Lust for Frankenstein

A sexy lesbian Frankenstein with large breasts. As in most of Jess Franco's recent work not much plot, just a very erotic and bizarre take on Mary Shelley's classic tale of Frankenstein (1931) with the nude Scream Queen Michelle Bauer [Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)], as the monster with a strange voice, and Franco favorite and aging life companion Lina Romay [Female Vampire (1973); Tender Flesh (1997)] as the sex-starved mad scientist. Her long dead father was of course Dr. Frankenstein, and he has been appearing in her dreams, which sets her off on a mission to make her own creature. The monster becomes jealous, and enraged at her masters sexual encounters, and destroys all who come near. Shot on video with a new American production company called One Shot Productions, it is great to see Franco still making films after all these years. Make sure to pay attention to the weird digital layering effects and the strange industrial metal music. The Shock-O-Rama DVD comes with both the US, and euro version, as well as a Michelle Bauer interview.

I bought this video used for $1 when my local video store was switching over to DVD's and getting rid of their never-been-rented videos. $1 was too much. The movie tries to be too artistic to be a good porn-esque video, and there's far too much pornography for it to be a good artistic film. The main actress (Frankenstein's descendent) is ugly, has saggy tits which, unfortunately, are shown prominently through the whole movie, and is way too old to be in a movie like this. I watched this a long time ago and haven't bothered with it since. All I can remember is waiting anxiously for it to get good, and then being continually disappointed. It's been so long since I've seen it, I'm having trouble thinking of reasons for people to NOT SEE this movie, but I pretty much blocked it all out of memory after watching it the first time. The only reason I was looking at this page is because I was browsing the 100 Worst Movies list on imdb and was surprised to find this one absent. Even Kazam had more entertainment value than this horrible...HORRIBLE piece of crap.

I don't have much of any experience with evaluating these kinds of films (one could criticize the film for excessive nudity, but that's kind of the point of the subgenre), so I'll do my best at reviewing it. Its story wasn't the easiest to follow and the poor quality of the dialogue didn't help much, but I think I got the gist of what was going on. To get what I enjoyed out of the way, I liked the use of colored filters for several sequences, a few shots which obscured the actors in shadows worked pretty well, and the soundtrack was nice as well. Overall though, I was deeply unengaged with the film. I got that Moira had to lure victims for the monster to kill, but this premise grew thin rather quickly and that the film seemed half an hour longer than it needed to be didn't help much. So yeah, story was kind of just whatever, but the style made up for this to a degree as this is the kind of bizarre, risk-taking film that's hard for me to hate. Also, in spite of what I said about the story, I did enjoy the final scene with Moira's former husband as a confirmation that she had lost interest in him (I have no idea what was going on after that though). So yeah, I don't have a lot to say for this one, but I'm curious to hear what some other people have to say about it.

Lust for Frankenstein (1998)

* (out of 4)

Softcore take on the famous story has Moira Frankenstein (Lina Romay) seeing a vision of her dead father and bringing back his creature (Michelle Bauer). Franco had previously made two other Frankenstein films, both in the 70s and while neither of them are classics they certainly are miles better than this thing, which is just downright trash. The film pretty much brought a new style in Franco's career, which has become known as the One Shot years. I'm not a fan of this period and for countless reasons that could be seen here. For starters, the film looks incredibly cheap even by Franco standards with its digital video. The movie features all sorts of strange visual effects, which don't add anything. The worst thing is that the film is pretty much disgusting as it features the elderly Romay in all sorts of sexual situations. She's certainly seen better days and I'm not meaning to insult the elderly folks out there but when you make an erotic movie it's probably better that you show two young people making out the entire time. I think it's a sad state for Romay who really comes off bad in this film but it would get worse with future One Shot films. If someone can find an actual story in this movie then they'll win a dollar from me because I couldn't spot one.

Several little things bugged the hell out of me about this movie, but mainly the star Lina Romay. Her accent was so thick I hardly understood her at points. Then there was the fact that she's not very attractive. What's good is a hot lesbian scene, if you can barely watch it? Also, most of the acting was terrible, the whole look was very abstract and weird. It was hard to follow, they truly never explained who created Goddess and why hasn't she been seen before, she was just in the next room. Not locked up or hidden in a secret passage or anything. I think Franco has lost what little mind he had to begin with. After all we are talking about the same director that made DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE (See: DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE). I give this mess of a movie the NOOSE!