Gothic (1987): or, The Young Romantics are TRIPPING BALLS

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 19!

In the summer of 1816, in Sweden at the Villa Diodati, one of the most legendary gatherings of literary heavyweights in history is about to take place. One of England's most famous young poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Julian Sands) is to be the guest of one of its most infamous, the Mephistophelean Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne). Shelley is accompanied by his beautiful future wife, Mary Godwin (Natasha Richardson)--not yet Mary Shelley, since the poet is still technically married to his first wife--and Mary's fiery, slightly unhinged stepsister Claire Clairmont (Myriam Cyr). Byron's sole companion is his physician, Dr. Polidori (Timothy Spall), a creepy little man with a more-than-professional interest in Byron's body. Once gathered, the group immediately engages in an orgy of free love, laudanum-fueled licentiousness, and nightmarish visions that will drive them to the brink of MADness, and will also give birth to one of the enduring horror myths of all time.

Warning: if you're in the mood for a Merchant Ivory-style biopic about the girl who wrote Frankenstein, this is NOT the movie you're looking for.

I had seen Gothic (1987) before, many years ago, but somehow I had forgotten how relentlessly, jaw-droppingly INSANE this movie is. Director Ken Russell--a man not particularly well-known for his even hand and cool restraint--takes the famous historical event as a springboard into a Phantasmagoria* of frenetic debauchery and borderline-surrealism. Everything is turned up to 11: the dialogue is overblown and operatic--literary references and quotes are dropped repeatedly and with great force. The music (by Thomas "She Blinded Me with SCIENCE" Dolby!) is hyperactive and intrusive, going from 80s synth rock to symphonic tempests to the Diodati Disco.  And the images...dear God, the images!

*Yes, I know.

A fish flopping helplessly (and pointlessly) in a stone birdbath. A writhing python draped around a suit of medieval armor. A merkin-jerkin' automaton. A demonic dwarf crouched on Mary's chest. Byron's menstrual vampirism. Claire's constant CRAZYFACE. Mary's visions of her dead baby. And Percy meeting a dream woman who never has to say, "Hey, my eyes are up here."

None of it makes very much sense, but Russell is clearly not interested in any sort of accurate historical representation--it's all about seeing how many beautiful, nightmarish images he can cram into 90 minutes. Turns out, the answer is "A Metric Shit-Ton."

The acting here is hard to judge. I said it was operatic, and it's true--there's lots of grand gestures, wild expressions, and screaming on key. Byrne really makes a meal of this diabolic version of Lord Byron, and Richardson is vulnerable and passionate as the future Mary Shelley. Cyr is a force of nature, with her wild black hair, huge, almost Steele-ian eyes, and a sensuality so raw it's almost bleeding. On the down side, Sands seems to have been hired solely for his (admittedly uncanny) resemblance to the actual Percy Shelley--even taking into account the over-the-topness of the script, he is uniformly terrible here.

Themes of birth, death, creation and destruction form only the thinnest framework for the unstoppable fever dream that is Ken Russell's Gothic--a movie so incredibly insane, if it were a person, you'd have to lock it up in the interest of public safety. This is, of course, the highest of recommendations. 3 thumbs way up!

This was exactly my facial expression during the entire runtime of Gothic.It will be yours too.

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (1972): or, Creating a BDSMonster

Damn it, Jess, you just WON'T make it easy for me, will you?

Much as I want to love the cinema of Jess Franco without reservation, after getting a smattering of his work under my belt I still find myself maddeningly on the fence. My early experience of Oasis of the Zombies put me squarely in the "Jeez, what a hack!" camp; but then he hit me with the beautiful Vampyros Lesbos, and I had to recalibrate my judge-ometer. The Awful Dr. Orloff, while not without its charms, left me cold (sorry, Kate), but then I was blasted into giddy glee by his much more colorful and MAD retelling of a similar story in the excellent Faceless (1987). Succubus hypnotized me with imagery and dreamlike narrative on par with the best work of Vicar-fave director Jean Rollin, but 99 Women seemed pale and uninvolving by comparison. The charming, enthusiastic interviews Franco is famous for only make it that much harder, since often he manages to convince me the movie I just watched was much more impressive and enjoyable than my initial viewing experience would indicate.

I guess what I'm saying is that for me, Franco more than lives up to his billing as a "difficult" filmmaker. And my latest foray into his inarguably unique cinematic vision, 1972's The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (Ritos de Frankenstein, La maldición de Frankenstein), did little to settle the matter. On the one hand, it's largely a poor production with laughable effects and a story so incoherent it would have the late, great Paul Naschy shaking his head in bewilderment; on the other, it has some gorgeous compositions, tasty psychedelic lighting, and enough sexy-horror MADNESS to prevent my dismissing it entirely. Hack or genius? HACK OR GENIUS? GAHHHH!

"My creature will be the greatest Solid Gold Dancer the world has ever known!"

