“There are definitely rites sometimes, but their significance isn’t explained and they’re not especially erotic. No one in this movie is interested in sex; they just happen to be doing the things they’re doing bereft of clothing. No one’s particularly interested in horror, either. Any of that icky bloody stuff is obscured by fight choreography that could best be described as “booze-soaked stumble-fucking.”
Confluence Of Cult.com
Who made it? Directed by Jesus Franco | Written by Jesus Franco + Mary Shelley | Director Of Photography Raúl Artigot| Special Effects/make up Monique Adélaïde | Music Vladiir Cosma / Voncent Gemignani / Robert Hermel / Armando Sciascia / Daniel White
Who’s in it? Alberto Dalbes | Dennis Price | Howard Vernon | Beatriz Savon | Anne Libert | Fernando Bilbao | Carmen Yazalde
If you weren’t watching this the week it came out, you might have been watching…
Soylent Green | Fists Of Fury | Last Tango In Paris | Jeremy | High Plains Drifter
Production notes and whatnot
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068559/
What’s it all about?
An owl hoots. And not for the last time. The Erotic Hoots Of Franken-Owl (if that wasn’t too Tim Burtony) would do as an alternative title.
As us nasty fans would hope for, a nice handwritten painty font then splashes the legend “La Malediction De Frankenstein!” For it seems we are in the realm of the dubbed picture.
We are in the trad’ Frankenstein cinematic era, notable by waistcoats, carriages, beards, cuffs, busoms and townsfolk. We close-up on a plastic medical-school rag-week skeleton. A joke-shop human brain in a jar. We pull back to see the laboratory familiar to all who go in for this sort of hokum. Under a spotlight, in broad daylight, a classic leering, eye-rolling “Egor” trope fiddles with plastic and Bakelite knobs that wouldn’t be invented for another century. On a slab, there is – let’s face it – a chunky wrestler covered in patchy silver paint. He’s not a hunk. He’s a chunk. Think more Adam West than Hulk Hogan. He has gingery hair and the sort of stock Frankenstein make-up popularised and parodied by The Munsters and Hanna Barbera: eyebrow ridges, square skull, neck electrodes, stuck on scars.
The monster screams on a table as someone in fancy “Baron-ish” garb tends to his electrodes. This is of course his creator, going for the chubby land-owner/ Joss Ackland, look in his cravat and boots. It’s already clear we’re putting a firm slice of “ham” in to the “ham-mer horror tropes.” God this looks cheap, and it’s been running for less than a minute.
Let’s hope this hasn’t opened with its strongest material.
Next, we’re in the forest at moonlight. Carriages and horses clatter through unconvincing “day for night” footage.”
The driver helps out a trembling spooky witchy starey eyed woman (Melissa). She is thin and sinister and looks like Helen Bonham Carter’s crack-headed cousin. Or, these days, like Helena Bonham Carter. But who can she be?
To warn us of impending looniness, the score goes bonkers freeform jazz and among more owlly hoots, a double bass, tom-toms and vibraphone do a mondo freak out. Yep she’s a weirdo.
Back at the modern mock-olde-worlde house (velvet drapes appear to cover UPVC double glazing),
in walks a figure. They pass through the gothicy whitewashed corridors looking for someone. Or something.
Back in the lab, they are increasing the voltage and dosage on the silver beast. More animal screaming. “He has the ability to talk!” Baron Frankenstein cries. At which point our mysterious witchy woman attacks the lab! Banshee wailing and clawing, bloody mouthed with echoey shrieks, wide eyes roll to the heavens as ketchup smears.
On the score, synths go crazy. And of course, under the tirade of bloodthirsty feminine scratches and bites, our good Baron and his Egor hit the stonework floor and – with the woman having achieved her goal (murder? Theft? Hunger? Photosynthesis? Bob A Job week? It’s not clear) her carriage escapes into the clippy clopping night/day.
At a distant “castle,” – soon to be revealed as “the Castle of Baana!” flutes and cymbals signal…something. On the high balcony stands our villain. He is draped in suitably olde-world kingly wizardy garb/blue curtain. He watches the shore as below, in a cove, two village folk haul a coffin from a boat. This man is Cagliostro. But not to be confused with this Cagliostro, who appeared in Marvel Comics. (In case you’re much much more of a nerd than I took you for.)
He watches. Oddly, a cowbell “clonks” on the soundtrack, making us wonder if the coffin contains a side of beef, or perhaps Albert Bouchard, the drummer from Blue Oyster Cult. Long tedious shots of the clumsy men hauling the box up the castle steps in the manner of Laurel n Hardy. The mood is set by adding more percussion – an ominous timpani this time.
