Spooky Bats and Scaredy Cats

Director: Nathan Smith
Writers: Nathan Smith, Bryan Allen
Producer: Clifford A Miles
Cast: Ken Sansom, R Chase O’Neil, C Brock Holman
Country: USA
Year of release: 2008
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Porchlight)

Who doesn’t love a good monsterfest, a film that gathers together a whole bunch of classic monsters in one story? This specific subgenre can trace its origins back to the final three films in Universal’s Frankenstein series in the 1940s. House of Frankenstein went one better on the previous Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man by tossing Dracula into the mix. This formula was repeated in House of Dracula then spoofed in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein which also threw a Vincent Price-voiced Invisible Man in as a final gag.

The other two well-known monsterfests are The Munsters (in all its many variants) and Fred Dekker’s wonderful The Monster Squad. Van Helsing falls into the category too as does a 1990s TV mini-series which appropriated the House of Frankenstein title. And then there are the animated monsterfests. Series such as The Drak Pack, The Groovy Ghoulies and Gravedale High took advantage of the freedom which animation offered, where a monster character costs no more than a human one. But probably the two best animated monsterfests are the brace that were produced by the famous Rankin-Bass Studio: the stop-motion Mad Monster Party? (with its completely inexplicable titular question mark) and the lesser-known, cel-animated Mad Mad Mad Monsters.

Well, now here’s another one. Produced in 2007 and released onto DVD in time for Halloween 2008, this is a half-hour stop-motion film so packed with classic monsters that it’s difficult to find a subgenre that it doesn’t tread on. It’s not a great film in terms of script or characters but TF seems to like it and he’s the target audience much more than an old monster-geek like me.

Spooky Bats and Scaredy Cats concerns two children out trick-or-treating. Makean looks to be about seven or eight and is wearing a quite good vampire costume, which just about shoves this into the vampire subgenre because, oddly, that’s the one type of classic monster which is not included. Makean’s name is pronounced ‘Mac -KEE -an’. His sister Katie is about twelve and is dressed as a cat, complete with ears, tail, furry cuffs and ankles and a wide, 1960s-style belt that puts one unavoidably in mind of the very different (or maybe not so different) cat-suits worn by Emma Peel.

After Makean is scared by a mouse and a scarecrow in a cornfield (the mouse is wearing a puritan outfit for some reason), he and his sister walk into the village where they meet an elderly fellow called the Candleman. He has a wide-brimmed hat covered with lit candles and also a pet fish called Brunswick which floats in the air and is towing a small cart along the ground.

Here’s what you need to understand this film. Spooky Bats and Scaredy Cats is the second in a projected series of seven such tales under the banner Evergreen Holiday Classics. The first film in the series was called The Light Before Christmas and there is a trailer for both that one and this on the Spooky Bats DVD. This is why we are neither introduced to Katie and Makean (which is no real narrative problem as they’re generic kids) nor to the Candleman himself. This latter situation is a problem because the Candleman is entirely an invented character with no basis in legend or fiction so we have no references. Katie and Makean evidently know him but how, and who the jiminy is he? And, er, why does he have a pet fish that can fly? Presumably there is some background in The Light Before Christmas but the film-makers have forgotten that people who buy this disc won’t necessarily have seen the previous one (which is still available in the UK but seems to have been deleted in the States).

Also important to know is that the characters and settings are based on the work of James C Christensen, a Hugo- and Chesley-winning artist whose speciality is heavily-clothed figures in whimsical settings, often with a spiritual or religious element. And whose trademark is a fish, swimming through the air. I didn’t know any of this when I watched the DVD.

The Candleman asks the two children if they will deliver some invitations to his Halloween party, to which they agree, hoping to collect some candy along the way. And this is where all the monsters come in...

Among the recipients of invitations are a mummy (inside an Egyptian tomb), a werewolf, a plant-creature who is to all intents and purposes Swamp Thing, a zombie (we only see the cadaverous arm reaching from the grave), a family of ghosts, some giant carnivorous plants, the Grim Reaper, an old witch and finally ‘Frank’ - and we can all guess who that turns out to be. Along the way, the sceptical Katie who doesn’t believe in ‘spooks’ (the M-word is never used) comes round to her more paranoid brother’s way of thinking. The quest ends at the home of the ‘fire-headed pumpkin demon’ (or somesuch) with a selection of the ghouls advancing towards the two terrified children.

But... it turns out that this is actually the Candleman’s home and the ghouls are of course his friends, come for the party. So is the message that we should conquer our fears or that there is nothing to be afraid of? Is the message that spooks and monsters are real but friendly or that they’re not real? This isn’t the first animated special I’ve come across where, despite a general moral tone, the actual moral itself is rather fuzzy.

There are some very nice touches. In handing the invitation to the mummy, Katie accidentally rips his arm off and he picks this up to wave bye-bye (or rather “Bmm-bmm” - there’s a lovely gag at the end where Frankenstein complains to the werewolf that he can’t understand a word that the mummy says). Also, the scene with the ghosts has Katie repeatedly trying to hand over the invitation only for it to fall through the recipient's non-corporeal hand.

Where the film falls down is in its own uncertainty about whether it’s set in the real world or some magical fairyland. Katie and Makean’s costumes suggest that they are contemporary characters, especially as they collect their treats in plastic, pumpkin-shaped baskets. Their speech is contemporary too, as is the older sibling’s dismissive attitude towards her brother’s childish belief in the supernatural which is finally dispelled when the witch lends them two flying broomsticks to carry them to ‘Frank’s place’.

But the village that we see is straight out of the Brothers Grimm via Hollywood, a mittel-European-influenced, 18th century hamlet. There is even a brief glimpse of the lower half of a giant, also out trick-or-treating. When the Candleman (who is very obviously a magical character, even before we notice his fish) sends the kids off on their errand, he summons an old-fashioned carriage without horses or driver, of which Katie blithely comments, “This must be one of those new steam-powered carriages.”

You see the problem? The film’s core is the acceptance by modern, cynical Katie that magic and the supernatural are real, yet she and her brother evidently already live in a quasi-historical world riven with magic and fantasy. This robs the film of its essential dichotomy. Not that five-year-olds like TF are going to mind.

The animation is very good although there is something about the alternate heads of the Candleman figure which means that his mouth movements don’t exactly match his words. I don’t know if this is a problem with the bar-sheeting (see, I know my technical animation terms!) or whether some of the dialogue was changed after the animation had been done. Nevertheless, the designs, the sets, the costumes are all impressive and where digital effects are used they are effectively integrated into the story, such as creating the mist-covered swamp.

Another five Evergreen Holiday Classics are planned: A Cozy Valentine, Shamrocks Leprechauns and Shillelaghs (for St Patrick’s Day), Independence - What a Day! and films based around Easter and Thanksgiving. These are all summarised on the series’ website although it’s notable that the synopsis of the Halloween film is different to what we see here. In November 2008, just after Spooky Bats was released on DVD, The Light Before Christmas opened theatrically in some IMAX theatres.

The company behind the Evergreen Holiday Classics is Tandem Motion Picture Studios, a Utah-based animation studio run by brothers Chris and Nathan Smith. Nathan Smith directed Spooky Bats and wrote it in collaboration with Bryan Allen although curiously Chris Smith doesn’t seem to be credited anywhere. Allen, Smith, producer Clifford A Miles, executive producer Michael R Todd and James C Christensen share the ‘story’ credit and Christensen also gets ‘based upon characters created by’ which seems fair enough. I’m guessing that Todd uses his middle initial to differentiate himself from the Barnsley-born animator who was technical director on Ratatouille, The Incredibles and Wall-E, although I suppose that they could be the same bloke as his bio says he has also working on Disney’s aborted Snow Queen feature (as well as Shark Tale, Reign of Fire and Spider-Man).

