Frankenstein 1970

When I was a little guy, my dad and I used to watch creature features on Friday nights and I loved the low budget scares on this show. Now as a middle aged guy who occasionally watches one of these "scary movies" I am amused and amazed at how easily I was scared and fooled. When I saw Frankenstein 1970 was going to be broadcast, I was ready to be disappointed. However I was fooled again.

Is this a great movie, NO. Is it a fun movie YES! Any movie who has as the the hero "Red" Berry is low budget. It does however have the great Karloff. He is wonderful. His monologue for the "movie in the movie" is great. Karloff was starting to show his incredibly painful arthritis at this time of his life and it does pain one to think of the agony he is going through. But he is Karloff and actually portrays a Frankenstein for the first time in his career. He does not disappoint.

If you love 1950 horrors and you like Karloff you will enjoy this movie. The acting is mediocre (except Karloff) and the Monster Hokey but give it a try.

The last association that Boris Karloff had with the Frankenstein character came in this low budget Allied Artists film that I remember seeing in the theater in 1958. It was not the best of endings.

This time Boris Karloff is playing the last descendant of the Frankenstein clan who's an old man and who in his youth was tortured by the Nazis in an effort to divulge Frankenstein family secrets. It left him quite understandably twisted.

Karloff is putting up with a movie company who is shooting on his castle grounds, no doubt shooting a film like Frankenstein 1970, a low budget thriller. The money they're paying him however is paying for an atomic reactor, something his ancestor didn't have, maybe that's the missing ingredient.

Of course the bodies start falling, four of them to be precise as Karloff searches for what he needs to revive the Frankenstein monster which he has found and preserved.

Boris Karloff and his contemporary Bela Lugosi did both great horror films and a lot of junk. Frankenstein 1970 sad to say falls in the latter category.

I have a little fondness for this movie. It was on TV quite often when I was a little skippy. It was always on The Ghoul who was a horror host in the Detroit area. Most of the time we were watching to see him but the movies weren't always bad. This one was a little above the rest.

To finance his experiments the last of the Frankensteins (Karloff) allows a film crew to shoot a movie/TV show on the grounds of his estate. Of course the Doc is building a creature down in his secret laboratory. Not only does Frankenstein need cash, he needs a few spare parts for his project as well. The film crew and servants provide him with these - unwillingly of course.

The film crew is really annoying. Seeing them getting bumped off by the bandage-swathed monster is quite fun. Many have complained that Karloff was hamming it up. I disagree as he was dealing with a one-dimensional character.

The ending is kind of predictable. But there are worse ways to spend your time than watching this.

Horror icon Boris Karloff, during the mid-1950s, significantly slowed down his prodigious output of the '30s and '40s. After 1953, fans would have to wait a full four years before his next horror picture, "Voodoo Island," was released, and that one is generally acknowledged as one of Boris' few stinkers. The British actor seemed to rebound a bit in 1958, however, with the releases of "Frankenstein 1970"--a shlocky yet entertaining picture--and the very-well-done British film "Grip of the Strangler." "Frankenstein 1970" was the fifth Frankenstein film that Karloff had participated in, following the classic original in 1931, the eternal glory that is 1935's "Bride of Frankenstein," 1939's excellent "Son of Frankenstein" and 1944's "House of Frankenstein," but--no surprise--the film in question is any number of rungs down the scale, qualitywise, as compared to those great others.

Here, the 70-year-old Karloff plays Victor von Frankenstein, the final descendant of the infamous House. Needing additional funds to purchase the atomic reactor that will enable him to complete his experiments (and at this point, need it even be mentioned what those experiments consist of?), he rents out his ancestral castle near Frankfurt to an American TV production company that is making a movie to celebrate Frankenstein's 240th anniversary. (Never mind that that would make for a birth date of 1730, if the film actually does take place in 1970, and that Mary Shelley's original novel came out in 1818, although admittedly set in "17--." Also, never mind the fact that the film makes no attempt to look as if it's transpiring 12 years in its then future.) But when body parts, such as brains and eyes, are in short supply, what is the good Baron supposed to do, other than use parts from the retainers, film crew and nubile actresses on hand?

