Plague of the Zombies (1966) Review

Conclusion

A highly influential zombie film that still regards the White Zombie inspired traditional link between Voodoo and the undead with a modicum of respect. There are no toxic substances or medical explanations for zombies here, only Voodoo tainted blood.

A British made film from the prestigious Hammer collection. Highly recommended for horror buffs, especially because it is the only Hammer zombie film, but it would probably put fans of films paced like The Matrix to sleep. An unsettling sleep, but sleep nonetheless.

Plot synopsis

Sir James Forbes is a highly respected doctor. He is summoned to a remote Cornish village by one of his former students, doctor Peter Tompson, to help deal with a mysterious disease. The illness is killing off villagers, but since the locals are superstitious, the doctor had been unable to perform any kind of autopsy.

Sylvia, the daughter of Sir Forbes, accompanies her father on his journey to the countryside to reinforce her feeling of silver spoon superiority over the simpletons in the country. She is an English bird, and due to her characteristically pale skin it is hard to tell whether she is a zombie or not.

Sir James Forbes digs up a grave of a recently deceased villager, only to discover that the grave is empty. Only to be discovered by constable Swift, digging up a grave, looking like a very demented thrill seeker with his panting breath, his rolled up sleeves and his sweaty palms. Somehow, Sir Forbes manages to convince the constable not to charge him for grave robbing, and also to aid him in his investigation.

The investigation soon turns more exciting when more people are put to their graves, more empty graves are unearthed and more dead people start walking the earth.

A secretive local links all the risen dead in seemingly innocuous ways. The squire, Clive Hamilton, spent some time in Haiti and some Voodoo seemed to have followed him home.

Review

It is estimated that Plague of the Zombies offers social critique of the practices of slavery and colonialism. I did not really notice any such critique. What I did notice instead was that the male hierarchy in the film is distinctly represented by their facial hair.

• Sir James Forbes is obviously the older alpha male who enjoys the highest regard. He has a hirsute appendage of the upper lip with graspable extremities, in other words a handlebar moustache.


• Squire Clive Hamilton is the antagonist, who is a candidate for the next alpha male. He sports a modest approach to a mutton chop. This suggests that he is well groomed, however the fact that sporadic mutton chop remains on his cheeks suggest he has a wilder nature and that he is hiding something.


• Doctor Tompson is a spineless nancy boy who is 19th century Emo or Buddhist, or perhaps both. He has no facial hair whatsoever, but he does sport a modest approach to the one eye fringe.

Jacqueline Pearce portrays the role of doctor Tompson's wife. She is promptly transformed into a chicita del morte, and along with Return of the Living Dead 3's Mindy Clarke, she is a certified C.I.L.F.


That's a corpse I'd like to find a good home for.

The only bone of contention I have with this film is the rather unimaginative ending. It just ends. There is no interesting twist in the plot, even though the audience is set up exactly for a marvellous twist in the plot. Clearly, this film came out before the 10 commandments of horror were conceived.

Director

John Gilling

Cast

John Carson, Diane Clare, Adré Morell, Jacqueline Pearce, Brook Williams.

Rating

Review of Divine Intervention by Slayer

Conclusion

The first real metal album I ever heard, and still probably the best. This is a completely biased review, because I love this album more than I love blonde lesbians making out with me.

I love this album almost as much as I love blonde bisexual girls making out with me. Every metal album I have heard since has been measured by Divine Intervention. The album, not the cow probing or the Elvis Presley U.F.O sightings.



Blonde bisexual girls making out with each other. Just kidding, this is 213 performed live by Slayer. Hell yeah!

Review

This album came out in 1994, the year grunge king Kurt Cobain committed suicide. Grunge was all the rage. Slayer hasn't delivered an album since 1990's Seasons In The Abyss. Since then, they lost a key member – drummer Dave Lombardo. Will Slayer bow down to the slacker grunge mediocrity of Pearl Jam and Nirvana? Nay nay.

Slayer gets new drummer Paul Bostaph to introduce this album with some wild drum rolls. After that, you get some awesome riffs with enough tempo changes to make Yes or King Crimson envious.

The seminal Thrash band is no stranger to controversy. Since the days of Angel of Death, Slayer has endorsed morbid imagery – enough so to cause some critics to accuse them of Satanic and Neo-Nazi views. Slayer adds fuel to the fire with Divine Intervention, firstly with the sleeve. The cover has a skeleton on a pentagram formed by swords – the band's emblem of sorts.