Cliff Miles, who also handled voice direction, has worked on a wide range of other projects include the world’s largest dinosaur museum (very rich in fossils, Utah). And in that vein it looks like Tandem’s next film isn’t another Candleman short but a feature called Pangea which will be the first film ever to mix dinosaurs with elves! It’s all about a ‘water elf’ called Nemonie who teams up with a dinosaur called Gobi to search for treasure on the prehistoric supercontinent (Nemonie is also the title used on a trailer on the Tandem Studios website).

Argentinean production designer Nebel Luccion was responsible for translating Christensen’s distinctive style into 3D with the assistance of wardrobe designer Patricia Walton. Visual effects supervisor Mathew Judd has worked on the likes of Lake Placid, Deep Blue Sea, The World is Not Enough, Minority Report and Mission: Impossible II as well as a large number of games and some military training simulation programmes.

Leading the voice cast is Ken Sansom as the Candleman. He has been the voice of Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh films and TV series since the late 1980s; his other credits include Herbie Rides Again, 1983 TV pilot The Invisible Woman and the voice of Hound in the Transformers TV series. R Chase O’Neil (Katie) was born in March 1993 (not October as the IMDB has it) and started her career in 2000 with a small part in a TV movie based on the JonBenet Ramsey case, progressing to war drama Saints and Soldiers and ice skating film Go Figure. C Brock Holman (Makean) was in a 2003 production called A Pioneer Miracle which was directed by cinematographer TC Christensen (I don’t know if he’s related to James C).

The werewolf, the witch and Frankenstein are voiced respectively by Joel Bishop (who was also in Saints and Soldiers and that JonBenet telemovie as well as Stalking Santa and Cyber Sleuths), Mary Parker Williams (Don’t Look Under the Bed, Firestarter 2) and Christopher Miller (who could be one of several actors of that name).

The other element of note is the music by Lisle Moore, who has previously scored trailers such as The Missing, Haunted Mansion and Cold Mountain as well as various Playstation games. Specifically, there is a song midway through the film as Katie and Makean fly on the broomsticks which is an utterly shameless rip-off of The Nightmare Before Christmas (complete with “Halloween! Halloween!” chorus). The aping of Danny Elfman’s music is so blatant that it frankly spoils and cheapens the production as a whole, which is a shame.

One final point to note is the running time which according to the DVD sleeve is 65 minutes. In fact, Spooky Bats and Scaredy Cats runs only half an hour, the rest being padded out with the two trailers, a short (but surprisingly good) look behind the scenes of the production... and half a dozen public domain Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons. That’s a bit naughty, although we should blame the distributor, not the producers.

While it has its faults, mainly in the story department, Spooky Bats and Scaredy Cats is a nicely produced little special which has enough fun for its target audience and enough monsters gathered in one place to get adult fans excited.

MJS rating: B+
Review originally posted 7th December 2008.

Rock'n'Roll Frankenstein

Director: Brian O’Hara
Writer: Brian O’Hara
Producer: Sean O’Hara
Cast: Jayson Spence, Graig Guggenheim, Barry Feterman, Hiram J Segarra
Year of release: 1999
Country: USA
Reviewed from: VHS screener

There have been some damn strange takes on Mary Shelley’s tale over the years, variants that would make even her liberal eyes pop out of their sockets, which just goes to show how universal and adaptable the Frankenstein story is. But few have been as far from the original - or as entertaining - as Brian O’Hara’s Rock’n’Roll Frankenstein.

Cigar-toting music mogul Bernie Stein (Feterman) falls out once again with his latest signing and decides that what he really needs is a pop star that he can control completely. He needs to build one for himself. Fortunately, he has his nephew Frankie (Spence) on hand, replete with well-equipped Mad Scientist Lab, necrophiliac tendencies and stoned, oddball assistant named (great touch!) Iggy (Segarra).

Iggy and accomplices are sent out to raid the cemeteries of the world for parts of deceased rock giants which Frankie can then patch together into what will surely be the ultimate rocker. They get Jimi Hendrix’s hands, Buddy Holly’s feet, Elvis’ head - finally all that’s missing is, well, a schlong. Who else’s could they use but Jim Morrison’s legendary trouser snake, apparently preserved in a jar in a bizarre collection of such things? But, in the grand tradition of useless assistants, Iggy drops the jar and grabs another one instead, belonging to someone called Ace. Unfortunately, that’s ‘Liber’ Ace!

The resultant creation, known as simply ‘The King’ (Guggenheim), is a triumph of the unholy arts and is trained to be a rock star. Gradually his fame takes off, but he does seem to prefer the piano to the guitar. Worse than that, he prefers men to women! Confused and scared, the King tries to make it with chicks but instead starts hearing voices - voices from down there.

Of course, Uncle Bernie is only interested in making money from The King, while Frankie is distracted by his, um, tendencies - and Iggy is still zonked out of his skull. This would be a touching, sad story of loneliness and confusion - if it wasn’t so funny. In an era when even mainstream films are attempting to gross-out their audiences, many film-makers have forgotten that grossness alone isn’t enough. Grossness has to be presented with intelligence, even wit, to actually be funny, and that’s where Rock’n’Roll Frankenstein scores.

This is not a film for the easily offended, but nor is it just mindless stupidity. Written, directed and produced with care and skill, R’n’R Frankie is laugh-out-loud funny while retaining the core element that makes the Frankenstein myth such an enduring tale. A largely neophyte cast are excellent, playing the comedy straight and thereby making it all the funnier; special mention to Segarra who makes Iggy, potentially a one-note stoner, into a fully realised, sympathetic character. Hugely enjoyable, deeply politically incorrect (good!) and highly recommended, this is a film that everyone should see at least once.

Rock’n’Roll Frankenstein was released as a Collector’s Edition DVD from EI Independent Cinema, including a ‘making of’ featurette and commentary from O’Hara and friends.

MJS rating: A
Review originally posted 7th December 2004.

Creep Creepersin's Frankenstein

Director: Creep Creepersin
Writer: Creep Creepersin
Producers: Creep Creepersin, Nikki Wall
Cast: James Porter, Nicole Nemeth, Kelly Kingsbury
Country: USA
Year of release: 2009
Reviewed from: VOD (HorrorInc)
Website: www.creepersin.com

When perusing obscure indie horror films, there are a couple of danger signs to watch out for. One is a possessory credit. In marketing terms, it means something if this particular New Nightmare belongs to Wes Craven, or if John Carpenter is prepared to accept personal responsibility for these Ghosts of Mars. But a film you’ve never heard of that was made by a person you’ve never heard of? Who cares? That’s just vanity.

The other warning signal is an obvious, quirky but not actually funny, horror-related pseudonym; an, if you will, ‘spookonym‘. What’s wrong with the name your parents gave you? And if your parents were Mr and Mrs Carpenter and named you Johnny and you want to avoid confusion (if only to make it clear that you are not to blame for Ghosts of Mars), well there are plenty of distinctive but sensible sounding names to choose from.

These two elements don’t always indicate that what you are about to watch is a piece of ultra-low-budget, me-and-my-mates, self-indulgent crap. But they are red flags of which you should beware.

Which brings us to Creep Creepersin’s Frankenstein.

I first became aware of Mr Creepersin last year when I was writing my review of Ivan Zuccon's Wrath of the Crows and I noted that Domiziano Arcangeli had appeared in a number of films by this director (albeit not this one). Given that Creepersin’s 40+ credits include such cheap-jack exploitative title as Orgy of the Damned, The Brides of Sodom, Awesome Girl Gang Street Fighter, Alien Babes in Heat, Caged Lesbos A-Go-Go and, ahem, Vaginal Holocaust, I really was expecting this film to be unashamed, unadulterated, unapologetic - and quite possibly unwatchable - trash. But I’m a sucker for Frankenstein movies and it’s available on VOD on HorrorInc for 75p, and I had 55 minutes to spare, so what the heck?

