Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)

Possibly the oddest re-imagining of the Frankenstein story ever made, Paul Morrissey's 1973 semi-avant-garde, satirical spoof is also one of the funniest, and most gruesome. Dr. Von Frankenstein (played by B-movie favourite Udo Kier) is obsessed with creating what he believes will become a master race of Serbians who will bend at his will. He locks himself away with his assistant Otto (Arno Juerging), manufacturing hideous creations from body parts. He creates a male and a female to give birth to the first of his new race, but he is frustrated and unsatisfied with the male's sexual urges. Von Frankenstein's wife/sister, meanwhile, is following her own urges with farmhand Nicholas (Joe Dalessandro), who is coincidentally the best friend of the doctor's latest victim.

One of the strangest pairings in cinema history, director Morrissey and producer Andy Warhol have certainly created an interesting piece of horror. For all it's rather sick moments of debauchery, it is actually quite impressive artistically. Filmed in Cinecitta in Rome (one of Federico Fellini's favourite film studios), the set design for Von Frankenstein's laboratory in vast and impressive. This approach works both for and against the film, as although it gives the film a grand, often operatic feel, the film can sometimes look like it's on stage. That said, Morrissey's ability to frame a shot is often spectacular, especially in the ultra-wide dinner table scene, where Von Frankenstein introduces his wife/sister to his fresh creations.

Yet sometimes the film can feel a bit confused. It works well just a straight B-movie, with plenty of the weird and gruesome on show to satisfy horror fans (given those fans are into watching sex with torso wounds). But the film isn't really funny enough to call itself a comedy, clever enough to call itself a satire, or pretentious enough to be avant-garde. All these different themes seemed to clash together and I never felt settled with what kind of film I was supposed to be watching. If that was the point, then well done, but it still doesn't make the movie into anything special.

Saying that, I did thoroughly enjoy 90 minutes in the minds of two strange characters that had a small, if fascinating, effect on cinema.

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Fmovies: This messy little splatter-fest was heavily censored in most markets back in the 70s and fully restored its wildly lurid visuals can still shock. The movie is all about the visuals and the splatter, and is so over the top that it gets a bit silly. The exploitation elements of the Frankenstein story - the grave-robbing, the obsessive experiments in mad science - have never been this wildly exploited and manage to straddle spoofery and shock cinema about equally well. This is not to say that this is in any way a good movie. It's almost a joke on the audience. The script is complete trash, straight out of a bad Gothic novel and probably meant to be laughed at, but played straight-faced by the film's 'actors'. The 'acting' is pretty horrible. Udo Keir is his usual creepy Eurotrash self and even moderately effective in a one-note performance, but he's the only cast member who has any business being in a period piece. Everybody else, especially Warhol protégé and gay icon Joe Dallesandro, is just too urban-contemporary (not to mention inexperienced) to pull off a 19th century look or 19th century speech. The women look decorative and shed their tops fairly often, but don't look for a romantic subplot or a strong female character because there aren't any. As straight-forward drama, this movie would get about 1/2 a star.

My rating is based on its effectiveness as an exercise in subverting audience expectations and slamming the Gothic horror genre which, after 15 straight years of Hammer and Roger Corman, had become a bit ripe.

I'm surprised that so few people have mentioned the beautiful cinematography of "Flesh for Frankenstein." Director Paul Morrisey went to great extents to model his film after the works of Luchino Visconti and other prolific Italian directors of the time. Of course to appreciate it, you must see it in it's original widescreen picture ratio. Featuring a lush, dreamlike feel that is helped along by a gorgeous and haunting music score, and top notch costumes. The gore, although extreme, possesses a kind of poetry, and i can imagine such sexually eroticized violence must have caused quite a controversy in the UK, at the time of release. Udo Kier is superb in his maniacal portrayal of Dr. Frankenstein, and the changes and additions to the Mary Shelley novel are for once, very smart and a welcome addition to an already great tale. Aside from the 1933 film "Bride of Frankenstein," this is my absolute favorite screen version of the Frankenstein monster. Excellent film!