Ritos de Frankenstein hits the ground running and seldom stops for breath. Skipping all preliminaries and niceties, we open in the sparsely appointed lab of Dr. Frankenstein (Dennis Price), in flagrante de genesis. Highlights here include a nicely disgusting brain in a jar, Franco himself assaying the role of the doctor's skeezy assistant Morpho, and monster makeup consisting of a bodybuilder (Fernando Bilbao) with a cereal box flat-top covered from head to foot in metallic silver body paint! Seconds later the monster is jolted to life and utters his first words--"It HURTS!" Flush with success, Dr. Frankenstein explains that since he put a human brain in the monster, it now has the power of speech and is thus perfect!

There's no time for celebration, however, as at just that moment a strange visitor arrives at the doctor's house. Clad in a full-length robe, anachronistic shiny red platform boots, and little else, Melisa (Anne Libert) is the right-hand girl of the mysterious Cagliostro, an occultist hip to the doc's discoveries and wanting to get in on the action. Together with distinctly Vampyros Lesbos-era Morpho-like henchman Caronte (Luis Barboo), Melisa invades Frankenstein's lab, kills his assistant, and then makes short work of the doctor, revealing under her robe some strange bright green feathers and talon-like fingers, about which there will be more to say in a moment.

Cagliostro, as played by Franco regular Howard Vernon, is a perpeturally reborn supervillain with incredible powers that are apparently based on a combination of telepathy, psychokinesis, and "magnetism" with a dash of Eeevil Spirituality thrown in--sort of a Caligari-meets-Crowley with a bit of R'as Al Ghul added for flavor. By summoning the legions of the dead in service of the great devil-god Panthos, Caligrosto hopes to create a new race of supermen to rule the earth, leveraging Frankenstein's technology to breed his monster with a yet-uncreated female creature.

Caligostro learns the perils of the Taloned Handjob

Melisa is apparently an earlier failed experiment in the whole "perfect being" sweepstakes, a hybrid of a Eurobabe and a bird of prey (hence the talons and feathers) that didn't quite live up to his hopes. However, though she turned out all blind and feathery, Melisa also inherited a bit of clairvoyance and the ability to transmit Caligostro's "magnetism" over great distances, sort of a relay tower between him and his creatures of the night. ("I receive images through your magnetic waves! Pleasure, blood, death! I can see Frankenstein's creature raping beautiful virgins to satisfy your desires!" All righty then!) And all she asks in return is the occasional half-naked woman (or in one case a young boy) chained to the dungeon walls in Caligostro's castle where she can find them by echolocation and drink their sweet hot blood. You know, just like a bird of prey does.

Back at Castle Frankenstein, one of the late doctor's colleagues, Dr. Seward (Alberto Dalbés, who played a pretty good mad scientist himself in Paul Naschy's Hunchback of the Morgue) has arrived for the funeral, along with the sole heir, Vera Frankenstein (Beatriz Savón), herself a fledgling mad scientist intent on plumbing the depths of her father's discoveries in order to avenge his death. At this point, my monster-kid brain kind of went into overload--we have Dr. Frankenstein, his creature, La Hija de Frankenstein, a Caligari-figure, a blind, blood-drinking, clairvoyant bird-woman, and the doctor from Bram Stoker's Dracula all tussling with each other with the fate of future generations in the balance. Could it get any crazier?

Have I mentioned the BDSM subtext yet? Well, hang on!

Frankenstein's Daughter: More than a Little Cross

So Vera and her female Igor quickly liberate the body of Dr. Frankenstein from his tomb and hook him up to the old rejuvenating ray, half-succeeding in bringing the old man back to life. Dear Dead Dad tells Vera that only Caligostro could be behind his death, and she swears to hunt him down and make him pay. Meanwhile Big C is sending Frankenstein's monster out to kidnap beautiful women and bring them back to his Build-A-Bride workshop so that he can pick the most perfect parts and stitch them together to create his Eve. Vera has to jolt Dad to life a couple more times (really, she uses him like a Living Dead Magic 8-Ball), but finally manages to trick the slow-witted monster into kidnapping her (instead of one of the other naked Eurobabes he went after) and thus infiltrates Caligostro's compound.

Of course Caligostro sees through the ruse right away and chains Vera in the dungeon along with all Melisa's tasty snack treats. There's already been a lot of leering bondage with these nameless unfortunates, but here Franco kicks the fetish up several notches. Dissatisfied with Caronte for allowing the monster to bring back the wrong dame, Caligostro concocts a fiendish system to kill two birds with one stone: he chains Caronte and Vera together back to back, places them in the center of a roomful of poisoned metal spikes,and decrees that whoever pushes the other onto the fatal spikes and survives will be released. To make it more interesting, he summons a legion of the wandering dead to watch, gives the Monster a cat o' nine tails, and has him get all whip-happy on them till someone dies.

To recap--you've got a mostly naked couple chained to one another surrounded by poisoned spikes, being whipped by a musclebound, silver body-painted Frankenstein's monster, while a bunch of skull-faced zombies look on. "Jaw dropping" is not really the word, but it's all I've got.

