Frankenstein's Daughter

**1/2 out of ****

My earliest memory of seeing FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER was somewhere back in the early 1970s when I was very young. I was living in Queens, New York and back in those sweet days I used to bounce between TV stations to catch a Saturday night horror film on either Channel 5's "Creature Features" or Channel 11's "Chiller Theatre." Well, "Chiller" won out on that particular evening. It was the heart of summer and my street was having a festive block party. I can still hear the sounds of music and kids laughing and playing, as someone would frequently run inside and ask me why I wasn't outside joining in all the fun. As much fun as I knew the family and neighbors were having outside, I couldn't have cared less; I was riveted to an old-fashioned television set watching FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER and adding this night to my memory banks. I'm sure they've all since forgotten their block party...

It's strange to think that this film was only a dozen or so years old when I first saw it! Since we weren't yet too jaded by gore and splatter, I found some genuinely powerful moments in FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER: There was blood on some of the the victims, we got a glimpse of a dismembered hand, and we were also treated to mangled and meaty body parts. The icing on the cake was a shot of a character's face virtually melting away after being splashed with acid. Pretty potent stuff compared to what I was already accustomed to.

The 1958 feature seemed very relative to me at the time. My Queens block looked very much like the residential streets in the movie, and the basement laboratory could very well have been my own cellar, had I dressed it up with some test tubes and a large table. The added fact that the story was about teenagers (okay, so they looked more like thirty-something's) also gave me a point of identification. A backyard barbecue scene again struck a chord, and was particularly appropriate on this festive evening where a noisy shindig was actually occurring a few feet away, just outside my own screen door.

The movie starts with a pre-credits sequence: Sandra Knight is prowling the neighborhood in cheap (but effective) monster make-up, with bushy eyebrows and decaying buck teeth. One of her girlfriends (the sultry Sally Todd) is just getting home from a date with her boyfriend and screams at the very sight of her. The next morning, Knight awakens as a normal-looking girl with no memory of what went on the previous evening, though when she meets Sally for tennis, her friend insists that she saw some sort of monster last night. This strange revelation triggers memories of bad dreams for Knight, and she soon thinks that she could have been the creature in question.

Meanwhile, Knight's elderly Uncle (played with hilarious ineptitude by the always-funny Felix Locher) is experimenting with a formula to render man ageless. He has acquired a young assistant named Oliver Frank (short for Frankenstein, of course) who is supposedly aiding him, but who would rather see the old man dead so he can gain full use of the laboratory to concentrate on his own masterful experiment. Donald Murphy plays Oliver, and he's one of the most detestable snakes ever to slither down the Frankenstein Family Tree. He's a joy to watch at work, using the "nutty old man's" formula on his own niece by spiking her nightly glasses of fruit punch, thereby turning her into the grotesque monster from the opening sequence!

Later, Oliver connives his way into a date with Sally Todd and tries in vain to make out with her, only to be slapped across the face by the stuck-up vixen... "Hey," Oliver protests from Lover's Lane, "you agreed to park here with me!" Soon he has a better idea: he gets even by mowing her down with his car as she tries to run away! Then, taking her body to the basement lab, Frank decides to use her head on the hulking carcass he's assembling behind the old doc's back. When the automation comes to life, it's actually a male actor (Harry Wilson) who portrays her with a toasty-looking face (reportedly, nobody bothered to tell makeup artist Harry Thomas that the monster was to be female, so he solved the dilemma by smearing some lipstick on its kisser!) Amidst the rampages of Frankenstein's Daughter, we are treated to the aforementioned evening backyard barbecue. Still wondering where their friend Sally Todd vanished to, the other teens ease their pain between hamburgers and frankfurters while enjoying the live music of "Page Cavanaugh and His Trio". The band treats us to two '50s gems: "Daddy Bird" and -- my own guilty favorite -- "Special Date." I have since memorized all the words, and it's a riot!

With lovable horror clichés, gooey monsters, and funny dialog, this is a cult classic of its type from director Richard Cunha. It's a lightly-paced thrill ride from start to finish and one of the best teenage monster movies of them all. It's easily Cunha's masterpiece (if such a word applies here). At its worst, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER is a harmlessly funny exploitation farce; at its best, it's one of the most underrated monster classics of the 50s. I'd love to give it three or four stars just based on sheer cheesy enjoyment value!

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Richard Cuhna; Produced by George Foley and Marc Frederic, for Astor Pictures release. Screenplay by H. E. Barrie; Photography by Meredith Nicholson; Edited by Everett Dodd; Music by Nicholas Carras. Starring: John Ashley, Sandra Knight, Donald Murphy, Sally Todd, John Zaremba and Harold Lloyd Jr.

Quickie sci-fi/horror of campy interest due to its rank stupidity and cruelty to characters and the non-aficionado audience. An American son to Dr. Frankenstein is added to the story conveniently by an old coot who helped the original as a youth in feeding the Jekyll & Hyde notion to a dumb young girl who galliants monstrously about the countryside. Not content with this white nightgown special, he grafts another young woman's head onto the body of a spare parts monster, and the old coot declares of her: "Frankenstein's daughter".