Sick of waiting for these two UPS doofuses, Cagliostro goes back to his castle rooms. On his bed, awaiting his attention, lie two women. All pale and nudey. Women, that is. Not girls. Not the Megan Fox type. Proper women, with hips and full bums and wobbly skin. They plead and writhe for Cagliostro’s love – or at least perhaps, his penis – but, in the manner of most rapey priest types, he dismisses their cries. “Bitches!” Some slapping. Some nudey dark quim action in neat triangles as they wrestle with a guard who throws them out. Tch. Dames
Back on the Baana balcony, the two twits are still trying to work out which way is up on their Amazon delivery. But Cagliostro meets Melissa, the witchy woman of our story! Ye’, ‘tis she of the carriage and the eye-rolling murder. “I can see you, master” she swoons. (There’s a lot of “my maaaster!” gasping to come). “As if my eyes had sight.” Ahhh! Melissa is blind. Hence the swooning and over-acting.
As a handheld camera swoops and sweeps about the balcony, Melissa – who makes up for her blindness with questionable visions and predictions – foresees death and blood! Oh no! And she foresees Frankenstein’s creature raping the most beautiful woman, utterly at your command. Oh yes!
This, it appears, is Cagliostro’s plan.
So we put two and two together and it turns out the body in the coffin is the silver monster. Melissa has murdered his creators and has shipped his warm-ish body off to her master. Cagliostro is now in a theme park dungeon, looking upon his prize. A fat man in silver paint and fake stick-on scars.
Cagliostro gives the silver Beast his instructions: Obey the master at all times, go out, find the loveliest lady you can and bring her back. As the string and wind-chime section of the orchestra earn their time and half, there is much “Jedi” like long exchanges of glances. Christ, you’d think they were about to be hurled into a Sarlacc.
Elsewhere in the castle dungeon, two women (possibly the two from the bedroom? I can’t be sure or be bothered to check) hang by their wrists from the wall, awaiting punishment or death or somesuch. Much like Michael Palin in Life Of Brian. “You lucky bastard.”
Melissa senses them. Or just hears their half-hearted clanking. It’s not clear. But she enters their enclosure…for what? Well at this point it could be anything. Sex? Lunch? Some saucy braille action?
We cut to morning. Very loud sound-library birdsong.
Another oddly, but not very, gothicky house. The local village doctor (Dr. Seward) is tending to the concussed Baron Frankenstein. It appears Melissa’s chomping and scratching was not fatal. The Baron admits his sinister work to Seward: breathing life into the tissue of a dead silver wrestler. He pleads for Seward to continue his work! Save the creature! In the name of science!
But knock-knock! Who’s this? Well it’s the local copper, an Inspector Tanner. He is asked to wait, so Seward can get the final bit of plot from the Baron’s last gasps. “There is something you have to know!” the Baron splutters in his last breath. “A vital fact!”…and then drops dead. Idiot. Tch.
But curiouser and curiouser.
Inspector Tanner arrives in Seward’s lab, tired of waiting. He sees the dead Baron. My notes don’t tell me how he reacts. I assume in no particular way, as I’m pretty good at recording the good stuff. They don’t murder each other, that I know.
And now to church. Baron Frankenstein must be buried in the proper churchy manner, and indeed a proper churchy manor. A coffin is brought out to the sunlight, altar boys and whatnot fuss about. Latin is chanted, bells clang. Inspector Tanner watches the service, clearly interested in the murder of the mysterious Baron. Choirs sing “et lux perpetua luceat eis” and other public school incantations. Crows crow. Organs pipe and puff. But who is this at the back of the congregation? A glamourous woman in a veil, watching the whole gig. She has one of those silly tiny cocktail hats.
The cheap coffin is laid on the stone work. Our lady in the daft hat tosses roses onto the lid. We presume, at this point, the coffin holds the dead body of Baron Frankenstein. Although to be fair it’s mighty skinny-fit, barely able to fit a pair of jeans belonging to a member of Green Day. But ho-hum, perhaps they squeezed him in or spooned him out for the fitting.
Doctor Seward approaches the dame. She, it appears, is Vera, the daughter of the deceased. Aka The young Ms Frankenstein. She is too tired to talk to the doc who is frankly creepily trying to get a date, as if she was an Austin film critic and he was Harry Knowles. But she gives him the big rebuff. She is not interested in discussing her treatise, medical degree or not.
But before they part, they ponder, mystically, how the Baron could have died in his lab…and yet have been found 2 miles way in a forest, ravaged by wolf like vultures. Or indeed, mountain lions?
Hmmmm. Vera excused herself. We imagine she knows more than she’d letting on. She’s keeping it, as it were, under her hat. Although it can’t be much gossip – it really is a very small hat.
Inspector Tanner arrives, just outside the nick of time. In the nick of time’s carpark if you will. He is very interested in this mysterious daughter. And her tiny hat.
