BLACKENSTEIN (1973)
In 1973, to cash in on the Blaxploitation horror success of
BLACULA, writer/producer Frank Saletri decided to do the same with the
Frankenstein property. Unfortunately, whereas the former had class, humour,
production values, style and money, this magnificently poor effort manages to
get by on…none of them. BLACKENSTEIN aka BLACK FRANKENSTEIN) is irredeemably
bad, made on an all-too evident disastrously low budget and fails on almost
every level. No wonder the poster tries desperately to sell it on an incidental
shot of an attractive and cynically exploited victim’s reaction before she
thankfully is removed from the experience!
Dr Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone, a fitting Equity name for
this inflexible actor) is a former student of Dr Stein (John Hart) and goes to
see him to beg him to help her husband with possible pioneering limb
replacement surgery after he is rendered paraplegic in Vietnam. We find all
this out immediately as the abominable script has her pouring out a bin-load of
exposition to him in one unsubtle and direly expressed chunk. Actually, if you
think that’s unsubtle, listen to the resoundingly ominous music cue as she
waits in the hall. It signals all manner of fateful possibilities but is
completely out of any context with her patient waiting for Stein’s appearance.
The score does this more than once, managing to draw attention to itself in a
gleefully clumsily manner later on – for no plot reason.
Hart resembles a cross between BARNEY MILLER and Dick Van
Dyke in DIAGNOSIS: TEDIUM but has none of their talent. He has however
developed a technique of saying all his dialogue with a precisely-measured
level of non-interest as though he’s running lines off-camera. Hart was a
former Western actor; his lazy delivery may have been acceptable on the prairie
but coupled with Stone, the oater and the non-emoter have clearly more in
common than medical training. They are a symphony of somnambulance.
To enhance the shoddiness, director William A Levey
obviously wanted to include as many reference points to the old Universal
FRANKENSTEIN films as possible. The first is the lab assistant Malcolm
(Roosevelt Jackson) who has the monotone of an Igor (unless I’m being too
charitable and he’s simply crap). He conceals a burning desire (if you can
tell) for Dr Winifred under that white-coated exterior, and when rejected by
the good Doctor, hell hath no fury like a lab assistant scorned. Malcolm goes
and secretly transfers what looks like hair dye from one bottle to another –
the brute.
Come the operation, and we witness the entertainment factor
of script, actors and near-zero production budget trying to conceal a total
lack of any medical research. Stein talks about “My special DNA formula” (he supposedly won the Nobel Peace Prize
for Genetic DNA code work). He tells his protégé: “The fusion looks excellent, Winifred” as he rummages, hidden,
under Eddie’s sheet on the table - but
they’re not fooling anyone. When they can’t figure out why initially results
aren’t more forthcoming, they confer: “The
cell-match tests look alright”. Stein ruminates on the matter, concurring: “All the blood tests seems alright”.
Fortunately this blinding medical jargon is helped by
regular wide shots of the lab equipment, an homage credited to the original
Universal effects designer Kenneth Strickfadden. Sadly, the gear in this tawdry
tribute looks like a museum exhibit room with the various static-electricity
gizmos, tubes etc sparsely laid out, less than the sum of its parts. During the
procedure, as crackling bolts of energy fill the screen, we are treated to
numerous pans across the technical banks, in particular ‘Memory Data Register’
which will soon become as fondly familiar as those papier-mache rocks in STAR
TREK.
Soon Eddie, played by non-actor Joe De Sue, (for those who
might be impressed at how seamlessly he blends in with the rest of the talent)
develops the classic hallmarks of the Frankenstein monster on the rampage: the
flat head, the low groan and that outstretched arm sleepwalk - why do human monsters
bother doing that by the way?. He also inexplicably has had time to put on his
own natty ‘70s clothes before causing havoc – the ensemble includes a suit,
roll-neck jumper and shiny Chelsea boots rather than the asphalt-spreader boots
worn by Karloff in the old movies.
Now that he is suitably attired for a night on the town,
Eddie goes homicidal, starting with the male hospital orderly who abused him in
his recuperation there. In silhouette, he tears the man’s arm off behind a ward
curtain and storms off. In the neighbourhood he runs amok, gouging out a
woman’s entrails in her garden, and in a secluded spot when a young woman
refuses the advances of a creep even more sinister than our revived soldier,
Eddie kills her as well. Here the director attempts a Hitchcockian style
gesture, filming his dragging of her body with her fallen glasses artfully
placed in the foreground.
Meanwhile, back in the lab Dr Walker has tried to figure out
the medical reason for their experimental catastrophe. She’s not above fiddling
with bottles herself, staring meaningfully at one labelled ‘EDDIE – DNA’. Stein
is taking this all very seriously (I guess) as he politely requests: “Winifred, I’d like to see you in the
laboratory please”. The music builds in a sudden misplaced sweep like an
epic high-point from GONE WITH THE WIND and…nothing happens.
In a nightclub, a band-leader tells an extended lame gag
about a dog, presumably to help flog this poor almost dead horse to beyond
eighty minutes. Outside, a smoking customer gives an eye-popping reaction on
seeing Eddie that has to be seen to be disbelieved. This is when the
poster-lady is dismissed by having her own entrails torn out and fondled
externally. (Is this some kind of fetish with Eddie?).
Two cops appear at Stein’s place on the hunt for info about
three local murders. The white one looks like a dodgy, pencil-moustached
mafioso. The black Lieutenant, Jackson, seems normal until you hear his bizarre
witness interview technique later in the club:
“Settle down and tell
me exactly what you saw”.
“I’ve told you once”.
“Well, give me a
description of what you saw then”.
Perhaps this is his idea of a Popeye Doyle confusion
technique. Either way, after Eddie lamely attacks Stein back in the lab, and
Stein equally lamely fights him off, Eddie oddly takes a woman hostage instead
of killing her, and then kills her for trying to escape. The cops are in lukewarm pursuit but they
needn’t worry. Our reactivated veteran is savaged to death by two security
Dobermans. He is left with a pile of suspiciously Butcher’s sausage-like
entrails carefully piled in his chest - , an ignominious death to end a
similarly shameful movie.
BLACKENSTEIN is stupendously awful, its dial firmly set to
PLAN 9 levels of amusement radiation.
I’ll leave it to Karloff’s infinitely superior monster to
sum up this tacky rip-off’s value from the end of BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN:
“We belong dead”.
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