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 Victor Frankenstein comes home from med school and has an interest in women and
experiments. He soon runs out of "fresh body parts" and has to do some
murdering to finish his experiment. Once finished, his monster goes on a
"ghastly killing spree". They note that Hammer attempted to "re-invent" the
Frankenstein legend "with equal does of bloody shocks and black humor". They
also say it was directed "with wild tongue-in-cheek style". 1970, 95 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
This was Hammer Films' sixth venture into Frankenstein country, it didn't star
veteran Peter Cushing as the Baron, and was pretty much reviled by critics and
audiences alike. Considering all of this as well as some other factors, I can
unequivocally recommend this as a "must have" DVD for your horror collection.
Adhering to my strict policy (except when I don't abide by it or simply forget
about it) of not reading anything about a movie before watching it (the
uninformed
viewer is often the easiest to please), I hadn't realized that this movie was
hated by so many people. Heck, it turns out that even "star" Veronica Carlson
didn't like it. Why is he putting "star" in quotes, you might be asking?
Because, for some reason (probably because she had nothing better to do) this
Anchor Bay DVD plays like the Veronica Carlson Collector's Edition of this
film. Most of
the extras are devoted to her. You have a Veronica Carlson photo album. You
have a Veronica Carlson interview. You are even "treated" to a gallery of
Veronica Carlson paintings and drawings. Why is he putting "treated" in
quotes, you might be asking? Well, you need to stop asking questions and just
go with the flow on this one, but I will say that if you saw her pictures, you
would understand where I was coming from on this one. There were a few
pictures that reminded me of some artwork I saw for sale in a parking lot in
Quincy, Illinois last month. You would think that I wouldn't have to travel so
far to complete my collection of "dogs playing various sports" paintings, but
you know how us art collectors are. When it comes to our art collection,
there's no parking lot too far away for us. So you have all this supplementary
material for the very supple Ms. Carlson on this DVD. The only problem I had
with any of this is that she wasn't even the female lead in this movie! Kate
O'Mara played Victor Frankenstein's housekeeper and had a role ten times bigger
than Carlson's Elizabeth. But she was the blonde they could dig up for the
disc, so here we are.  I'm only guessing because I'm not stupid-dumb like the people that didn't like
this movie, but I'm assuming that they were outraged at this one because Hammer
actually had a little humor going on in this one. Oh, I'm not saying that they
had the monster running around burping and farting or that Victor was doing any
stand up at the medical school or nothing, but there were several moments where
I snickered and a few times I laughed out loud when Victor dropped some bit of
deadpan humor on us. The moment where the Dean is seriously telling Victor
that his daughter has gotten preggers (presumably, by the amorous Victor),
Victor merely smiles and says "congratulations" and shortly thereafter offers
to perform an abortion for him! This dude is a natural! I'll take this funny
Frankie over that Young Frankenstein goof any time! I'll confess that I wasn't
really sure what I was getting myself into when I started watching this one.
In fact, its selection is a fairly uninteresting story in itself, that I will
now relate in painful detail (this will be in lieu of actually reviewing the
film itself - it's a Hammer Frankenstein movie -there's a little gore and some
busty dames - what more do you expect?). The MonsterHunter Vault has of late
become quite unmanageable and I'm thinking about clearing it out by donating
several already viewed Eurotrash DVDs to the local foodbank. With all the
families going hungry in my trailer park, while I'm sitting pretty trying not
wrinkle the Armani whenever I climb into my Hummer, I feel it only my duty to
try and make the holiday season a little brighter for those stupider, lazier,
and with substance abuse problems by sharing my bounty. I figure a viewing of
something like Cannibal Ferox or Evil Dead Trap Two will make these losers forget
how hungry they truly are. Until I get rid of all these discs, though I find
that the avalanche of cruddy DVDs that confront me has seriously impeded my
ability to select a movie for viewing. I find myself standing in the Vault
debating on whether I should wade back into the Hercules genre or maybe begin
tackling the eight Gamera movies, or maybe Vinny Price needs another look-see.
By the time I realize I don't really want to see any of them, it's 3:00 a.m.
