Lady Frankenstein (1971)

I hate it when I run into a movie like Lady Frankenstein. A movie that may not be great, but wasn't horrible. Sure, you probably didn't notice it sweeping the '71 Academy Awards, but it wasn't a bad movie.

Lady Frankenstein gives a somewhat new twist on the whole Frankenstein story. This movie follows Tania Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein's daughter. She's just returned home after completing medical school and would like to work on her fathers experiments... though she isn't aware that her father has progressed from experiments on animals to humans.

The first part of the movie is your typical Frankenstein movie, Victor Frankenstein is paying a grave robber and his band of merry body thieves to bring him fresh corpses to experiment on. Well, long story short "It's alive!" and that's when things start going downhill.

And not just because it's ugly.

You see, The Creature kills Victor Frankenstein. Woops. It also escapes the lab to wreak havoc on the countryside. Double woops.

Well Victor's lab partner wants to go to the police, but Tania doesn't want to tarnish her father's good reputation. So of course they remain silent and allow The Creature to go on a killing spree.

And kill he does! Usually people having sex. Seriously, I think he kills at least three people mid-coitus. I'm pretty sure this is the movies attempt to throw in a little bit of boobies. Either way, he goes on killing people while Tania comes up with an ingenious plan to stop The Creature.

I'll admit, the plot gets a little muddled here. You see, Tania comes up with a plan to create her own Creature to kill the other one. Gee, nothing could go wrong there. And all while planning this out she falls in love with the lab assistant, Dr. Marshall... and then we go further down the rabbit hole.

You see, Tania needs a body for her Creature... so she talks Dr. Marshall into killing the grave robber. It doesn't work out, because the Creature kills him before Dr. Marshall can. A lot of killing going on. You see, all those people who were killed are actually people responsible for bringing the creature to life. So let this be a lesson, if you're a grave robber or just a mad scientist you most likely are having a lot of sex.

Then something happened that confused me. Tania starts hitting on the retarded manservant. I mean that he's literally retarded, not just dumb. I assumed she was doing this because they needed a new body since Tom the grave robber was killed. The box implies that it's because Dr. Marshall is an old man and she wants his smart brain in the body of the hot, but retarded, manservant. I'm not sure which it is, and frankly I'm not sure the movie does either... but I'd like to think it's a mixture of both.

The more you kill people the more I love you

So they kill off poor Tommy and transplant Dr. Marshall's brain into his body. They can now battle the original creature! Or perhaps live happily ever after! Either way there's a battle royale between The Creature and Dr. Marshall in Tommy's body. For some reason having your brain put in another body gives you incredible strength.

Dr. Marshall/Tommy win of course, which gives Tania and Dr. Marshall/Tommy just enough time to make sweet, sweet love by the fire. You see the townsfolk and police have finally figured out what's going on at the old Frankenstein place and of the course the only thing to do is march up that hill torch in hand.

And that's really how the movie ends, the townsfolk burning down the castle and Dr. Marshall/Tommy and Tania doing it while the castle burns down around them. I'll admit, it was an odd ending but I guess if you got to go might as well be that way.

Overall not a great movie, but it's a watchable movie. It just gets weird and convoluted in places.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5.

Squid.

The War Between Mushroom and Peas

Usually I put the year up after the title as well as a picture of the DVD cover, but there's one problem... I can't find any information about this movie. None, zero. I looked it up on the IMDB as well as Googled it and couldn't find anything about it.

I wanted to go with something different today so I busted out one of the many, many dollar cartoon DVDs I have. I decided on The War Between Mushroom and Peas because... did you see it's name? Something tells me that's why I bought it in the first place. Also from now on I'm referring to it as TWBM&P because it's way to goddamn long to write out.

So I read the little blurb on the back and noticed it said:

This must have DVD features the following stories:
1) Little Red Riding Hood
2) Childrens Album
And Other Animated Classics

Color, English, Approx. 60 Minutes

Let me point some things out that are wrong about this.

1) This is not a must have DVD, seriously, no one is rushing out to add this to their collection.
2)Little Red Riding Hood is not on this DVD, in fact only two shows are: TWBM&P and something called Ilaya the Great. I assume those are under the category "Other Animated Classics".
3)60 Minutes... actually it's about 26 minutes. TWBM&P is about 17 and Ilya the Great is about 9 minutes.