On the disk, you will find the image of a fan with the word 'Slayer' slashed into each wrist. I can just imagine how this lead to much misguided dabbling in Satanism and self-harm.

Various newspaper clippings are portrayed on the inside of the sleeve, with selected words blacked out. In typical anti-censorship, anti-government and anti-religious control stance. Albums like these are like alchemy. They turn you into metal.


Jane Austen, in all her pride and prejudice. Don't let her Victorian dress or her hessian underthings fool you. This lady had a bitter satirical bite. Apparently, she was no Slayer fan either.

Lyrically, this is no Jane Austen novel either.

• SS-3 refers to the license plate number of the car Reinhard Heydrich travelled in when he was shot.


• 213 is based on the dealings of Jeffrey Dahmer. 213 refers to his apartment number.

Reynhard Heydrich. Don't let the fancy suit fool you. This is a wicked, wicked man. Apparently, he's no Jane Austen fan either.

213 also features some of the sickest metal lyrics ever.

Death, love's final embrace
Your cool tenderness
Memories, keep love alive
Memories, will never die

Doesn't look like much, but once you know what the song is about it gets a bit more chilly.

Definitely still one of my favourite metal albums.

Track listing

1. Killing Fields


2. Sex. Murder. Art.


3. Fictional Reality


4. Dittohead


5. Divine Intervention


6. Circle of Beliefs


7. SS-3


8. Serenity in Murder


9. 213


10. Mind Control

Personell

• Tom Araya: bass; vocals.


• Jeff Hannemann: guitar.


• Kerry King: guitar.


• Paul Bostaph: drums.

Rating

Cherish Your Life: Saw (2004) Review

Conclusion
A grizzly tale, but not a gory one in the horror-porn torture porn gorno tradition of Hostel. Saw is strictly driven by suspense and intricate plot. Highly entertaining and with more twists in the plot than in a koeksister. A beacon of original light shining through the darkness of politically correct angsty teen creature features.




One of Tannie Marie's koeksisters. Tannie Marie ships koeksisters all over America, bringing a touch of Boere culture to the new world.

Plot
Two men find themselves in a locked bathroom, while on videotape. No, it's not George Michael and a member of the Village People. It is Dr Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and photographer Adam Faulkner (Leigh Whannell). They find a corpse between them, which holds a tape recorder and a gun. Talk about a silver lining. They each find a cassette in their pockets, with their names on it. The cassettes instruct Dr Gordon to kill Adam within a given time frame.

Of course doctors usually save lives, with the notable exception of the South African minister of health, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who rather saves witch doctors and their superstitions. Dr Gordon is persuaded to join the dark side of Dr Tshabalala-Msimang and Dr Hannibal Lecter when he finds out that his family is kept hostage by an evil man.

Review

• For some reason, Saw is grouped with Hostel and Devil's Rejects in the torture porn or gorno (gore + porno) genre. This genre is described as being devoid of suitable metaphor for its explicit scenes of nudity and violence. Personally, I found Saw to have many suitable metaphors and the version I have on DVD is bloody but not gory. Not that I mind blood and guts for the sake of blood and guts, but just to prove the point, Saw features no nudity that I can recall.


• Since it is claimed that the Jigsaw Killer never actually kills anyone himself, the film is highly original. The exception is photographer Adam Faulkner, but I won't give away anything.


• Saw has an excellent plot. I pride myself in identifying the killers in this sort of film early on. Of course, I was right, but only half right. I love being outsmarted.


• The Jigsaw Killer, so named because he leaves the imprint of a jigsaw puzzle piece on his victims, is hailed as the new Freddy Krueger. This antagonist of the Saw series is a person with a terminal illness who wishes to teach his victims the value of their lives by placing them in virtually inescapable situations. They could learn the same valuable lesson by waiting in line at customs instead. The irony here is the victims have a choice between their lives or the lives of others, whereas the Jigsaw Killer has no choice.


• This film attempts to answer the question of what one would do when one is faced with the options of acting civil for the greater good, or acting in your own best interest at the peril of strangers in a life or death situation. For this reason, the Wikipedia article on the Jigsaw Killer identifies certain Darwinian, Nietzschean and Deleuzian traits in the methods of the Jigsaw Killer.


• In contrast with other excellent serial killer films like Manhunter, the focus here is on the psychological ordeal of the victims instead of on the complications of the personality of the killer. This is not a case of finding a new mask and a new weapon for a generic mass murderer and ticking his victims off one by one. The character of the Jigsaw Killer is carefully crafted, but the viewer is not forced to be a fanboy with trading cards. Excellent film!