Back with timpani solos and cheap night-time filters. Oh and a lot more owls. Figures enter the church. They make off with the Baron’s coffin! And, we presume, the Baron inside. It’s not made clear. Drums boom, Horses clatter. Owls owl. You get the idea
Now (keep up) we’re back in the lab where we started. Young Vera now has her dad on the slab, wires and machines and whatnot. A female Egor (Egette? Ed.) asks about success? Vera fusses with cables and wires and knobs. She is positive she can bring daddy back! Windy wah wah sound effects.
And in an unconvincing manner (and an even more unconvincing manor) the Baron awakes! As if, just from a nap. One half expects him to scratch his scrotum and ask them to pop the kettle on while he has a shit. “Get my creature back!” he pleads. “I gave my creature mind! They stole it from me!” Vera – dutiful daughter that she is, swears she will retrieve the monster. “They’ll pay for committing this crime!!”
In case you’re interested? We about 20mins in.
More owls hoot. Or it might be the same owls. Either way, some repetition of the hoots. It is later. A young woman lets Dr Seward in to see Vera. Her nurse is unhappy, but Vera is willing to have a natter. They talk science.
He explains the Baron tried to tell him something before he died. He wants to talk about it. Vera couldn’t be less interested and dismisses this snoopy medic. A little flirting we sense? Possibly, but they’re not very good at it. Piano chords tinkle as Seward leaves, suggesting a possible romantic dalliance. Or at least a han-job behind the cemetery.
ADR crickets tell us we are in a cheap sound studio. We cut to frankly the most beautiful woman in the world who primly is undressed, petticoats ahoy, by her maid in some draughty 4 poster room. We get a little bare bum and a boob or two, if that’s why you’re reading this. Oh grow up.
As she primly strips and they turn down the bed, outside the window crazy Melissa turns up. It occurs to me now, watching it for the third time, blind Melissa is not only blind but also sort of half woman, a quarter a slightly weirder woman, and about 2 fifths bird. She has feathery arms, a beaky nose and tends to – and there’s no other term for it – caw and squawk at her prey. Outside the window she sniffs the night air and senses the sexy boudoir lady getting her boobs out and climbing into a big old plumpy bed. Her fancy is taken! This must be the woman she and Cagliostro yearn for.
She hurries to the carriage where old Silver Face Monster waits in an oddly patient manner. She tells him to get the girl! Unaware, the lovely woman sits up in bed for some candle-light reading before shut-eye (a tome that appears to be G-K of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Ahhh, home schooling).
The monster appears at the window! Our lady screams unconvincingly! The monster attacks! And we get an odd zoom-in close up of his tight buns in lesuire slacks. Which reminds me of nothing more than that weird pervy close up of the Bat Nipples in Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin.
Now? Flutes and the castle Baana! Sigh. We’re back here again.
Our lovely lady, sporting a healthy 70s bush in the obligatory porny triangle, is now hanging naked, helpless and unconscious. Melissa – now even more birdy than we thought with stuck on blue feathers all over her torso, a la Batman & Robin again, this time Uma Thruman’s Poison Ivy – chants about a creation of a master race! The first sacrifice!
Beneath them, down red-lit polystyrene castle steps come “a coven.” Or something. Wierdos. Makeup, skulls, cowls, hoods, masks. Our naked beauty is thrown to the floor. Menacing Cagliostro commands: “I want her head!”
A goon steps in, an unconvincing neck slice! She gags, she collapses. A proper Heinz variety Ketchupy knife. “A clean severance, yours to command and ours to obey!” Cagliostro lifts the head. The oddballs in cloaks and masks and mum’s borrowed curtains watch the baffling ceremony. Frankly, we have no idea why he’s bothered to do this. I thought they were going to shag? Well why let something like a missing pulse and early onset rigamortis ruin the romance.
Ah well. Onwards.
Meanwhile, Vera is back looking drab in the lab with dad on the slab, as Roger McGough would probably have droned. Trying to bring him back, she pumps up the decibels up to eleven like she’s Nigel Tufnell with a Marshall amp.
There is much am dram groaning and synth sounds. She asks who his killer was! The Baron gasps and groans and plays it for all its worth. Who? Who? Who is he?! “He’s mad!” Baron croaks. “Avenge me! Cagliostro! He died centuries ago! His soul is constantly recreated! He wants to destroy humanity! Go to the castle of Baana!” There are gasps, over acting, an Oscar attempt…and farewell… We have one dead Baron.
Silence. That we assume is meant to be chilling. It isn’t.
Daughter Vera swears vengeance. “Revenge is our work! The world will recognise Dr Frankenstein!”
Yeah yeah yeah, and so on.
We’ve got about 43 minutes to go.