There's something you don't see every day.

Vera wins the challenge, earning the right to become Caligostro's mindless slave and work on putting the Bride together. Meanwhile Dr. Seward and the local police inspector have jolted Dr. F to life one more time to find out where Vera went. It turns out it's one time too many, as the Dead Doc becomes a shambling zombie and goes after Seward. Luckily the cop has a jug of hydrochloric acid in hand, which he splashes on the dead man and which immediately dissolves his head to a bloody stump! I mean, in less than a second! Good thing Seward didn't get any splashback.

It all ramps up to a scene where the Bride is brought to life in a wonderfully pervy and very BDSM-tinged scene, and the Monster prepares to mate with her while the Dead Army of Panthos cheers him on. Seward arrives in time to break it to the monster that Caligostro killed his papa, which leads the creature to interrupt his coitus and go after the bad guy for the Final Confrontation.

Oh, and there's a bunch of scenes with Lina Romay as a gypsy writhing by a creek while Caligostro sends her mental messages that really seem to have nothing to do with the rest of the movie at all.

Most Romantic Honeymoon Ever

Like I say, the madness of the plot is certainly appealing, and the BDSM subtext and kitchen-sink sensibility is something I can get behind even if I can't quite sort it all out. It's about as far removed from the lyrical tristesse of Succubus as you can get, but I've got plenty of room for both under my pleasantly pitched tent.

Where it gets maddening in a bad way is the split-personalty nature of the way the film is made. Franco gets in some truly gorgeous shots here--standouts are an early scene with some henchmen bringing a crate containing Frankenstein's monster up the beach to Caligostro's castle (again reminiscent of some of Rollin's best work, all bright colors and weird visual poetry) and shots of the Children of Panthos creeping through the fog-drenched forest, wrapped in their burial shrouds--just creepy and lovely. However, much of the rest of the movie looks like it was shot by an epileptic ape and edited with a blender. The monster's makeup is "My Kid's First Super-8" level stuff, as is the haphazard feathering of Melisa. The scenes in the dungeon with the chained models are grimy in a grindhouse way that's either terrible or great depending on your perspective. And close-ups of Panthos' Kidz in the final scenes are frankly laughable. And despite my previous statement, sometimes the plot seems SO pulled strait out of Franco's drug-addled ass, some of the joy gives way to frustration.

Performances are all over the place too--Vernon is great as Caligostro, sporting a truly awesome fake beard and some of the craziest wide-eyed stares it's been my pleasure to witness. Vera ranges from competent to bad, and Seward isn't given much to do. I was actually kind of moved by some of the monster's scenes, particularly his painful birth, though I don't know if that's a result of the actor's performance or my own gin intake.

"Wait--you made his wang HOW big?"

I do think The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein is an...interesting movie, with flashes of brilliance amid a sea of what-the-fuckery. It doesn't settle my Franco problem, but it's definitely worth at least one viewing--because let's face it, where else are you going to see Frankenstein's Monster whipping a couple of chained up naked folks? 2.25 thumbs.

Nota bene: I actually checked this DVD out of my local public library, which is pretty objectively awesome. The version on the disc is the domestic "clothed" version, but includes the for-export nude versions of the super-pervy scenes as a bonus feature. These improve the proceedings greatly--naked artist's models, the bride in all her birthday-suit glory, and even Vera and Caronte completely unclothed in the climactic whipping scene, offering a rare glimpse of wiggly Eurowang. You know, if that's your thing.

A few more images from The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein:

And this is your brain on really good drugs...

Caligostro: Next on MTV's Cribs

"A little to the left..."

A Haunting Scene

"I knew we should have worn our Ming Dynasty camouflage!"

Caligostro always got a kick out of Melisa's Grover impersonation

"Thow the switch, Jess! THROW THE SWITCH!"

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Assignment Terror (1970): or, Farancksollen Meets the Wolfman

About halfway through 1970's Los Monstruos del Terror, aka Assignment Terror, I sat bolt upright in my chair, mouth agape as the full import of what I had just heard onscreen slowly sunk in. When my brain finally clicked all its tumblers and the combination was true, I pointed at the character still speaking and uttered a phrase you seldom hear when applied to the werewolf films of Paul Naschy:

"Holy crap! CONTINUITY!"

That's right--this, the second installment in Jacinto Molina's legendary Daninsky Saga, actually proceeds in DIRECT CONTINUITY from the previous entry, the excellent Frankenstein's Bloody Terror. About halfway through the movie the main female protagonist's father is introduced, a Judge Steinberg--and the astute Molinaphile will quickly realize that he is meant to be the aged version of the wimpy young suitor from FBT who Waldemar Daninsky rescues from the rampaging resurrected Count Wolfstein and thus brings the curse of El Hombre-Lobo upon himself! A generation later, he is the only one who remembers the horrors of Waldemar's previous rampage, and with his help the police also finally accept the dark forces at work here...