Director
James Wan

Cast

• Cary Elwes


• Michael Emerson


• Danny Glover


• Monica Potter


• Leigh Whannell

Rating

Dagon (2001) Review

Conclusion
A noble effort by Miskatonic University graduates. It features buckets of blood and everybody's favourite Cephalopoda: Cthulhu! The Great Old One even gets a sacrifice or two.

This film is clearly low budget, but whether that is a weakness or a strength depends on your perception. I feel necessity breeds invention. And sometimes a race of Merpeople.

Plot
Barbara and Paul are enjoying a cruise when their ship suddenly becomes shipwrecked. That's what you get for letting an IT professional navigate without google earth. They seek help in a nearby Spanish harbour. At first, the inhabitants seem friendly, but the tide soon turns.

The inhabitants are a tad more than eccentric. In fact, they are just plain creepy:

• they have no electricity. No, this is not a South African port, but a fictional Spanish town called Imboca


• there is a strange symbol everywhere


• there are virtually no opposable thumbs in Imboca


• no really, I am not kidding. There are virtually no opposable thumbs in Imboca

It turns out that Barbara was kidnapped instead of being helped. To what end? Well, that's where Cthulhu comes in.

Inhabitants of Imboca faithfully answer to the call of Cthulhu. If you aren't chanting "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu ftaghn!" by now, you might not enjoy this movie.

Review

• Dagon is loosely based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. In particular, the tales Dagon and The Shadow Over Innsmouth were used: Dagon for the name, and the latter for the plot. The infamous author is long since "dead but dreaming", which means you can find the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft for download, free.


• There is some CGI, but it is not intrusive. More importantly, it is not tacky. You won't find actors playing imaginary dodge ball in front of a blue screen. It must be one of the few recorded incidents of tastefully used CGI.


• There are several latex heads. Even latex hands. Expect even anatomically non-descript latex, but as far as I could tell there were no severed latex heads.


• Expect even some fine breast implants on display.


• A man features as the protagonist and a woman as an antagonist, or half a woman as an antagonist. Nevertheless, for the most part, Dagon abides by the 10 Commandments of Horror.


• Produced by Brian Yuzna, who also directed Faust: Love Of the Damned. He is one of my favourite producers, because if you see his name on a credit roll, it means buckets of blood. Dagon is no exception. Let's just say your skin will crawl.


• Dagon is Spanish actor Francisco Rabal's last film. The dynamic between him and Ezra Godden is great to watch, especially in the dialogue right before Rabal's character gets... no wait, that would be telling. Watch it!


• It could always do with more ooze.


• It could always do with more fine breast implants.

Dagon also teaches us morality. It suggests a perplexing philosophy, sometimes difficult to grasp, but for the layman it could be summarised in a few words:

What Would Cthulhu Do?

Director
Stuart Gordon

Cast
Ezra Godden
Macarena Gómez
Raquel Meroño
Jorge Luis Pérez
Francisco Rabal

Rating

Necrophagist - Epitaph (2004) review

Review
Since the days Ritchie Blackmore played classically inspired leads for Deep Purple, a neo-classical movement has erupted in popular music. Yngwie Malmsteen became synonymous with the movement thanks to his high level of technical virtuosity, particularly his sweep arpeggios. Since then, the cheese has been cut back considerably but the sweep picking technique remains a trusted item in the metal guitarist bag of tricks.

Necrophagist released their debut, Onset of Putrefaction, in 1999. Suiçmez played and recorded most of the instruments on the album and left the drum duties to Steve Jobs. The sound on the album is lacking, and of course for this kind of music having a machine do any work is a disgrace. The album has recently been re-recorded by Suiçmez, who was never pleased with its sound. Despite this, the album caught on well with fans of brutally technical music.

Following the relative success of Onset of Putrefaction, Suiçmez assembled a band of session musicians and toured extensively. Epitaph was recorded after the tour, mostly with live musicians.

You will be completely arpeggionated after listening to Epitaph. Suiçmez is an incredibly skilled and amazingly tasteful guitarist - enough so that Ibanez designed their Xiphos guitar with him:



The lyrics deal with your standard death metal fanfare of death and destruction. That much is compulsory, but the riffs drip with melody. All the arpeggios provided by guitarist and bassist (and one could almost claim the drummer too) are enough to confuse a nest of killer bees. There is a feeling of very strictly organised chaos in every track. Picture the nest of killer bees getting confused and then proceeding to fly along sine graphs, cosine graphs and a host of other hypnotic trajectories to torment a ferret on a raft in the Limpopo river. Despite the fact that Africa does not have killer bees. Or ferrets. Basically, imagine extremely mathematical noise.