Flutes and castle Baana again. A POV Carpetner halloweeny camera patrols the castle gates. From a distance, two women (Vera and her maid? Oh I don’t know, they all look the same in this garb) spy our Silver monster casually climbing into a carriage. “We have to see where they’re going!”
Now a boudoir. More stuffed birds than Norman Bates’s workshop. A readers-wives type woman lays “comfortably” on a chaise, dressing gown pulled awkwardly open for full boobs.
It must be very drafty. At the other end of the preposterously long room, a man paints her. Badly. She complains of being tired of the portrait endeavours. The man (all puffy shirt and puffier moustache, cravat and a splash of Hair Karate) lets her go for the night. Frankly, from the state of his drawing, he doesn’t really need her there. Just boobs and a smiley face would about cover it. Owls hoot too much, crickets crick. The pair kiss. So assume they are more than just model and artist. She leaves, heading down a gloomy corridor. More jazz drums. Sinisterish shadows. Our monster appears! A close up-scream! Frankie attempts to carry her off, we assume back to the castle.
But! Who should appear but Vera! She stops him! Demands the creature obeys his NEW master! And take HER to Cagliostro! Look at me! Look at me! (It’s like Kath & Kim, if that reference means anything).
The Monster seems un-fussed by this swap of tasks, so dumps the portrait lady and picks up Vera instead. As drums and bass fretless bass twang, owls hoot and jazzy gamelan vibes go bonkers, the monster hefts Vera (no lightweight) into his arms and he’s off back to Baana with his alternative prize.
A carriage arrives at the castle. Vera’s assistant clambers out and begins to prowl through the castle grounds. But what does spot on the lawn!? Boy oh boy, it’s Melissa-Called-Birdy chomping down on a poor victim. Melissa’s bird calls get frantic and she lets out a squawk!
The carriage driver fucks off with a clippity clop, leaving Melissa to attack the lab-gal dame with sticks. Much cat fighting and feeble stick waving.
From the turrets of Baana, we see Cagliostro look up! He can sense Melissa’s cries! Or hear them! We have no idea!
He runs to the castle door where the carriage driver is waiting. “Yeahhh, left birdy in the forest pecking at some bloke. She’ll be all right…”
Twerp.
So Cagliostro and the carriage driver head down to the cell to see the booby artist model the monster has brought to them. But fuckity doo…look who it is. Vera Frankenstein. She’s done a swappa-dee-doo. Cagliostro is livid. So slaps her about and spits on her.
They are interrupted by feathery Melissa who has returned from the forest after her stick fight. She tells Cagliostro the driver abandoned her and she was attacked by a witch. Oh ffs. Cagliostro is clearly pissed off with his driver’s incompetence so he’s flung in a cell for future torture. “We shall devise an amusing sport for the pair of them!” he says snootily. Clearly the day isn’t going as planned and he’s cheesed off.
Clanging bells. We’re back at the manor. The lab-assistant goes full am-dram Bafta, writhing and wailing on a hospital bed. She is screaming about bird women! About claws! About blood! About exposition! Calmly of course, Dr Seward paces and construes she must have been attacked by some clawy birdy bloody creature. (I wish they’d given Seward a pipe. He’s very much of the Peirce Brosnan mode in Mars Attacks. God I wish I was watching that instead).
Seward and Tanner realise the game is afoot! Or something. Vera must also be in danger! (They don’t seem too troubled by the assistant and her screaming PTSD). The cops are on the trail!
But hooray! At least we get to the scene on the box! Drums and upright bass thunder and twang and we are back in the red-lit dungeon again. The crazy crew in the hoods and cowls and masks are back to watch the afternoon’s entertainment. Cagliostro and Melissa stand narrating and cackling and narrating a bit more, like boxing referees:
“Okay, let’s keep it clean. 12 rounds of 3 minutes. You stand back to back chained together, surrounded by a floor full of spikes. Monster? You whip them feebly. You two scream and writhe and the first person to fall on the poison spikes dies. All clear? Have a good fight. Back to your corners.”
The crowd stare in theatrical lighting and the set-piece begins. This is pretty much the reason you rented it, as the sight of fully-frontal nudey folk chained up on a bed of spikes being lashed by a silver wrestler is pretty much what the poster and marketing team went with.
And it begins. The driver and our four-poster beauty and flogged limply with a short whip. Red slashes and gashes appear on their body. The crowd watch. Melissa squawks! Caglisotro laughs. This, like most scenes, seems to go on for days. Boobs get bloody. A penis wobbles a bit. Hidden Ewoks appear to chant and play drums. The crowd are clearly all jerking off under their robes and loving every minute of this crappy “Crucible” look.
Finally…the carriage driver collapses! There is cheering! He is dead on poison spikes! Laughter at length. Now Cagliostro summons the bloody and beaten Vera. She will obey him! Presumably.