But I get ahead of myself.

Our movie opens with a wizened alien, portrayed by the aged and frankly ill-looking Michael Rennie, monitoring his interocitor and getting instructions from his home planet Ummo. (Rennie is an old hand at playing men from another world, as his most famous role was as the extraterrestrial Christ-figure Mr. Carpenter in the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.) The Ummoians...Ummites? Ummoarians?...live on a desolate wasteland of a planet whose water supply is almost gone--therefore they've established several sleeper cells on Earth to prepare for its conquest and the destruction or enslavement of all humankind.

"Let me tell you where you stand."

Rennie, using the alias Dr. Varnoff, is leading the most important aspect of the mission: he must find a way to use the human's superstitions and folklore against them by dredging up several of the most horrifying monsters from human history and then using them to create an army of mythical monsters that will terrify the populace to the very brink of madness, making the subsequent conquest easy! The plan is breathtaking in its simplicity, you'll agree. What could possibly go wrong?

Dr. Varnoff needs assistants, so the Ummo High Command helpfully reanimates the bodies of two recently dead humans, a man and a woman, and puts Ummite brains in them. (If not an homage to Plan 9 from Outer Space, at least a wonderful synchronicity; the alien technology in Varnoff's lab, composed mainly of colored light bulbs and panels of tissue paper, also underscore the resemblance.) With the two new henchpeople in tow, Varnoff instigates the first phase of the plan of conquest by going to--a FAIRGROUND!

Yes, the alien plot for world domination depends on getting ideas from carnival sideshows. Luckily one of the dirty, thieving gypsies has a vampire's skeleton on display, the stake still wedged between its ribs, and claims nonsensically that the corpse gives him fortune-telling powers. His lovely blonde daughter smiles and strokes her furry pussy...CAT.

You know you want it.

Dr. Varnoff instructs the female Ummolian to seduce the skeleton out of the gypsy, which proves easy enough, as gypsies are genetically unable to resist random, emotionless poon. The male alien henchman removes the stake from the vampire's ribs and uses it to kill the gypsy in flagrante deUmmo, and then we get a wonderful fx scene of the vampire's guts reconstituting themselves as he returns to life! The gypsy's daughter is taken back to Varnoff's lab for torture and reprogramming. Phase one is obviously a rousing success!

(Note: the vampire in this story is not, in fact, Dracula, although the butchered American video release of this was titled Frankenstein vs. Dracula (perennially confused with the Jess Franco film of that title). Still, his real name is only mentioned once by the gypsy in his carnival barking, so I choose to call him Dracula for simplicity's sake--even though he looks less like Lugosi or Lee than a seasick Andy Kauffman.)

Even though the victim was a gypsy, the cops are on the case of his murder very quickly. We get a brief introduction to the gruff old chief and our "hero", who quickly jumps to a supernatural explanation for the crime and goes to the library to research monsters. He arrives too late, though, as the Ummozers have found Dr. Farancksollen's rare Anthology of Monsters and ripped out the pages they need. (Why the doctor is "Farancksollen" instead of "Frankenstein" is never explained, but they pronounce it this way very meticulously throughout, and you see it written on the book with this spelling.) Apparently by looking at the table of contents the cop is able to deduce the menu of monsters: vampire, Farancksollen's Monster (his chapter is halfway through the book, though it ends with Dr. F killing himself...must have been ghost written), the Mummy, and of course the Werewolf.

Meanwhile the Ummotodes are having fun torturing more Eurobabes (Dr. Varnoff REALLY likes this part of his job) but soon they raid Waldemar Daninsky's tomb and pull his silver-bullet ridden corpse out. We get some grisly real-life open-heart surgery footage that's meant to be Dr. Varnoff removing the bullets, and sure enough the heart starts pumping and Paul is cursed again! It should be said that Paul is in GREAT shape in this movie, as buff and muscular as I've ever seen him--in fact with his rockin' sideburns and the gothic surroundings he looks a lot like Glenn Danzig, only taller and more awesome.

Tell your children not to walk his way.

Anyway, with Waldemar's considerable brawn at their disposal, the aliens head to Egypt via Stock Footage Airlines to liberate an ancient evil from its tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The Mummy makeup is probably the weakest of all the monsters here, but he makes up for it later, as we shall see. Back at Dr. Varnoff's lab they've pulled Farancksollen's Monster out of their ASS, apparently, and the proto-army of monsters is complete.

Meanwhile the cop has continued his investigation, interviewing a girl who Waldy attacked the first night of his resurrection, before the aliens learned that CHAINS DO NOTHING against El Hombre-Lobo. She turns out to be the daughter of Judge Steinberg, previously mentioned, who tells Waldemar's story and really gets the investigation going. In between shag-sessions with the judge's go-go-boot-wearing daughter, Ilsa, our hero cop is getting closer to a truth he can scarcely believe. There's a great scene where the stress of the job gets to him, and he starts seeing monsters everywhere he turns, in the go-go club, the bar, and even the mirror! Fun stuff all around.

