Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tillie

Donald Pleasence appeared in 137 movies; of those, I've seen just 30, but I'll hazard a guess that this is his worst film. Not only do I believe that Frankenstein's Great-Aunt Tillie must be the absolute nadir of Pleasence's career, I also reckon that it is the worst Frankenstein film ever made, the worst comedy ever made, and quite possibly the most terrible film I have ever seen (and I can regularly be found scraping away at the bottom of the cinematic barrel).

The script (if indeed there was one) feels like a stream of consciousness from a drunken Chinese madman, translated into English by another drunken madman whose first language is neither Chinese or English. The actors spout their lines of gibberish as though they're tripping on peyote (the film WAS made in Mexico, after all). Come to think of it, the whole experience felt like a bad hallucinogenic trip for me too, such is its sheer nonsensical nature.

Pleasence plays a descendant of Baron Frankenstein, who travels with Great Aunt Matilda (Yvonne Furneaux) to the ancestral estate to try and locate a hidden treasure and prevent developers from buying the place. In the basement of the castle, they discover Frankenstein's monster and bring it back to life. What follows is a series of seemingly random scenes in which everyone rambles incoherently whilst acting like fools.

Clocking in at an excruciating 100 minutes, Frankenstein's Great-Aunt Tillie is a virtually unwatchable mess that only the most dedicated fan of z-grade films will be able to finish. Those who do manage to stay the distance (and stay sane) will be treated to such garbage as women's rights protestors attacking the police with soda siphons, Pleasence dressed in a frilly maid's outfit, a parody of the Karloff classic's 'monster meets a little girl' scene that is off-the-charts insane, and an epilogue that continues the agony just when you thought it was all over.

Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tillie (1984)

BOMB (out of 4)

Incredibly awful film has Baron Frankenstein (Donald Pleasance) and his Aunt Tillie returning to the family estate to try and get money. When they discover the monster's body they decide to bring him to life to make some cash off of him. This so-called comedy is without a doubt one of the worst films I've ever seen. I'm a firm believer than every film has at least one fan but I don't see how anyone could enjoy this mess. The comedy doesn't work on any level and the story is so confusing that I had a hard time following it. The subplot with women's rights also didn't work. No horror, no laughs, no nudity, no gore, no violence. Worthless on all levels even when Pleasance goes out in drag.

See The Respectable People keep down suffragettes trying to bring the E. R. A. To Mucklebugger from a 1386 AD decree. See car race on old roads. Much hilarity ensues and is a visual feast of off-beat, obscure, weird and odd references that don't really congeal into a whole movie.

Speaking of a disjointed movie, how about that audio de-sync. But wait for it - this is a movie to GO APE! It's got so many strange items and things to see! Thomas Crapper is referenced, Zsa Zsa Gabor shows up, radio and FM had not been invented yet, bloomers are given away: "down with trousers, up with skirts", likes Chinese food, dancing at 48m(!), cross-dressing Nanny Groat, Sir Thomas Crapper and the dream of hygiene, gunk of rock oil, hickie on wrist, many UFOs: Unverified Frankenstein Observations: 6; Ape-tastic: 7; Ape-tastic: 9 (Audio De-Sync); Black Monolith with Apes: 2; Conelrad Alert: 1; Indian Head Test Pattern: 2; Monkeys at a Typewriter: 4; Poop Show: 0; Propeller Cap: 5 (Obscure References) .

Find the audio sync by using a second player in the mini player mode. This audio de-sync will keep you Going APE. If the sync was there, it might - might - be as good as Young Frankenstein.

PSA: Watching the audio de-synced version is one of the hardest films yet to extract viewing enjoyment out of and receives a Poop Show Award. GO APE! Enjoy!

So appalling I nearly stopped watching. I only continued when I realised that only once or twice in a lifetime would one be privileged with the opportunity to see a film quite this bad. It was so stunningly bad I felt compelled to watch it all.

The cast comprised no-name actors and a couple of b-movie actors who one can only assume had very large tax bills to pay that year. To describe the acting as wooden would be only partly accurate it was rotten wooden acting. The dialogue was poorly conceived badly delivered and delivered with the comic timing and deftness only available to those suffering from autism.

It was intended to be funny and tongue in-cheek and had the script not been written by the directors 9 year old it may have succeeded. The cinematography looks like it was done by the 5 year old's elder brother playing with a cheap camcorder he was given for Christmas.

So, then, bad acting, dire script, ludicrous production values. Should you watch it. Yes but remember the eye bleach.

This movie fails so hard that it's hilarious. It's funny in ways that the filmmakers, who were on some potent drugs, couldn't possibly have intended. The surreal dialogue, the terrible sound recording, the huge-breasted actress changing costumes on camera to work in yet another shot of her cleavage, Donald Pleasence on an apparent bender, all of it. It's a perfect storm of awful. Dysfunctional hilarity!