"Frankenstein 1970" is a film that I never got to see as a little kid, despite its ubiquitous presence on television back then. When I mentioned to my Psychotronic Guru, Rob, that I had just acquired the DVD to watch, he enthused about the film's opening scene, which he said he'd found terrifying when he saw it in a theater over 50 years ago. Film historian Tom Weaver says the same thing on the DVD's commentary regarding this sequence, in which a claw-taloned maniac pursues a screaming, hysterical blonde through a fog-shrouded landscape and into a swamp, and in truth, that scene IS the best and scariest moment in the film; the only scary moment, as it turns out. For the rest of it, the picture is a tad slow moving, occasionally dull, with many scenes of the Baron puttering around with his creation in his lab, dictating his progress into a running tape recorder. The resultant monster is one of the most ridiculous looking in any Frankenstein film; indeed, swaddled in mummylike wrappings as he is, we never even get a good look at the pathetic thing, until the picture's admittedly startling final moment. A lumbering bundle of bandages, with a head that looks like a giant cardboard box residing under the wrappings, the monster here is an object of laughter, not fright. Eyeball-less as it is, the monster seems to get around just fine, leading the viewer to wonder just why the Baron is so obsessed with procuring orbs for his creation. Besides the monster, the film's laboratory equipment and creation sequence FX pale mightily in comparison to those earlier four Frankenstein films, which all featured stunning-looking lab sets and amazing creation sequences (particularly "Bride"). Still, it must be said that director Howard W. Koch (later, the producer of such classic films as "The Manchurian Candidate," "The President's Analyst," "The Odd Couple" and "Plaza Suite") makes nice use of his CinemaScope frame, that the score by Paul Dunlap is occasionally gripping, and that cinematographer Carl E. Guthrie has provided some moody B&W visuals. The film also offers fans of grisly horror some very mild gross-outs, such as a jar of spilled eyeballs, the massaging of a human heart, Boris' tale of the tongueless commandant, and a corpse-grinding machine (an inspiration for Ted V. Mikels, perhaps?). Basically, however, the film is of interest mainly because of Uncle Boris, who gets to overact deliciously and impress his many fans, once again, with that wonderfully mellifluous voice. As in the 1934 classic "The Black Cat," Boris also gets to play some chilling music on his home organ, always a dismal thrill! Bottom line: Filmed as it was in only eight days (!) in January '58, "Frankenstein 1970," cheezy as it is, remains a surprisingly decent, oddball entertainment. After 1958, fans would have to wait another five years before Karloff's next horror pictures, which he made under director Roger Corman. So this film, and "Grip of the Strangler," had to hold them for a while (in addition to TV's "Thriller," of course, which Boris hosted from 1960-'62). And really, where else can you find a line like "Torch, scorch, unforch"?

MORD39 RATING: **1/2 (of ****)

As a kid I recall being disappointed when catching FRANKENSTEIN 1970 on TV. I was expecting the 1931 original, and at the age of 8 or 9 I was understandably disappointed. But now as an adult I can appreciate this 1950's monster flick for what it is.

Most fans dismiss this film, but I believe it has much going for it. For one thing, we get Boris Karloff as the Baron. Too many folks have panned his hammy performance, but I think he is deliciously sinister and over-ripe. His character reminds me of the Boris puppet from the MAD MONSTER PARTY film, and I'm surprised that more viewers don't find his performance endearing.

The film boasts a surprise opening and a surprise ending (I won't give them away), and in between that we get to see a gloomy castle filled with an underground secret laboratory and hidden passageways. Boris plays eerie music on his organ, and he's creating a monster that runs around killing people. Is this not what makes a fun horror pic?

True, the monster isn't very convincing...but neither are most fifties creatures, so why all the fuss? Besides, the monster only looks as he does due to the fact that the bandages and head cast have not yet been removed.

With foggy swamps, unexplored corridors, and a mad Karloff, fans could do far worse than FRANKENSTEIN 1970.