Then an odd scene as Melissa transmits Cagliostro’s wishes and demands to Vera, hypnotising her and bending Vera to her master’s will! Melissa – with less birdy squawks now, more like Alan Sugars assistant on The Apprentice, explains Vera’s task at length. Cagliostro sits and stares. An out-take of Johnny Marr from The Smiths’s How Soon Is Now appears to be on the wireless. The demonic plan is laid out in painful detail!
Vera must obey! She must use her father’s knowledge to create new creatures! Bring them to life for his Monster to…well, to fuck presumably. They must be the perfect mix of beauty and submission! (Like the women advertised on Croatian marriage websites). She agrees. Coz she’s frankly off her head on something.
Cagliostro sits quietly as Melissa goes into unnecessary detail about the whole sketch.
We have 29 minutes to see how this plays out. They are not going to fly by, trust me.
Back in the manor house, Tanner discusses progress with Seward. We have idea how much time has passed. The cop talks of further disappearances. Artist models! Village girls! The assistant awakes and asks to speak to the doctor. She feels so tired. As do we of course, but only one of us have gone through such appalling trauma. I mean we’re watching it, she’s acting in it. “I feel so tired doc…so weak, so weak…”
Seward wants to know what occurred. She cannot tell him, as she is over acting too much. It’s all a blank! I can’t! Doc pleads with her. Other lives depend on it! Seward starts world associating to prompt her messed up memory. “Spring? Rain. Forest? Flowers. Europe? Cagliastro! Cagliastro! Cagliastro! Vera? MONSTER! Castle! Death!” She becomes hysterical. Thankfully, like in that weird bit in Ghostbusters where Bill Murray goes to meet Sigourney Weaver and she freaks out and he doses her with the sodium penthathal he HAPPENED to have with him (#metoo), they knock her out with a hyperdermic. “We better go!”
Owls again. Back in the “castle” of day for night whitewashed crappy gothic doors and lattice and oak.
Tanner and Seward arrive. Sneaking around to the soft sound of a distant jazz trio rehearsing the best of Henry Mancini, a fuck load more owls add atmos. They find the Dead Baron under a sheet in the lab. Jabbing at a large wooden BBC Stereophonic Workshop Sound Effects machine, things begin to hum and whirr and buzz. The Baron stirs! He begins to shake and spasm and over-act and try and deliver coherent exposition! “Come closer doctor Seward! You know my secret! Have pity! Don’t interfere. She is at Baana Castle avenging me! Don’t interfere! Get out!” and so on. He gives a final theatrical spasm and collapses. I want to say “dead” but this is the third time they’ve woken him up so I imagine he’ll be back before the credits. He must be very grouchy.
The cop and the doc hunt for the Baron’s diary to search for clues. More jazzy Mancini as they rifle through desks and papers. But next door! As the string section get back from a 3 martini lunch and realise they’re paid by the note, the music goes psycho-whatnot and from under his deathly sheet…yep! The Baron awakes. Again! All stiff and Frankensteiny, scarred face and wide eyes,
He stumbles in to the study, creeps up on Seward and, with no upper body strength at all, tries to strange him. Frantic music as Seward collapses, gasping. The Baron blank faced as he tightens his grip. When who should appear with an – ahem – handy bottle of sulphuric acid? Inspector Tanner! A hurled splash of acid on the Baron and he collapses, freeing Seward. But leaving his hands behind in grotty rubbery stumps. That’s some acid. The severed hands are tossed to the desk. Won’t be needing them.
We hurtle, sort of, towards a climax. Back at the castle in a room over-looking the bay, Cagliostro and Melissa command Vera to bring life to the beauty who survived the spikey-floored WrestleMania. She lies naked, remarkably neatly trimmed downstairs and proposterously perky upstairs as Melissa incants meaningless drivel about beauty and new races and past and future and whatnot to the gods and a dazed Vera flicks switches and twists knobs and gets the sound effects and flashing lights going. Suddenly on the slab, the dead woman screams and jiggles and thrusts and makes “coming painfully back to life” acting manoeuvres. Flashing lights. Very fake perty boobs fail to wobble much. She pouts and gasps and collapses.
As a “well done dear,” Caglistro gives Melissa the key to the dungeon and allows her to enjoy whatever prisoner she chooses. Much chirruping and squawking from old feathery flaps.
Vera prepares to reanimate our perky beauty.
Melissa finds a man chained in dungeon. We assume a missing villager. Drums and toms as she unchains him. He is striped with bloody whip marks from a previous “ice-breaker” when he arrived we assume. Melissa laughs and caws. Bites! Screams! Super hickeys! Screams of delight! Chains clank! She screams and laughs! She will devour him!