Let me clarify that first point. I love Frankenstein movies. Larry love ‘em. They fascinate me. I’ll never knowingly turn down a chance to watch a new Frankenstein film. Some people love slasher movies, some are obsessive zombie fans. For some folks it’s vampire or werewolves or kaiju or whatever. For me, it’s Frankie and his pals.

And one of the interesting things about Frankenstein films is that they are very, very difficult to do. Sure, you can go the gothic historical route if you have the budget. Or you can laugh it up and spoof the whole idea in some way. But a serious, modern-day Frankenstein story is a very difficult thing indeed to pull off. Pretty much the only good one I’ve seen in recent years was Sean Tretta’s The Frankenstein Experiment/Syndrome. That one worked but, with the best will in the world, John R Hand’s Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare is incomprehensible and that 2007 BBC version from Jed Mercurio was all over the shop.

The inherent problem is that the Frankenstein story is both a science fiction tale and a gothic romance. There’s room in the world for medical science fiction, of course. And gothic romances can still work if they rely on magic and mystery, which is why vampires and werewolves don’t go away. But it’s 200 years since cutting edge science was in a sufficiently rudimentary state that it could effectively meld with the gothic romance genre. Modern medical experiments are neither gothic nor romantic and trying to squeeze the two genres together, especially within the limitations of a well-established story, is a very, very difficult thing to do. Lean too far either way and you’re no longer a Frankenstein film in anything but name.

All of which preamble does indeed lead me to discussion of the motion picture entitled Creep Creepersin’s Frankenstein and to the revelation that this is, in fact, a very good film. Despite all the warning signs, despite the inherent difficulties of this particular subgenre, despite my own low expectations, I was captivated by this and I’m not ashamed to say that it is one of the best Frankenstein films I have watched for a long time. Let me clarify that: not one of the best films about Frankenstein - clearly there are many better (though also some worse) - but one of the best uses of Frankenstein ideas and tropes in a film.

So I loved this for its originality and the brilliant way it did something radical and new with the Frankenstein subgenre. I also loved it because it is grim, bleak and wrist-slashingly depressing - and that’s the sort of horror movie I enjoy. Don’t come here looking for gore and splatter. Certainly don’t come here looking for lurching monsters. But if your idea of a good time is an hour-long study in mental illness interspersed with clips from classic horror films, brother you’ve come to the right place.

James Porter stars as Victor, a lonely, middle-aged guy without apparent friends or family, or job. He lives in a small apartment on a farm in Hicksville somewhere, his only companion a white rat named Frankenstein. Victor has what we might term learning difficulties, and we are left to decide for ourselves whether his awkwardness and stilted mannerisms have contributed to his social isolation or have resulted from it in some way. In what is apparently his only screen role, Porter is absolutely terrific, bringing real sympathy to the pathos of Victor’s sad existence.

The one human being with whom he has any contact is a neighbour, Shelly (Nicole Nemeth), who is actually his landlord (I didn’t pick up on that but there is a clue). In one of several innovative and effective directorial decisions, all of Shelly’s dialogue is played backwards on the soundtrack. Victor hears and understands her and the two converse normally, but the garbled pseudo-speech we hear underlines Victor’s alienation from even his single point of contact with the rest of the world.

Every day in Victor’s life is the same. He rises, cleans his teeth, subsists on a diet of scrambled eggs, talks to Frankenstein and watches old horror movies. We see this two or three times. In fact one of the first scenes in the film, after a five-minute title sequence, is a single locked-off shot of Victor cleaning his teeth for more than a minute (when we all know you should scrub for at least two...). At first sight this seems like padding, the work of an incompetent director who doesn’t even understand how to edit a scene together. As I waited for the camera to cut away, I pondered how other film-makers could show a person’s entire morning routine with a handful of one-second shots: alarm, shave, breakfast, teeth, dressed, out the door. Sorted,.

But Creepersin doesn’t want to be conservative or succinct with his storytelling. The whole point of sticking with the mundane scene of dental hygiene is to let us witness the mundanity of Victor’s life. And the reason it’s repeated later is to emphasise the repetitiveness of Victor’s life. We see him clean his teeth, we see him feed his rat, we see him eat his scrambled eggs, we see him watch his old movies - because that is all he does. That is his life. And he’s not really aware enough to try and break out of this. But he is lonely. And haunted too.

Not literally, but by visions of his mother (seen only from the back, played by the director’s spookonymous wife, Mrs Creep), an overweight sack of hate who hurls homophobic abuse at Victor because he let his father sexually abuse him.

Victor’s only relief from all this is a succession of flickering images: scratchy prints of old horror films on his TV, all of them public domain for obvious reasons. We see clips from Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, the silent Phantom of the Opera, the silent Hunchback of Notre Dame and Carnival of Souls. The actual Frankenstein mythos is represented by two early 1950s telecasts. One is Tales of Tomorrow, in which we see John Newland as Victor Frankenstein in the creation scene but not Lon Chaney Jr as the monster (this show was the infamous incident when Chaney was so drunk he thought the live broadcast was a rehearsal and was careful not to smash any of the break-away props). The other clip is Chaney in full Universal get-up dancing with Lou Costello in The Colgate Comedy Hour.

From watching these clips, which are cleverly selected to intercut with and reflect Victor’s own actions and feelings, and from a voice in his head (played by the director) which he believes to be his rat speaking, Victor gets the idea to create a bride for himself. Next thing we know, he has the bloodied corpse of a young woman laid out on his couch. Her name is Mary, so our three named (human) characters are Mary, Shelly and Victor. Which reminds me that another danger sign inappropriate in this case is in-joke character names.

We don’t actually see how Victor came by Mary until later, in a scarlet-tinted flashback (yet another unconventional but thoroughly sound directorial choice). What we do see is Victor denying to Shelly that he has seen the missing young woman, and then setting about re-animating her. For reference he uses a copy of Gray’s Anatomy (which he owns, somewhat improbably) and a hardback copy of The Annotated Frankenstein. I didn’t get a great look at this but I think it was the 1977 edition published by Clarkson N Potter, edited by Leonard Wolf.

Here’s where the film really gets clever. Of course he doesn’t reanimate Mary. He can’t do that, he’s just a socially awkward loner in a grubby, untidy apartment whose only companions are a pet rat and a hallucination of his abusive mother. Plus, reanimating dead people is impossible.

But a significant part of this film takes place inside Victor’s broken mind. So instead of sewing Mary together, he draws the stitches onto her skin with a magic marker. This is a startling and audacious move by Creepersin but it bloody works. It tells us exactly what is happening in Victor’s head and shifts the already compelling film up a gear as we wonder what will happen next.

What happens next is that Mary is living once again, drawn-on stitches and all, but because Victor only understands love through his crackly old PD films, especially the silents like Hunchback and Phantom, Mary herself appears in a scratchy sepia world, communicating through intertitles. This is a conceit which in anyone else’s hands would have been a gag. God knows a silent pastiche like this has been used for comedy plenty of times, but here it’s just another facet of Victor’s increasingly disturbed reality. There is even one superb shot where Mary’s sepia, silent existence and Victor’s physical world share the screen.

But there is a problem. Mary is not the loving girlfriend Victor desires, not the kind companion, not his Esmerelda but his Christine, immediately negative in her attitude towards him. Victor has no concept, outside of those flickering frames on TV, of what a real woman is like. Shelly is alien to him so that his only notion of womanhood is his mother and before too long Mary and Mother are laughing together at his expense, driving Victor further and further away from reality and deeper into a black hatred.

What I particularly love here is that this is a perfect retelling of the essence of the Frankenstein story: the creator rejected by his creation. Just like his namesake, Victor has hubristically sought to create a human but has not thought ahead to what would happen once that human has freedom. He has assumed loyalty towards himself but finds rejection from one who did not ask to be made. That’s the essence of the story. The whole original novel is encapsulated in the quote from Paradise Lost which appears on the frontispiece: “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay. To mould me Man, did I solicit thee. From darkness to promote me?” That’s Mary Shelley’s novel right there in 21 words. And that’s Creepersin’s film story too.

