The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein

Back in the early 70's there was a spate of very strange cinematic versions of the famous Frankenstein tale. There was Frankenstein '80 (1972) which was a detective story where the monster was a serial killing sex offender; there was also Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), the schlock-fest produced by Andy Warhol, featuring delirious performances from the likes of Udo Kier and Joe Dallesandro; and then there was Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974) in which the good doctor was accompanied by an evil dwarf, a Neanderthal man improbably called Lugosi and a monster named Hulk. Well, given this fashion for sexploitation/trashfests based on the famous old story it surely comes as no surprise that that king of the Eurotrash horror film himself, Jess Franco, got in on the act and delivered his own take on this most specific of ideas. And so we have The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein. Oh, one can only wonder what Mary Shelley would have made of such adaptations of her little Gothic novel.

Anyone experienced with Franco films must surely go into a new one with an element of trepidation. Old Jess certainly knocked them out fast and sometimes with hilariously little care, so you never know for sure if what you are going to get is going to be good or terrible. Well, pleasingly, this flick is one of the better ones. It's from his early 70's period when he was ludicrously prolific and naturally it has a very low budget. But this one contains lots of the very weird style that the director is perhaps most loved for. It also has a great deal of his more notorious techniques, such as copious zooms and lots of out-of-focus shots. While regular collaborator Daniel White provides one of his better scores, even if jazz does seem a little ill-fitting to a story set in the 19th century.

I'm not going to recount the story as there simply is no point but needless to say this is a surreal, sexploitation costume horror with enough genuine strangeness about it to ensure it is always interesting. The most obvious thing to do will be to simply recount some of the strange highlights of this film. Firstly, we have a strange blind, vampiric bird woman who kills Dr Frankenstein within the first five minutes; she is so bizarre a character, a whole film could easily have been based around her. She is played by Anne Libert, who played another very odd character in Franco's A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973). She appears to be the muse of a sorcerer called Cagliostro played by legendary Franco regular Howard Vernon, who once again puts in a commendably serious performance despite the essential nonsense of the storyline. Then there is the unexplained fact that the monster itself is silver. I have no idea why this is but it's brilliantly bizarre. He even gets to viciously whip a naked couple who are tied together above some spikes. This constitutes one of the sadomasochistic erotic rites of the title I think. They all begin with the white gowned undead walking through a misty moonlit forest on their way to Cagliostro's castle; once there, these strange creatures observe the rites. All of this stuff is really great and show Franco at his best. While this rather strange stuff goes on other things happen too, such as Dr Frankenstein's dead body hilariously being periodically reanimated by his daughter simply in order to get information and then there are several scenes involving Lina Romay as a gypsy girl called Esmeralda who has several one-way discussions with a very old woman, these scenes seem to have no relevance to anything else really and are in here for reasons only known to Franco. And why is Dr Seward from the novel Dracula involved in all of this? Your guess is as good as mine.

In summary, this is psychotronic nonsense of the first order. But if you have a taste for the bizarre and appreciate Mr Franco's eccentricities then I think this is one that you will get a kick out of.

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (1973)

*** (out of 4)

Dr. Frankenstein (Dennis Price) finally makes his monster human after putting a brain into his skull but shortly afterwards the doctor and his assistant are murdered and the monster stolen by a mysterious bird woman who was sent by the evil Cagliostro (Howard Vernon). Soon Dr. Frankenstein's daughter (Beatriz Savon) seeks revenge for the death of her father.

Jess Franco's THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN is without question a rather wild, over-the-top and downright batshit crazy film that rarely makes a bit of sense but that's what makes it so darn entertaining. The movie is a complete head-scratcher and it makes you wonder what must have been going on inside of Franco's mind but there's no question that it's a major improvement over his Dracula, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN.

This film here, like most of the director's work, is available in two versions. The French version is also known as the "hot" or the "nude" version as as you might guess it contains a lot of female and male nudity. This here is certainly the version you'll want to check out because, well, if you're going to watch an "erotic" movie then it might as well feature nudity. This version adds a lot of erotic stuff, which adds up on the camp factor but with that said there's still reasons to watch the non-nude Spanish version. The Spanish version has Lina Romay in the role of a gypsy and this is missing from the French version.

Again, if you're coming to this film expecting something normal then you might be as nutty as Franco himself. The plot of this thing is rather crazy and all over the place. The fact that there's a bird woman here with green feathers on her body is a clear indication that you're not meant to take this too serious. The silver toned Frankenstein monster is another interesting visual but so is a sequence where all sorts of masked weirdos are watching the events. Add in some bizarre torture scenes and some really whacked out scenes of Dr. Frankenstein being brought back to life and you've got a wild little picture.