Back at the castle things are starting to go badly, as not only are the monsters not cooperating with the aliens' attempted domination, but the human hosts of the Ummodal minds are starting to have an unsettling effect--passion, jealousy, love and lust are starting to manifest, emotions unknown on their home planet. Turning his torture devices on his own kind, Varnoff struggles to maintain order. Meanwhile, the cop shows up for a visit.

"Ch-ch-ch-ch-YAAAY-UH!"

I really can't summarize all the fun scenes that happen here, so I'm going to skip ahead to what everybody's waiting for: the old school monster mash! On the under card, Dracula confronts the hero cop, which is disappointing as the cop stakes him with barely any trouble at all; really, for the king of the undead, he's a wuss. It's no wonder a gypsy owned his bones.

Then it's on to the main event as Waldemar, aided by the gypsy's daughter (who's fallen for him, natch), has returned to the castle, wolfed out, and is ready to kick some Ummo ASS! He first confronts the Mummy, who despite being 3000 years old is a real scrapper and puts up a hell of a fight! There's some real crowd-pleasing monster mayhem here, and when it ends in a WHIRLING WHEEL OF FIRE (Mummies is Flammable), you can't help but stand up and cheer.

But then it's time for the title match, Farancksollen's Monster Meets El Hombre-Lobo! It really made me smile to see this, as Paul makes no secret that the original Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is the movie that made him want to be a filmmaker--so to watch him leaping around the lab Lon Chaney-style while the hulking monster flings him around like a rag doll just really has to make you happy. Once again the fight is a real slobberknocker, and for a while the plucky hairy one seems overmatched...until, using his quickness and agility to counter the monster's brute strength, he's able to knock him into a transformer and electrocute him! (Never mind that the monster's power COMES from electricity--consider it a short-circuit or overload and go with it.)

What it's all about!

Shortly after accepting the well-deserved title All-Round Monster Champeen, Paul lets his gypsy chick pump him full of hot silver (as they planned) before then she dies herself with a swipe of the werewolf's paw. The lab in flames, the plan in ruins, Dr. Varnoff is admonished by his superiors and dies in a fiery cataclysm with some really spectacular pyrotechnic effects. The hero cop (who apart from staking the world's wimpiest vamp has done NOTHING) makes a moralistic statement and the credits roll.

Can you tell I had fun with this? :)

This movie is a blast for a Naschy fan--you get to see him acting out his favorite movies, and the exuberance and energy is something to behold. The wonderfully goofy plot one-ups even Plan 9 with its outlandishness, and the bargain-basement effects can't suppress the enjoyment. Not a good place to START with Naschy, perhaps, but if you're a fan already, this is cinematic gold.

The only downside is that the print of this movie is TORN UP. The dubbing is off by a second or two for most of the movie, and periodically drops out altogether; also the colors are washed out and bad, and there’s lots of grain. My copy is a bootleg (readily available on your favorite auction site), but chances are good that what we see is the best available print; still, it's none too good.

"EAT IT, Frankie!"

However, I'm just glad that a print exists at all (many foreign films especially have been completely lost), and that I got to see it. Though a non-Naschy fan would have difficulty sitting through it, I loved it all the way , and recommend it highly, both as an enjoyable monster mash and as an important early piece of Paul's movie monster career. 3+ thumbs. Add salt to taste.

MORE MADNESS...

Summary only...

Blood (1974): or, The Dysfunctional House of Frankenstein

Picture an early Paul Naschy movie, something that might have been ancilliary to the Daninsky saga. Say the plot goes something like this: the son of the world's most famous werewolf returns to the relocated-to-America Talbot estate under an assumed name with his vampire bride, the Daughter of Dracula, in tow. Unable to take possession of his ancestral home immediately , the younger Talbot, something of an amateur scientist, spends his time in a rented house with his two servants (a legless butler named Orlando and his lame, limping, sexually frustrated wife) and his mentally challenged ward Carlotta, performing experiments.

What kind of experiments? Well, mainly they're raising a crop of enormous man-eating plants (!) in the cellar by feeding them Carlotta's blood, so that they can extract from the roots a serum which not only allows Mrs. Talbot to keep from vamping out, but also suppresses the werewolf's transformations every full moon. Then, of course, things start to go wrong...

As you can see, a perfectly serviceable, even smile-inducing kitchen-sink, monster-fantasy plot, worthy of a spot the early Naschy filmography.

Now, subtract all funding for things like effects and sets, remove any sense of competency in the cinematography and editing, and replace Naschy's boundless, child-like joy and enthusiasm with bottomless pits of boiling, seething, unending HATE.

Welcome to Andy Milligan's Blood.

"I hate you."