In fact this is doubly apposite because in creating a female companion for himself, Victor is also reflecting the later part of the story when Shelley’s hero, hidden away from the world on a remote Scottish isle, sets to making a female companion for his first brute creation who is pathetically lonely and seeks only a mate. This aspect of the film has just dawned on my as I write. Honestly, with every paragraph, my admiration for this little film grows.

One more thing that impressed me was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it close-up, after we have seen Mary drinking coffee and smoking, of an untouched coffee cup and cigarette on Victor’s table. That’s the cold harsh reality of Victor’s physical world right there, but it is barely touched on because we see this story through Victor’s mind and he is almost entirely detached from cold hard reality. He does not acknowledge the unfilled cup, the unsmoked cigarette, yet he has provided them explicitly for his imaginary companion, like a little girl playing tea party with her dolls. What makes this absolutely perfect is that Victor tells Mary he himself doesn’t smoke. Has he found a cigarette somewhere, specially for her? Has he made it himself by rolling up a piece of paper? It doesn’t really matter, what matters is the storytelling and the characters and what we see happening inside and outside of Victor’s head at the same time.

This is masterful storytelling, and the fact that it’s being told in a film which gives every impression to the casual viewer of being a tuppeny-ha’penny piece of crap, of having been made for next to nothing in, according to Creepersin, only a day and a half, just makes it all the more impressive.

Creep Creepersin’s Frankenstein is a bleak, thankless hour spent in the bleak, thankless world of Victor as his misguided attempt to create a semblance of a normal life falls apart under the weight of his own paranoia. I loved it! There’s no happy ending, but nor is there a tragic one, it’s just more bleakness and thanklessness and it completes the story (inasmuch as it will ever be complete). This is one of those films where, after the closing credits, one has to sit still for a while and consider what one has seen. It put me in mind of another obscure on-line marvel, Joe Wheeler’s extraordinary The Rise of Jengo, not least through the magnificent performance of James Porter who is entirely without reservation in his sometime very physical portrayal of a descent from madness, a descent from a glimmer of optimism and self-content, into a deeper madness riddled with angst and anger, fear and loathing.

The credits are pretty much limited to Creepersin, Mrs Creep and their associate AL Smith who appears briefly on screen as Mary’s companion. Creepersin self-released the film on DVD in May 2009 and it is now available on various VOD sites including Amazon and Daily Motion.

According to his Wikipedia page (which needs updating), Creepersin is a Californian musician who formed a sort of garage-goth-punk band - called Creepersin, naturally - in 2004, since when they have released a couple of albums and some other stuff. He has also recorded some solo stuff and, with Mrs Creep, one album as The Sci-Fi Originals. From what I can gather, most of his songs are related to or inspired by old horror movies. After a number of short films and music videos, Frankenstein was his first long-form movie (it’s not quite a feature).

I really don’t know whether Creepersin set out to make the brilliant film he has ended up with. I don’t even know whether he realises what he has created, but that doesn’t matter. It would be the final superb irony if what many people (to judge by IMDB/Amazon comments) consider to be a hideous monster of a film actually took on a life of its own, beyond what its creator envisaged.

Perhaps this was all intentional. Perhaps if I were to explore Creepersin’s filmography further I would find that Caged Lesbos A-Go-Go is a sensitive tale of a gay woman’s sexual awakening, that Awesome Girl Gang Street Fighter is a harrowing exposé of inner city teenage violence, that Alien Babes in Heat is... no, I’m really not sure what Alien Babes in Heat could be if it’s not a trashy exploitation picture about sex-mad space-women. Frankly, even if everything else that Creep Creepersin has ever made is utter shit, that doesn’t detract from the achievement that is Creep Creepersin’s Frankenstein; if anything, it makes this film all the more remarkable.

Maybe he peaked early in his cinematic endeavours, but in any case Creepersin continues to bang out films at a prodigious rate, several each year. Recent productions have included Zombie Dollz, Satanicus, a remake of White Zombie with Creepersin himself as Murder Legendre, and Frankenstein’s Bride. This last appears to have no connection with the film under review but does feature some actors who have been in real episodes of real TV series and even in some films I have heard of (not seen, but at least heard of). Creepersin seems to be building up quite the rep company around himself.

So: Creep Creepersin’s Frankenstein. I am fully aware that this film is not everybody’s cup of tea. But if you have an open mind, if you seek something different from standard video fare, different even from the oft-times formulaic crap which believes itself to be different, if you want to be both amazed and depressed for 55 minutes, if you want to get some idea of the tortures which can go on inside the mind of a lonely soul, if you want to see a Frankenstein film which is thematically closer to what Mary Shelley wrote than a dozen lurching monsters - then seek out a copy today.

Please note: this review is not a spoof. I really, genuinely do think that this is an awesome film. It is the discovery of hidden gems like this which makes wading through all the shit worthwhile.

MJS rating: A

Kreating Karloff

Directors: Vatche Arabian, Conor Timmis
Writer: Steve Vertlieb
Producer: Conor Timmis
Cast: Conor Timmis, Norman Bryn, the spirit of Boris Karloff
Country: USA
Year of release: 2006
Reviewed from: screener disc

Conor Timmis, the 25-year-old behind Kreating Karloff, and I have at least one thing in common. We both believe that William Henry Pratt was one of the finest actors to ever grace a cinema screen and that he remains under-appreciated, beloved by a few horror movie fans but, in the overall zeitgeist, just a name at the back of people’s minds, vaguely connected with Halloween.

I have said it before and I will say it again: there is no such thing as a bad Boris Karloff film.

What Timmis would like to see, and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request, is a decently budgeted Hollywood biopic of Karloff. There’s a biopic of Chaplin, there’s one of Ed Wood for goodness’ sake. Why not Boris? So in May 2006 Timmis assembled a cast and crew for three days to recreate a handful of scenes from Frankenstein and The Mummy, with himself as Karloff, in the hope that this might demonstrate the feasibility of - and potential interest in - such a project.

And if such a feature did get made, well, there’s no reason why Conor Timmis should not be cast in the lead. (Well, there is a reason, of course. No-one has heard of Conor Timmis but everyone has heard of Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck or whatever name actor they might cast in the lead. Still, you can’t blame the lad for trying and at the very least he has created a terrific showreel which demonstrates not only his acting ability but also his determination and his organisational skills as a producer.)

Timmis directed the recreated scenes himself while the documentary footage that surrounds them was directed by Vatche Arabian. This mixes to-camera interviews with behind-the-scenes shots and includes potted biographies of Karloff (which very sensibly emphasises the range of his non-horror work) and make-up man Jack Pierce. Film/music journalist Steve Vertlieb (onetime Associate Editor of The Monster Times!) wrote some of the material and is interviewed.

Kreating Karloff works on all three counts: in recreating the physical appearance and mannerisms of Karloff, through the acting of Timmis and the extraordinarily detailed make-up of Norman Bryn; in recreating the look of the two films, thanks to excellent black and white HD camerawork by DP Scott Sniffen; and in documenting the whole process, not just the how but also the why.

This could easily have become a vanity project, but it’s not. What comes through above all is the sincerity. It is clear that Conor Timmis is a very, very smart young man who has managed this whole project - from finance to promotion - not to boost his own ego or to foolishly compare himself to Karloff but because he genuinely and sincerely believes that the work of a fine artist should be better known and duly celebrated. Combining this care and passion with the sensitive and uncluttered documentary skills of Arabian (who has previously directed Timmis in the title role of Booth, a short film about Lincoln’s assassin) has resulted in a film which is a delight to watch and which reawakens one’s desire to go off and watch a real Boris Karloff film. Can there be a better recommendation than that?