and I've got to sack out, because it's only five hours before I can go to work
and sleep.  Finally, I decided that I needed to implement some cutting edge technology and
automate the selection process, because it has been my experience that the more
decision making a person can abdicate to a machine or the United Nations, the
better off he or she is. It was thus, that I installed the Random Number
Generator 3000 Supercomputer where one of my stepkids used to sleep (there's a
hearing next week on him and I'm confident that they can't prove nothing and
we'll get custody back). Inputting all the numerical parameters, the machine
whirred, smoked, and belched forth a randomly generated number (or at least so
it claimed - it could have known all along what number it was going to give me
- how would I know?). With that number, I would count right down the line and
select the movie that corresponded to that number. Easy enough, right? Sure,
except that it spit out something like 141 and there was no way in hell I was
going to spend my time stooped over counting out over 100 DVDs just because
some damn machine told me so. I mean, do I sound like the kind of guy that's
going to let my life be run some jackass gizmo? So I reset the RNG3K and it
crapped out another number, this time the much more manageable 39. Wall-la! Horror Of Frankenstein! Didn't really have any burning desire to see it, but who am I to argue with a
finely tuned apparatus like this Random Number thing? It started up and I was
at first slightly perplexed that the lead was played by one Ralph Bates. Ralph
as real MonsterHunter fans know has a mixed track record with us. He was quite
solid and effective playing the guy who turned himself into a murderous girl
and ended up dating himself in the Hammer transgender epic Dr. Jekyll And Sister Hyde. Unfortunately, he also humiliated himself, his relatives, his friends, and
everyone from his home town when he played the pervert schoolteacher in the
regrettable Lust For A Vampire. Even more worrisome was that Horror Of
Frankenstein was directed by Lust For A Vampire director Jimmy Sangster. I was, as you
might have guessed, shooting a large dose of negativity toward the Random
Number thing and thinking that it perhaps had been hi-jacked by spies to do
evil a la
Tobor, as detailed in his hit biopic Tobor The Great. 
Initially, this looked like one of Ralph's bad pictures, but that was mainly
because he was sporting a hairdo that uncomfortably reminded me of the one
that Journey frontman Steve Perry had back in about 1982. As soon as Victor
was getting in trouble in class for drawing anatomical diagrams on nudie
picture he was hiding in his desk, I quickly forgot about his coif and realized
that this wasn't my father's mad scientist (or maybe it was since this came out
way back in 1970). The teacher gets all in his face about it and demands that
Victor allow the guy to whap him on his knuckles with his cane. Victor loves
the ladies though and not this strangely British fetish of all-male school
discipline and politely declines. You'll no doubt see that Victor switches into
mini-Damien Thorne mode here and pretty much mind-humps the teacher into
thinking he's having a heart attack or something and not only gets out of being
this guy's "bottom" (I don't know what the devil that means, but my buddy whose
into this scene assures me that that's the term I want to use for some reason)
but
also gets the class a little of that early dismissal us cool kids always craved
in school. Back at the castle, his father refuses to give Victor anymore money
for scientific equipment and says that he ain't paying for Victor to go to
college in Vienna. Well, guess who has an oopser of a hunting accident and
guess who goes to college in Vienna right after the funeral? He knocks up the
Dean's daughter, hightails it out of there with a pal, comes back to his castle
and sets about doing some experimenting with forces that man was never meant to
understand, but was obviously meant to mess about with to some extent since it
always seems to work at first. Victor realizes he has to start out small and
somehow this involves kidnapping the pet tortoise of the father of the girl who
has a crush on him. He also finds time to maintain a strictly non-platonic
relationship with the bosomy housekeeper he dad used to get freaky with (I know
these reviews are too hip for some of you, but I'm not about to dial it down
for you squares out there). By and large, the movie follows the pattern you would expect from a
Frankenstein movie, from this point on. Victor becomes increasingly obsessed
with his project of building a guy out of spare parts and his college chum gets
increasingly wussy about the whole affair, earning him a thorough electrocuting
from Victor. The guy who provides the body parts gets nosy and gets a trip
into a vat of acid and the guy with the pet tortoise gets poisoned in another
amusing scene as Victor hears the old coot say how healthy he is, so he dumps
some extra poison in his drink just to be on the safe side. The Monster itself
doesn't appear until late, but
when he does, he is definitely the most ripped Frankenstein Monster you'll
ever see. I was wondering if Victor was getting his body parts from hanging
around GNC or something. Was this Monster on Stacker II or what? Darth Vader
himself plays the Monster and does a good job looking a bit dead, creepy and
all stitched together. I'm not sure about his gauze boxer briefs that he was
wearing, but you never know what's up with these British lads and their boarding
schools and I'm not about to criticize another culture, no matter how
un-Christian it is. The Monster does a little rampaging and even gets sent out
by Victor to knock off some snoopy woman (He repeatedly urges the woman to take
the shortcut through the woods on her way to the police!). Eventually, it all
comes tumbling down on Victor. Well - sort of. His monster is unknowingly
destroyed
by a little girl, the cops leave the castle to get a warrant, and Victor stands
around staring at the shoes of his creature, the only bit left of him after his
surprise acid bath and that's that! Bring this guy back, please! This was a
refreshingly lively take on a genre that by 1970 had surely gotten moribund
after thirty-five years of guys dropping brains, playing God, and shouting some
variation of "it's alive". Sure, most of that is in this movie, but this
Victor seems like some arrogant rich punk with a dark and dry wit. What's the
point of sitting through yet another movie where the doctor is some dried up
old prune with no sense of humor? I was actually sorry to see this one end.
To those who regularly watch these types of movies, this movie has some
slightly off-kilter moments provided by the surprisingly adept Ralph Bates
(considering his previous Hammer vehicles - who knew he had it in him?) that
will
make you raise your eyebrows and smirk guiltily. I don't assign ratings in
this reviews, but let's see what the Random Number Dodad gives this out of 100
points (just a sec). An 8! Huh, I thought it'd score higher, but who can
argue with the machine?
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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