Working with almost zero budget, Milligan produces a one-hour opus that, while never able to cover up its grindhouse roots, is still difficult to dismiss as the work of a bumbling amateur. Sure, the editing looks to have been done by a chimp with epilepsy, jumping from a conversational scene to an action-filled monster-fight and back in a few feverish tics of a neurotic eye; sure, the cinematography is bottom-drawer throughout, especially in an extended nighttime scene where the viewer must deduce what's going on purely through use of the soundtrack; sure, the sets--meant to be late 1800s manors and inns--are obviously modern apartments and houses (watch especially for the "kitchen" scene)--there's no denying all these zero-budget shortcomings.

Still, though, there's something fascinating, something hypnotic about it all--something that settles in your brain and tells you there's something, SOMETHING there--which prevents you from switching off or looking away.

"God, how I hate you!"

Maybe it's the way Dr. Orlofski (nee Talbot) and his vampire bride snap at each other with a venom that could only come from years of living together in a hatred that sprung from withered love. (In bed the vampire woman, her amorous advances refused, spits at Oronofski "Go to hell!", to which he replies, wearily, "We're already there.") Or the mystery of the ailment that took servant Orlando's legs (forcing him to drag his body around on an cart that is always unseen by the audience--we just hear the squeaking wheels while the actor shuffles around on his knees), an ailment that also infects his sexually frustrated wife, and that perhaps has something to do with the plants.

Perhaps it's everyone's out-in-the-open, reasonless hatred for the grotesque, retarded Carlotta, whose brain damage is the fault of the doctor and his servants taking too much of her blood. Is it the strange borderline incestuous exchange between the female servant and her visiting virile brother? The seemingly kind-hearted lawyer's assistant who in the end proves herself as capable of venom-spitting as any of the other snakes? The incongruous hilarity of the country-fried nosy neighbor? The blink-and-you'll-miss-it transformation of Orlofski to bargain-mask werewolf? The bad accent and strange physical mannerisms of Old Lord Talbot's gypsy lover? The incessant creaking of the man-eating plants?

"I, too, am brimming with hate for you."

Individually, each of these aspects of the film is a standalone piece of absurdity, but taken together they add up to...something. I don't know yet WHAT that something is. But the venom, the VENOM of everyone in this movie for everyone else, the hatred that pervades every scene, in the end just serves to glue all the delirious anachronisms and movie monster mayhem together into one big hateful craft project from Hell.

I don't know why Blood affected me the way it did, or why I can't stop thinking about it. But I have to think that that fact alone--the fact that something in Milligan's shoestring, misanthropic vision won't get out of my head, refuses to be forgotten or ignored--means SOMETHING.

Taken on a sliding scale to its resources, the acting in Blood is actually not bad. Dr. Orlofski in particular handles his role admirably, and a few of the bit characters (the female servant, her husband Orlando, the crooked lawyer and the inquisitive landlord) turn in memorable performances as well. So while no one will win any awards, in the world of shoestring productions, Milligan has a good cast here.

"Hate hate HATE HATE HATE!!!"

I didn't know much about Andy Milligan before watching this, but afterwards, fascinated, I did more research. The erudite and entertaining Bleeding Skull has a thoughtful retrospective of Milligan's filmography (http://bleedingskull.com/features/milligan.html), of which Blood is reportedly the most accessible--other entries are said to contain more gore, more strangeness, more nudity (none in Blood), and more hate.

Though I don't know quite what to make of Andy Milligan, I do know that I want to see more of his work. Maybe it will give more clues to why I'm so fascinated. Or maybe not. Whatever the other films reveal, Blood is an weird piece of no-budget cinema that trash fans everywhere need to see.

2.5 befuddled thumbs up.

"Ay WUBB OOOOO!"

PS--Since originally viewing Blood and jotting down my thoughts about it, I've purchased and read the excellent biography The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan by Jimmy McDonough. Milligan is indeed a fascinating, tragic, one-of-a-kind character, and his experiences in grindhouse filmmaking and the Warhol-era NY art scene make for riveting reading. He was not the kind of guy you'd want to hang out with, but definitely an original, for better or worse. I highly recommend the book to those interested.

MORE MADNESS...

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Lady Frankenstein (1971): or, She Only Wants You For Your Body

After watching Lady Frankenstein (aka La Fagila di Frankenstein) on my Mill Creek 50 Chilling Classics set, I just had one burning question: why?

WHY IN THE HOLY HELL HAD NO ONE EVER TOLD ME ABOUT THIS MOVIE?

Of course I'd heard of the movie before, but with a name like Lady Frankenstein, I'd expected something silly and worthless a la Frankenstein's Daughter Meets Jesse James--and the poster art, featuring an evening gown-clad big-boobed blonde among laboratory equipment, didn't help matters much. But behind the boobs of that blonde was in fact a FANTASTIC Frankenstein movie with great production values, real Hammer-esque atmosphere, an engaging story carried by charismatic actors, and a script with a perverse streak a freakin' MILE WIDE.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE MODERN PROMETHEUS, WHY?!?!?!

