Blackenstein

BLACKENSTEIN is a terrible movie and its title wouldn't suggest otherwise. Like ABBY (sort of like a Black version of THE EXORCIST), BLACKENSTEIN has practically no budget whatsoever and the acting is just terrible. Believe it or not, the two Blacula movies aren't that bad--BLACKENSTEIN, however, is abysmally bad--so bad that bad movie fans might (but probably won't) love it. Others with taste, however, won't!

One of the first things you'll notice on the DVD is that the print is really, really bad--though it does get a bit better later. This is because there just isn't much money to be made from this film and adding closed captions or digitally restoring the picture just isn't going to happen! You also will probably notice how odd Los Angeles is in the film. Most nights, there seems to be thunder and lightning and often there is an eerie fog about as well (perhaps this is just smog). Regardless, it's pretty funky weather for sunny Southern California! As for the plot, it's really not like the traditional Frankenstein story. There is no mad scientist and no dead people are reanimated. Instead, a sane researcher and his assistant work to attach dead limbs to living people who lost theirs in accidents. However, instead of working in a hospital, they work in the doctor's home which is more like a castle (in Los Angeles, okay?). Heck, the place even has a dungeon and Frankenstein-like laboratory! The assistant is a young Black lady whose boyfriend lost his limbs in an explosion in Vietnam. While the transplant looks promising, no one realizes that the doctor's evil butler switches the genetic formulas and the poor Black man starts to mutate and become evil. He, of course, goes on some obligatory rampages and since this is a so-called "Blaxploitation" film, you see two ladies' breasts--though it really made no sense at all and was very, very contrived. It's amazing to see how this made no sense at all, but given that NONE of the film makes sense, it's understandable.

So what is to like about the film......well,....nothing really except for the small sequence involving the comedian. One of the jokes, though a bit crude, is funny and he was pretty cute. The acting is purely amateur, the script is amazingly static and dull (something you'd never expect in a horror film--even a bad one) and the sets are cheap and make no sense. It's really too dull for bad movie fans to enjoy and I found myself falling asleep from time to time--it was that unexciting. By contrast, even the very worst Hammer horror film was light years better.

After the huge success of "Blacula", Sam Arkoff made plans for a similar knock-off called "Blackenstein". In the meanwhile, write-producer Frank Salteri decides to beat him to the proverbial punch by taking the Black Frankenstein concept, dashing out something resembling a script, gathering together a considerably less than stellar cast (including ex-mob moll Liz Renay and a couple of 40's has-beens who appear to have needed some extra bucks to pay the phone bill that month), and spending what appears to be about $30, slaps out one of the worst pieces of cinematic drek to have ever played inside the confines of a movie theater. If the wooden acting and laughably inept gore effects don't get you, how about the inappropriate musical and stand-up comedy routines (such as they are), or the long-shot camera work during crucial scenes, or how the title character shuffles about with his arms outstretched, just like every parody of Frankenstein you've ever seen.

For years, Sam Arkoff has taken the blame for this cinematic blunder. Sam: A lot of people owe you a hell of a big apology!!!!

In 1972, some genius had the idea of a blaxploitation vampire film, Bram Stoker's legendary vampire Dracula becoming Blacula. It's clever because it rhymes.

The following year, writer/producer Frank R. Saletri tried to get in on the action with a blaxploitation version of Frankenstein called Blackenstein, which isn't such a great title. It's also not a very good film.

Blackenstein sees Dr. Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone) paying a visit to her old teacher Dr. Stein (John Hart) in the hope that he will help her fiancé Eddie (Joe De Sue), a Vietnam veteran who has lost all of his limbs in a landmine blast. Using a special DNA serum, Stein transplants new limbs onto Eddie, but his assistant Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson), who is in love with Winifred, meddles with the treatment, turning Eddie into a violent lumbering monster.

The problem with Blackenstein is that it's not obvious whether director William A. Levey was going for genuine horror or pure camp. If he was aiming for a truly terrifying experience, he fails spectacularly, starting with Stein's hilariously clichéd mad scientist's lab, which is full of flashing lights, bubbling beakers, and crackling electrical equipment that could have come straight out of James Whale's Frankenstein forty years earlier (in fact, the special electronic effects were created by Ken Strickfaden, who also worked on Whale's movie). If he was going for tongue-in-cheek, OTT fun, he doesn't go far enough: much of his film is uneventful and extremely tedious, so much so that the director resorts to throwing in a nightclub act to try and add some pep to proceedings.

With terrible performances, inept gore (limb ripping, spilled guts, a torn out throat), and gratuitous female nudity (four bare breasts, and past-her-prime mobster's girlfriend Liz Renay in a sheer negligee), Blackenstein sounds like fun, but it takes a special kind of horror fan to sit through a film like this without wanting to throw in the towel at some point.

This kitschy blaxploitation film was originally intended as a serious movie, which (ultimately) earns it some points in the camp department. However, the movie's slow starting pacing pace, wooden acting, and (periodically) decent production value make for a largely uneventful ride. Using sets from the original 1931 "Frankenstein," as well as similar art direction, "Blackenstein" was a movie that tried hard to be legitimate, and the first half of the film rises above typical exploitation schlock. However, once the Blackenstein monster is created, the film begins to fall apart, and what follows is a terrible, "Blood Freak"-style horror movie, with laughably amateurish scene direction and gore effects. The result is a very uneven film, and a difficult one to recommend without reservations. The highlight is the awful acting, (particularly of Blackenstein himself), which makes for decent joke material, but I can't say we consistently laughed our way through this one. Fans of H.G. Lewis and Ray Dennis Steckler should be pleased, as the film has a somewhat similar feel, but most others can give it a pass. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

Well the movie is silly now but you got to really understand that was 1973 and it was scary back then. even the original movies are not scary now . But they was back then. so come on now. if today they do a remake of blackenstien YES it would be scary now .THINK ABOUT IT.AND THE MOVIES THEY make now unless the music is really hard people are not that scared now. but on the real tip the movie was not all that bad for it,s time that it came out.the end of it was a bit silly. It did not have that hard core thunder to it . and really if it was a black movie why all the white women getting kill . you don,t see that many black women getting killed in the white movies . just asking OK don,t get it wrong . just something to think about.