Conor Timmis has a few film and TV credits under his belt, most notably as Rudolph Hess in a production for the History Channel. Sniffen’s work includes Star Wars adverts for Pepsi and an extraordinary sounding fantasy feature called The 1,000 Year Reich (I’m sure the alarming Nazi theme developing here is pure coincidence!). Bryn worked for several years on All My Children and also did character make-up for Saturday Night Live. The role of Zita Johann in the Mummy sequences is taken by Liesl Ehardt, who has been in episodes of Monk, Dawson’s Creek and Sex and the City but was cast here because she is actually a distant relative of Zita Johann herself.

Ehardt does a good take on Johann but ultimately this stands or falls on two things: Bryn’s make-up (which is superb) and Timmis’ own performance. Or rather, performances: as Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster and as Boris Karloff as Ardath Bey. And he does a sterling job, truth be told. He treads a very fine line; it would be easy to go overboard on Karloff’s lisp or the way he rolled his Rs but Timmis keeps the vocal mannerisms subtle and therefore believable. While he’s no ringer for Karloff out of make-up, he has enough similarities - tall, thin with a narrow face and high forehead - to form a good base for Bryn’s prosthetics. Let’s face it, if Hollywood can make Martin Landau look like Bela Lugosi and Will Smith look like Mohammed Ali, anything is possible.

Timmis has obviously spent a great deal of time studying Karloff, both in general and in these specific scenes, and his portrayal - I deliberately avoid the term ‘impression’ or ‘impersonation’ - is remarkably accurate. And Sniffen’s photography is terrific too. If there is a downside it’s that the HD camerawork is too clean. We are used to seeing these films jumpy and crackly and this pristine version seems to jar with our memories in that way. But that’s pedantry and it won’t stop me from wholeheartedly recommending Kreating Karloff, which I expect to be a staple of film festivals for the next couple of years.

It would be nice to see this released on DVD, with maybe a selection of Karloff trailers and one or two pertinent interviews. But it would be even nicer to see it, one day, as an extra itself on the two-disc special edition of Karloff: The Movie.

MJS rating: A

review originally posted 31st August 2006

How to Make a Monster

Director: Herbert L Strock
Writers: Herman Cohen, Kenneth Langtry
Producer: Herman Cohen
Cast: Robert H Harris, Gary Conway, Gary Clarke
Year of release: 1958
Country: USA
Reviewed from: UK (Region 0) DVD (Direct Video Distribution)

This is one of my favourite 1950s B-movies for several reasons. It’s a bizarre semi-sequel to two bona fide classics - I was a Teenage Werewolf and I was a Teenage Frankenstein - and it features props from several other AIP productions. But mostly it’s just a stark raving wacky storyline played deliciously straight.

Teenage Werewolf was probably the single most influential horror movie of the 1950s - even more so than the almost contemporaneous Curse of Frankenstein. It opened up the previously untapped teenage market, coinciding with a boom in car ownership among young people that made drive-ins a major distribution sector, and with the release of the old Universal monster movies to TV for the first time. The launch of Famous Monsters of Filmland didn’t hurt things either!

Werewolf was followed by Teenage Frankenstein, then Blood of Dracula - which was I was a Teenage Vampire in all but name. Herman Cohen couldn’t get enough of the title: even Konga was originally pitched as I was a Teenage Gorilla!

How to... isn’t a direct sequel to Werewolf or Frankenstein, it’s a movie about the making of a sequel to Werewolf and Frankenstein! It’s set on the lot of American International Pictures (producer/writer Cohen makes a cameo appearance in a screening room scene and there are AIP posters on various walls) where Teenage Werewolf Meets Teenage Frankenstein is in production. The make-up is by Philip Scheer who had worked on both the original films as well as Attack of the Puppet People and Invisible Invaders. But the actors underneath it are different: the Teenage Frankenstein is played by ‘Tony Mantell’ who is played by Gary Conway (Land of the Giants) while the Teenage Werewolf is played by ‘Larry Drake’ who is played by Gary Clarke (Missile to the Moon) making his feature debut. I hope you’re following this because there will be a test later.

Robert H Harris (The Invisible Boy) stars as make-up artist Pete Dumond. Short, balding and starey-eyed, he’s a sort of TK Maxx Donald Pleasance and consequently makes a great villain by looking oddball but harmless. Paul Brinegar (Wishbone in Rawhide, later seen in the godawful 1980s SF comedy Spaceship) is his oddball assistant Riviero.

Dumond may be loosely based on Jack Pierce, a master craftsman of make-up unappreciated by the new owners of the studio. They have decreed that monster movies are a passing fad and that once TWMTF wraps they will concentrate on rock’n’roll movies, so Dumond and Riviero can pack their bags. But Dumond has discovered a formula which, when added to make-up, makes the wearer totally subservient to suggestion. He mixes this in with the make-up for the two teen stars and sends them out to kill the movie execs. He also - and this makes no sense at all - slaps the make-up hurriedly on himself at one point to commit murder.

Just over an hour into the 73-minute feature the lovely, crisp print quality - showcasing the excellent work of cinematographer Maury Gertzman (She-Wolf of London, The Brute Man, The Creature Walks Among Us) - shifts down a noticeable grade. This is because the final reel is shot on Technicolor stock and bursts into glorious colour a minute or so in. Dumond has creepily lured the two teenagers back to his home where the wall are adorned with his ‘children’ - horror masks. Most of them are generic, possibly early home-produced efforts by Paul Blaisdell. But prominent among them are an alien from Invasion of the Saucer-Men, Beulah from It Conquered the World and the She-Creature. Fantastic!

The great Morris Ankrum (Earth Vs the Flying Saucers, The Giant Claw etc) and Walter Reed (Missile Monsters) are policemen, while John Ashley (who made another Frankenfilm in 1958 - the completely loopy Frankenstein’s Daughter - and later became a staple of Philippines-shot exploitation fare) plays himself in a rehearsal for a rock’n’roll flick. The lovely gals dancing around him are choreographed by Lee Scott who had the same unlikely credit on Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla!

Co-writer Langtry is actually Aben Kandel whose horror CV goes back to uncredited work on 1935’s Werewolf of London. He wrote this and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein as Langtry, and I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Blood of Dracula as Ralph Thornton. Credits under his own name include Berserk, Craze, Konga and Trog. Cinematographer Maury Gertsman also photograaphed the final two Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes pictures, Terror by Night and Dressed to Kill.

Extras include a 50-minute audio interview with Samuel Z Arkoff recorded at the NFT, plus nice poster-reproduction postcards and tatty trailers for nine AIP films: Voodoo Woman, Blood of Dracula, Day the World Ended, The Brain Eaters, War of the Clossal Beast, The She-Creature, The Undead, Earth Vs The Spider and this one. This is a great presentation of a glorious film. DVD Ltd slipped up slightly by calling the main character ‘Paul Drummond’ on the sleeve, but I won’t penalise them a grade for that.

MJS rating: A-
review originally posted 8th May 2005

Frankenstein vs the Creature from Blood Cove

Director: William Winckler
Writer: William Winckler
Producer: William Winckler
Cast: Larry Butler, Bill Winckler, Dezzi Rae Ascalon
Country: USA
Year of release: 2005
Reviewed from: screener DVD

Or, to give the film its full on-screen title, William Winckler's Frankenstein vs the Creature from Blood Cove. I know some people are a little ambivalent about proprietorial credits in film titles (like Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound or John Carpenter's Career Continues to Decline) but I suppose that if a chap writes, directs, produces and stars then he has earned the right to stick his name in the title, even if it is already an unwieldy length to begin with.

So: Blood Cove. Let's not beat about the bush - this is a sort of coded way of saying 'Black Lagoon' which is of course a phrase that is copyrighted to Universal Studios. But the crux of this film is a fight (actually two fights) between Frankenstein's monster (Lawrence Furbish) and an aquatic, reptilian humanoid referred to as 'the Creature' (Corey J Marshall). We all know what is really happening here, but in order to avoid a visit from copyright gorillas in the middle of the night everyone has to pretend that it's something else. It's not.