An aged Joseph Cotten plays Baron Frankenstein, who after 20 years is on the cusp of realizing his dream of reanimating dead flesh. He and his elderly assistant Charles spend the first few minutes of the film paying slimy, disreputable graverobbing types to collect the raw materials for their final push toward immortality. While Paul Muller as Charles does a great job as the loyal henchman and voice of reason, it has to be said that the much esteemed Cotten is pretty terrible as the mad doctor. At first I wondered if Cotten was interpreting the doctor's character as an alcoholic; later it became clear to this viewer that Cotten was, in all probability, ACTUALLY DRUNK during most of his scenes. Still, the period sets are very well done, the lab looks great, and the build-up to the creation scene is economical, fast-moving, and very well done.

"Yech. I've gotta find a new place to hide my gin."

On the eve of the Baron's triumph over death, however, his daughter Tania shows up for an ill-timed visit. Tania Frankenstein is played by Rosabela Neri, known to her American fans and credited here as Sara Bey, and she is SMOKIN' HAWT. Far from being just a pretty face, however, Neri is immediately believable as the intelligent, driven daughter of a man of science, a sexy apple that has not fallen far from the mad scientist tree. She's just completed her anachronistic training to become a surgeon, and has returned home hoping to help her dear old dad in whatever blasphemous experiments he might happen to be engaged in this week. The tipsy Cotten refuses her help, however, and forbids her entry to the lab until his results are ready for peer-review and publication.

Charles is quite a bit happier to see Tania, though, as the dirty old man has apparently had a thing for her ever since she was a wee bairn and he a middle-aged lab tech. (Eew.) Of course now that she's grown up into a ridiculously sexy mad scientesse...well, let's just say the lab isn't the only place where dead flesh is being resurrected. (Eew x 2.)

Meanwhile, Lynch the graverobber is being hounded by Captain Harris, played with hardboiled enthusiasm by Mickey Hargitay. It seems some of the bodies Lynch delivered to Castle Frankenstein might have been a bit fresher than was strictly legal, and Harris wants him to swing for it. Though the muscle-bound Hargitay is perhaps best known as "Mr. Jayne Mansfield," here he's very impressive as the tenacious, no-nonsense police inspector on Lynch's trail. And Lynch--played by the hilariously yet appropriately named Herbert Fux--is just the apotheosis of the slimy, too-clever-by-half lower-class degenerate, street smart and cracking wise, confident he can stay one step ahead of any flatfoot from the constabulary. The scenes between Hargitay and Fux are so great, you can almost forget there's a monster mash a brewin'.

"What the fuck do you mean, 'Is there a
mirror in her pocket?' "

But brewin' it is, and when a sudden storm blows up, Baron Von Bottlesucker is ready to call down the thunder and bring his creation to life. When the creature's brain is damaged during the last-minute transplant (brains has got to be fresh), Charles sensibly wants to call the whole thing off, but naturally the Baron is having none of that nonsense. He presses forward, with predictably disastrous results.

A few words about the creature here. Though the set designs, costumes, and makeup to this point in the movie have been nothing short of top-notch, the monster is one of the dumbest-looking in the entire subgenre, and that includes the 7-ft Chuckie doll in Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound. This creature has a head like a Metaluna Mu-Tant, an orange shirt, and the ugliest pair of form-fitting vertically-striped pants I've ever seen on an animated conglomeration of dead body parts. He's ugly, too--but only because during the reanimation a stray spark catches his face ON FIRE. Though I wasn't a fan of the creature design, I had to appreciate the creative effort to explain the creature's disfigurement. So that allays some of the silliness. But not much.

Monster goofiness aside, the creation sequence is one of the better ones I've seen in a Frankenstein movie, very exciting and well-realized, second perhaps only to the wonderful stuff in the old Universal flicks. Sensing how silly he looks in those pants, the newborn monster wastes no time going on an kill-crazy rampage, starting with the man that dressed him, Baron Frankenstein himself. The creature crushes him like a wine grape--probably releasing twice as much alcohol in the process--and then heads out to the countryside to find some villagers to dismember.

It's here that the movie starts to get pervy, and in the most wonderful way possible. Out of nowhere we find ourselves in an idyllic nature scene by a rushing river. Nearby, and buck-naked Eurobabe basks in the sunlight, attended to by a half-naked Euroboy with love on his mind. Alas, we barely have time to exclaim "Whoa! Funbags!" before the Creature rumbles in and tears the loverboy limb from limb. Then the monster picks up the screaming young lass, and in an homage so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes, lumbers over to the water and tosses her in, recreating exactly the "flower boats" scene from the Karloff classic, except with no flowers and a naked Eurobabe instead of a little girl.

Yep, now you know what kind of party this is. Where are the mashed potatoes?

Keep your eye out for this guy.

