The Big Picture Magazine

Recommended: Flesh for Frankenstein (Paul Morrissey, 1973)

frankenstein

To complement her Terror Vision article in Issue 6 of The Big Picture print edition, Emma Simmonds recommends one of the flashiest and trashiest of 3-D horror films.

Director Paul Morrissey's 1973 contribution to the 3-D canon is an irreverent exercise in outré spectacle and more of a tawdry curio than a landmark use of stereoscopic imagery. Supposedly, a production of legendary provocateur and pop art darling Andy Warhol, it is no surprise that the film bends the aforementioned technology to doggedly prurient ends. But lower your expectations, cast your sense of moral indignation (should you possess such a thing!) aside and - provided you approach with a sense of humour - there's much to enjoy.

Udo Kier plays Baron Frankenstein, a man married to both his love for dubious scientific advancement and (wait for it) his sibling Katrin (Monique van Vooren). His penchant for weird science is matched by his twisted sister's greedy pursuit of strong but simple farmhands. At the outset the Baron summarises his ludicrous aims thusly: 'The male we create will fall in love with my female zombie; they will mate and she will bear me the children I want; they are going to be the true start of a new race entirely created by me, responding only to my bidding.' The maniacal laughter is, of course, implied.

Determined to find a man with a formidable sexual appetite (what else?) the Baron and his right hand maniac Otto (Arno Juerging, playing a paradigm of ancillary criminality, replete with ruffled coiffure and wild eyes) pay a visit to the local brothel where we're presented with a gleefully gratuitous eyeful of 3-D breasts and buns.

During their reconnaissance they haplessly dub obvious homosexual Sacha (Srdjan Zelenovic) a rampant womanizer and follow him home with a view to incorporating him into their perverse project. And so the damnable duo spring out of a bush and decapitate him with an enormous pair of stereoscopic secateurs, to the (attempted) bafflement of his inexpressive friend Nicholas (Joe Dallasandro). When the Baron presents his undead creations nonchalantly at dinner that evening, newly employed serf Nicholas recognises his recently butchered friend and it seems the jig is up. What this highly improbable and apparently ineffectual hero will do to avenge his friend's extraordinary demise provides the dramatic tension, of sorts.

Throughout, the performances are uniformly terrible and the dismal dialogue is almost usefully smothered by the cast's thick accents. However, these abject but consistently amusing failings belie Flesh For Frankenstein's quality in other areas: costumes, sets and the score are often nicely put together and as a whole the film is competently and occasionally dynamically directed.

Somewhat surprisingly, Frankenstein doesn't employ 3-D to chill or terrorise (to my mind the most fruitful way the technology can be applied). There are isolated examples where its implementation brings worthwhile depth to the imaginatively constructed mise-en-scène (for example in laboratory sequences and some of its exterior shots) but, admittedly, it is predominantly utilised for schlock value and larks. In addition to the eye-popping brothel sequence, it shamelessly gives us 3-D piranhas and rubber bats, a woman's internal organs dangling outrageously through a grate, as well as a sequence where another unfortunate woman's innards are molested to the point of sexual climax.

Any sliver of credibility the film might (doubtfully) seek is hindered by limp writing and a cast functioning at the extreme ends of the acting spectrum (virtually inanimate or barking mad). Yet, despite the idiotic exchanges and seesawing performance styles, for all of Avatar's rich spectacle, Flesh for Frankenstein undeniably has more fun with the 3-D - and audiences may have more fun watching it. It's the mad aunt in the three-dimensional oeuvre, an orgy of the grotesque, and well worth a watch.