Director: Paul Morrisey (Antonio Margheriti on prints for quota purposes only)
Year: 1973
Country: USA/Italy/France
Alternate Titles: Andy Warhol's Frankenstein; The Devil and Dr. Frankenstein; The Frankenstein Experiment
Genre: Frankenstein
Plot:
Arriving home at Castle Frankenstein, a woman finds her husband and his assistant toiling away in the laboratory working on a secret experiment, but when she discovers that the point was to artificially sew two monsters from various people together she gathers up those who believe her to stop him.
Review:
This here was a really enjoyable film at times. The film works out best when concentrating on all the hyper-sleaze on display. This one here fits in with all the typical European horror fare at the time by indulging in it at every possible moment. The fact that the two creatures are nude for nearly all of their screentime, which includes the early portions where they're yet to be reanimated and are still corpses on the table being operated on and the later scenes where they're walking around, is something that shoots up the sleaze as well. That it takes time out of the plot to go to a whorehouse, where one of the characters is seen in the nude along with two women in a threesome is still more of an example, and there are also several lengthy sex scenes once the one character arrives at the castle, leaving this one really high in the sleaze since this one revels in it the way the very few are comfortable with showing, meaning that this is equal opportunity when it comes to showing it off, and that's never a bad thing.
The other big part that works here is the scenes in the laboratory are quite nice since the majority of the time we're down there. The several surgery scenes are great, graphic, detailed, and completely unnerving, and unsettling, especially the second one where a close-up view of organs is seen being removed from the body cavity. That brings up the gore in here as another bonus as besides all the bloody mess from the surgeries there's a simply incredible decapitation with a pair of large metal prongs as the effect of ripping the head off and taking a healthy chunk of muscles and viscera in one piece as a stream of blood shoots out from the stump is awe-inspiring while more comes along with its gore-soaked finale. By featuring several chests ripped open, a hand lopped off with a closing door, a scalpel to the chest, and a metal rod impaled through the and out the stomach, which all provide some nice gore, there’s some fun to be had in here. These here are the film's good parts.
This one here only had a few flaws. The main one here is that there’s a major flaw with the experiment that the film fails to get around. The fact that this one never bothers to mention how the biological compositions in the body parts that are cobbled together in the form interact with each other since those are severed during the removal from the original body and can’t be expected to function once they’re brought to life despite the introduction of electricity to do so. It would be sending out impulses to dead ends, leaving the body parts on the other side clueless about what to do and negating all movement. There’s also the fact that there are some filler scenes in here to boost the time in the first half that prevent this one from getting the creatures out and about which is the point of these kinds of films to begin since the focus is on stitching the bodies together and the science behind the creations. However, they pale next to the big flaw on display which is what holds it down.
Overview: ****/5
While not entirely bad, this one has more good about it than bad especially in terms of its exploitation content regarding the hyper-sleaze and graphic violence, making it enjoyable while slightly flawed. Give it a shot if in the mood for this kind of film, a fan of European horror, or as the companion piece to the other film, otherwise this should be viewed with caution.
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