Good Old Victor F.

I was wandering through my movie collection t'other day and it struck me just how many Frankenstein movies I have.

I've got the Universal release from the 1930s, with Boris Karloff playing the monster. I've got the Hammer version, with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. I've got Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein (which is still one of the funniest films ever made). I've got the sequel to the Hammer picture, I've got a copy of the not-very-good one with Brannagh and DeNiro in it. And I have a copy or two of the book, plus some of the various literary riffs on that theme.

Why? Well, mostly because it's an ace tale. A very early science fiction cautionary tale in a style that later writers like Crighton would adopt; Frankenstien says, loud and clear "look what we can do! Do you think we should?", with the undercurrent that of course we bloody shouldn't because we really have no idea what we're doing.

It's the sort of cautionary tale that can be applied to every kind of advance, from cybernetics to genetic engineering. The monster of the book is very different to that of the various movies, although following an image as startling as the Karloff makeup for the Universal release, which seared itself into the world's imagination, is this surprising? Monsters put bums on seats, not morality.

Over the years, things have changed a bit. My latest encounter with Victor and his mad science came in Dean Koontz's books; he depicts the Baron as a callous, amoral, cold scientist who has artificially extended his life and is intending to replace the human race with one of his own, much improved, design. Against him stand a couple of New Orleans cops and his original creation - now calling himself Deucallion. The books make undemanding reading, perfect for killing time in an entertaining manner. However, t'other night I came across something rather unexpected.

It's a movie known variously as "Flesh for Frankenstein" and "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein", the latter being why it drew my attention. Andy Warhol? He's not listed anywhere on the credits, but Udo Keir is. So I watched it.

In some ways, I wish I hadn't. In others, I'm so glad I did.

For one thing, quite a lot of time was spent on the look of the thing. Castle Frankenstein is labyrinthine and baroque, with plenty of places to hide and spy on people. The Baron's laboratory is a huge space complete with anatomical statues and lots of things floating in jars, but none of the electrical thingammies that we've come to expect. The costumes are interesting; filmed in the 70s, the period evoked by the look of the clothes is anywhere between 1890 and 1930 although the villagers are your standard Euro-peasant, stuck some time in the early 1700s. Because of the relaxation of censorship laws for stuff rated X, there's a fair bit of nudity and it's not limited to topless females.

In fact, the UK title (Flesh for Frankenstein) says exactly what the movie is about. It's sex. Victor's wife/sister (the two titles seem interchangable) just wants to get laid. A lot. Victor has an unhealthy fascination with internal organs and is creating two people from bits of other people. He intends them to be representatives of some off-kilter racial purity, and wants them to breed in order that he can replace the current crop of humanity - which he regards as trash. Aha, Mr. Koontz, I see where you got the idea!

It's a very visceral film, with much time spent staring at assorted guts and gore, and as stylish as it is, from time to time it becomes unintentionally funny thanks to a script which doesn't seem to know what it wants to do. We go from Victor Frankenstein, brilliant surgeon to Victor Frankenstein, amateur phrenologist. We also have Victor the gut-shagger who declares "To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life...in the gall bladder!". This, and Victor's unhappy choice of a gay head* for his male monster, ends in disaster and the one genuinely chilling scene of the entire film, right at the very end, in which the surviving adult ends up in the hands of the eerily Addams Family/Midwich Frankenstein kids. Two kids, silent and intense for the entire film, alone, in Victor's lab, with scalpels, and a man dangling by his wrists from a crane. A situation like that...well, it just can't end well, can it?








*possibly not gay, but definitely not interested in women of any sort, even before it was removed from the original body.