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1973 - USA Directed By: William A. Levey Starring: John Hart, Ivory Stone, Joe De Sue, Roosevelt Jackson, Andrea King, Nick Bolin, Karin Lind, Yvonne Robinson, Bob Brophy and Liz Renay.
Aka
Black Frankenstein
Return Of Blackenstein
Current Availability
Available uncut on US R1 DVD from Xenon Pictures. Xenon's full screen transfer has been clearly sourced from a rather grainy, well worn VHS source, however the DVD is at least available fairly cheaply online.
Recommended?
Not recommended in the slightest. Blackenstein is an absolutely woeful low budget blaxploitation riff on the age old Frankenstein's monster formula which clearly tries to jump aboard the black horror bandwagon set in motion by the far superior Blacula. A combination of leaden pacing, inept direction and completely wooden acting makes Blackenstein a bizarre yet utterly tedious ordeal to sit through. Avoid it like the plague!
Review (Contains Spoilers)
The early seventies marked the birth of the “blaxploitation” genre as American exploitation filmmakers began to opportunistically people their movies with black protagonists and base them around black cultural themes in order to appeal to African American audiences. The blaxploitation movement soon became highly prolific and successful. One of the most notable blaxploitation pictures of the period would be William Crane’s Blacula (1972) – a novel riff on the age old Dracula theme which marked a successful crossover between blaxploitation and horror. Blacula proved to be a sleeper hit for its distributor American International Pictures and ended up paving the way for a short-lived series of other black themed horror pictures.
The success of Blacula was soon noted by legendary film producer Samuel Z. Arkoff who soon began formulating plans for a similar blaxploitation riff on the theme of that other famous literary based horror mainstay Frankenstein. However, Arkoff would be beaten to the punch by writer and producer Frank R. Saletri who hastily strung together his own script for a black revision of Frankenstein aptly entitled Blackenstein. Blackenstein would be quickly put together on a shoestring with first time director William A. Levey and a cast comprised of unknowns and slumming veterans bringing Saletri’s opportunistic vision to life. If Blacula had been the zenith of the black horror film then Blackenstein marked the nadir and failed to achieve anything resembling the same level of success. Despite the failure of Blackenstein Frank Saletri was undeterred and soon began mooting the concept for a blaxploitation riff on the tale of Jack The Ripper entitled Black The Ripper which sadly never made it into production.
The plot of Blackenstein begins with young Dr Winifred Walker (Stone) returning to continue her studies under the tutelage of her original mentor the brilliant surgeon Dr Stein (Hart) who has recently been awarded the Nobel Prize due to his pioneering work in unlocking the secret of the human genetic code. As it turns out Dr Walker has an ulterior motive for seeking out Dr Stein as she in fact requires his help with a personal matter. As it turns out Dr Walker’s lover and Vietnam veteran Eddie Turner (De Sue) has sustained the horrific loss of all four limbs following an impromptu encounter with a landmine and now lies helpless in a hospital bed. Dr Stein is only too happy to help and is miraculously able to use his skills to restore Eddie’s arms and legs.
However, a spanner is thrown into the works by Dr Stein’s sinister manservant Malcomb (Jackson) who harbours a secret romantic obsession with Dr Walker. When Dr Walker spurns his attentions Malcomb is left feeling slighted and takes a terrible revenge by secretly switching Eddie’s DNA injections causing him to undergo a rapid transformation into a mindless, homicidal monster that promptly embarks on a brutal killing spree.
Blackenstein tries desperately to do for the Frankenstein’s monster formula made famous by Universal what Blacula did for the similarly familiar Dracula formula just a couple pf years earlier. However, due to an almost total lack of expertise both in front of and behind the camera, a hilariously inane script and constant staggering examples of budget deprived ineptitude Blackenstein falls flat on its face. What we are instead left with is an outlandish hotchpotch of heavy handed blaxploitation and Frankenstein movie clichés cobbled together into an absurd yet profoundly dull whole. Anyone who reads my reviews with any regularity will know that I am normally a sucker for such trash and I really did want to find myself enjoying Blackenstein, but unfortunately I found it a real ordeal to sit through.
First time director William A. Levey most assuredly not acquit himself well here and no sooner have the opening credits rolled he infects Blackenstein with the kind of leaden pacing that invariably proves the kiss of death for any horror or exploitation film. Indeed the first forty minutes of the film leading up to Eddie’s monstrous transformation and subsequent rampage are absolutely interminable offering nothing but tedious woodenly acted exposition that seems to drag on for what seems like an age. In addition I must say that while I realise that Levey and company had no real budget to work with that is still no excuse for the howling lapses in continuity we are subjected to. For example we are informed that Eddie lost all four limbs in Vietnam, but when we are first introduced to him lying in his hospital bed no attempt is made to hide the fact that all four of his limbs are visible and clearly intact underneath the bed sheets. This would be bad enough in itself but astoundingly Levey then repeats exactly the same gaff again just moments later. In the very next scene we see Eddie being removed from the back of an ambulance on a gurney and once again all four of his limbs can be clearly seen beneath the sheet covering his body.
