Lust for Frankenstein

When critics start to use capital letters in an attempt to show their feelings, they are showing more childish emotion than critical savvy. Poking verbal sticks in Jesus Franco's eyes about over the ultra-low budget LUST FOR FRANKENSTEIN is pretty easy to do. Unfortunately, not one of the commentaries here have managed to give it a negative critique that is indicative of any intelligent thought. The gut reactions are real, though, and you have every right to hate this film once you've watched it. But when pudgy nerds try to belittle Lina Romay or Michelle Bauer, they are merely showing their inability to critique a film. The fact of the matter is that LUST FOR FRANKENSTEIN is so "out there" that it does stir emotions within the viewer. Whether that emotion translates into lust or disgust is for each viewer to decide but the film defies you to watch it dismissively. You have to react.

Franco, using his One Shot Productions team, captures every man's fantasy, the beautiful Michelle Bauer, and turns her into his garish ideal as a Frankenstein monster. Anyone who watches this film and declares Michelle Bauer as wasted in the role or not beautiful needs to push away from the dinner table once in a while and join the real world. Bauer is garishly gorgeous as Goddess, the monster in question, and Franco has truly achieved one of the singular incarnations of the Gothic creature. While she whiled away the '80s and early '90s in schlock goofy video fare, Bauer has finally creature a character here that is worthy to be remembered. And now she can be remembered for her acting ability and not just as a naked body and pretty face wasted away in countless Fred Olen Ray videos.

Lina Romay is way past her prime and she looks every bit of her 40-plus years. But she's not cast as a beautiful young thing here, so why does everyone want to fault her for acting her age? Is it a crime to age on camera? Sure, she has some embarrassing nude scenes but the point of the whole thing is that her character is the loser daughter of Dr. Frankenstein who finally discovers, at middle age, that she has a monster in her control who can possibly deliver the lust that her life has always been missing. I'm sure most of the people who have patheticly belittled Romay for appearing nude in this film probably have thrown blankets over their own bathroom mirrors. But they sure love to throw those stones.

Finally, the story is simplistic and straightforward with no twists or turns other than the omni-sexual creature created by Franco/Frankenstein and embodied by the wonderful Bauer. Once Romay's character sets the monster loose, the story just runs its bitter and disgusting course. But you'll have to admit, you will react viscerally to almost everything that transpires on the screen. When Bauer and Romay embrace as the monster couples with a tree (yes, it's true), you will know that you are deep inside the mind and world of Jesus Franco.

Boris Karloff would turn over in his grave. Universal fans will hate this. The average movie viewer will be disgusted. Fans of erotica, Euro horror and the Unusual will revel in Franco's ongoing nightmare of lust.

Several little things bugged the hell out of me about this movie, but mainly the star Lina Romay. Her accent was so thick I hardly understood her at points. Then there was the fact that she's not very attractive. What's good is a hot lesbian scene, if you can barely watch it? Also, most of the acting was terrible, the whole look was very abstract and weird. It was hard to follow, they truly never explained who created Goddess and why hasn't she been seen before, she was just in the next room. Not locked up or hidden in a secret passage or anything. I think Franco has lost what little mind he had to begin with. After all we are talking about the same director that made DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE (See: DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE). I give this mess of a movie the NOOSE!

What the hell was this movie about? What was the point of it? What were they thinking when they made it?

You should not - I repeat, NOT - spend a cent of your own money to watch this crap. But if there was some kind of a fly-on-the-wall documentary available, that might shed light on what they were thinking, I'd pay good money to see it.

What happened to Jess Franco? He started out with a classic horror film, 1961's "The Awful Dr. Orloff", and just drove his talent straight into the ground. This isn't even really a movie.

Ignore any "plot description" you might find online. This movie has no plot. It's also not related to the classic Frankenstein story in any sense at all. The movie basically just shows Lina Romay wandering around, often undressed, and Michelle Bauer naked with fake stitches on her body and bolts on her temples. It is amusing to see her stomping naked up to people and killing them by twisting their heads, which she does once or twice. What the hell did she think about her role in this movie? Some might say it's kind of degrading.

Who wants the sight of their naked body to be met with laughter? Especially a beautiful woman like Michelle Bauer.

The movie has minimal dialogue, and what it does have is weirdly filtered so you can't understand it. Much of the footage is also filtered, so that even on DVD, it looks like you're watching a decaying VHS tape. Actually, these visual effects are so weird and pointless and ugly that I wonder if they were even done on purpose. Perhaps Franco just spilled something on the lens, or accidentally pointed it at the sun and didn't realise until too late.

You know, the kind of mistakes you'd expect from a forty year veteran of the film business.

There are only two things you could possibly remember about "Lust for Frankenstein". One is the shocking ineptitude in its filmmaking, and I believe I have made that point strongly enough. The other is the fact that the movie features a liberal dose of sex and nudity from its two middle-aged stars. There are regrettably few movies in which we are given an opportunity to admire the beautiful bodies of 40+ year old ladies. It's such a shame, then, that they had to use such a crappy movie to provide us that.

Hot, lesbian scenes starring an aging scream queen and an aging vamp (Michelle Bauer and Lina Romay) are the highlights of this direct to video take on the Frankenstein mythos. The he/she monster becomes jealous of her master's love affairs and take things in it's own hands (and other parts of it's body). Bauer's electro-altered voice is enough to rate this film "scary" and director Franco's Spanish scenery shots are always beautiful. Pick up the unedited version for the sex scenes.

I bought this video used for $1 when my local video store was switching over to DVD's and getting rid of their never-been-rented videos. $1 was too much. The movie tries to be too artistic to be a good porn-esque video, and there's far too much pornography for it to be a good artistic film. The main actress (Frankenstein's descendent) is ugly, has saggy tits which, unfortunately, are shown prominently through the whole movie, and is way too old to be in a movie like this. I watched this a long time ago and haven't bothered with it since. All I can remember is waiting anxiously for it to get good, and then being continually disappointed. It's been so long since I've seen it, I'm having trouble thinking of reasons for people to NOT SEE this movie, but I pretty much blocked it all out of memory after watching it the first time. The only reason I was looking at this page is because I was browsing the 100 Worst Movies list on imdb and was surprised to find this one absent. Even Kazam had more entertainment value than this horrible...HORRIBLE piece of crap.