You know that late-night drunken conversation you once had about how the Gill-Man, despite being an iconic monster, didn't appear until the main monster cycle had finished so he never got to share the screen with the other classic horror icons (apart from in The Monster Squad, obviously)? Well, despair no more because here is his cousin, going monstro a monstro with Dr F's lumbering creation, filmed in glorious black and white-o-vision.

However, this isn't some 'living fossil' from the Amazon. This Creature has been 'genetically created' by loopy scientist Dr Monroe Lazaroff (Larry Butler: Animal Instincts III, Legend of the Phantom Rider) in the laboratory beneath his house up above the inexplicably empty beach that is Blood Cove. Here he lives and works with the assistance of Dr Ula Foranti (Alison Lees-Taylor) and tall, scarred, pony-tailed assistant Salisbury (make-up guy Rich Knight who designed all the monsters in the film). The movie starts with the Creature escaping out to sea but Lazaroff thinks it will probably die soon so that's alright then.

Having lost his creation, there is only one alternative - which is of course to travel to Shellvania (located, according to an on-screen map, just beyond Transylvania) and there dig up the Frankenstein monster who turns out not to be in the ruins of a castle as everyone expected but in an unmarked grave, guarded by a mad old gypsy woman. While digging, Lazaroff and his two colleagues are attacked by a werewolf for no narrative reason that I could see (played, like the Creature, by Corey J Marshall).

Back in California we meet photographer Bill Grant (Winckler himself) who works for a low-rent glamour mag, assisted by hair stylist Dezzirae Lee (Dezzi Rae Ascalon) and fat, camp make-up man Percy Featherstone (Gary Canavello). They head out to Blood Cove to shoot some pictures of bikini model Gabrielle (Tera Cooley) which they do at great length. There is no full-frontal nudity in this film but this is one of three quite lengthy T&A scenes which frankly drag on a bit. If I want to watch sexy young ladies climbing out of microscopic bikinis there are whole films consisting of nothing but that sort of thing - heck, there are whole cable channels. The T&A sequences just interrupt the monster fun; apparently they may be cut down for a more TV-friendly version and that would be an improvement in my opinion.

Anyway, Bill, Dezzirae, Percy and Gabrielle are interrupted by the appearance of the Creature and high-tail it out of there. But editor/publisher Harry Granville (George Lindsey Jr) isn't happy about the abbreviated photo-set, even though it includes a shot of the beastie in question, and he argues with Bill - in a rather clever and fun bit of dialogue - about whether it's just a guy in a rubber suit. Bill, Dezzirae and Percy are sent back to Blood Cove with another model named Beula (Carla Harvey) who takes the same inordinate amount of time to divest herself of her itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny. You would think that a professional model who does that sort of thing all day would be able to undo whatever knot or catch is holding the thing up... (Actually, I must note some sympathy for this actress as these scenes seem to have been shot on a very windy day and the poor love must have been freezing her tits off. Suffering for your art, it's called.)

When the Creature attacks again, Beula is killed and the others escape up to a house which they haven't previously noticed but which is presumably closer than their cars. Of course, this turns out to be Dr Lazaroff's pad. Dr Foranti initially tells them to bugger off but lets them in when the Creature turns up. Annoyed at this intrusion, Dr L has to keep the three prisoner until his diabolical plans are hatched.

And what might those diabolical plans be? As far as I can understand, Lazaroff thinks he can defeat global terrorism with one suitably indestructible monster, whether a genetically created fishman or a bunch of sewn-together charnel house remains which has been buried under East European soil for a century or two. Using 'mental programming' (no more details are given, so let's just leave it at that), the Frankenstein Monster will be dispatched to the homes of terrorists and will despatch those terrorists when it arrives. Quite how the Monster will actually find these evil masterminds if they're surrounded by thousands of armed guards or hiding in a cave in the middle of nowhere (or both) isn't a subject that is touched upon, but I suppose such logical leaps are the mark of a truly mad scientist. And at least the Monster has an advantage in desert conditions over the Creature which would probably just dry out and shrivel up.

It must be said that, for this reviewer, bringing terrorism into a comedy fantasy story like this, however peripherally, is a little uncomfortable. This is no reflection on current events; I'm writing this review only a week or so after the 2005 London suicide bombings but good heavens, I'm a 37-year-old Englishman and have therefore lived under the threat of Irish and/or Islamic terrorism my entire life. It's just that Dr Lazaroff's ultra right-wing, ultra-naive view that there are certain people who are 'terrorists' and if you kill 'em all the problem goes away seems uncomfortably close to the overly simplistic views genuinely held by some of the loonier fringes of American society (some of whom, unfortunately, run that country).

I have no idea where Bill Winckler's own views lie in all this and I certainly wouldn't ascribe a fictional character's politics to that character's creator (especially when the character is a mad scientist who digs up patchwork bodies and transports them halfway across the globe). But to an international audience, hearing an apparently educated American character pontificating on a simple solution to terrorism - especially when so much terrorism over the years has been funded by either the US government or private US citizens - just rankles. I'm sure the whole thing is meant to be satirical but it's not played broad enough for comedy and it just seems to play into the hands of xenophobic idiot rednecks (although Lazaroff himself is certainly not portrayed that way) and that doesn't strike me as a good thing. This is all a personal reaction and I'm not for a moment suggesting that one should not make jokes about terrorism, but the net result in cinematic terms is that this idea jolted me out of the story, interrupting the monster fun even more than the bikinis did.

Lazaroff could have had some other reason to want the Creature and/or the Monster which would have been equally valid. But an anti-terrorism project it is, so on we go. Some official looking guys in dark suits (credited as 'Soldiers') do turn up at one point to collect the Monster - one of whom gives the most incredibly wooden performance I have seen for many a long year - but after that the subplot is dropped in favour of more monstroid action. One of the soldiers speaks into a radio in a foreign language but the meaning behind that escaped me, unless they are meant to be rotten old terrorists themselves, duping poor Doctor Lazaroff into working for the bad guys.

But enough of all this and back to the monster stuff, which is what we have come here to see. As previously noted, the Frankenstein Monster does square off against the Creature on two occasions. There is also a subplot about the Monster stalking Dezzirae who reminds him of his Bride (played in brief flashbacks by goth chick Lisa Hammer, "the darling of New York's nouveaux noir underground film scene"). The ghost of Dr Frankenstein himself also makes an appearance, played once again by a heavily made-up Corey J Marshall who must just be a sucker for punishment.

Marshall does get to appear sans make-up in the background of a sequence in a bar which is apparently situated just along from Dr Lazaroff's house although nobody has mentioned it previously. Porn legend Ron Jeremy and Troma supremo Lloyd Kaufman are also among the bar patrons (though each was clearly shot separately). Three other names also making 'special appearances' are Raven De La Croix (Up!, Screwballs, The Phantom Empire) as the Shellvanian gypsy woman, author David Gerrold as a writer in the magazine offices (who says he is off to the Mojave in search of giant ants!) and 'Patrick Lilly' who plays the human form of the werewolf seen briefly in the Shellvanian sequence. This isn't the first time that this actor (who usually goes by a slightly different name) has played a werewolf - he did so on TV for a couple of years in the 1960s...

Porn actress Selena Silver doesn’t get a ‘special appearance’ credit but she does perform a pole dance, holding up the action once again. To be honest, if I wanted to see her naked I would rent one of her other pictures such as Anal Perversions 3, Stick It Where the Sun Don't Shine, Cum Fart Cocktails (no, honestly!) or that sensitive study of rebellious youth Gang Bang Darlings 2: Cocks Aplenty.

