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The Tormented/Lady Frankenstein

The Tormented/Lady Frankenstein

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Frankenpimp
Review: No. No, no, no, no, no, no, NO! Stay away from this god-awful mess that's an insult to the original story of Frankenstein. This is pure 70s schlock that looks like it was in Roger Corman's Vault O' Crap. The story involves a woman who creates her own man made of dead bodies to be her sex slave. I mean, I don't really know what else to say. It's a bad movie. If you REALLY like this stuff, be my guest. I like bad movies too, if they have a certain enrtertaining quality to them, but this does not.

The acting is atrocious, the picture quality is terrible, the monster's makeup is laughable, the story is...I mean, come on! This is one of the absolute worst things to enter the horror genre (if it can even be considered horror). Steer clear.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Schlock-fest
Review: Oh man is this dumb. Where to begin. Frankenstein's daughter returns home after completing medical school. She is very interested in his work, but he wants her to have nothing to do with it. Dr. Frankenstein and his assistant create the monster during a thunderstorm. Not thirty seconds after the creature comes to life, it kills the doctor.

Now the daughter (Lady Frankenstein) wants to build a creature of her own to destroy the creature that killed her father and a couple in the woods. She wants the assistant's brain and put it in the body of the good looking(?) retarded garden guy.

Well she seduces the retard, kills the assistant for his brain and makes her monster. The two fight at the end and everyone dies, including the Lady. Bought it on sale, what can I say?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Only the Monster she made could satisfy her strange desires!
Review: The title character in "Lady Frankenstein" ("La Figlia di Frankenstein") turns out to be the daughter of the mad scientist and not his wife. Baron Frankenstein (Joseph Cotton) has been trying unsuccessfully for two decades to bring dead tissue to life. Using the corpse of a recently hung man as his test subject (note the interesting place they pick to hang the guy), the Baron finally succeeds. But there is something wrong with the brain and the monster kills the Baron and goes off to wreck more havoc on the countryside. Now that she is in control of the laboratory, having watched her father work since she was a little girl and having graduated medical school herself, the Baron's daughter Tania (Rosalba Neri, a.k.a. Sara Bay), wants revenge. However, Lady Frankenstein wants to do more than fight fire with fire.

Her plan is to take the brain of Dr. Charles Marshall (Paul Müller), her father's old lab assistant and the man who loves her, and put it into the hulking body of Thomas (Paul Whiteman), a manservant who is mentally retarded, so that she can have both brains and brawn. The plan is that this new creation will get revenge by killing the first creation, and then return to Tania's bedroom to find other ways of making her really, really happy. Meanwhile, Captain Harris (Mickey Hargitay) is investigating the Baron's death (Tantia makes up a story about a robber) and spouting interesting lines of dialogue to the suspects. It also turns out that Tania is not the only one seeking revenge. The original monster is going after the grave robbers, so there is a constant body count in this one. Actually it is not the dead people but the naked people who count more in this one, especially the quaint European custom of the man staying fully clothed while the women is totally naked.

Despite the cartoonish poster art for "Lady Frankenstein," director Mel Welles (a.k.a. Ernst R. von Theumer) creates an appropriately gothic looking horror film. However, the story is an uneven mix of interesting ideas (e.g., chemical batteries are better that lightning for reanimating dead tissue) and sundry plot holes (e.g., how Marshall's brain finally puts two and two together). Simply in terms of Eurotrash this is an above average example of the genre, in terms of both the story and the acting in addition to the bodies. Then again, as good as Neri looks (as long as you are not watching her eyes dart back and forth when she is listening to others speak) that is about how bad the monster (the first one) looks. Overall, the ending is the weakest part of "Lady Frankenstein," but that it is actually a plus because normally it is the set up that has you rolling your eyes. That is once you put your eyes back in your head, because when you cast Rosalba Neri as the lead character you are clearly deemphasizing the horror aspects of this particular horror film in favor of other attributes.

The DVD has some pretty good extras considering what the movie is, with a lot more than the theatrical trailer and televison spot for "Lady Frankenstein." Also included by DVD Drive-In are the trailers for other Italian horror movies from "Beyond the Darkness" to "The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave!" with "Revenge of the Living Dead," "Curse of the Living Dead," and "Fangs of the Living Dead" thrown in between. There are all sorts of production photographs, movie posters, and candid shots, several of which will make Neri's fans rather, ah, happy. There is also a short interview with the actress, as well as a longer walk down memory lane with the director Mel Welles, who tells a lot of stories about the production of the film (Roger Corman to the rescue). The deleted scenes are in Italian, so be prepared for that and make up your own dialogue. For me the extras are good enough to decide to round up on "Lady Frankenstein." Note: The Easter Egg on this one is the candle.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not bad, decent movie, fairly revealing movie version.
Review: This variation, on the Mary Shelly novel, has Joseph Cotton (always strange, remember Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte) and Sara Bay (who has some quite revealing scenes, and there's also some other revealing scenes, of uncredited actresses. This also has some mild language, for the time, which was the '70's. It wasn't too bad, not as "schlocky" as one might think. It also features, as a Captain, police officer; guess it runs in the family, Mickey Hargitay, that's right, Mariska's father [she who plays on Law and Order SVU]. Produced by Alpha video (not the company listed here, but there's no listing for that version and I wanted to review it, so there).


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