At the same time that Terence Fisher and Peter Cushing were infusing new life (pun intended) into the hoary cinematic tradition of Frankenstein at Hammer Studios in England, "Frankenstein 1970" emerged from Hollywood. It's a dull, halfhearted effort and would essentially be unwatchable without Boris Karloff, who portrays Victor, the last of the Frankensteins. A psychological and physical casualty of the Nazis (his face is badly scarred and he walks with a limp), Victor rents out his estate to a film crew who are shooting a Frankenstein movie. He needs the money to fund his experiments: specifically, he must purchase and install a nuclear reactor in his laboratory to revive the Frankenstein Monster.
It's not the world's worst premise, I guess, but the ridiculous part is that the Monster has actually been interred in the family crypt. I mean, why? In the average Universal Frankenstein film, the body was discovered in a block of ice or dredged out of a swamp; the rationale that Victor's ancestor preserved the body as a "never forget" monument to the horror he had wrought just comes off as silly. *Profoundly* silly, like the filmmakers were reaching desperately for novelty. To be fair, director Howard W. Koch was working with his hands tied behind his back, as Allied Artists had demanded significant cuts to the screenplay--eliminating virtually all on-screen violence. (In one scene, the Monster confronts a woman who screams and faints. Cut to Karloff closing the lid of his disposal unit and scolding the Monster: "I didn't intend for that young woman to die!" Or words to that effect. The film is full of limp, audience-disappointing moments like this.)
Boris Karloff is always fun to watch, and there's some nice dramatic tension in the scenes he shares with Rudolph Anders as a family retainer. But even the King couldn't carry an entire production singlehandedly, and that's what he was asked to do here. Had the script been shot as originally written, "Frankenstein 1970" might have been a more potent film. Even so, it's not the worst Frankenstein flick (that distinction easily belongs to "Lady Frankenstein"), and Karloff fanatics will want to see it.
It's not the world's worst premise, I guess, but the ridiculous part is that the Monster has actually been interred in the family crypt. I mean, why? In the average Universal Frankenstein film, the body was discovered in a block of ice or dredged out of a swamp; the rationale that Victor's ancestor preserved the body as a "never forget" monument to the horror he had wrought just comes off as silly. *Profoundly* silly, like the filmmakers were reaching desperately for novelty. To be fair, director Howard W. Koch was working with his hands tied behind his back, as Allied Artists had demanded significant cuts to the screenplay--eliminating virtually all on-screen violence. (In one scene, the Monster confronts a woman who screams and faints. Cut to Karloff closing the lid of his disposal unit and scolding the Monster: "I didn't intend for that young woman to die!" Or words to that effect. The film is full of limp, audience-disappointing moments like this.)
Boris Karloff is always fun to watch, and there's some nice dramatic tension in the scenes he shares with Rudolph Anders as a family retainer. But even the King couldn't carry an entire production singlehandedly, and that's what he was asked to do here. Had the script been shot as originally written, "Frankenstein 1970" might have been a more potent film. Even so, it's not the worst Frankenstein flick (that distinction easily belongs to "Lady Frankenstein"), and Karloff fanatics will want to see it.