Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #185877 in DVD
• Rating: X (Mature Audiences Only)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, French

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If you're in the properly receptive mindset to appreciate the artistry of director Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein, you may experience an unexpectedly delightful shift in attitude while watching the film. At first it appears that Morrissey is indulging in an exercise of pure camp (and it's true, he is), but then it hits you: underneath all the wretchedly awful dialogue and seemingly deliberate bad acting, it's clear that Morrissey and his cast are up to something wonderful. Not only is this a seductively beautiful film to watch--even the abundant bloodshed and gory scenes of dismemberment are esthetically striking--but it's been conceived with astute intelligence and a wealth of refined humor, while maintaining connections to the resonant themes of the Frankenstein story. In this case, Baron Frankenstein (marvelously overplayed by Udo Kier) is a rather twisted fellow, married to his sister (Monique van Vooren) and determined to create the perfect man and woman from the assembled remains of selected corpses. He's created a sexy female, but his male specimen's got the brain of a young man who aspired to be a monk, making sexual arousal a bit of a challenge! The dead man's friend (Morrissey discovery Joe Dallesandro) intervenes to disrupt the Baron's mad experiment, and it all leads up to a climactic laboratory scene of gruesome and tragic death, all worthy of Morrissey's splendid operatic staging.

Originally filmed in 3-D with outrageous scenes of in-your-face carnage, the film is enjoyable as camp horror, but it's equally entertaining as an exercise in pop-art symbolism and socio-political satire. This becomes even more evident from the wonderful audio commentary track featuring Morrissey, a very witty Udo Kier, and the stuffy but erudite critic Maurice Yacowar, whose insightful analyses make it clear that this is surely not a typical horror film. It's trashy but exquisite, and quite worthy of inclusion in the Criterion Collection. Once you've seen this, you simply must move on to its companion film, Blood for Dracula. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Not as good as "Blood for Dracula," but still enjoyable
I happened to watch director Paul Morrissey's "Blood for Dracula" before indulging in "Flesh for Frankenstein." After having seen both films, I can unequivocally state I preferred "Blood for Dracula," which is somewhat of a surprise considering "Flesh" was made first with "Blood" coming as almost an afterthought. By the time Morrissey and company started "Blood," the cast and crew were exhausted from the non-stop schedule of making two films back to back. If you have little familiarity with these films, they were made under the auspices of Andy Warhol's Factory, a time when the creator of Op Art decided to branch out into other artistic mediums. If you are like me, you cringed when you heard that Warhol had an influence on Morrissey's films. I could never bring myself to appreciate anything associated with Andy Warhol; I always considered him and his associates talentless hacks of the lowest order. Not to worry here, though. While the titles often carry Warhol's imprimatur, he apparently had little to do with any aspect of the production of either film.

"Flesh for Frankenstein" is a wonderful retelling of Mary Shelley's classic 1818 novel. The good Baron Frankenstein and his sister, in this instance also his wife, bring up the kiddies in a nice, creepy castle somewhere in Europe. The hardworking Baron spends most of his time mucking around in his laboratory attempting to create a human being from scratch. Often toiling alone or with his creepy assistant Otto in tow, Frankenstein is on the verge of success when he finally puts the finishing touches on his female creature. The Baron has quite an affection for his experiment, as seen in a few extremely tasteless scenes, but he realizes he has a problem. What good is a woman without a man? Frankenstein quickly decides to build a complimentary male figure so he can have a second family completely subservient to his own whims. Why would the good Baron wish to have a second family? Perhaps because he doesn't seem to get along with his own family all that well.

Meanwhile, Baron Frankenstein's wife tires of her husband/brother's heavy workload and his tendency to neglect his children. Being lonely in a big castle in Europe wears on a person, so Baroness Frankenstein turns to the hired help for consolation. Her eye falls on the newly arrived Nicholas, a beefy stable boy who promises to alleviate the Baroness's solitude. Nicholas came into the castle after he and his friend, a Serbian planning to devote his life to the priesthood, fell victim to a heinous crime on the road outside of the castle. Nicholas woke up from the assault to discover the attackers decapitated his friend. Angered by the senseless brutality of the crime, Nicholas soon comes to suspect Baron Frankenstein and Otto had something to do with the atrocity. While the stable boy entertains the Baroness, he starts poking his nose around the castle in an effort to figure out what is going on in the Baron's laboratory. Everything comes to a head (no pun intended) when Baron Frankenstein introduces his two creations to the family at dinner, and Nicholas notices with horror that his friend's head rests on the neck of one of Frankenstein's "visitors." The servent swears to bring the terrible Frankenstein and his sick experiments to an end, which he does in a finale both cheesy and gory in its execution.

In "Blood for Dracula," Morrissey turned Stoker's tale of the undead into an examination of class conflict between the decaying European aristocracy and the emerging proletariat. There is a bit of that class emphasis in "Flesh for Frankenstein," but this movie also deals with the original themes of Shelley's story. The arrogance of man to interfere in territory strictly reserved to God, and the subsequent nightmares resulting from such arrogance, appears throughout the film. Of course, Morrissey also throws in tons of erotica, stomach curdling violence and gore, and the cheesiest dialogue and performances in the history of cinema. You haven't lived until you see Arno Juerging (Otto), Udo Kier (Baron Frankenstein), Joe Dallesandro (Nicholas), and Monique van Vooren (Baroness Frankenstein) ham their way through the movie. Dallesandro makes no effort to hide his thick New York accent even though the film is ostensibly set in 18th century Europe. Arno Juerging and Udo Kier deliver camp dialogue at eardrum shattering levels, often with hilarious facial expressions and exaggerated motions. If you enjoy and appreciate truly outrageous performances, you will love "Flesh for Frankenstein." I know I did, although I think "Blood for Dracula" was much funnier in terms of the campiness of Kier's and Juerging's performances. Further enjoyment comes from director Morrissey, who shot the film using lavish costumes, expansive set pieces, and excellent cinematography. On the surface, you would think "Flesh" is a top-notch production until you notice how sleazy Kier, Juerging, van Vooren, and Dallesandro look and act. A movie like this must have ticked off some serious film aficionados.

