Les Expériences érotiques de Frankenstein

Dr Frankenstein : Dennis Price and his assistant Morpho : Jesús Franco, are attacked by the giant monster : Fernando Bilbao , as soon as he is brought to life. Then the monster is taken by the immortal magician Cagliostro : Howard Vernon , and his helper , the witch Melissa : Ana Libert . Cagliostro's goal is to create a new master race and turn over the World. Then Dr Stewart : Alberto Dalbes to do battle against the forces of evil and once again decides it's time to wipe them off the Earth , unfortunately his is attacked by Frankenstein monster .They have awakened .. and they are the sound of terror!

Typical Jesús Franco of the Seventies , this time revisiting Frankenstein creature . This is the follow-up to "Dracula versus Frankenstein" 1972 with similar techinician and artistic team, adding Paca Gabaldon and shot in same scenarios from Sintra , Lisboa , Portugal . Here shows up ordinary actors of the Jess Frank factory , giving lousy interpretations , such as : Howard Vernon, Dennis Price , Anne Libert , Britt Nichols , and film debut of Lina Romay , Jesús Frank's future wife and his muse.

It packs an atmospheric and passable cinematography by Raúl Artigot . Being shot on location in Barcelona, Alicante, Murcia and Sintra, Lisboa , Portugal. As well as atonal and weird musical score by Daniel White, Jesús Franco regular . The motion picture produced by Franco regular producers Arturo Marcos and Robert De Nestle who financed him several movies in the Seventies . The flick was lousily directed by Jesús Franco in his usual style . This La Maldición de Frankenstein or Erotic adventures of Frankenstein was one of a multitude of terror films directed by the hack Jesus Franco, such as : Miss Muerte or The Diabolic Dr Z , Gritos en la Noche , La Mano del Hombre Muerto, Count Dracula , Jack the Ripper , Vampyres Lesbos , Dracula versus Frankenstein , The erotic rites of Dracula , Los Demonios , Mansion of the Living Dead and Doctor Orloff Saga that includes : The Awful Dr Orloff , Secret Dr Orloff , Sinister Dr Orloff , Orloff's Invisible Monster , Faceless . Rating 4/10 . Inferior and below average horror movie . Exclusively for Jesús Frank completists .

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!

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.

Most people watch Franco it seems specifically because it is junk, or so they think. The cheapness and (for the era) exotic nudity must give some sort of trailer park thrill.

But these films seem important to me. The reason is that today's most exiting cinema comes from the Spanish tradition of layered realisms. While the main source is Latin literature, I fancy that it can be traced back to Franco and buddies as well.

About half of these that I encounter make me yell "This! This must be the ultimate Franco!" I had that experience when gliding through this.

Yes, of course it is cheap, with bad acting and so on. But nearly _every_ movie is for me. Its just a matter of degree and earnestness. Overlook that, dear viewer.

The story alone should be enough to attract you. I won't recount it here, but it is complex and ambiguous, borrowing from several genres and reinventing them capriciously. One character is the evil genius's erotic soothsayer. She is blind but sees, a vampire but humanly erotic, our surrogate on screen.

That evil genius wraps us up in capturing Frankenstein's monster to mate for a purpose I didn't understand. This eventually involves Frankenstein's beautiful scientist daughter who temporarily reanimates her now carrion dad and ends up getting nudely whipped... well it hardly matters.

The real thing is in how he creates a gauzy, abstract world that floats above the normal world of movies. It is a movie like other movies, but not. It engages us in a conspiracy to weave a new world. Who cares about what that world contains, it is how it is woven that matters.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.