Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter

Thought dead, Jesse James joins the Wild Bunch (!) for a stagecoach robbery. Double crossed, he escapes an ambush and takes his wounded partner Hank (Harry?) Tracy to the house of Frankenstein's granddaughter for treatment. She instead plans on turning the hulking Tracy into the newest Frankenstein monster.

Not for all tastes, this is actually pretty good if you catch it in the right mood and if you have a sense of humor.

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter is neither the best Jesse James nor Frankenstein movies ever made. However, it's a lot of kookie fun. Also, it's slightly better than the infamous companion film Billy The Kid Versus Dracula.

Under the supervision of of veteran director William Beaudine, this is a pretty even mixture of the old poverty row western and horror films, slathered in a thick coat of 1960's color and shot in widescreen.

Giving credit where credit is due - unlike many other Jesse James flicks, this one actually cast an actor that looks like James!

"Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter". Who can resist a title like that? A Frankenstein monster in the old west. You have to wonder how they are going to mesh the two together and what the result will be. The name of this movie tells you right off the bat that you can't really expect much in the way of a very serious movie. I mean, come on, what did you think? The plot has a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of unrealistic scenes, I was fully expecting that. This is the type of movie that you have to go with the flow. Don't ask too many questions. It's not that kind of a film. This was probably been made with kids as the intended audience in 1966. The movie combines cowboys, Indians, old west robbers, a sheriff, Mexican villagers, Jesse James and his partner, a European brother and sister mad scientist team, and a monster. With all that, you should have an exciting although strange movie. That's what I was expecting, a lot of action. That's not what I got. Surprisingly, there isn't that much excitement. The movie moves slowly and is pretty tame. The so called monster is also a bit of a dud. Not that scary and could have been done so much better. Although this film was actually quite bland, I'm still glad I watched it. It's all in the title. I just had to see what this movie was all about. For any fan of the older monster movies, this should be on your list, maybe quite far down on the list, but never the less on the list all the same.

With a title like this, the audience is being "put on" before the first frame of the film is seen. And, if you don't like being the brunt of the joke, you ain't gonna have anything good to say about this flick - not that there's anything good to say if it were called Gone With The Wind. But - come on - Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter...what do you expect? We DESERVE a dud if we watch it. Stetson's off to whoever came up with the combination, let alone had the gumption to try to depict the two on the same celluloid - like Billy the Kid and Dracula, which proves that, if you don't get it right the first time, you probably won't get it right the SECOND time, either. If you're like me, you'll take in this movie just to find out HOW the two get together and HOW a monster fits in there. All of the other elements are immaterial, which is important, 'cause they all contribute laughably to this effort. If that's your intention with your dime and your time - and you're easily amused - you MAY be able to tolerate this epic.

Veteran filmmaker William Beaudine, with 256 movies under his belt, directed this dreary, low-budget, drive-in oater without much flair. Beaudine and scenarist Carl Hittleman go to absurd lengths to give the preposterous plot (what if Jesse James tangled with Frankenstein's daughter) a plausible set-up. Our notorious heroine and her elderly assistant have fled Germany to conduct their abominable experiments in the relative isolation of the old Southwest in a converted monastery. Film theorists will have a field day with the metaphorical implications of Frankenstein renovating a Catholic monastery. Maria Frankenstein longs to follow in her dastardly daddy's footsteps, but the Mexican peasants nearby don't make good guinea pigs. They have a nasty habit of dying on her. Interestingly enough, Frankenstein's daughter relocated to the American West to take advantage of the frequency of lightning. Anybody who has heard the commentary track on the Kurt Russell movie "Tombstone" may recall the director commenting on the abundance of lightning on their movie set in Arizona, so "Jesse James" contains a modicum of plausibility. The infamous outlaw is trying to lay low when he hooks up with Butch Curry and the Wild Bunch. (Obviously, Butch Curry is Butch Cassidy, but the producers must have felt that one real-life outlaw was sufficient.)Anyway, Butch's greedy brother Lonny alerts Marshall MacPhee about Jesse's whereabouts. During an abortive stagecoach robbery, Jesse's partner Hank catches a slug in the shoulder, and Jesse takes him to the House of Frankenstein to get patched up. Naturally, evil Maria takes them in, because muscle-bound Hank qualifies as the perfect specimen for her blasphemous experiments. See what I mean about the bedrock of plausiblity? This horror horse opera appears to have been shot on a shoe-string budget, since Beaudine stages the action largely in master shots. A mustached John Lupton makes a bland Jesse James. Other than an accurate alias, Jesse's character has been white-washed beyond recognition, and he utters lines about himself that only a censor would pen to dissuade anybody from following in his footsteps. After Hank's transformation to Igor, the camp factor in the action picks up, but there is simply not enough camp to keep this western fired up. Not as hilariously awful as you might imagine, but nevertheless this hybrid-genre hokum is tame, without fireworks. Maria dons a multi-colored G.I. helmet during the transformation sequences, and her laboratory pales in comparison with even a Hammer entry. At one point in the film, she refers to herself as Frankenstein's granddaughter. The producers really should have made up their minds. If there is anything truly execrable about this superficial, saddle-sore sagebrusher, scrutinize the long shots of Frankenstein's monastery: it's an obvious matte painting! Maria Frankenstein is a hoot as a character. In a lackluster cast, veteran character actor Jim Davis of "Dallas" fame stands out as a stalwart lawman, while long-time heavy Rayford Barnes provides the most excitement as he tries to collect the reward on Jesse's head. Worthwhile only as a curiosity piece, "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter" (* out of ****)lacks the audacity of "Lady Frankenstein." The year after Beaudine made this nonsense, he helmed "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula."

This is one of those movies that "Mystery Science Theatre" was made for (I don't know if MST3K ever did one on this). All of the fun is asking questions that nobody who made the movie ever did. Why is there only one bed in the Mexican household? Who gets to sleep in it? Do they take turns? Why is Lady Frankenstein's brother so much older than she is? Juanita leaves her parents in the wilderness and doesn't she ever worry about them? When Jesse goes to the pharmacist to get some medicine, the pharmacist goes in the back room and exits out a back door to get the sheriff. When he gets back, he starts preparing the medicine. What was his justification for going into the back room?

(Perhaps I overthink things. . .)

This is a movie to goof on and in that respect it triumphs tremendously.