Rating: 
Summary: Frankenstein and His Wife, the sister
Review: This is an interesting film, with all sorts of good intentions. The casting of Udo Kier in the starring role is some inspired casting. Joe Dallesandro looks a bit out of place, but I think that is part of the point that Morrissey was making. Loads of great humor, and more gore and werid sex than you could ever imagine. Parts of it were a little slow though, and the sex was not at all attractive to look at. But take a look, and the commentary is great. But, also be sure to check out Morrissey's superior follow-up, "Blood for Dracula". It is far more interesting, and Kier fits the role of Dracula perfectly.
Rating: 
Summary: Exquisite Trash
Review: This masterpiece will have your sides splitting (no pun)--Basic premise-- Frankenstein lives in a nondescript east european castle with his wife/sister/baroness (who enjoys taking extensive rides in a shetland pony driven carriage), 2 damien-esque children, & a manservant Igor... in his lab he is constructing the ultimate male & female super humans from the best body parts of several subjects... frankenstein is in need of a head for his male monster, but unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how your mind works) the head he picks is that of a would-be monk with a propensity to admiring joe dellesandro's buns.. and so the fun begins... best lines -- Frankenstein: "two women--he must be very powerful", "there he comes", "KISS HIM!", "my wife... my seestah" -- The baroness : "what's goin on on my property" , "how DARE you interfere with the baron's work! you SCOUNDREL! you TRASH" -- Monique van Vooren, i am now convinced, was born to play the baroness-- and it must be, because i haven't seen her in anything else -- she is arguably the campiest female lead in film history, though elizabeth berkeley in "showgirls" runs a close second (and i would gladly argue such matters with anyone who's brain is warped enough to be concerned with such issues) And the two demon children are perfectly twisted, and I especially like the scene with the bats (I can almost see the nylon strings)-- No particular explanation as to why igor freaks out at the end I recommend watching this in an altered state of mind, though be forewarned- if you are not in the right frame of mind, you might have a bad trip... otherwise you will be laughing till it hurts just the scene with the stitches still freaks me out (snip, snip, snip)ugh-- i think they may have edited that out of some versions -- it's still pretty sickening, even by today's standards (or maybe i was just too toasted):)
Rating: 
Summary: Campy with some of its own things going on
Review: This movie does not have humor that just strikes you in the face like some films, but it is not without a fair amount of subtle humor. For example, the director likes to weave in and out of bloody and purely beautiful scenes. The movie has its own feel, but overall it is not the most entertaining movie I've ever seen. Nevertheless, it fits the occassion if you want to have an odd film in your collection to show off to friends, etc.. It's kind of hard to rate a movie like this, but overall, I think it's fair to give it 3-4 stars depending on your tastes.
Rating:
Summary: So much better than Dracula!
Review: This movie is so much better than Andy Warhol's Dracula.The film looks so much modern and edited.The movie is a great masterpiece of Andy Warhol style.It has Monique Van Vorran (Mrs. Frarnkenstien)who has an affair with Joe Dallesandro and has two children who know that their father is killing people to put in evil experiments.Joe Dallesandro's friend's head gets cut off by Baron for one of his experiments.Some good special effects.
Rating: 
Summary: a film ahead of it's time
Review: This review is for the criterion collection DVD edition. This film, now over 30 years old was ahead of its time in regards to the genre mix of gory horror and comedy. Peter Jackson's film, "Braindead" (known as "Dead Alive" in the US)comes to mind. This was at the time the goriest comedy ever made, though I do not see much humor in it. It is a difficult film to watch as far as the sex scenes, (which earned it an X rating by the MPAA upon its initial release) are concerned. Though today the film would probably be given an R rating even in it's uncut version given the current MPAA views. The film itself is based VERY loosely on Mary Shelly's famous novel. In this version Dr. Frankenstein created TWO zombies. One male and one Female. He attempts to get them to breed to create a master race. To these ends he specifically chose the head of a Serbian for the male zombie. The gore in the film while may disturb many, has special effects that by today's standards are very cheesy and unrealistic. The film was origianlly released in 3-D which would probably have turned the stomachs of people who viewed it. The DVD has 2 special features. There is a full length audio commentary by selected cast and crew. There is also an 18 minute slide show with scenes from the making of the film and publicity shots. The slide show is accompanied with excerpts from the film's musical score.
Rating:
Summary: an interesting and disturbing film
Review: this review is for the Criterion Collection edition of the film. This film along with "blood for dracula" were filmed back to back in Italy. This one the more controversal of the two originally received an X rating by the MPAA. Is is based very loosely on Mary shelly's novel and follows Dr. Frankenstein creating a male anf female zombie and his attempts to get them to breed. The Criterion collection has audio commentary and an 18 minute slideshow with photos from the film and its production along woth an audio soundtrack of music from the film.