We’ve 15mins to go. We have to assume at this point the doc and the cop will turn up, there’ll be a big fight. Perhaps one might get killed. Perhaps they won’t? You can’t deny the crazy set up does create an unpredictable plot. But let’s brace ourselves and see what happens…
Outside the castle, the production team are getting the most from their Wind Machine Sound Effect before it has to go back to the rental place. Doc and Inspector skulk about, palms against the walls, prison break style. They overpower a guard to sound of scuffled footsteps and fretless bass. To a window! It’s not locked! They feign breaking in anyway to give some drama, but the fucking thing falls open like wet cardboard.
They stumble into the lab where Vera is reanimating the silver monster. The usual red lighting and flashing bulbs and sound effects as the creature cries out! “My head…my head…” over and over. A production assistant fades down the Dr Who SFX Vol 3 LP they’ve been playing, to give enough time for Doc Seward to approach the silver beast on the slab and explain to him that the Baron is dead!
Frankie is not thrilled. These people killed him! Frankie is even more furious! They flee, leaving the confused beast on the slab as footsteps approach. He has been following the wrong master!
Vera arrives. We must go to Cagliostro! The Monster stands, stiff. They leave, down the stairs to the red chanty room once more where spooky Latin is on the stereo and plastic skeletons, bad makeup, druidy masks and chanting are on the guest list. Cagliostro’s followers? His family? His book-club? It would appear these are the zombies Cagliostro has been playing with up until now. But now he’s cracked the potion of using “living ingredients.” A finale approaches!
Melissa joins in with her birdy chanting and we get the big speechy bit. “Half of me is a bird. I am blind. Not worthy! But I cannot prevent your bodies from rotting here!” The reanimated beauty on the slab will now…as it were…bump uglies with the silver Monster, creating a new master race!”
The Monster appears. In the shadows, Tanner and Seward begin to kill off the bystanders Indiana Jones style, to get close-up to the zombie snogging and a bit of the old reanimated in-out-in-out.
As Melissa bangs on and on in her chanty fey voice, all gasps and swoons, she continues to explain exactly what we all know. Old silver wrestler is going to have sex with the four-poster woman. She if course is naked and strapped to a slab. He is painted silver from the belt buckle up and still wearing trousers. Seward and Tanner watch wide-eyed as the creature half-heartedly eases his way down to the naked woman and sort of gets off with her a bit. Plastic joke shop skeletons in bedsheets stare…
As the Monster begins to go in for, what we can only assume is some reanimated foreplay (his mouth is going sensitively nipplewards), this proves too much for the onlookers and Doctor Seward screams to the creature! How can obey those who killed his master?! Well this is a piece of logic that has escapes our Silver brute until now so in a tremendously admirable show of loyalty, he pauses pre-shag and decides the hottie can wait – he should murder everyone first.
A hyperactive feline, off her tits on catnip, appears to jump onto a church keyboard for 5 mins as the music goes all stabby and the Monster murders Melissa. She squawks and collapses in a sea of feathers. The coven all leg it about a bit, the Monster goes total Lou Ferrigno and there us much chapelly chaos.
Jerky cameras, out of focus zooms, some wrestling moves and the Monster destroys the place. The doctor fires his trusty revolver a few times. Cagliostro can only stare. He’s been planning this for a thousand years so is pretty fucked off by the whole thing.
The Monster attacks Cagliostro…but he cannot bring himself to destroy his new master. Irritating. Cagliostro flees laughing like Skeletor at the end of a He-Man cartoon and the creature carries off Vera instead.
There’s lots of running upstairs and “Hurry Inspector!” drama as they chase through the castle. Gunshots! Trumpets! Organs! Close ups!
A final gunshot! The Monster is hit! He drops Vera and falls off screen. Someone finishes cleaning their trumpet mouthpiece in a squeaky fart.
Cut to the sea! Cliffs! Cagliostro! Horse-driven carriage! Faster! Hahahahahahaha! His face is torn with mad laughter! Vera, Seward and Tanner rush to the castle roof to stare! It cuts back and forth to the sea. If this was a late 80s Stephen King straight to video, clumsy stop-motion animation would have his carriage grow wings! Burst into flames! Shoot into the reddening sky! Laughter echoing forever!
But it isn’t. We just show some waves.
“Can’t you hear him laughing Dr Seward? His laughter is a jubilant one showing he has not been vanquished.” And then seems to say, although the dubbing isn’t clear, he intends to be back! To begin again! In about 9 months, give or take. Which is pretty specific.
Close ups! Organ frenzy! Titles!
And relax.
Is it any good?
Well. I mean this depends very much on a number of things.