Conclusion
Suiçmez is a fair vocalist, clearly from the Melissa Cross school of screeching, but applies these methods to gargling and growling. The technical skills on display with this album are on par with that of Vital Remains, with Necrophagist being far less brutal. It lends itself to the Cynic school of odd rhythms, syncopated palm mutes and aristocratic drumming. There is a great variety of styles on display. Even though the album is barely longer than half an hour, it doesn't leave one with a feeling of emptiness once it is over. In fact, you want to listen to it on repeat.

Track listing

1. Stabwound


2. The Stillborn One


3. Ignominious & Pale


4. Diminished to B


5. Epitaph


6. Only Ash Remains


7. Seven


8. Symbiotic in Theory

Personell
Muhammed Suiçmez: Guitar; vocals.
Christian Muenzner: Guitar.
Stefan Fimmers: Bass guitar.
Hannes Grossmann: Drums.

And in case you were wondering, my personality type:

INTJ - "Mastermind". Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population.

Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)

Rating

The 10 Commandments of Horror (part 2)

At last, the merciful completion of the final five commandments of horror. If you missed out on the most excellent first instalment, you can find it here. Here follows the remaining five, with an extra one because I know you have been losing sleep over this:


5. Thou shalt have as thine protagonist a female, untainted and nubile

There are perfectly valid academic reasons for having a female in the role of thine protagonist. Of course, being untainted is not a requirement for sequels. Nay, the protagonist is to be deflowered in the first instalment to enable the franchise to bloom. If she is not deflowered, she is to be beheaded, but giveth head one way or another she shalt! Although you should definitely make her nubile in the sequels. You don't want continuity errors.


4. Thou shalt have a twist at the end

And let it be filled with surprise. The original Friday the 13th had this right, at least. You could get away without a plot, if you provide a sufficiently macabre twist at the end. Another case in point is Children of the Corn III, but I don't want to give anything away yet. A classy, well-executed example could be found in the Ninth Gate.


3. Thou shalt have a fleeting conclusion

Unless you pay heed to the sound advice of the ninth commandment with much fervour and prolong your film for the sake of that law. Or perhaps to drench the cast in a few more buckets of blood. Or perhaps both. The conclusion should last at most 20 minutes. You don't have to tie up all the loose ends, because you might want to make a sequel. Or seven. Which leads us to our next commandment.


2. Thou shalt sequel, and often so

Because you will get it wrong a few times. Nightmare on Elm Street is an excellent example of a franchise that had its very high points and very low nadirs. The Final Nightmare is not bad at all, despite the reviews you may read, and the DVD version even comes with a 3D ending. The secret is to keep your protagonist in character. Do not get artsy, you want to expand the fan base of the original. Rather than changing the rules or the personality abruptly, try to let the personality think of cunning ways to work around the rules you establish in the first film of the franchise. It's called a catharsis. Just because your audience only wants to see gratuitous inexplicable boob shots and buckets of blood, does not mean you should not develop a character. You must have a bigger budget by now, which means - yes: more buckets of blood, more elaborate real fake latex heads, more ooze and more inexplicable boob shots. A developing character, which unfolds onscreen, would result in more sequels. Which means more buckets of blood, and you get the idea.


1. Thou shalt not remake, ever.

Not even if thou can't sequel due to man made copyright laws. Thou shalt spawn then a prequel, but nay, a remake never. It is a grave sin and your children shalt be struck by pox. A business of rabid ferrets shalt devour them, and then the business of rabid ferrets shalt be infected with pox, and then the children of the business of rabid ferrets infected with pox shalt be infected with pox, and infect your children's children with pox before the children of the business of rabid ferrets infected with pox shalt devour the children of your children, who had been infected with pox originally, before their children devour your children's children again. Then an unknown film maker of straight-to-video nasties, who used the business of rabid ferrets infected with pox as a more economic solution to latex heads in one of his films, which would probably get reviewed here at one time or another, shalt be infected with pox, and spit on the graves of your children, and your children's children, before digging them up, infecting them with pox again and then your children, your children's children, the film maker's children and the film maker himself shalt be devoured by a business of rabid ferrets, with no known relation to the business of rabid ferrets from before, or the business of rabid ferrets from before before. I am not sure if they too would be infected with pox, but I hope so.