The Criterion Collection decided to release this film, as they did with "Blood for Dracula," with all of the trimmings. Included on this disc are a widescreen presentation of the film, a stills gallery, and a commentary track with Kier, Morrissey, and film critic Maurice Yacowar. I didn't listen to the commentary in its entirety because I couldn't stand Yacowar's nasally insights into the film. If I planned on writing and publishing something about this film I would listen to such overblown pap, but I wanted to form my own impressions of the film. Lovers of cheesy films should make "Flesh for Frankenstein" and "Blood for Dracula" required viewing. Heck, watch them as a double feature and enjoy.

WARNING: Do NOT Eat While Viewing This Film
One would be well-advised to heed my warning. This is one of the most violent, perverse, and laugh-out-loud (intentionally) funny versions of the Frankenstein myth. It's also one of my favorite movies (I like it better than its sister production BLOOD FOR DRACULA, though most tend to rate that one a bit higher) and, as far as I'm concerned, the best film to come out of the Andy Warhol-Paul Morrisey collaborations of the 60s and 70s. Udo Kier is astounding as the mad Baron Frankenstein, Arno Juerging is great as his idiot assistant Otto, and Monique Van Vooren holds her own as Frankenstein's wife-sister, whose insatiable sexual appetite is fed by hunky Joe Dallesandro. Poor Mary Shelley could never have imagined that one day her Gothic horror novel would one day evolve into something as hideous as this. But it's all in good fun, as the Baron and Otto sew up beautiful corpses and talk science in the lab. One of the Baron's hobbies is to make love to his female zombie (Morrisey mercifully spares us the more graphic details in this scene). He and Otto go to a bordello for the perfect male "whose overriding urges are sensual". But - oops! - they pick the wrong stud to behead. Instead of Dallesandro, they pick his friend, an aspiring monk who really didn't want to be at a bordello in the first place. When the Baron and Otto find that their male creature is frigid, the plot thickens. This film is NOT for people who are squeamish. The sex and violence is all of such a perverse nature that it isn't the kind of thing you want to sit down and watch with grandma. It's filled with campy humor and super-gory FX (imagine it as it premiered in 3-D!). But, in spite of the usual Warhol-crowd tomfoolery, there is a very real sense of quality to the proceedings. Gorgeously photographed, with a sumptuous score and fine period detail, this is a little too well-mounted to be written off as simply "a camp comedy". Ironically, the final scene is genuinely tragic! Interesting bit of film-buff trivia: This film (as well as DRACULA) was shot at the same time, in the same place (Italy), and with much of the same crew as Polanski's little-known sex comedy WHAT?. Polanski, who has a brief but hilarious cameo in DRACULA, let Warhol's crowd move into his Italian villa, but their eccentricities eventually drove him off. (As he has it in his autobiography: "They were a nice enough bunch, if a bit camp...")

The perfect Serbian nasum for the male zombie.
Director Paul Morrissey is that rarest of artists: a reactionary moralist who isn't prudish. 1973's *Flesh for Frankenstein* is a case in point, with its many sex scenes (including at least one involving the organs of a corpse) and ample gore projected at the audience via 3-D. (Rather unfortunately, Criterion's DVD edition has abandoned the 3-D option out of practical considerations.) As a result of his at-bottom fuddy-duddy conservatism, Morrissey has never been championed by the cinema art-house mavens (left-wing to a man and woman), who still resent his vicious critiques of their precious Sexual Revolution. Doubtless, Morrissey's being a product of the Andy Warhol Factory increased the sense of "betrayal" felt by the art-mavens. And the everyday moviegoer resented the director's attack on their viewing preferences -- in this case, the horror film, specifically the hallowed and hoary Frankenstein story. Most of us don't like having a mirror put in front of us . . . Morrissey does this here by taking the conventions of this type of entertainment to a perverted and gory extreme, and the original 3-D is part and parcel of his intent. It's a way of saying, "You want sex? naked bodies? blood and gore? HERE!" before he literally rubs our noses in an eviscerated stomach. But the contempt on display is also amusing as hell: the deliberately bad dialogue, the amateur actors (including talentless hunk Joe Dallesandro, who makes no effort to conceal his thick New York accent despite the fact that everyone else -- and the locale -- are European), and the risible plot details (for instance, the Baron and Baronness Frankenstein are in fact brother & sister with demonic children of their own) will make you rock with laughter. When you hear Udo Kier as Frankenstein whine in thick Teutonic accents about his perfect "male zombie", you'll be glad that reactionary Morrissey has a sense of humor to match his lack of prudishness. [Criterion's DVD is great: good picture with correct widescreen ratio, etc. etc. Also includes a commentary track with some Canadian scholar or other, and with Morrissey and actor Kier, each of whom philosophize freely.]