Elsewhere Blackenstein delivers a strong contender for the award for “sorriest looking laboratory ever seen in a Frankenstein movie”. Indeed, Dr Stein’s lab looks as if it is made out of cardboard and held together with spit and string. In a pointless but rather amusing bit of trivia it should be pointed out that the bits of apparatus that adorn Dr Stein’s laboratory were the same props utilized in James Whale’s classic 1931 adaptation of Frankenstein starring the legendary Boris Karloff. These props were also wheeled out and dusted down for Al Adamson’s infamously terrible Dracula Vs Frankenstein (1971) just a few years previously. Adding even further to the growing catalogue of woes is Lou Frohman’s laughably misappropriated score. The soundtrack consists of a combination of clichéd vintage horror cues and fairly generic soul cuts sung by female vocalist cum actress Cardella Di Milo. While these are passable enough the manner in which music is plonked into the film seemingly at random is astonishing as dramatic cues blare away despite the fact that nothing more exciting is going on than someone trudging slowly along a corridor. On the same note Di Mio’s soul cuts seem to be inserted into the film in a similarly random and indiscriminate fashion and appear to serve as a heavy handed and intrusive reminder that we are supposed to be watching a blaxploitation picture.
The cast of Blackenstein is comprised mainly of unknowns with the exception of a few slumming veterans who were presumably in desperate need of a payday. The cast for their part really do precious little to help the films cause as they reel off their lines with an almost total lack of anything even vaguely resembling conviction or enthusiasm. Veteran actor John Hart is competent yet ultimately ineffectual as the imaginatively named Dr Stein who adheres to neither the mad scientist nor the misguided humanitarian characteristics of previous Frankenstein adaptations and soon fades into the background. Meanwhile both Joe De Sue as Eddie and Roosevelt Jackson as Dr Stein’s vengeful manservant Malcomb are completely wooden and monotone and bring no colour to their respective roles.
Once Dr Stein’s surgery goes awry transforming Eddie into a homicidal monster hopes are briefly raised that Blackenstein may finally step it up a gear and deliver the kind of trashy entertainment value that its concept promises. Unfortunately if anything this instead prompts the film to become even more tedious, desperate and inept. Sporting a ridiculous looking square afro Eddie is a woeful excuse for a monster as he lumbers around at a snails pace with his arms outstretched grunting like an imbecile. In a bid to inject some semblance of interest into the proceedings Levey intersperses the endless scenes of Eddie plodding slowly around the scenery with gratuitous gore scenes, Eddie’s first victim proves to be a previously abusive hospital orderly who he proceeds to tear limb from limb, the scene shown in silhouette behind a curtain. Predictably the execution of this scene is terrible with the attack so needlessly protracted that it ends up resembling some sort of crude slapstick comedy sketch. Later scenes in which Eddie tears handfuls of bloody intestines from female victims are slightly nastier but no more convincing and fail to disrupt the tedium. In fact the only scene to offer any semblance of amusement is the abrupt yet long overdue finale in which Eddie is torn apart by a pack of Doberman’s which resemble a collective of failed auditionees for the title role in Zoltan , Hound Of Dracula.
To put in rather bluntly Blackenstein is quite frankly an ineptly made piece of interminable crap. While the concept of the film may well sound like a “so bad its good” hoot on paper, rest assured that sitting through the crime against celluloid that is Blackenstein is most assuredly no laughing matter. The acting – for want of a better word – ranges from the nonplussed to the truly atrocious, the monster effects and cheapo sets are laughable and William Levey’s direction proves to be the kiss of death as he handles the proceedings with the kind of leaden pacing that makes every insufferable minute of Blackenstein feel like at least ten. So bearing all this in mind lets just sign Blackenstein off as a feckless and deeply regrettable budget and quality devoid attempt to take the outdated Frankenstein’s monster formula into a new seventies exploitation territory and just have done with it. Let us never speak of it again.
Also Try… Blacula / Scream Blacula Scream / Dr Black, Mr Hyde / The House On Skull Mountain / Dracula Vs Frankenstein (1971, Al Adamson) / Frankenstein Island / Frankenstein’s Castle Of Freaks.
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