If you ever think of making a remake, remember that being struck thrice by pox carried by a business of rabid ferrets is not ponies and rainbows. There are countless of terrible remakes, some of which feature Paris Hilton, none of which I am going to name. Not even if it sticks to all the other commandments of horror can a remake be excused.

The only remakes which are to be excused, are the ones on my list. But I only made that list to cast a silver lining around a dark cloud of ferret morsels.

Just to be perfectly clear:

0. Thou shalt not remake, ever!

Vital Remains : Icons of Evil (2007) review

Shop for Vital Remains at Amazon.com!

Personell
Glen Benton, Tony Lazaro, Dave Suzuki.

Track listing

1. Where is Your God Now


2. Icons of Evil


3. Scorned


4. Born to Rape the World


5. Reborn... the Upheaval of Nihility


6. Hammer Down the Nails


7. Shrapnel Embedded Flesh


8. Til Death


9. In Infamy


10. Disciples of Hell" (Yngwie Malmsteen Cover)

Review
Certain infidels who were unimpressed by latter Deicide efforts maintain Glen Benton should stick with Dave Suzuki in Vital Remains instead of continuing with his own band. That, or he should have fulfilled his self-destructive prophesy and committed Glenoncide at age 33. While Glen seems like a jovial fellow, crucifix burnt on his forehead and drunken delinquencies besides (or maybe because), the guy is not the sharpest splinter on a vampire stake. However, with the last Deicide effort, the shunned Son of Satan himself rose considerably in my estimation. This Vital Remains album further redeems Benton.

The previous Vital Remains album, Dechristianize, started with a Carmina Burana sample. As much as I admire Orff's work, the smell of Old Spice is not one I'd like to associate with a heavy metal record. Nay, I prefer the stench of redemption, or better yet the stench of fire and brimstone. It seems that Suzuki shares my passion for perdition. Icons of Evil kicks off with a sample from The Passion of the Christ. The movie was not as Good as the Book, but the sample is a marked improvement over the Orff cliche.

Suzuki is a matchless guitarist and a matchless drummer. If you liked Dechristianize, you would like Icons of Evil. Seemingly effortless sweep arpeggios, tumultuous drums and sinister writing orchestrated together with Glen Benton's vocals resembling a lawnmower running over rabid ferrets. I've had this album for about 2 months, and I'm still not tired of it. My neighbours are a different story though...

My copy has a slipcase with an anguished face and the title in handsome red crimson writing. Once inside the slipcase, a rather disturbing image of the king of kings being nailed to the cross meets me. Seriously man, petty blasphemies are one thing, but why Elvis? You just don't go there. The horror doesn't end there.

Inside the booklet, we find the band posing in front of unsavoury banners. In the middle, there is a centrefold. Before you get all excited at the prospect of seeing Glen in lederhosen, let me explain. It is a painting of the three guys in the band and Eddie from Iron Maiden on horseback. The four horsemen are gripping chains. These chains are tied to a body at their centre, the body being that of Elvis. Their horses are ripping the body of Elvis apart. Now that is too much metal for one hand.

Here is a little taste of the track Born to Rape the World live, with Brian Hobbie on vocals. He looks rather jehovial himself:


Conclusion
Suzuki furthers the ambitions of his brilliant project with this worthy release. Technical death metal in the tradition of Tampa still owns all. Ultimately, technical finesse and brute force tactics combine in a smorgasbord of fire, brimstone and the passion of the Elvis. The Malmsteen cover is a brutal kick in the nads, but in a nice way. Ruthless like a rabid ferret!

Rating

Evil Dead (1983)

Director
Sam Raimi

Cast
Betsy Baker
Bruce Campbell
Richard DeManincor
Ellen Sandweiss
Theresa Tilly

Plot
Five college students decide to make vacation in a cabin in the woods. The desolate forest leads them to do what college students are inclined to do, namely indulge in a little occult ritual in addition to making hanky panky sexy time.

They stumble upon an audio cassette player (it's like the iPod of the eighties that works with a steam engine) that summons evil spirits. If you remember audio cassettes, you can summon spirits with them by playing the tape backwards, or if you let the tape lie on your dashboard in the sun and then play it. Of course the only persons with enough mojo to play a tape backwards were Satanic musicians and evangelist preachers. Interesting connection they share.

This cassette contains passages from the Necronomicon, a mythical book invented by H.P. Lovecraft as part of his ploy to mock religion. The Necronomicon of Evil Dead is not so innocuous, and evil spirits start to haunt the cabin. The Bruce and his consorts have to battle the spirits with McGuyver-like ingenuity.

