Mel Welles’ reimagining of the Frankenstein story is a ludicrous and exploitative film that rejects art for lurid sex scenes and unconvincing violence.
Whereas Mary Shelley’s novel was a masterpiece of the gothic literary movement, examining the hubris of a scientist who wishes to create life unnaturally, this story pays only lip service to those themes.
Sure, the characters have debates about whether they are doing the right thing and the risks inherent in their choices but the film never convinces when talking about morality. Perhaps it’s the score of topless women that somewhat distracts from any pretence at a greater meaning to this tale.
Joseph Cotten plays the older Dr Frankenstein, the scientist experimenting with cadavers in the hope of creating new life. After three years of work he finally succeeds in but the brain he uses in his experiment is severely damaged and the creature wakes up a mentally unbalanced monster. Killing his creator, this monster then embarks on a killing spree, taking vengeance on those who created him.
His daughter, discovering the body, reacts as any loving daughter would do. She persuades her father’s assistant not to report the creation of the monster and tells him that she wants to become his lover but cannot bear his elderly body.
She proposes killing a handsome but mentally-slow young man and transplanting the assistant’s brain into that body so that she can make her perfect man. Riiight. From that moment on it ceases to even pretend to be a horror film and switches to become melodrama interlaced with nudity. This is not an improvement.
This film is schlock of the worst kind, completely lacking in depth or artistic merit. Failing even to frighten, it is grippingly atrocious cinema (and I use that word in its lightest sense).
Earlier in his career Joseph Cotten had starred in such great films as The Third Man, Citizen Kane and Shadow of a Doubt. It is humiliating to see him reduced to a role this slight, although he does his best to inject some gravitas into a clunking script. He is fortunate to be able to escape the picture at the half-way mark. Rosalba Neri is not so lucky.
With a concept so horrible you wonder if the filmmakers were intending this to be parody but any laughs it may generate are strictly unintentional.
Some may find it comically bad but it didn’t work for me on that level either. Lady Frankenstein is a tiresome, grim film that even fails to provide scares. For a horror film that is inexcusable.