Rating:
Summary: Ain't got nothing if you ain't got love
Review: Udo Kier, Udo freaking Kier. Perhaps my absolute favorite bad actor bringing new life to the story of Frankenstein, utterly unshackled by any semblance of the book itself. Here, we have the anthropomorphic vision of a petulant, tantrum-throwing Baron Frankenstein and his plan to create not one but TWO wombies, male and female, to procreate and spawn a master race of wombies to answer to the will of Udo Kier alone. This scheme is more or less similiar to the one favored by Bela Legosi in the Ed Wood saga, Bride of the Monster. Playing devil's advocate, I never pictured a male wombie with too many active sperm cells, nor a female wombie with an overly active reproductive system, but, who's splitting hairs. At the outset of the movie, Udo does in fact have the female wombie fully completed, but he needs the final component to complete her male counterpart. To finish his male wombie, Udo in fact needs the proper "nazzum", and nazzums, evidently, are reasonably difficult to acquire. So, Baron Frankenstein, with his sidekick, Otto (the same guy that played his sidekick in Blood for Dracula) sets out for his nazzum. He needs a vigorous nazzum, the kind that frequents brothels and enjoys fornicating with any and every type of woman. At this stage, we have the same slouching Communist stable boy from Blood for Dracula, and his good buddy who wants to go join a convent or something. In the dark, Udo mistakes the the buddy, rather than the whoremongering Communist, for the nazzum he wants, and ends up, much to his despair, with a homosexual nazzum. Great Scott!!! So, Frankenstein throws the two wombies together, kiss him, kiss him, kiss him, kiss him, KISS HIM, but unfortunately the male wombie with the insufficient nazzum ignores the female wombie. In desperation, Udo throws the male wombie to his wife, Baroness Frankenstein (who looks a little bit like Skeletor with a blonde wig), but, not only does the wombie fail to become aroused, he kills the baroness as well. Good golly miss molly, what a waste! Simutaneously, Otto, the hackneyed sidekick, learns that he has his own Mortal Kombat Fatality--pull out their guts and let them see them before they die trick--which he promptly launches against the housekeeper and the female wombie when they both dispassionately spurn his groping Torgoesque affections. Udo, disenchanted, runs into the laboratory, kills Otto, then fails to defend himself against the vengeful male wombie. My favorite line: "My experiments will go on. I will not die in wain..."
Rating: 
Summary: Very funny. But only unintentionally.
Review: You might be under the impression, since this is part of the Criterion Collection and our kind benevolent review posters, Amazon.com, have posted a breathless "Amazon.com" review, that this movie is somehow artistic. Well, it isn't. Keep in mind that along with "The Seventh Seal" and "The Passion of Joan of Arc", the Criterion Collection has seen fit to lavish attention on "The Rock", "Armageddon" (both double disc sets, natch), and "Fiend Without a Face." This and "Blood for Dracula" can be safely filed among those head-scratchers of selections. The artistic rep comes from the fact that Andy Warhol put up the cash to make these movies. Do not be fooled, he was not involved in them in any other way. The director, Paul Moressey, did, indeed, know how to frame a shot (which, as near as I can figure out, is the reason so many people drool over this movie. They must go nuts when they see their first James Whale flick.) That is all he knew how to do. He didn't know how to direct actors, he didn't know how to get the accents consistent (one peasant seems to be from Transylvania via the Bronx), and he certainly didn't know how to spare poor Udo Kier, the one professional in the bunch (and who really does deserve better), the torture of such an amateurish production. The Criterion ad copy reads (taken shamelessly out of context) "...a relevation to horror fans." Well, it's not. It's not even a horror movie; it's a slasher movie and should be referred to as such. This is not "Nosferatu", or "Bride of Frankenstein." It is not "Night of the Living Dead" (and where's the Criterion release of NOTLD, I'd like to know?) or "The Haunting" (the original, NOT the Liam Neeson version, and another Criterion candidate.) No, this would fit right in along with, oh, "The Ghastly Ones" or maybe "The Bloody Mutilators." It's not even camp; it's stupid and badly-made slop, worthy of Andy Milligan, and to call this an artistic horror movie is to disgrace everything actual artists from James Whale to David Cronenberg have worked on to develop the genre. Since nobody's bothered to do so, let me fill you in as to the actual PLOT of this flick: Baron Von Munchausen, er, Frankenstein is trying to make a perfect man to breed with the perfect woman he made, in between the bouts of incest, necrophilia, etc (among other treats, we discover Frank's really happy to meet a gallbladder. Yes, that means what you think it means.) Unfortunately, since Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman had some dignity, two clowns from Warhol's Factory arrive to serve as the heroes. It would help if anyone other than Kier could act. Unfortunately, they can't. Frankenstein needs a head for his love machine of a creature, so he spies on brothels looking for really (...) guys (apparently, he didn't think to just look for your average male teenager, but then, who said people in slasher movies were smart?) This has buckets of gore, mostly because they could afford buckets of gore, and if you're looking for a movie in the vein of such amateur nights behind the camera as "Slave of the Cannibal God", or "Pieces", or any of a slew of the bloody (and bloody stupid) slasher flicks that tried to exploit the market, this is definitely a good stop, although I wouldn't pay what Criterion's asking. Certainly the scene at the end where poor Udo has to cauterwaul for five minutes with a spear through him (on the end of which is a "vital organ" that looks suspiciously like a piece of beef) is a laugh riot and worth paying the ten bucks this movie would be available for if it hadn't sponged up some art credibility from Warhol. If you are looking for actual art in the horror film, you don't even have to leave the Criterion Collection. "M", "Haxan", "Sisters", "The Vanishing", "Kwidan", "Peeping Tom" and "Shock Corridor" are all fine creepy movies and currently in print. Out of print, but still possible to find, are "Dead Ringers" and "Silence of the Lambs" (more of a thriller, but what the heck, it's certainly a country mile better than THIS turkey.) Other, non-Criterion, releases worth checking out are pretty much anything by David Cronenberg, Romero's "Dead" trilogy, the two "Tetsuo" films by Tsukamoto (although those can't be recommended to the squeamish) and, of course, the German expressionist films of the 20s ("Nosferatu", "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", "The Golem"), which are currently getting beautiful rereleases. If you're looking for blood and carnage, you could pay good money for the brilliant "Dead Alive" (get the unrated version), or simply check out the $5 and up DVD bin at your local chain record store. This, however, and "Blood For Dracula", which is more of the same, are nothing more than garbage, slasher flicks for people who don't want to admit they like slasher flicks. Call it trash, call it amusing, just do us all a favor, folks, and don't call it art.
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