Friday, October 16, 2020

October Horror Movie Challenge: Frankenstein Night

Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965)

I talked about this movie back in 2015 when I watched War of the Gargantuas. I mentioned then I need to see this movie. Finally got around to it.  

The premise is cool. In 1945 Nazi doctors find the heart of Frankenstein's Monster.  The SS comes and takes the heart and sends it to Japan. They are about ready to study it when the atomic bomb is dropped.

Fast forward 20 years and there are strange things going on. Stranger than the radiation sickness still affecting people.  An odd boy is running through the streets eating dogs and other animals.   The boy seems to be impervious to pain and can heal.  After a bit of back and forth with capturing the child he is discovered not only to be European, but Frankenstein's monster regenerated whole from just the heart.  
Ok, that is cool enough on its own.  Also, the boy is growing bigger all the time.

The movie soon becomes a standard Toho Kaiju movie with giant Frankenstein battling Baragon. Oh yeah, Baragon is in this too, because Japan is just overrun with monsters. This gives us the English title, Frankenstein vs. Baragon.

Lady Frankenstein (1971)

Some more Italian fare tonight.  This one was a total stab in the dark. I wanted another Frankenstein film and this one meets all my other criteria in a movie, especially since I have been on an Italian horror kick this year.  So let's see how it is. It is described as Hammer Films meets Italian Giallo horror.

This is a surprisingly forward-thinking movie for 1971.  Tania Frankenstein wants to be treated as an equal Doctor and Surgeon in her father's eyes.  Sadly though the movie is about as predictable as you think.  The Hammer parts come in with sketchy looking assistants to get the body parts, a monster on the loose, an angry mob,  and lots of death.  The Italian Giallo parts are random nudity and the monster always seeming to catch people having sex.

Tania manages to up her father one by creating a creature that is both strong and intelligent. So both monsters have to fight it out. 

The angry mob comes to burn down the castle (Hammer) while Tania Frankenstein and her monster have sex while it burns (Giallo).  Well. That is not something you see in every Frankenstein movie that is for sure.

Watched: 29
New: 18

NIGHT SHIFT content

Frankenstein's story is a fantastic one and one that we can go back too time and again.  I think if I ever were to use the Frankenstein story in a game it would have to borrow elements from "Young Frankenstein" and the bits on Frankenstein from Supernatural.  The current heir of the family name has found his ancestor's old notes and has begun his own experiments.   Meanwhile the original creature, still "alive" is out there and is drawn to this new Frankenstein to destroy him and his works. 

OR better yet make this Dr. Frankenstein a young woman to honor Frankenstein's original author Mary Shelly.  Yeah. "Lady Frankenstein Conquers the World."


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