I am generally a big fan of the highly prolific exploitation filmmaker Jess Franco, yet it is undeniable that his impressive repertoire includes ingenious films as well as big time stinkers. While this "Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein" of 1972 is not one of the most awful films Franco has ever brought to screen it definitely ranges among his lesser ones. The film has its positive aspects, including a certain delightful weirdness, but it is overall a bit too messy, and often quite boring. Still, for my fellow trash fans, there are some reasons to see the film. This is the first film ever starring Lina Romay, who subsequently became a Franco-film-regular and sleaze-queen. Romay was only 18 when this film was made, and she became director Franco's wife some time later. The film's storyline is weird and very absurd, and basically typical for a Franco flick. I will not go into detail, but I'll say this much: The story revolves about an insane scientist/sorcerer named Cagliostro (regular Franco-film star Howard Vernon), who has a cult of devoted freaks in his castle, and wants to create a human 'masterrace' by crossing beautiful women with Frankenstein's monster. Or whatever. Sounds like a lot of weird fun, I know, but sadly the film gets quite tiresome at times. There are two versions of the film, one of which is a lot sleazier. They basically shot the whole film twice, with the exact same things happening, only that the women are mostly clothed in one version and mostly fully naked in the other. My DVD contains the more prudish version, with the more explicit 'alternative' scenes as a bonus feature. I strongly recommend to watch the sleazier version, of course, since the sleaze factor is arguably the most recommendable thing about the film. The female cast is lovely to look at and mostly naked (in the interesting version). Also, there are some ridiculous and amateurish, but delightfully weird outburst of violence. The cinematography and settings are also very good. Howard Vernon enjoys a certain cult status among many of my fellow exploitation fans, and rightly so, if I am considered. The guy was certainly not the most brilliant actor ever, but he fit very well in the trashy Eurohorror roles that he played. Vernon's repertoire ranges from some excellent films (such Jess Franco's very own masterpiece "Miss Muerte") to god-awful (such as Jean Rollin's dreadful "Zombie Lake") and his presence actually makes films like this one a lot more worthwhile. This film of many aka. titles (such as "La Maldición De Frankenstein") is watchable (in the explicit version) for its weirdness, but one shouldn't expect too much. Among the Franco films I've seen (and those are quite many by now) this one doesn't rank at the very bottom, but it certainly ranges in the lesser half.

A silver-skinned Frankenstein's monster - now that's different. One thing is for sure, this isn't your bog-standard Frankenstein film. Whereas most movies based on Mary Shelley's legendary creation are content with one mad doctor and one monster (two at a push), Jess Franco's The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein features three insane scientists - Dr. Frankenstein (Dennis Price), his daughter Vera (Beatriz Savón), and the villainous Cagliostro (Howard Vernon) - plus a whole slew of strange creations, including a blind bird-woman called Melisa (Anne Libert), a bloke with pointy ears, some living skeletons, and assorted ghouls.

In the film's opening scene, Doctor Frankenstein is murdered by Cagliostro and Melisa, who make off with the scientist's shimmering, shambling monster, intending to mate it with their creation, a perfect woman, to create an entirely new race. To be honest, the shambolic plot doesn't make a lot of sense (like a lot of Franco's stuff), and the film's limited appeal is its sheer insanity and some gratuitous nudity. The most bonkers scene sees the shiny monster flogging a naked Vera and an equally starkers man, who are bound together, until they fall on a floor of rubber spikes. If that sound like fun to you, then by all means give it a whirl, but this isn't one of Franco's better efforts.

To all of you out there who think that the likes of Steven Soderbergh and David O. Russell epitomize independent film-making: go rent this film and let the scales fall from your eyes. Made during director Jess Franco's amazing early 70's period, post Harry Alan Towers and pre-porno, The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein is a surrealist masterpiece, poetic, perverse, comic, and mesmerizing. Shot for next to nothing on location in Portugal, the film is full of evocative, wide-angle, hand held imagery that must have appeared jaw-droppingly innovative at the time, and still astounds today. Daniel White's atonal, experimental score skillfully enhances the film's nightmarish languor, and the roles, particularly Anne Libert's blind cannibalistic Bird Woman, and Howard Vernon's strangely sexy Cagliostro, are performed with aplomb and conviction. You won't soon forget the scenes of white-shrouded undead gliding through a mist-laden forest, the strange, red-lit shots of Cagliostro's acolytes blithely staring at cruel tableaux orchestrated for their perverse amusement, or a shrieking, silver-skinned Frankenstein's monster relentlessly whipping a man and a woman tied together over a bed of spikes. Anyone who doubts Jess Franco's talent should rent this DVD, and then ponder the pettifogging morass that independent cinema has become.