Meanwhile Charles has told Tania about the disaster in the lab, and shows her the Baron's body, still leaking whiskey all over the laboratory floor. But Tania is not one to sob and faint--her thoughts immediately turn to science, and vengeance! Realizing that the monster will be unstoppable by conventional means, she resolves immediately to create a SECOND monster to hunt down the first--or, in her own words: "Not a monster--an executioner! Our creature will kill my father's murderer!" Tania, I love your can...I mean, your can-do attitude. Let's get it on!

It seems Charles is thinking the same thing I was, because he immediately professes his love for Tania and willingness to help her do anything, as long as she might someday love him back. The movie's pervy streak continues to broaden as we see Tania eyeing the stable-boy Thomas, who is muscular but also completely retarded. Charles plaintively asks the Baroness, "Could you love me?" "Yes," she replies, "if you looked like Thomas!"

The vengeance plan is quickly revised to accomodate the pervy plan as well: Charles agrees to help Tania create a monster using Thomas's body, if she will put Charles's brain in it, thus giving him the raw sex appeal he needs to be her lover. Charles and Tania are quickly married to seal the deal, though the marriage is unconsummated so long as he's a wrinkly old coot.

Meanwhile the monster's rampage continues. What the Creature lacks in sinister looks and fashion sense he more than makes up for in sheer viciousness, as we are treated to several brutal murders which the villagers are powerless to stop, despite some very spirited resistance. Soon Captain Harris is questioning Tania and Charles about their abrupt nuptuals, the Baron's death, and the sudden rash of crushings and pullings apart in the neighboring village, but they play dumb.

What happens next must go down in the annals of Mad Movies as one of the greatest mad scientist body-procurement scenes in cinematic history. Tania uses her feminine whiles to lure the retarded Thomas into her bedroom, where she sheds her gown and corset and makes a man of him. Neri's acting has been great throughout, but here she totally commits to her role by getting completely naked and letting the audience feast its eyes on her heart-breakingly stunning gorgeousness. To be that beautiful AND talented--it hardly seems fair. But at least we get to see her ride the 'tard like a thoroughbred, so that's something.

Risking unemployment to bring this to the world.
It's totally worth it.

Meanwhile, Tania's new husband is watching the whole thing from the closet, getting angrier as the sex gets hotter. Finally he can stand it no more, and creeps out to smother the hapless handicapped helper in mid-coitus. (Minimal damage to the body that way.) Solidifying the film's grasp on the title "PERVIEST FRANKENSTEIN MOVIE EVAR," Thomas expires underneath the Baroness WHILE SHE ACHIEVES ORGASM! Ho-lee shit. I still can't believe they went there, and I've watched that scene at least a dozen times.

After a peak like that it's bound to go downhill, and in short order Charles's brain is in Thomas's bod (and his larynx as well, from the sound of his voice), the torch-bearing mob is finally zeroing in on the Castle, and the first Creature, enraged by sibling rivalry, returns to do battle with his better-looking little brother. The final battle doesn't take too long, as Charles/Thomas triumphs over Egghead McIrate and claims Tania for his prize. Tania, overwhelmed by joy at her success in both mad science and revenge (not to mention way turned-on by her monster-man's manliness) falls into his arms even while the mob sets the castle ablaze, as mobs are wont to do.

Hargitay catches the couple in literal flagrante delicto, and the film reel runs out, apparently, as there is a super-abrupt ending with no credits, in mid-tussle. I can only assume this is a bad cut in the print and the the theatrical version went on at least a few more seconds; however, my limited internet research suggests that this is the way ALL the prints end, so either it was intentional or this is the best surviving print we've got.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE.

Sara Bey achieves the impossible by
getting EVEN HOTTER.

It's not without its failings--the monster is dumb looking, as I said, and Cotten slurring his way through his lines is frankly embarrassing, especially if you're familiar with the esteemed actor's other work. There's some weird editing with jump-cuts, though how many of these are due to print damage or censors I can't tell (though I can't imagine what they would have censored, considering what they left in). And if you look carefully in an early scene, you can catch a glimpse of a crew member in Tania's mirror! Still, for someone like me, that just adds to the charm.

And the plus column WAY outweighs the negative. I'm an official Rosabela Neri fan club member now--not only is she gorgeous, she's a great actress, pulling off the driven mad scientist role well, and also lending depth with her portrayal as a woman who will use her mind as well as her body to achieve her perverse goals. Hargitay is great, Fux is great, the set designs and costumes are great--hell, even the dubbing isn't all that bad. Plenty of blood, plenty of nekkidity, and loads and loads of fun all add up to my new favorite non-Karloff-starring Frankenstein movie, period.

6 thumbs, and more if you're a perv like me. Get yourself a copy of this, pronto. Thank me later.

PS--as if I needed another reason to praise the 50 Chilling Classics set, I was stunned that somebody working for Mill Creek put this, Devil Times Five, and Funeral Home all on one disc--and ALL THREE have scenes where a mentally challenged character is seduced by a manipulative older woman. A trilogy of 'tard seduction! It had to be intentional on some DVD author's part, and for that, whoever you are, I thank you. I hope Mill Creek gave you a nice fat bonus.

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