has no scares, no surprises and but may deserve a look just to check out this
little gnome of a man that walks like a duck and tried to bring two
star-crossed cavemen together, only to fail, his dreams of world-domination by
ruling an army of primitive men destroyed in an inferno of mob violence at the
caves where sexy girls take mud bathes. Good lessons for us all.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
|