I'll leave the plot summary at that, but I don't think it's a spoiler to imply that this film finishes with the good guys still alive and a lot of other people dead at the hands of one monster or another.

Winckler's first movie, The Double-D Avenger, was a superhero spoof which paid homage to the works of Russ Meyer (several of the cast here were in that picture, and Ms Ascalon was assistant director). For his second feature he has crafted a deeply affectionate tribute to the monster movies of the '40s and '50s and you know what, he pretty much succeeds. This is no Young Frankenstein but it's done with respect, enthusiasm and talent and the result is terrific fun. Winckler directs with a professional touch and he's no slouch as an actor either (some other cast members are... less good) but this doesn't come across as a vanity project, even with his name in the title. He has brought together a talented crew, not least DP Matthias Schubert whose lighting and monochrome photography are simply superb. I have pointed out in the past that one does not leave a movie whistling the cinematography but, you know, in this case I think you do - it’s that good. Also contributing to the authentic vintage feel of the movie is the music by Mel Lewis (Demon Slayer, Legion of the Dead, Bloodfist 2050; he also appears briefly as one of the soldiers), much of which is based around Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. As this is famously the only music in the 1931 Dracula, its use here may be a way of making up for the lack of vampires in this otherwise packed monsterfest.

And then of course there is Rich Knight's make-up on the long-suffering Corey J Marshall, on himself and on the various victims and other characters. Knight has had a field day designing and creating a whole house of monsters, probably on a budget which wouldn't pay for the eye-liner on a Hollywood blockbuster. The werewolf is a nicely-designed head let down slightly by a body which is just a hairy suit with no acknowledgement of quasi-lupine anatomy. The Frankenstein Monster is a scarred, stitched, decomposing monstrosity with the long, dank hair which was pretty much the only specific part of him ever described by Mary Shelley. (Shelley's novel, incidentally, gets an 'inspired by' credit which is rather generous but a nice touch.)

The double-exposure ghost and the flashback bride are both also terrific but of course the star is the Creature. This is a fabulous full-body suit - the head is separate with a flap around the neck - and it is a thing of wonder for monster fans, putting Rich Knight onto a list of talented, hard-working make-up guys like Paul Blaisdell and Jack Kevan who could create a whole new species without forgetting that there has to be an actor inside. Squeezed inside the costume, Marshall runs, fights, even swims - yes, there is underwater photography which is worth another round of applause for Schubert I think. Knight's skill at crafting full-body suits comes as no surprise when one considers that he previously constructed monsters for Power Rangers.

Among a hard-working cast, the stand-out is Alison Lees-Taylor as Dr Foranti who invests genuine intrigue into a character which could have fallen either way: as a sidekick providing nothing but a voice to ask questions or, as here, a complex character whose motivation and morality remain equally difficult to fathom. There is another woman in Dr Lazaroff's house, a busty maid named Mimi (Mimma Mariucci) who appears from nowhere, without explanation, being snogged by the dirty doc - but sorry, Dr Foranti's the girl for me. It is also worth pointing out that, despite spending the entire film in a lab coat, Lees-Taylor comes across as considerably sexier than any of the young ladies climbing in and out of G-strings (she also scores points for not having appeared in any film with a title like Cum Fart Cocktails).

William Winckler's Frankenstein vs the Creature from Blood Cove is a lot of fun for monster fans. It doesn't mock, it doesn't spoof, but nor does it take itself seriously. The dialogue and acting just balance on that knife edge of affectionate homage to something dated but glorious. Winckler and his team can be proud of having created a film which will be enjoyed by a lot of people and - I have no doubt this is partly the intention - will make those viewers want to ferret through their DVD collections for some of the original monster films that inspired this one.

MJS rating: B+ (or A- if the T&A scenes are cut down a bit)
review originally posted 15th July 2005

Frankenstein: The College Years

Director: Tom Shadyac
Writer: Bryant Christ, John Trevor Wolff
Producer: Robert Engelman
Cast: William Ragsdale, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Vincent Hammond
Year of release: 1991
Country: USA
Reviewed from: UK rental VHS (Fox)

Two hip but geeky students stumble across the body of a hulking, inarticulate scientific anomaly and somehow restore it to life. Trying to pass of their new ‘friend’ as a ‘surfer dude’ student at their college, they are amazed to find that his naivete makes him endearing and he becomes a star on campus. Can they maintain the illusion and if not, what will happen when people find out the truth?

Wait a minute, wasn’t that the plot of the moderately entertaining 1992 Brendan Fraser movie Encino Man/California Man? This TV movie is reminiscent of California Man (this is a UK site, so I use the UK title) and its entertainment value is even more moderate, especially without Fraser’s hunky bod.

When zany Professor Lippzigger (Robert V Barron, who was Abraham Lincoln in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and also did voices for Power Rangers) dies, his mysterious research work becomes the responsibility of his favourite pupil Mark Chrisman (William Ragsdale: Fright Night I and II, in a pair of really bad fake spectacles). With his room-mate Jay Butterman (Christopher Daniel Barnes, who voiced the title character in the mid-1990s Spider-Man cartoon), Chrisman explores the creepy old gothic house where Lippzigger worked and discovers an ancient book, written in German, monogrammed ‘VvF’. Further investigation reveals a secret lab containing the body of Frankenstein’s monster (six-foot-eight Vincent Hammond: Freaked, Species II, The Relic and various tall aliens in Stargate SG-1and Enterprise) which the two students revive using Kenneth Strickfadden-style equipment.

Meanwhile scheming, slimy Professor Arnold Loman (Larry Miller: Dean Richmond in the Nutty Professor movies, also in the Carnival of Souls remake and the voice of XR in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command) wants to find out what Lippzigger was working on so that he can claim it for himself and become the new Department Head. He is assisted by his unfunny comedy lab assistant Blaine (Patrick Richwood: Casper Meets Wendy, the truly odd Galgameth, and a bit part in the infamous Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie) whom he sets to spy on Chrisman.

When Frank goes walkabout in the Halls of Residence, no-one notices him except Token Black Guy Kingston ‘Kings’ Sebuka (De’voreaux White) who must be meant to be West African or something as he has a truly extraordinary French accent. With some ‘cool’ clothes and some foundation to hide his green skin, Frank passes for an exchange student (they register him on the college computer as ‘Frank N Stein’ - be still my aching sides).

Meanwhile Jay has fallen for glamour-puss Andi Richmond (Andrea Elson, who was the daughter in ALF) but his attempts to date her are constantly interrupted by problems with Frank. Things become even more complicated when Andi’s room-mate Gretchen (Margaret Langrick: Earth Star Voyager and the original movie of Harry and the Hendersons) falls for the tall, new student. And on top of all this, Frank is taken on as star kicker with the college football team. It all ends predictably enough with Professor Loman kidnapping Frank and making a presentation to the press which is effectively sabotaged by Mark, Jay and chums.

Frankenstein: The College Years is notable chiefly as the directorial debut of Tom Shadyac, who went on to helm Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, Patch Adams and Bruce Almighty. The humour here is basic and forced and while it’s not really bad there’s certainly no hint of a real comedy spark - so it’s exactly like all his later films.

This was the only ever produced script by Christ and/or Wolff but producer Engelman, who in a previous life was Second AD on films like Peewee’s Big Adventure and Footloose, had recently completed Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and would go on to oversee Blade, The Mask, Scooby-Doo, Mystery Men and Revenge of the Nerds III. Special effects are credited to Tom Bellisimo (Tales from the Crypt) and Charlie Belardinelli (A Nightmare on Elm Street) who together worked on Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, The House on Haunted Hill, What Lies Beneath etc. Marc Hershon (Monster Makers) did some rewrites on the script.