Firstly, your mood. As we’ve previously discussed, depending on how you’re feeling this could be enjoyed for the seventies Pan Euro cheapie campy Hammery Franksploitation nonsense it is. You could roar with laughter at the dialogue, you could squirm and giggle at the silly story, you could play a drinking game and down a shot of tequila every time the music goes full bongo-crazy or Pink-Panther rip-off or a half-woman/half-bird screeches and says “Cagliostro!” and flaps about, tweeting like a drunk Ricky Gervais at 2am. It’s just under 90 mins and has enough art-school self-conscious Jonathan Ross/Elvira “Late Night Movie Drive In” kitsch to keep you chuckling. The make-up, the hammy over-acting, the silly sets and cheap props. Plenty of charms in that regard.
So, y’know – if that’s what you’re after, there’s lots of 70s camp to enjoy here.
Alternatively, if you’re a cineaste interested in yet another retelling of Mary Shelley’s Modern Prometheus myth, and fancy settling in with a glass of port to see how European writers and directors have taken this eternal story of Man vs God and given it a supernatural gothic twist, incorporating European legend? Well then this is going to have you reaching for the “eject” button within about 15mins.
First thing to note of course is that we’ve been definitely sold a pup, gore and sex wise. From the first moments the splashy bloody words La Malediction vomit across the screen, we need to lower our expectations. Most of which will have been set by the porny whipping and knives and nudity on the box. (More of that let down later). Malediction has nothing whatsoever to do with eroticism. It means “curse.” So we’re 10 seconds in and we’re already disappointed by renting something we hope is a bit “eroticy” and it’s actually just “cursey.” Sigh.
Production wise, the crew have chosen to avoid the pitfalls, floorboards, rust and authenticity of genuine spooky old Transylvanian baroque locations by saving a few bob on outside generators and lighting by hiring a modern manor house or local presbytery for $17 plus tax for the weekend and a promise to chip in for a new conservatory for the creche. It’s not in the least bit scary or convincing, the dark wood, arches, polished floor are all fresh and new, reminding us more of the “HAMA HAUS” range at IKEA. Now there’s an idea. And a really good joke.
The church where the Baron is buried among Latiny chanting and whatnot actually resembles a converted Scientology weekend retreat in Provence. I swear, it’s a good thing the cameras held back as I’m certain just inside the porch would be a full colour 7 foot plastic banner advertising Wellness Centres and a discount on some Tony Robbins self-help tapes.
Equal savings have been made in the make-up department. Now here’s often where movies such as this get to show their wares and bring us the shocks and gross flesh-peeling delights we have hoped for. But we are yet again let down. The half-bird, half-woman Melissa is a mixture of eye-rolling gasps and avian post-production screeches with stick on blue feathers about her arms and torso, plus some false talony nails to give her feeble “murderous” scratches some edge.
Our titular Monster is a silver painted wrestler. All barrel chest and thick neck, it’s just face paints, glue, wigs and ketchup. If it turned up at your door, trick or treating, it wouldn’t earn a fun sized Snickers.
Which reminds me. Universal Pictures, the studio behind those great early horrors got the great Jack Pierce to design the iconic look we all now know as the monster. And they had to copyright it, to stop other studios taking the property and running with it. Which is why only Universal “Franks” have that classic bolt-neck square-head asphalt-layer-boots look. It appears however, by 1974, they had little energy to sue Jesus Franco on this half assed rip off attempt.
Casting is terrific however, I’ll give it that. If by “terrific” you mean “absolutely text-book clichés of the highest order.” Our Egor in the opening scene is a hunchy Bill Bailey lookalike, which is de rigeur for this kind of set up.
Our manly Dr Seward is played by a mix of Bill Hicks via John Larroquette with a dash of Kevin Spacey and a sprinkle of John Sessions. He thunders about the place demanding traumatised women get over themselves and tell him what he needs. He is a fearsomely driven doctor of the old stripe and wouldn’t look out of place hand-on-hips, one foot up on a chair, slapping his thighs and singing “Bless Ma Beautiful Hide!” while Howard Keel phoned his agent.
Our humble bumbling copper – and every movie like this has one – we have to hope isn’t undercover CID as he couldn’t be more Edwardian Policeman if he tried, all Sherlock Deerstalker and tweedy and cape and officious “god be damned man!” moustachy manner. He plays it straight with the material he’s got and his fussing and spluttering and “what ungodly work is this?!” puffing gives it a panto feel.
Casting the coven must have been a piece of piss. Director Jesus Franco would have thumbed through a copy of the French and Spanish editions of The Stage and asked for anyone over 40 who could gurn, scowl, stare and look blankly transfixed – ideally able to bring their own curtain to dress in. Gaps in the coven’s numbers were made up with joke-shop skeletons in bedsheets. It’s “Eyes Wide Shut” on a pound-land budget. Budget Half Cut, if you prefer. Or casting director half pissed. Whatever you like.
