Frankenstein vs. the Mummy

Perfectly acceptable throwback of a picture with more traditional Universal inspired monsters. The film has a good script, good acting for the most part, and does wonders in the set design, makeup and gore effects for a low budget feature.

Damien Leone shows he's capable as a director, though the film could have benefitted from some tighter editing. It's too long at almost 2 hours, and could have been a topnotch, better paced movie at 90 minutes. Also, with the budget restraints we don't get enough wide shots, which gives the film a bit of a claustrophobic feel. Still, I'm going to check out the director's other films.

"That Bella chick gets shiny vampires and hunky werewolves, and I get a couple of reanimated corpses? What is up with that." The lead actress, by the way, is the only thing worth watching in this film. She's easy on the eyes.

The film starts with the university with the most lax research rules, ever. While Doctor Victor F. is on one side of the campus reanimating corpses and paying the janitor for body parts, his whacky Egyptologist girlfriend brings back a cursed mummy from Egypt. after 140 minutes of plodding dialog, gory special effects and more contrivances than you can shake a test tube at, we get the fight between the two titular monsters.

I give the actor credit for trying. The special effects artists also did a good job given what must have been a low budget. The direction and writing are the problems here.

In New York, the professor of the medical university Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Max Rhyser) is buying body parts from the janitor Carter to build a corpse and reanimate it. The Egyptologist Naihla Khalil (Ashton Leigh), from the same university, has just returned from an expedition and brought the Mummy of Usekara (Brandon deSpain), an evil and cruel pharaoh that was cursed, leaving his soul trapped in his mummified corpse. Victor and Naihla have a crush on each other and they date. Meanwhile Professor Walton (Boomer Tibbs), who is chief of department where Naihla works, accidentally releases Usekara's soul and is possessed by him. He kills his assistant Isaac (Robert MacNaughton) and his blood awakes the Mummy. Then Walton lures his student Lenora (Stefanie Merola) and the Mummy eats her heart. Frankenstein's monster (Constantin Tripes) is reanimated and Victor is surprised with his capacity. But soon both monsters want Naihla: Frankenstein's creature to force Victor to transfer his brain to a new body and the Mummy believes she is the sorcerer that trapped his soul and wants Naihla to call off the spell. What will happen to Naihla?

"Frankenstein vs. The Mummy" is an entertaining horror movie that uses the classic Universal monsters. There are good lines, but the limited budget limits the film to few characters. The exotic beauty of Ashton Leigh is impressive and the plot is well resolved. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): Not available on DVD or Blu-Ray.

If we were reviewing college movies, I would give this a solid 5, and B for the movie making class.

But since this is a real movie, it's just barf. To be fair, I took one look at the terrible post production, flat acting, and fast forwarded right through it at 20x. I caught maybe one action scene. They get an extra point for decent makeup.

Some of the issues might be fixed by a re-edit and better post production. It needs to be really tightened up. I'm surprised no one stopped the director and asked them, what they were doing.

This is MST:3k material.

Maybe the intent was to make a modern-day equivalent of some of those Universal Monsters crossover movies from way back in the 30s and 40s, but it feels more like Damien Leone making an Asylum film, sadly. I think it's better than the handful of Asylum releases I've seen, but that doesn't mean I'd go so far as to call it good.

Also, anyone who feels Terrifier 2 is too long will have whatever the opposite of a field day is with Frankenstein vs. The Mummy. Some of those Universal movies were 60 to 70 minutes long, and this one should've taken inspiration from that aspect of them.

At least the Mummy looked kind of cool. We could use a good gory/modern-day full-horror take on the Mummy one of these days.