There’s not a hint of originality in Frankenstein: The College Years and very few laughs; given the proximity of the dates, it was presumably made as a quick cash-in on California Man. The funniest thing is actually a clip from WC Fields’ The Dentist; there is also a clip from something which may be Reptilicus but I’m not sure, and references (but not clever ones) to Star Trek, ET and Mission Impossible. The two charisma-free central characters are certainly no Bill and Ted or Wayne and Garth, and Hammond’s duties as Frank extend to little more than an impression of Peter Boyle in the immeasurably superior Young Frankenstein.

In fact, there are plenty of Frankenstein comedies better than this one. For a film about two geeks coping with their Frankenstein-ian creation, watch Weird Science; for a film about the real Frankenstein Monster being reanimated and teaching someone the meaning of responsibility, see Frankenstein and Me; for a laugh-out-loud, brain-in-neutral Frankenstein comedy see Rock’n’Roll Frankenstein.

MJS rating: C
review originally posted before November 2004

Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare

Director: John R Hand
Writer: John R Hand
Producer: John R Hand
Cast: John R Hand, Amy Olivastro, Chester Delacruz
Country: USA
Year of release: 2006
Reviewed from: screener DVD

Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare - and no, there’s no apostrophe but that may be deliberate - is either completely brilliant or absolute shite. The fact that I can’t actually tell which it is leads me to suspect that it’s a work of genius, since shite tends to be fairly clearcut and easily identifiable. But still, there’s a nagging part of me that says this is a load of pretentious art student twaddle. And another part that says that’s just because I didn’t understand it.

Which I didn’t.

This may well be the least comprehensible film I have ever reviewed on this site. I understood what was going on less than I did when I watched Ansatsu - and that was in Japanese. I can’t even begin to approximately describe the plot or scenario or characters or anything. I’m no more able to synopsise this film now than I was before I started watching it.

There are three barriers to following what is going on in Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare. One is visual: the whole thing has been deliberately shot in very low light. Many of the shots are complete darkness with only one or two things or areas illuminated (usually through a coloured gel). Sometimes the lighting set-up is such that we can only see part of what we’re looking at so we can’t actually tell who/what it is. Occasionally this is combined with extreme close-ups to create almost abstract images. And some shots are heavily polarised for some reason, possibly because they are somebody or something’s point of view.

Adding to this is the extreme graininess of the image. This was evidently shot in 8mm. The titles claim the movie uses the ‘Cinechrome 70 Bio-Color Process’ and a quick Google for ‘cinechrome’ reveals it to be a brand of Kodak 8mm film. However, although there is Cinechrome 25 and Cinechrome 40, there does not appear to be such a thing as Cinechrome 70. Go figure. Cinechrome 40 is “a fine-grained daylight color reversal movie film which captures your subjects in the most life-like color with the sharpest detail” - which this stock certainly doesn’t. This is massively grainy, to the extent that it left me wondering whether it was even shot on 8mm at all. Perhaps there is some gauge of film called 6mm or 4mm which had up to now escaped my notice...

There’s also a fair amount of scratches and marks on the film which makes it look like the negative was left in the pocket of somebody’s jeans when they were put in the wash. Despite the 2006 copyright date, much of the film looks like it could have been shot 30 years ago.

So those are the visual problems. Then there’s the audio, which seems to be entirely post-synched. Writer/director/producer/editor John R Hand also gives himself a credit for ‘sound design’ and, to be fair, it does sound like somebody has designed it. As much thought has gone into the sound as the picture, except that there’s very little dialogue and what there is is often indistinct. Unaided by footage of grainy, not-quite-synched lips (when they’re illuminated at all), I sometimes found myself struggling to make out what actors were saying. I don’t know if it was a technical problem with the recording or just poor diction. Not that there is very much dialogue anyway, and what I could make out didn’t really elucidate me as to who these characters were, what they were doing or why.

And that’s problem three: the whole style and structure of the film is such that, even if one could see and hear what was going on, it still wouldn’t make any sense. Everything is obtuse and vague and there’s just nothing to try and get a handle on.

One of the few things that I could determine is that the central character, a floppy-haired young man played by Hand himself, is called Victor and is some sort of ‘physician’. According to the end credits his full name is Victor Karlstein (presumably a Hammer homage), making this one of the few Frankenstein films to not feature anyone called Frankenstein. Victor has a girlfriend called Victoria (Victoria Vermillion in the end credits) - played by Amy Olivastro - who lies in a hospital bed for most of the film with big black panda circles round her eyes. He also has a middle-aged boss named Andrew Milligan (Chester Delacruz: Cremains); could the name be an homage to the legendary New York schlock merchant?

Is there a monster? Sort of. Karl Borst is credited as ‘the monster’ on the website, although he is ‘the beast’ in the end credits, but we never get a decent look at him. There are occasional close-up shots of some sort of putrid, bubbly head which seems to have circuit boards inside it so I’m guessing that’s the monster/beast. Victor also seems to be growing a brain in a tank, for some reason.

Things pick up a little on the comprehension front in the second half when Victor receives a phone call from Victoria’s sister Tara (which both characters pronounce as ‘Terra’). He visits her hotel room but she’s asleep so he leaves her a note. She then visits his apartment where he drugs her, laughs maniacally for several minutes, then does something in the dark very quietly before driving her out into the countryside, where she smashes him in the face with a coke bottle. He chases her, they tussle, then Victor is somehow shot through the chest by someone unseen without him or us noticing.

The odd thing is that, despite this complete incomprehensibility, it’s clear that a lot of work has gone into this. Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare isn’t just somebody with a camcorder filming their mates larking about. Every shot has been carefully composed, every sound has meaning - we just don’t know what. Since this hasn’t been just thrown together, it must all be deliberate. Question is: does John R Hand think that we can unravel the puzzle he has set us, or is he deliberately avoiding narrative cohesion for artistic reasons?

Okay, having written all this, let’s take a look at the website and read what it says ‘about the film’: “Brilliant young Victor Karlstein finds himself lost in an abyss of personal turmoil and professional stress after the woman he most likely seemed to love dies while under the care of his own mysterious medical facility. Determined to keep her alive, Victor uses his mechanically-enhanced reanimated corpse to murder young women in order to furnish ‘raw parts’ for her new body, among other devious things.”

Now here’s the funny part. This is sort of what I assumed might be going on, merely because it’s what you would expect in a film called Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare. But there is absolutely no way to tell, through the underlit, grainy image and the sparse, indistinct dialogue, that this is what is happening. There are one or two murders but we never see who commits them and we never see any surgery - at least, nothing that we can recognise as surgery. In fact, the murders are the weak points, standing out like inserts from another, gorier, less artistic film.

Oh, and I haven’t mentioned the soundtrack yet, have I? Apart from some protracted periods of silence, we have a nonstop barrage of what might kindly be called ‘atonal electronica’, sounding like Roxy Music-era Brian Eno tuning up his Moog. The music is credited to ‘The Greys’.

Remarkably, Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare actually played theatrically in New York for a week (rather incongruously situated inbetween some ‘improv comedy’ and the animated kidflick Barnyard, according to a photo of the marquee on the film’s website). It has also played a couple of festivals. I can only imagine how this comes across on the big screen, in Dolby 5.1 sound. It must be like staring at a TV screen from two centimetres away while someone tries to find the police waveband on a shortwave radio next to your ear.

I always say that I judge films on how well they achieve what they set out to do with what they have available, but that’s very difficult to do when there’s no clue as to what the film is trying to achieve. As to what Hand had available, well that would seem to be an amateur (or at least, neophyte) cast and crew and a reported budget of two thousand bucks. To get any sort of feature-length anything (the film runs about 78 minutes) for that much is an impressive feat.

Baffled: I’m absolutely baffled by Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare. It could be in Swahili and shown upside-down and I wouldn’t be any more baffled than I am. I’ve seen most of the Frankenstein films that are going at one time or another - I even edited a short-lived fanzine on the subject, back in my student days - but I have never seen anything like Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare.

I’m not going to give this an MJS rating because, well, because I’m stumped.

Review originally posted 9th November 2006