EVEN DeepER Blurting!: DBNS: Frankly-enstein, My Dear...

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DBNS: Frankly-enstein, My Dear...

Posted by Kenneth Morgan on 2/29/2008, 10:37 pm

Today, Kenneth Morgan laments how far the Baron’s good name has fallen.
*****
You know, some movies have a lot of nerve. They promise you things in the title, and then don’t really deliver. I mean, look at “Godzilla vs. Megalon”; Godzilla barely makes a cameo appearance in the thing. Or, “Abbott & Costello Go to Mars”, where they actually end up on Venus. Or, “Women of the Prehistoric Planet”, where the planet itself was actually women-less. It just seems to me that you should at least deliver what you promise in the title.

This brings us to our subject for today, a movie that also plays a bit loose with that concept. It’s “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster”, released by Allied Artists Pictures in 1965.

The movie opens with an alien spaceship approaching Earth. (Supposedly, it’s from Mars, though I don’t believe they actually say that in the movie.) On board, the crew is lead by Princess Marcuzan (Marilyn Harold) and her chief lackey, Dr. Nadir (Lou Cutell), who looks and sounds like an alien Jon Lovitz. The ship easily shoots down a couple of Earth missiles lazily fired at them, then settles back to wait for the right time to take action.

Meanwhile, on Earth, NASA is preparing to launch a manned spacecraft to (ugh!) Mars. (SUGGESTED RIFF: You know, there are other planets in our system besides Mars.) At a press conference consisting of about four reporters, the pilot is introduced. He’s Col. Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly), a handsome, ultra-confident astronaut who’s all set to go. But, oddly, he seems to freeze up in mid-sentence (and mid-smile) during one question. We soon learn why: Frank is a cyborg of sorts, a being made of various transplanted parts, synthetic skin and electronic brain implants. Apparently, Frank’s creator, Dr. Steele (James Karen) created him so NASA wouldn’t have to keep risking real people on dangerous space flights. In any case, Frank is repaired and (via stock Project Mercury footage) launched on his way.

The aliens, though, think his ship is another missile attack and zap the capsule. Frank manages to eject before it blows up and parachutes to Earth. The aliens land and hunt him down, fearful that he’ll give away their existence (as if the other destroyed missiles didn’t already do that). Frank encounters an alien crewmember and gets shot with a blaster, burning half his face and leaving him seriously disoriented. He gets away, but the aliens are determined to hunt him down, referring to him as “the fugitive” (S.R.: An innocent victim of blind justice.) Oh, Frank has also become so unhinged that he kills a couple of men who half-heartedly threaten him.

Meanwhile, Nadir (an appropriate name for this flick) gives the traditional plot exposition speech. It seems atomic war has devastated their home planet and thems that died were the lucky ones. Also, it seems that a few males managed to get away unscathed, but all the females (except Princess Marcuzan) died. So, in order for their race to continue, they must find some women for “breeding stock”. Yup, it’s pretty much “I Married a Monster from Outer Space” and “Mars Needs Women”, but a lot worse. (No, really, it is.) So, the movie soon features sequences of attractive women getting rounded up by the aliens and herded into the Martian ship, which has a vague golf-ball shape and TARDIS-like inner dimensions.

Elsewhere, Steele and his assistant Karen Grant (Nancy Marshall) have picked up a signal which could be from crazy Frank. They track the signal to Puerto Rico and get ready to head over there to find him. Both are worried that, if Frank’s brain is damaged, that he might wander around and even turn violent (which he has). This leads Karen to speculate that he could turn into “a Frankenstein”. (S.R.: Colin Clive or Peter Cushing?) Oh, by the way, Steele is stubbornly considers Frank to be just a machine, while Karen thinks of him as an individual (and obviously has a bit of a crush on the demented lug).

In any case, Steele & Karen, along with a bunch of military types, are brought to the seaside scene of one of the abductions. (Earlier, a bikini-clad girl was kidnapped and her Allan Sherman-esque companion disintegrated by the Martian goons.) After a long travelogue sequence of riding a scooter through the nearby streets, our intrepid scientists find Frank in a beachside cave and calm him down. Steele starts trying to fix Frank up, but must send Karen off to get help. (I think you know where this is going.) She does, and promptly gets caught by the aliens and carted off to their ship. Once inside, Nadir & the Princess find one of Frank’s control gadgets on her. Since she won’t talk, they lock her up next to the titular pet space monster, called Mull. (S.R.: Is Fred Willard on board, too?)

Anyway, Steele and the barely-functional Frank find the abandoned scooter and later manage to find the Martian ship. Steele leaves to locate a phone so he can call in the troops, pausing to tell Frank to stay there and keep watch. (I know you know where this is going.) Frank, however, gets captured and taken on board. And, thus, we finally arrive at the sequence promised by the title, when, to defend Karen and Earth, Frank(enstein) and the Space Monster have it out. Who wins? Like it really matters…

This movie is almost legendary in its status as a bad movie. It was featured in “It Came from Hollywood” and is mentioned in most books on bad movies as one of the worst. Well, I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it certainly is a bad one. Let’s run through why…

Well, for a start there’s the title. Okay, I can understand that Frankenstein has a lot more marquee value than Frank Saunders, but they were really stretching the point, almost to the “false advertising” stage. (Yes, Karen uses the term “Frankenstein” once, but that’s not much justification.) In addition, there are the low production values, the overacting (especially by Cutell as Nadir), the overly-familiar plot (what, there are no attractive females around Saturn?), the blatant sexism, the abundance of stock footage and so on. Two particular problems are interrelated: on two occasions (Frank’s spacecraft lift-off and the scooter travelogue sequences) the action just stops dead, while bland pop songs with no bearing at all to the sequences are played. I can only figure they were trying to shoehorn in some songs in the hope of some Top 40 airplay or maybe a soundtrack album (just like many of today’s movies do, actually).

This movie, though, is a gold mine of riffable material. It starts at the very beginning, when we see that the movie is presented by Futurama Entertainment Corp. (S.R.: Bite my shiny metal butt!) There’s also the first shot of the first swimsuit-clad kidnap victim (S.R.: Ah, the real reason they made this movie!) and the Princess expressing her approval of said victim’s appearance (S.R.: Insert subtext here.). When the goons raid a poolside dance party, there are the gratuitous butt shots of the dancing females (S.R.: Brought to you by the Committee to Stamp Out V.P.L.). And, of course, you have to have at least one riff where Nadir mentions, “my wife…Morgan Fairchild. Yeah, that’s the ticket.” And there’s a lot more.

All in all, I guess you could enjoy “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster” by just lying back and using it as riffing fodder. That’s what I’d suggest, anyway. If you look at it from a serious moviemaking standard, it’s quite bad. Again, not the worst, but very low on the list. Still, at least the movie did promise a “space monster’ and certainly delivered. That’s better then “Teenage Caveman”; no way was Robert Vaughn teenaged in that one.

Okay, I’m going to ridiculous extremes, but it doesn’t disprove my point.

CONNECTIONS NOTE: Marilyn Harold (Princess Marcuzan) appeared in “The Brain that Wouldn’t Die”. James Karen (Dr. Steele) was in the MSTed “Being from Another Planet” and the previously-reviewed “Hercules in New York”. And Executive Producer Alan V. Iselin was Associate Producer on “Horror of Party Beach” (which had better songs, courtesy of the Del-Aires). And, as noted, clips of this movie were featured in the previously-reviewed "It Came from Hollywood".

TRIVIA NOTE: According to IMDB, an alternate title used for this flick was “Mars Attacks Puerto Rico”. That’s still pretty lame, but at least it’s more accurate.