Lady Frankenstein

Lady Frankenstein is a travesty of a movie. It has only the loosest connections to the original Frankenstein story, that being a name and the concept of giving life to the dead. It does involve a Baron Frankenstein who is cobbling together a monster from corpse parts.

In this one Frankenstein succeeds in creating his monster and is immediately killed by it. His daughter takes up the mantle. I was never convinced that her expressed intentions were truly what she wanted, but according to her she wants to create a monster that can stop the original one from running around killing people. Mostly it's to save face for her father's reputation. It seems more like an excuse to accomplish greater feats than her father than anything altruistic.

She's not afraid to use her feminine wiles to get what she needs for her experiments, but while she works an investigator pokes his nose around. He thinks the cover story she's using is flimsy so he sets out to find the truth which of course is bad news for her creation of the new monster. Ms. Frankenstein will stop at nothing to get what she wants, though.

Most of the performances seem wooden to me. I don't really buy most of these characters as real people. The investigator does a halfway decent job, but that's about the best I can say.

The sets really look fake. Sometimes they look more like a stage play with a limited budget than a movie set. The monster makeup is no better. They tried to add a disfiguring quality to it that makes it look hokey rather than gruesome.

MORALITY:

There's some violence here including gore such as exposed organs. Most of the more gruesome things are too fake looking to be disturbing, but it may still be enough to bother sensitive viewers.

There's a surprising amount of nudity. There are numerous shots of bared breasts and a few naked backsides. Some are sexual, some violent, and some a combination of the two.

There's a bit of strong language throughout.

SPIRITUALITY:

To a small degree this taps into the megalomaniacal implications of the original Frankenstein although it does a poor job with the concept. This Frankenstein is puffed up with her scientific capabilities and will sacrifice or hurt whomever she needs to in order to see her experiments succeed.

While it's undoubtedly not attempts to create an undead monster, do your ambitions cause you to be callous or even hurtful towards the people around you?

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I didn't like this movie at all. The story, the performances, the production values, and to some degree the characters combine into a steaming pile of horse neers. Don't bother unless you're just dying to see all things Frankenstein.

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