LADY FRANKENSTEIN [1971]

Review Number: #003

Movie Title: LADY FRANKENSTEIN  

Original Italian Title: LA FIGIA DI FRANKENSTEIN (English translation: The Daughter of Frankenstein)

Year: 1971

Colour

Cast: Joseph Cotton, Rosalbia Neri (under the name of Sara Bay), and Paul Muller.

Director: Mel Welles 

Run Time: 85 minutes

You know what pisses me off dear reader with most of the bad films I just happen to encounter? Oh, no, no, no it’s not with the Acting, Scripting, Direction or shoddy sound and camera work, no it’s a films wasted potential. What do I mean by a films wasted potential? Well imagine a unique low budget big-screen adaptation spin on the FRANKENSTEIN story by Mary Shelly with a twist, but that is thrown down the toilet when the film becomes a near sexploitation film. So hence a film with wasted potential, oh wait that description of a film with wasted potential IS a description of the 1971 film Lady Frankenstein , all I can say about this film is it’s a soft core piece of S#%t.

Ok Lady Frankenstein or its original Italian title La Figia Di Frankenstein (English translation: The Daughter of Frankenstein) isn’t all that bad but is severely dragged down by pointless soft-core sex scenes. The things that make this film interesting is the brilliant performance by the then aging Joseph Cotton as Baron Frankenstein (who had stared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of A Doubt [1943], starring with Orson Welles in The Third Man [1949], and in Welles critical masterpiece Citizen Kane [1941])   and this films unique spin on the Tale of Frankenstein. But sadly this film as a fair few flats which is why this film is the 3^rd and final Blog-review of a Mad Doctor and Mad Monster themed movie in The Movie Ghoul’s Cult Cinema Reviews for a little while. Also to make this review special this is the first Movie Ghoul review of an exploitation film, a movie made outside of the U.S.A and the first movie shot in colour to feature in this Blog, so read on dear reader of the Tear down of Lady Frankenstein.

Movie's Poster

The Plot (or has one but gets ruined by various things): To be honest I’m quite surprised by how good this film story is. The film starts off with an aging Baron Frankenstein (Joseph Cotton) and his assistant Dr Charles Marshal (Paul Muller) buying a corpse form grave robber Lynch and his men. It turns out the Baron has been working many years making his monster and in a few scenes later Lady Frankenstein or Tanya Frankenstein (Rosalbia Neri) , the daughter of the Baron returns for medical school and makes clear of her intentions to aid her father in his work. But her father is reluctant to allow this, in a fair few scenes later a hanging of a criminal introduces the character of Captain Harris who has a strong hate for Lynch and vice versa for Lynch, this rivalry/ enemy relationship makes this rather minor sub-plot seem quite interesting.   

Jospeh Cotton as The Baron Frankenstein

But anyway on one stormy night (of course) Baron Frankenstein and Dr Charles Marshal create the infamous monster, but with a fair few flats and setbacks the monster turns out to be nothing more than a mindless killer and kills the Baron (now that’s bloody good twist)  while Charles informs Tanya about their success. The two are horrified to discover that the monster has killed the baron and has escaped; Tanya then reviles to Charles that to save her father name she will make a new monster that will kill her father’s monster. While in the meantime Charles and Tanya try to throw off Captain Harris form discovering that the monster killed her father by trying to trick the Captain that a burglar killed the Baron. While the monster roams the country side, kills a woman who was having intercourse with her partner until they were rudely interrupted by the monster (wow that’s one way to kill some ones buzz, LOL), the monster kills other people which includes the entertaining and sleazy Lynch much to the Captains disgust, who really wanted to see him hang.

Well that's the thing that can only "Satisfy Her Strange Desires" :-X

Anyway back at the Castle Tanya discovers Charles love for her so in an evil way Tanya decides to kill a handsome stable hand and place the brain of Charles in the body. (Um that could be seen as necrophilia in some way I think) so Tanya seduces the stable hand, has sex with him and Charles kills the stable hand during the act, (Autoerotic Asphyxiation ends badly? Ha why doesn’t that surprise me dear reader? ) and so Tanya operates on Charles and to cut a long story short the operation is a success  and the monster is on the way back to the castle to kill Charles.  Now Harris is well aware of what has been going on at the castle after helping the stable hands sister to find her brother.  The movie ends with a monster duel between Charles and the monster which results in Charles winning and victory sex with Tanya which ends with being killed by Charles by being straggled, the movie fades to black and /......nothing else happens. That’s right the movie ends at the end of a soft-core sex scene..... That’s one F$%ken stupid way to end a film of any sort.

The Acting, Direction and Cinema- Photography:  the acting in this film is actually bloody good. Joseph Cotton delivers a brilliant performance in only the 30-40 minutes of screen time he is given, while the other actors and actress are all decent.

The direction is ho-hum to say the least after all its directed by Mel Welles, who the diehard cult cinema hounds would remember as Mr Mushnick, the flower shop in Roger Corman’s The Little Shop of Horrors [1960]. His direction was not that interesting and all I can say is “This Movie is No-good-nick”. The cinema-photography is ok and not that notable so I just skip to this films weirdest moment or moments.

The Weirdest/Dumbest/Strangest or Just Plain Disturbing Moments   

Here are the moments in Lady Frankenstein I found just out of the ordinary.

The Monster: The look of the monster is well just plain silly just look at this picture of the thing below.....I rest my case on this one.

Snowing at Night then suddenly in the day ah where is the snow: Ok in the opening during the night snow falls but in the morning the snow seems to melt like a vampire at day break.

The Score:  The movies score in parts, especially the intense scenes of operations is just bizarre, the score sounds like a train is going past with its horn blowing a full blast.

The Pointless Sex Scene and Nudity: In really bad films sex scenes are thrown in to make the film seem good, but in this film it has a good script and acting, the sex scene seems to have little relevance. In fact this Frankenstein film easily falls into the Sexploitation genre with its over-the-top nudity.

The sudden fade to black at the end: I’ve already mentioned this earlier in this review about this moment, still it stinks to high heaven.

Overall Lady Frankenstein is that much of a bad film, its brilliant story and brilliant performances of Joseph Cotton are its saving graces but are ruined by a cheesy monster and useless sex scenes which kills this films atmosphere from which it never recovers from after Cotton leaves the screen. My rating for this film is out of a possible 0 to 5, and the rating is a simple 3 for its unique spin on the story of Frankenstein.