But a word to be said on Cagliostro himself. Well four words really. “Brian, out of Spaced.” It’s the UK Channel 4 sitcom I’m sure you’ve seen, wherein the comedy actor Mark Heap goes bonkers arty in his spare room while Simon Pegg and Natalie Haynes make pop-culture references and Edgar Wright practises getting his foley louder and his cuts shorter. Starey eyes, little fuzzy chin beard, gaunt look. Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.
The music is all over the place. Everything and a kite has been flung at the score to get the requiste spooky atomos. So, depending on what’s on screen, it might be stabbing strings, tinkly piano, wind-chimes, jazz beat bongos, double-bass noodlings or full-on Victor Hugo organ chords. Towards the end, as I said, everyone goes to lunch to leave just a drummer and bass player to knock out a supper-club spy-theme “best of The Pink Panther” during the castle chase which is delightful campy fun. Although it gets in the way of the owls. Of which there are either 400, or one very tired one in a radio mic and grounds for workman’s comp.
The main observation of The Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein however is that of the editing and pacing. If you have a friend who likes to spin a tales of Christmas Shopping and adds synonyms and retellings and voices and characters and mimes and examples upon examples to the point where you just want to grab them by their fleece and say “we GET IT! It was BUSY! Move ON!” then you’ll know this feeling. Director Franco is very much from the low budget “keep it running, keep it running,” school of cinema and if a scene can be 20 seconds, it must be six times better if it runs for two minutes.
Almost every scene has twice the dialogue, three times the exposition, four times the explanation and eight times the running time that it needs. People say things. And say them again differently. And then again, louder. And then in close up. And then repeat them. Creeping through forests are shot from 9 different angles and by the time you’ve thought “well, I guess from the trees and the music and the creeping, she’s approaching the castle,” you could go and make a spaghetti Bolognese from scratch, and eat it, and come back and Franco may still not be finished showing you all the creeping and bongos he’d shot. It sags. Let’s say that.
As does this paragraph, by way of a happy accident. Snappy, it isn’t, Edgar Wright could have made this a 3min short film.
So is it any good? There are much, much better movies about reanimated monsters, European villagey curses, supernatural rebirthings of master races and harried detectives and shouty doctors out there. Get drunk and giggle along if you want. But you’ll be fast-forwarding before the gin’s run out.
Nasty?
A flat nope. Unlike the gall-bladders on a stick of Flesh For Frankenstein, the Mark Of The Devil’s medieval torture or Mario Bava’s bloodied billhooks, Jesus Franco has not gone for the close-up nastiness. Shots that could have been gruesome flesh-tearing, knife point piercing or blade thrusting nastiness are all handled in the softest of softcore manner.
When Melissa starts to get “hungry” with her prey – in a field or in a dungeon – there’s a lot of ketchup and mock biting, but she just sort of presses teeth marks into chests and moves on, smearing fake blood all over the place with her cheeks like an art school project. Strangulations are feeble, no-pressure affairs that involve velvet gloved hands on the shoulders and lots of fake eye bulging.
Whipping is a short piece of wool sort of half wrist-flicked like a wet gym-room towel, with the red paint on its ends leaving spots and streaks on the clearly unharmed flesh.
Oh and the big set piece? The one on the box that got the film censors excited? The “spikes” on the floor are as sharp as old condoms and wobble and flap as the cast pad around them, and we virtually see the spongey “blades” fold as the cast lower themselves on.
As ever, the slapping and spitting and general nudey-torture scenes are unpleasant and shoved in for pervy titillation. Women have their boobs out more often than antne would think necessary in a medieval castle with no central heating. Some full frontal nudity has a flapping willy and a well trimmed bush.
But gore? For heaven’s sake, you’d be better off with an episode of E.R.
Ban worthy?
I might stop putting this bit in. Ban it for its hammy acting, ban it for its clumsy storytelling, ban it for its clichés and stereotypes, ban it for being a waste of some fine character actors. But apart for some splashes of ketchup and some nudity, it’s no more worrying that “Carry On Screaming.” Which, to be fair, is funnier and better made.
What does it remind me of?
As above, we’ve seen similar tropes before. If you fancy a gory Frankenstein retelling with plenty corn, laughs, camp and grue you’d be better off with “Warhol’s Flesh For Frankenstien.” It has all the gothicky crinoline and ruffs of Mark Of The Devil, with none of the cod-religious posturing. If you’re looking for classic Video Nastiness, then what you have here is a frightened Board of Public (nay Pubic) Prosecutions getting het up about the words “Erotic” and “Rites” and some tits on the cover. Nothing to see here.
Where can I find it?
If you’ve a YouTube subscription, this link will take you to the full dubbed widescreen version I watched.
letsgetthebannedbacktogether.uk 