We're off to great start!

So let's start off with TWBM&P. Imagine if Salvador Dali took a ton of acid and decided to write a fairy tale. That's pretty much what TWBM&P is.

Meet the King of the Peas

So the king of the Mushroom Kingdom... no, not Mario, decides he needs to husband up his daughter, Princess Whitey. That's right, Princess Whitey. She has many suitors but she's in love with... Browney. So if you're keeping score Princess Whitey is in love with Browney. Browney also spends his day doing manual labor in a field. Oddly enough that's where this story ends. I really figured we were in for some delightful racism... but nope, it really just ends with that.

So the suitors come from all across the land trying to woo the beautiful(?) Princess Whitey. You have the smartest man in all the land, the richest man in all the land and... well this is supposed to be the most beautiful man in all the land.

All man, baby...

Well apparently along with getting sweet, sweet Princess Whitey whoever marries her also gets a huge hunk of the Mushroom Kingdom. So of course the King of Peas wants in on this action... and by that I mean he declares war on the Mushroom Kingdom.

Well the King of the Mushroom Kingdom decided whoever can stop the King of Peas will be the right man for his daughter.

Yes, the King of the Mushrooms looks like a... you know

Well the most beautiful man, the richest man, and the smartest man all fail miserably. So it looks like the King of Peas has won... what's this? Browney swoops in and saves the day? Well who would have guessed.

So Browney saves the day and gets Princess Whitey in the end. It's uplifting. Really.

Then you have Ilaya the Great. It's about overcoming adversity.

Ilaya is born.
Ilaya gets sick.
Ilaya's town is attacked.
Ilaya is too sick to do anything.
3 wiseman call Ilaya a pussy.
Ilaya says "Nuh uh!"
Ilaya overcomes adversity.
So can you.

That's pretty much what I got from the 9 minutes of Ilaya the Great.

Cancer? Get out of bed you wuss.

4 Birthday Fish out of 5.


Squid.

Horror of the Zombies (1974)

I've done some scientific research and I've come to a conclusion: the more names a movie has the worse it is. Case in point, Horror of Zombies. Also known as The Ghost Galleon, El Buque Maldito, Ship of Zombies, The Blind Dead 3, and Zombie Flesh Eater. For those of you keeping score that six names. Six. You know what that means? Pretty bad movie.

About twenty minutes into this movie I realized that I had seen it before, and let me tell you it takes a pretty awful movie for me to completely forget about it. So after realizing this I remembered what I was in for. A really bad movie.

The first and last time this movie is actually good.

I remember this movie feeling very disjointed, like I was missing something. I could never really figure it out, but this time I realized what it was. Remember all of those names up there? The one you should really know about is The Blind Dead 3. That's right, this movie is part of a trilogy. A trilogy that I haven't seen the first two movies of. Imagine sitting down and watching Back to the Future for the first time, no not the first one, Back to the Future III. Sure you could probably piece together why Marty and Doc Brown are playing cowboys and Indians but you can bet you're going to be a little confused.

Horror of the Zombies starts out making little sense and then evolves into a weird train wreck.

You have a bunch of fashion models who go out on a boat for a publicity stunt, I'm not 100% sure what kind of publicity stunt, but one nonetheless.

Hello? Publicity?

Well they're out on a boat in the middle of the ocean but in contact with some kind of weird/evil rich dudes who are in charge of the "publicity stunt". Well of course shit goes south. The models hit a patch of fog that shouldn't be there and get lost... oh noes!

Well for some reason, I'm not sure why, the rich guys kidnap another model who is going to go to the cops and tell them that they managed to lose a boat full of models. I guess maybe not all publicity is good publicity?

So the models eventually find a boat in the fog, and of course the first thing you do when you come across a creepy ass boat in the middle of the foggy ocean... you board it!

So now the (stupid) models are on board the SS Cursed by Ghosts and need rescuing.. and who better to do it then the two rich guys, their hired hand, their kidnapped model, and some woman who I honestly forgot who she was.

And then the Knights Templar show up... as zombies.

Okay, stop right their. Seriously, that's the what we're working with here. That's the plot of this movie. I have three words for you Zombie Knights Templar.

The story is muddled and crappy, the acting is awful, the script appears to be non-existent, the...



Oh to hell with it.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.