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40%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #11,201
...out of 20,717 movies
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Near an isolated beach on California's coast, a sinister plan is underway in a laboratory of horror. Three renegade scientists have resurrected the Frankenstein Monster... legendary indestructible dead man come to life... and they have also created a biogentically engineered half-man, half fish abomination... to use as secret weapons in the fight against terrorists worldwide. However, disaster strikes when the terrifying monsters chemical brainwashing fails and the entire plan goes to hell! Instead of stopping terror, these invincible monsters spread terror! The first victims... young people on a glamour photo shoot are attacked by the amphibious beast of evil! Rescued and held hostage by the scientists, the survivors must find a way to escape the madmen and the monsters!
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: November 4, 2005
In this golden-age flashback, we find three deranged scientists who are using Frankenstein's resurrection formulas to create monstrous beings to fight terrorism. Their first creation is a gill-man creature (Corey Marshall under the suit) that is part man, part barracuda, and loaded with black mamba venom. The creation of this being went off without a hitch; it's a nasty little critter, and it's sure to destroy just about any of the terrorist bastards that it comes across. The problem, however, is that the mind control serum that they injected into it didn't quite work as expected, and this monster escaped the scientist's lab and is now residing at the beach-front Blood Cove. As a result of losing their prize specimen, these scientists, led by Dr. Monroe Lazaroff (Larry Butler), decide to go to Shellvania (a small country right beside Transylvania) in order to get the remains of Frankenstein's Monster in order to resurrect him... after all, starting over from scratch on a new project probably wouldn't be too much fun after losing six years of work. Rounding out the group of scientists is Monroe's right-hand man Salisbury (Rich Knight) and the lovely Dr. Ula Foranti (Alison Lees-Taylor).
Meanwhile, back at Blood Cove, a photographer by the name of Bill Grant (director William Winckler) and his assistants Dezzirae Lee (Dezzirae Ascalon) and Percy Featherstone (Gary Canavello) are having a photo-shoot with an attractive young bikini model. It doesn't take too long before the creature residing here decides to make its presence known, and in doing so, scares the shit out of all of the humans involved. They manage to escape, but Bill's boss back at the office claims that this monster was just a guy in a rubber suit trying to scare them off. He forces them to go back (in a hilarious scene), and when they do, the monster manages to claim the life of the new model that they were shooting... and then decides to go after the rest of the group next. They manage to escape to a nearby house, which just so happens to be the secret laboratory of the recently-returned scientists who have successfully resurrected Frankenstein's Monster (Lawrence Furbish behind the makeup). Now, the scientists plan to pit one monster against the other in order to get rid of the sea-faring threat... but we all know how successful Frankenstein was at controlling this monster, don't we?
Here we have a nice throwback to the good ol' days of the Universal monster movie. Most of the big-name creatures from that era make their presence known here in one way or another; there's Frankenstein, of course, as well as "the creature" (from The Creature From The Black Lagoon, but shortened a bit so as not to get slapped with a copyright infringement), as well as a brief appearance from the Wolf-Man (Corey Marshall under the suit, once again) and the ghost of Dr. Frankenstein (Corey Marshall, yet again... what a trooper). There's also sly references to other films that couldn't be worked into the plot, with a scientist who claims to be investigating giant ants out in the Mojave (Them!) being one of the better ones (and though not movie-related, a small nod towards Del Tha Funkee Homosapien is included as well).
Now, a movie can have all the nods and wink-winks in the world, but if the movie itself isn't good, then who really cares? Thankfully, this movie works out quite nicely, and as a fan of the classics, it really does feel like something that came out of a Universal back-lot back in the fifties. Sure, there's some modern devices (the internet, cell-phones, etc.) that could have been removed in order to keep the entire movie feeling authentic, but they were kept to a minimum and since none of these were a major part of the movie, they can easily be overlooked and ignored. The only other thing that slightly annoyed me was the two bikini girl scenes that overstayed their welcome a bit. Sure, it's nice to see T&A from a couple of nice looking ladies, but I've got a stack of screeners from Seduction Cinema sitting on my desk if I want to see that... when I popped this movie in, I wanted to see some monster action and a storyline that focused on stringing said action along. I'd have been fine with these scenes had they been trimmed a bit, but the first one alone went on for too long... and then the second one almost immediately followed. Once those two scenes are over with, it's a straight monster film for the remainder of the film... well, with the exception of getting to watch a stripper in a bar, but that scene works out nicely thanks to humorous cameos from Ron Jeremy ("I bet I could get her some work") and the Troma-man himself, Lloyd Kaufman.
All said, however, this movie is a very entertaining film for those of you who enjoy the classics. It was nice seeing the Creature get a leading role and not be pushed to the background as has so often happened in the various "Vs." and "Meets" films, and the suit that was used for him was extremely well done. The makeup for Frankenstein was also done up very nicely, and it actually stayed true to Mary Shelley's original vision of long, dangly hair (a rarity in Frankenstein films).
If camping out in front of the tube with a (seemingly) old black-and-white monster film is your idea of a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon, you can't go wrong with this one. Although there were a few minor things that I personally would have changed around, it's a solid monster movie at the core, and it will definitely put a smile on the faces of the Universal fans out there. 8/10.
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#1:
bluemeanie
- added May 3, 2006 at 5:15am
I didn't even know I had this film until I saw the
title and thought it sounded familiar -- turns out
it was included in this 50-pack of DVD's that I
bought a long time ago -- a bunch of old black and
white classics. So, I watched it. This is just
one of those cheesy and fun horror films from the
day that are responsible for most of the horror
films we see in current theatres. A very
entertaining time. 7.5/10.
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#2:
Chad
- added November 21, 2010 at 1:23pm
I'm going way back here, but are you sure you're
talking about the same movie? This was released
in 2005, and I doubt it made it to any of those
50-pack releases (though I could be wrong).
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