Review
In the year of our Bruce - well, Bruce can make it any year he likes, at any given time – Sam Raimi documented the pristine manner in which to deal with an undead attack. It is true that one Romano first brought us knowledge of the existence of zombies, casting his lots on their side. Alas, this had been before the coming of our Bruce. Generous helpings of whoopass and chainsaws put these metaphysical entities in their place. Evil Dead should be passed from generation to generation to ensure our children and our children's children - even the test tube ones - know how to prepare for an attack from the undead. The Bruce should be made a saint and honoured by having one hand of our firstborn replaced with a chainsaw in his homage.

Conclusion
The Bruce deserves to be further immortalised in the mind of the public with his own strand of poor attempts at humour, from the same genus as those of The Hoff, The Chuck and The Shat. Maybe not The Shat, but Evil Dead is superawesome!

Rating

Two Alice Cooper DVDs

I recently got these 2 DVDs of live performances by Alice Cooper. Typically, I am drawn to the older Alice Cooper with a stable kick-ass band lineup that diluted due to megalomania - something necessary to both the survival of a band and its downfall - and the tolls of the rock and roll lifestyle. This lineup captured a performance on film, but that's not one of the ones I got hold of, unfortunately. The first solo tour of singer Alice Cooper after the band Alice Cooper became defunct is offered on the first DVD, while the second DVD offers an Alice Cooper from the eighties when his antics proved a hit with the ümlaut heävy crowd.

Welcome To My Nightmare
Alice Cooper started in the sixties as one of the first ghoulish leather-clad shock rock mayhem makers, and not as a stunt double for The Crow as rumours may have you believe. Welcome To My Nightmare hosts one of the most compelling and influential performers of all time battling his way through props comprising gigantic spiders, skeletons, concerned parents and most ruthless of all - journalists.



It would not be a self-respecting seventies show if there were no bass or drum solos. These are thrown in for good measure, plus the bassist has a Brakpan snor and does some porno grooves which stretch the spandex of all the dancers just a tad. As an added bonus, there are many pärking lot scenes with audience members all claiming the genius of Alice Cooper in foreign accents and mock-Cooper face paint.

The Nightmare Returns
The eighties. A decade of decadence. Following the precedent set by Led Zeppelin, bands like Mötley Crüe went hellbent for leather and tried very hard to destroy themselves. Alice Cooper on the other hand rediscovered Jesus and sobriety and subsequently some of his short term memory. Like where he put his old spandex.

The Nightmare Returns features a much more confident Alice Cooper with a pseudo-virtuoso band and less intervals between the songs. The audience would tolerate none of that anyway. This time the enemy comprises of boa constrictors, plastic dolls and nefarious makeup, but worst of all - he confronts it with ten years more worth of sagging skin in what appears to be the same spandex. Except it grew an exoskeleton.

Wait at least two hours after a heavy meal before watching.

Lady Frankenstein (DVD)

The nubile Lady Frankenstein returns from boarding school where she achieved her medical degree. She follows in the proud footsteps of her father, also Dr Frankenstein, by animating freshly deceased animals like rats, burglars and rapists. He looks more like a hair-plug infested soap opera star than a doctor, which is all good because soap operas do need to animate corpses from time to time.



Soon, Lady Frankenstein improves on the controversial methods of her father and starts animating corpses left, right and centre in a hapless attempt to satisfy her lust. See, the Lady loves the dead, in more ways than one.You can tell the animated corpses from the normal humans by their gigantic latex heads, but that looks almost as wrong in print as what it looks like on screen. The lady might as well call her town "Frankenstown" after a short while, and if you care for a plot, you might lose what pray little there is between the body swapping, the retired porn stars, the gigantic latex heads and last but not least, the retired porn stars.

The film is directed by Mel Welles, who is perhaps best known for his creepy performance in Little Shop of Horrors (1960). His acting career did not always fare so well, but his fluency in 5 languages proved to fare very well in Europe. This is how he came to direct Lady Frankenstein (actually entitled La Figlia di Frankenstein) in Italy.

Cult writer Edward di Lorenzo writes the script, which is often considered the zenith of his artistic achievement. He currently teaches script writing at an American university. Many argued that Lady Frankenstein provided a feminist alternative to the Frankenstein films, with many opposed to such arguments on account of the female nudity. I guess feminists do not like getting naked, and judging by the looks of some, I do not want them to get naked either:


Andrea Dworkin, the radical feminist. I would love to see Mike Tyson try his dating tricks on her.