For many years people derided this film as the worst Frankenstein movie ever made. Of course that was before things like FRANKENSTEIN '80 or FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS came along. I grew up watching this film on "Chiller Theatre" and now I have a beautiful sepia tinted print on video so it is indeed a pleasure of mine, and not a guilty one either. I like this film and I am not ashamed to admit it, so there! What a cast, Felix Locher, real life father of actor Jon Hall, as a dedicated but misguided scientist; Donald Murphy as yet another "last of the Frankenstein's" (the third one the movies offered us in the space of a single year!); Harold Lloyd Jr as the comedy relief, Sandra Knight (future Mrs. Jack Nicholson) as both the girl in distress AND the fill-in monster; and last but not least John Ashley as the hero. Two men played the title monster: mostly he (she?, it?) was played by Harry Wilson, former stunt double for Wallace Beery (you can see Mr. Wilson briefly in THEM! in the hospital scene. He is in the bed next to the one occupied by Olin Howland) and for the scene where the Monster is on fire stuntman George Barrows takes over. Ms. Knight is memorable as the crusty faced, bug eyed monster who dominates the first half of the movie. If she had just gone on one date with Mr. Murphy perhaps he would not have experimented on her; but of course the plot had to advance. It's the title monster that gets me. An ostensibly male body with the severely mutilated head of a female hit-and-run victim grafted on; talk about gender confusion! Mr. Murphy gets a classic bit of male chauvinism when he declares "The brain of a female is conditioned to a man's world, therefore it takes orders." Wanna bet? The first thing the monster does after it wakes up is wander out on its own and kill someone! It is polite enough to knock when it returns home at least. You have to love the party scene. Harold Lloyd Jr (backed by Paige Cavanaugh and his Trio, a jazz combo trying to ease into rock and roll) sings "Special Date" and "Daddy Bird" and nearly steals the second half of the movie. Oh, and for your trivia folder, that burned face makeup on Mr.Murphy that was immortalised in the opening credits of "Chiller Theatre" was accomplished in less than 5 minutes thanks to some clear gel, lens paper, and chocolate syrup. Director Richard Cunha made other features, but I do believe this is his best.

Well, words are hard to come up with to describe this routine premised monster film of the 50's. A descendant of the late Victor Frankenstein, his son Oliver to be exact, is hiding his identity and working as a lab assistant for a kindly scientist. The scientist is working on something beneficial to mankind, whilst his assistant secretly works his own experiments on his benefactor's niece. These experiments hideously disfigure her face and cause her to walk the streets scaring people at night. But soon we see that all this is really secondary to Oliver's real plans of recreating life...keeping the family tradition alive so to speak. With the aid of a disgruntled gardener related to Igor(or someone like that), Ollie and friend end up killing people and fusing dead body parts with the end result being the creation of a barely woman-like played by man being. Ollie is not just worried about creating life, however. He is a randy sort of chap who has the hots for the delectable niece and then her also delicious friend, played by playmate Sally Todd.

The rest of the film is how he is discovered by the niece and her boyfriend, with some implausible and disgusting music sequences thrown in. The acting is decidedly over the top by most concerned. Donald Murphy terrifically hams it up as Ollie. John Ashley is painful to watch as the boyfriend. Saying he has limited acting ability would be an understatement! Notwithstanding the complicated, highly ridiculous plot, the hammy performances, the cheap sets, the bizarre make-up, this is a fun one to watch. It grabs you early, has some fun sequences, and some lovely, lovely heavenly bodies to feast your eager eyes on.

Capitalizing on the 'teenage monster' craze of the late 1950's, this is one is weak even by the modest standards of the teenage schlock horror school of film. It's better than 'Teenages From Outer Space,' but that's not saying much.

The eponymous monster, Frankenstein's Daughter, does not appear even vaguely female, instead looking like one of the lunch ladies from my grade school cafeteria, or perhaps the great thespian William Frawley.

I suspect the producers of this film must have figured out that they had Fred Mertz Monster on their hands, because there is a really strange and tangential subplot which involves making a temporary monster out of a cute young bathing-suit clad ingénue. This time the monster make up is good (by schlock-horror standards) and there is some interesting footage of a nice-looking bathing suit clad female body with a horrible monster face.

The other interesting thing in this film is the creepy, murderous and sexually predatory Dr. Frankenstein. He attempts to date rape one teenage girl, and he turns another one temporarily into a monster (see above). Oh, and the one he attempts to turn into a monster...well, he tries to put the moves on her as well.

The son of the great silent film comedian Harold Lloyd plays a part in this film, but damned if I can remember him. The guy who played the boyfriend of the ingénue/monster girl later showed up in a few of the Annette Funnicello/Frankie Avalon beach movies. There is also some obligatory teenage music and scenes by the swimming pool.

As an adult connoisseur of schlock horror and bad movies, this film is mildly enjoyable. Whereas some of the better teenage schlock horror films can also be enjoyed for their aesthetic value as well.