La maldición de Frankenstein

To all of you out there who think that the likes of Steven Soderbergh and David O. Russell epitomize independent film-making: go rent this film and let the scales fall from your eyes. Made during director Jess Franco's amazing early 70's period, post Harry Alan Towers and pre-porno, The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein is a surrealist masterpiece, poetic, perverse, comic, and mesmerizing. Shot for next to nothing on location in Portugal, the film is full of evocative, wide-angle, hand held imagery that must have appeared jaw-droppingly innovative at the time, and still astounds today. Daniel White's atonal, experimental score skillfully enhances the film's nightmarish languor, and the roles, particularly Anne Libert's blind cannibalistic Bird Woman, and Howard Vernon's strangely sexy Cagliostro, are performed with aplomb and conviction. You won't soon forget the scenes of white-shrouded undead gliding through a mist-laden forest, the strange, red-lit shots of Cagliostro's acolytes blithely staring at cruel tableaux orchestrated for their perverse amusement, or a shrieking, silver-skinned Frankenstein's monster relentlessly whipping a man and a woman tied together over a bed of spikes. Anyone who doubts Jess Franco's talent should rent this DVD, and then ponder the pettifogging morass that independent cinema has become.

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (1973)

*** (out of 4)

Dr. Frankenstein (Dennis Price) finally makes his monster human after putting a brain into his skull but shortly afterwards the doctor and his assistant are murdered and the monster stolen by a mysterious bird woman who was sent by the evil Cagliostro (Howard Vernon). Soon Dr. Frankenstein's daughter (Beatriz Savon) seeks revenge for the death of her father.

Jess Franco's THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN is without question a rather wild, over-the-top and downright batshit crazy film that rarely makes a bit of sense but that's what makes it so darn entertaining. The movie is a complete head-scratcher and it makes you wonder what must have been going on inside of Franco's mind but there's no question that it's a major improvement over his Dracula, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN.

This film here, like most of the director's work, is available in two versions. The French version is also known as the "hot" or the "nude" version as as you might guess it contains a lot of female and male nudity. This here is certainly the version you'll want to check out because, well, if you're going to watch an "erotic" movie then it might as well feature nudity. This version adds a lot of erotic stuff, which adds up on the camp factor but with that said there's still reasons to watch the non-nude Spanish version. The Spanish version has Lina Romay in the role of a gypsy and this is missing from the French version.

Again, if you're coming to this film expecting something normal then you might be as nutty as Franco himself. The plot of this thing is rather crazy and all over the place. The fact that there's a bird woman here with green feathers on her body is a clear indication that you're not meant to take this too serious. The silver toned Frankenstein monster is another interesting visual but so is a sequence where all sorts of masked weirdos are watching the events. Add in some bizarre torture scenes and some really whacked out scenes of Dr. Frankenstein being brought back to life and you've got a wild little picture.

MORD 39 RATING: 0 (of ****)

I have no objections to low-budgeted horror films of the foreign nature...but when they're boring beyond endurance, it's mind-numbing.

Jess Franco is one of the worst directors in the horror genre (I'll give him respect by not saying "of all time"), but this piece of garbage makes his COUNT DRACULA (1970) look like a masterpiece. I can't critique this film very well, as I literally had no idea what I was looking at. The monster is painted silver, someone gets whipped, and that's all I am sure of. Dull, dull, dull.

A sort of companion piece to this dreck was DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN. While it too was poor, it was far less plodding than this one. As of this writing, EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN is not easy to find...and that's the best thing to be said about it.

Once upon a time, I viewed a copy of Jess Franco's Virgin among the Living Dead. I thought the movie was slow, boring and utterly pointless. Henceforth, I made it my firm resolution to avoid any movie directed by Jess Franco again. However after catching "the Awful Dr Orloff" on tv I have over the years become an admirer of his unique filmic style and now suprisingly claim that Jess Franco can be considered an Auteur of Euro-trash cinema.

The Erotic rites of Frankenstein is a very hard movie to track down. As far as I know it has never been released in the UK or America. Therefore, I was lucky enough to obtain a good widescreen copy on VHS from a car-boot sale. (These thing's always turn up in carboot sales!) The movie is a very imaginative and bizarre reinterpretation of Shelley's classic horror tale with and overtly sexual subtext.

Dr Frankenstein finally bestows the gift of speech upon his creation. Unfortunately his triumph is short lived when he is attacked by a weird naked vulture woman who tears him to shreds in his laboratory. Vera Frankenstein investigating his death reanimates her fathers corpse and discovers that his murderer is none other than Cagliostro the Wizard who has stolen the monster to aid his plans for world domination. Vera sets out to revenge her father but alas falls into the clutches of the wicked and very perverse Cagliostro....

This film contains many odd scenes and speeches from the characters. The oft mentioned scene of a bare chested and silver skinned Monster mercilessly whipping a naked couple over a spiked floor is suprising to say the least. The naked vulture woman's attack and slaughter of several naked men too is unexpected. As is the appearance of zombies at Cagliostro's castle. For once in a Frankenstein film it is the Doctor himself who is reanimated not less than three times and eventually becomes his own monster.

I enjoyed this movie - Franco's obsessions with S&M and naked women provide a spice to a very tired tale.

This one's undoubtedly superior to Dracula, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN (1971) – displaying a fair evidence of style throughout (notably some Bavaesque lighting).

It utilizes a lot of the same cast as that film: Dennis Price, in fact, returns as Frankenstein but gets little to do (this is his least performance in a Franco film – especially embarrassing when his character is regenerated); Howard Vernon now turns up as Cagliostro (I had been underwhelmed by his performance when I watched the Spanish version a few years back, but he's actually quite commanding); Anne Libert gets her most impressive role as Melissa, the blind and eccentric "Bird Woman" in Cagliostro's service (though the mysterious zombie-like figures who witness the titular events from behind bars are just as grotesquely made-up); Britt Nichols is underused, but her luscious figure gets exposed this time around (and, in any case, she's perfectly cast as Cagliostro's proposed bearer of a new master race); Alberto Dalbes also returns as Dr. Seward where, again, he's the hero; ditto Fernando Bilbao as Frankenstein's monster (given a curious silver make-up here); Luis Barboo is on hand as well but, now, he plays Cagliostro's henchman rather than Frankenstein's (the latter role is taken all too briefly at the very start by Franco himself); Daniel J. White also gets more screen-time than in the previous film (where he was just an extra) as a Police Inspector.

Missing here – consequently, the film runs for a mere 70 minutes! – is the irrelevant gypsy subplot (featuring Lina Romay) filmed some time later and eventually incorporated into the Spanish variant, dubbed LA MALDICION DE FRANKENSTEIN aka THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN...though the English-language edition I watched also bears this title!! Still, the would-be erotic rites (presented clothed in Spain) are silly rather than titillating: actually, there's only one (in which the monster is made to whip the naked figures of Barboo and Frankenstein's daughter in a dungeon with a spiked floor), as the intended procreation scene involving Bilbao and Nichols is ultimately interrupted by the heroes. Cagliostro's flight at the end, then, suggests that a further instalment may have been intended – but it never transpired.

Opinions about this particular version seem to go from one extreme to the other: it's neither one of Franco's top efforts nor among his worst, hence the middle-of-the-road rating I gave it. On the other hand, everybody seems to agree that the alternate Spanish release is a lesser achievement – even so, it's not that the loss of the tacked-on footage (or, for that matter, the benefit of nudity) dramatically alters the quality of the finished product!