Okay, so for the most part Blaxploitation “horror” movies are not all that common. Most folks are aware of BLACULA (even if they haven’t actually seen it) and maybe even it’s sequel, SCREAM, BLACULA, SCREAM. There is also SUGAR HILL, JD’s REVENGE, GANJA & HESS (one of my all time favorite movies) and also the movie ABBY (an EXORCIST rip-off)—just to name some relevant ones. Then of course, there is the lesser known, BLACKENSTEIN, subtitled “The Black Frankenstein”. First lets deal with that. Anybody that knows jack about horror knows that “Frankenstein” was the name of the scientist, not the monster. Here, the scientist is white (Dr. Stein…clever) and the monster is black. So right away the films credibility is down the shitter, because the makers of the film obviously know dick about the actual story of Frankenstein. It is clear very early in the film, that this is not any kind of a remake of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at all, but a film relying on the name recognition of Frankenstein and is probably closer to The Island of Dr. Moreau than Mary Shelley's classic tale. Yet, I don’t fault the film for that—it’s chock full of way more irritating issues.
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Let’s get the “story” out of the way first. Ivory Stone plays Dr. Winifred Walker, wife of Eddie Turner (The Monster), a Vietnam vet that comes back from the war as a big slab of torso (sans arms and legs). Winifred knows of a doctor named, Dr. Stein (John Hart) who is known in the medical community for splicing DNA, and other controversial things. Her hope is that the Doc’ can re-attach some limbs onto her husband—because who could love a slab? She takes Eddie out of the hospital he is in (where he is abused by the staff) and takes him to Dr. Stein’s home, where he has other patients such as the lady he’s testing age-reversing on, and the man who's DNA he spliced w/a Tiger. Dr. Stein also has a mostly mute servant that falls in love with Winifred. Winifred isn’t having any of the servant's affection, so the servant messes with Eddie’s DNA while no one is looking. The Doc’ is able to get Eddie some limbs, but the “evil” DNA turns him into a cannibalistic Mongoloid. Eddie takes to the streets by night, ripping out people’s guts and munching on them. Soon the police are on his trail, and by that point in the film I was zoning out.
Before I get into a laundry list of critical bile, let me first go over the few things I did like about the film. Top on the list is the score—it was very well done, if not over-the-top, plus it’s kind of all over the place, from bluesy crooning to the cheesiest of classic “horror movie” music. Which brings me to the other thing I liked about the film. It was very clear that director, William A. Levey was a big fan of the Universal Monster flicks. If the film had been in black & white it could have passed as a horror movie from the 40’s (minus the gore and nudity). There are some half decent camera shots in the film—even if the copy of the film, that I own, is very crappy. Not that I think the film is worthy of a re-mastered print—the film as been forgotten for a reason…many, many reasons.
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Now on to the bad—where do I begin?!
Let’s start with the pace of the whole film…it’s fucking slow! The director relied too much on the laboratory scenes to be entertaining. The lab is straight out of any mad scientist flick from the 40’s and 50’s with lots of equipment that zaps and pops--machines with lots of buttons, and levers, and so forth. Each scenes screams, “Hey look at all this stuff! Ain’t it cool? Doesn't it look all scientific and shit?” and the answer is, sure--and it is entertaining for about 5 minutes…then it just gets boring. The first 20 minutes of the film showed promise, even if the acting was stale—then nothing happens for like 40 minutes after that, and when the Monster finally starts killing people, the lighting is too dark, and the story pretty much fizzles away. By the time the detectives show up, I didn’t even care about the plot anymore.
The acting is bad by pretty much the whole cast, but Joe De Sue (The Monster) has all the screen presence of a boom mic. His monotone line delivery looks as though he’s reading from a queue card, and he’s not much of a reader…or in need of glasses. Ivory Stone does all right for the most part, but is not without some embarrassing moments. Not surprisingly, both Stone and De Sue never worked again. Then there is John Hart as Dr. Stein…how this guy ever got a starring role, I’m not sure…he might as well have been another part of the set…come to think of it…maybe he was. The funny thing about the actor that played the servant is he had horrible skin…you’d think the doc’ could have found time to fix his servant’s face while he was making women younger, and turning men into tigers…go figure. By the way, the guy that played the servant--yeah, he sucked too.
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After the horrible acting—which I could have overlooked if the plot had been entertaining—the rest of the blame for this horrible mess falls on the director, William A. Levey. Levey is also responsible for directing the raunchy comedy, WHAM BAM THANK YOU SPACEMAN (more horrid then BLACKENSTEIN but w/lots more nudity), THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES TO WASHINGTON, and also the film SKATETOWN U.S.A., starring Scott Baio. In other words, his talent is very limited. The only film he ever made that was worth a smidge of a crap was a little b-horror called, HELLGATE, which is also bad, but in a good way. Of course all fingers can’t be pointed at Levey as he was probably doing the best he could with the script he was given, which was written by Frank R. Saletri who—surprise, surprise—never wrote another script that made it to film.
Lastly, I mentioned how crappy the copy of the film that I own is, but the topper is I believe it may be an edited version. A lot of the more “violent” scenes seem to have some choppy editing, and I have no idea if that’s because some scenes were cut or if the film was just edited poorly, as both could be the case. In all honesty though, even more gut munching, and nudity couldn’t have helped this movie…and I don’t believe I've ever said that about any movie in my life!
Screenshots courtesy of www.blaxploitationpride.org
BLACKENSTEIN trailer