Flesh for Frankenstein fmovies. Paul Morrissey´s film is probably the most unusual adaptation of the well-known Frankenstein-stuff I´ve ever seen! The story is about the mad scientist (likewise to his "Blood for Dracula"-role Udo Kier´s giving another outstanding performance, what makes him being the most culty German actor next to the inimitable Klaus Kinski!), who wants to create two artificial creatures to father some children. However, the experiment runs out of control, his sister/mother of his son and daughter starts having an affair with her servant and finally the whole plot ends in a big disaster... In comparison to James Whale´s "Frankenstein" from 1931 starring horror-icon Boris Karloff there´s nothing left from the romantic charm of the original. Director Paul Morrissey´s movie has created a bizarre and creepy scenario that contains a plenty of blood and guts, grotesque humor, hinted incest and love to dead bodies. Some calm and tender moments are in a gross contrast to the rest of the film. The end is bloody and pretty macabre. After all a very provoking, but nevertheless a really recommended mixture between splatter and art !

Well. we can only speculate what Mary Shelley would have made of this! By the time it came to the early 1970's there was a peculiar trend in European genre cinema for erotic/sleazy Frankenstein films. Amongst others there was The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein and Frankenstein '80 – both from 1972 – so it can be not too much of a surprise that a year later came the king of this very specific sub-genre, the one and only Flesh For Frankenstein. It was famously produced by New York Pop artist Andy Warhol, along with the similar Blood For Dracula. But it's a far cry from Warhol's other art films and unsurprisingly his creative input was pretty negligible. It was filmed in Cinecittà studios in Rome and directed by Warhol acolyte, Paul Morrissey. But irrespective of who did what and why, the main thing about this one is that it's a bona fide trash classic of the very best kind.

Its blood and guts galore and transgressive sex all the way. But it's all presented in a camp manner that simply has to be seen to be believed. The acting ranges from insanely over-the-top (Udo Kier) to hilariously under-the-top (Joe Dallesandro). What makes it so very funny is that despite the sheer ridiculousness of proceedings everybody plays it deadpan straight. We have Kier fully committed and out of control as the Nazi-like Baron who dreams of making a new master race; Dallesandro is a local shepherd stud with a hilariously out of place New York accent – he seems more like a Times Square street hustler than a character from the early 19th century; then there is Arno Juering in a bewildering performance as the eye-popping Otto, assistant to the Baron; Monique Van Vooren makes an impression too as the Baron's over-sexed wife/sister; even the couples incestual offspring are memorably creepy, the little girl being the one and only Nicoletta Elmi who appeared in dozens of Italian horror and giallo flicks in the early 70's.

Flesh For Frankenstein was also noteworthy for being one of the members of the infamous video nasty list, which of course was a selection of movies deemed criminally obscene by the British authorities back in the early 80's. It's an example of an entry from this list where you sort of understand why it caused offence in the first place. Not only does it have a healthy dose of explicit gore – including a hilariously over-the-top finale – but it is wilfully transgressive in other outrageous ways with the brother/sister-husband/wife incest plot strand and the baron's necrophiliac behaviour with his zombie creations. Of course, all of this excessive content, funny performances and insane dialogue adds up to a must-see movie for anyone with a passing interest in Euro horror from the schlockier end of the scale. On top of all of this, it's actually a quite handsome looking film, which is perhaps unsurprising given its Cinecittà origins. Suffice to say that all of this adds up to a cult film, truly worthy of the tag. Its additionally well worth seeking out its sister film Blood For Dracula, which is slightly less psychotronic but equally indispensable.

This is clearly the superior of the two films that Paul Morrissey filmed at Cinecitta studios (Rome) during the early 1970s. It's the typical Frankenstein story with the Morrissey's spin on it.

And I suspect that it has a lot to do with Antonio Margheriti being involved since he is famous in Italian horror circles for the gore effects he brings to films. Especially the scene where the male monster (Srdjan Zelenovic) rips open his stomach sutures, exposing his organs in an act of suicide. Very anatomically correct.

Udo Kier is probably the best reason to see this film, however. His hammy acting skills are tops! His version of Frankenstein is so demented, I guess the German accent adds a lot to it. Usually it's an American or English actor who plays Frankenstein so having a real life German (speaking in English, of course) adds to the atmosphere.

And of course Joe Dallesandro's New York accent sounds totally out of place here, just as it did in BLOOD FOR DRACULA. He sounds like a male hustler hanging out in Times Square instead of an Italian stable boy

Also hideous is Monique Van Vooren as Baroness. Good gawd, the Dallesandro character must have been real hard-up in order to sleep with that old hag.

Still, it has decent atmosphere and the Criterion DVD uses a widescreen print that looks crystal along with production stills of the movie, secondary commentary track by Morrissey who has some revealing comments about the film, and some silly, pseudo-intellectual commentary by Maurice Yakowar that a trashy film like this doesn't deserve.

Worth seeing mostly for Kier's presence.

6 out of 10