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The Rites Of Frankenstein
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1972; color
Directed by Jess Franco
Starring: Dennis Price, Alberto Dalbes, Howard Vernon, Beatriz Savon, Anne Libert & Brit Nichols
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The Rites Of Frankenstein is the most psychotronic re-invention of the classic film I've seen yet. Conceived and created by Jess Franco (which should tell you something right there) this was originally released in 1972 under the title The Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein, and was apparently ripe with all the nudity and softcore sex that are hallmarks of his films. The re-titled Spanish release however, from which this DVD is taken, has no nudity or sex but it has so many other over the top scenes that it almost doesn't matter. For starters, the monster is a guy who looks as if he's been spray-painted silver (!) and he can talk (!!). Actually the movie opens with Dr. Frankenstein giving the creature the power of speech. Almost immediately after that, he's attacked by some weird half-woman / half-bird (she looks like a woman but has feathers for hands, big metal talons for fingers and patches of feathers all over her; she's also blind, and tracks her prey by smell) who steals the creature and brings it to her master, Cagliostro. Cagliostro is some sort of alchemist, scientist or Satanist apparently (possibly a combination of all three) and thus has been able to cheat death and remain among the living for a couple hundred years. He has hypnotic mind control powers over not only the bird-woman, but over an ever growing army of white-shrouded zombies who look like they're in various states of decay and spend most of their time slowly walking through a forest. His ultimate goal is to create a mate for the metallic monster (a la Bride Of Frankenstein) and then breed them to create a new race that will conquer the Earth. But that's only half the story. (Maybe less.) You see, Frankenstein's daughter, Vera, is a disciple of her father's and knows all his tricks. The first thing she sets to doing after Daddy's funeral is promptly steal his body, bring it back to the lab and reanimate him for long enough for him to reveal the name of the person who killed him and took the creature. Once he mutters Cagiostro's name, the game is on and it's revenge time—Frankenstein style. Vera figures out what Cagliostro is up to and manages to get herself kidnapped in place of another girl and taken to his castle. Of course, as soon as Cagliostro sees her, he recognizes her as Frankenstein's daughter and decides he must get rid of her. And he might as well knock off the bumbling assistant who brought back the wrong victim at the same time. He has them tied back-to-back and placed in the center of a floor of giant spikes, where they're whipped by the creature. After the guy she's tied to is dispatched, Vera is sent to Cagliostro's bedroom where he hypnotizes her into helping with the creation of the mate for the creature. All along there's also been a third doctor (the one who treated Dr. Frankenstein before he died and learned the secret of the creature as well as about Cagliostro) and, just as a monster mating session is about to begin in front of an audience of Cagliostro and his zombies, he and the police burst in. They try to get the creature to turn on Cagliostro and kill him but this only enrages the creature. He goes on a rampage, killing the bird-woman and a mess of zombies before grabbing Vera and making a run for it. Then the cops shoot him. The end. Or maybe not - the possibility of a sequel is totally left wide open as Cagliostro's fate is left a mystery with parting shots of him maniacally laughing and Vera, the good doctor and the cops staring at a raging river as if to imply that he might have thrown himself in. Needless to say, this is classic Franco from start to finish and by this point in time in his career his style was pretty fully realized so expecting anything—and I mean ANYTHING—to happen is par for the course. The Rites Of Frankenstein delivers just about everything you could want and more.
—the Kommandant
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