FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACEMONSTER

By: BRIAN THOMAS
Date: Friday, May 05, 2006

Here's a movie that has always intrigued me. I've always been intrigued by anything to do with Frankenstein, of course, and FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACEMONSTER was one of those movies that only showed up on TV once in a great while. After reading about it in a monster magazine I was able to catch it on one of those local morning movie programs where viewers could call in to win money. It's one damn bizarre motion picture. I've seen it a few times since, but it always puzzled me. On one hand, it's kind of like a Saturday afternoon matinee monster movie aimed at kids and a very bad one at that. But on the other, it seems too camp to be taken at face value. Much like QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE, its makers seem to have been well aware that they were involved in a ludicrous project and were determined to have some fun with it.

It opens with an alien spacecraft approaching Earth or so we're led to believe. It's hard to tell from the stock footage standing in for special effects shots. Princess Marcuzan of Mars (Marilyn Hanold, Playboy's Miss June 1959, who'd played an alien in the Three Stooges short "Space Ship Sappy", and later the scarred model in THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE) commands a small invasion force with the assistance of her flamboyant aide, the bald, pointy-eared Dr. Nadir (still busy character actor Lou Cutell). The Martians are desperate, having sterilized their entire female population in an atomic war. They've come to Earth seeking breeding stock to repopulate in other words, Mars needs women! And Larry Buchanan needed a plot so badly for a TV movie in 1967 that he swiped the same idea for MARS NEEDS WOMEN.

Cut to Florida, where the press is being introduced to top NASA astronaut Captain Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly). When Saunders freezes up during the press conference, he's hustled out by Dr. Adam Steele (James Karen, another familiar face best known to genre fans from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD). There's a great deal of concern over Saunders' performance, as the public isn't in on the fact that he's really an android. This leads to a sequence making use of even more rocket launch stock footage, accompanied by some earnest hippie garage rock (by the Poets). The Martians mistake Frank's rocket for a missile and use a ray to knock it down, then realize their mistake and send some men to kill the pilot, who has landed in Puerto Rico. Of course, they don't reckon on a robot, and they're only able to wound Frank, blasting off a hunk of his head, but this is enough to send the android out of control and into a murderous rampage. While Frank-enstein (get it?) is stumbling around butchering cocoanut farmers with a machete, the Martian soldiers are out abducting bikini-clad hotties from beaches and pool parties. Concerned with their 6 million dollar investment, the military sends Steele and his assistant Karen Grant (Nancy Marshall) to Puerto Rico to search for the robot, outfitting them with a Vespa, travelogue footage and some faux Beatles music (by Distant Cousins) for their mission. That's right, the US Army has plenty of helicopters, tanks and jeeps in the stock footage, but can only afford a rented scooter for one of their most important rescue efforts.

What's that? Oh yes, the title promised a spacemonster (onscreen) or a space monster (in ads). The Martians have a doozy in the basement of their ship, a hulking mutant known as Mull (Bruce Glover, another busy actor and dad to Crispin), who looks kind of like a cross between ROBOT MONSTER's Ro-man and SHE CREATURE. When Grant is captured in a Martian go-go girl roundup and thrown in a cage next to Mull (thus setting up the climactic showdown), the grasping creature is actually frightening, at least to the kids in the audience.

It's all an incredibly strange and bewildering tapestry of rock music, sex, a gruesomely disfigured android, silly space opera aliens, a creepy monster, lots of military and space program stock footage, Caribbean locations, curiously impassive extras, and a semi-interesting collection of character actors (Robert Alan Browne of PSYCHO II and III is also in the cast). It's not what anyone would call "good", but it's also a mind-bender and a lot of fun to watch. Some peculiar details just jump out there, such as the way the Martians slide their captives into a machine for "purification" after first throwing cheap curtains over them. It's just plain weird. Released to moderate success on a double bill with CURSE OF THE VOODOO, it later blew some minds when it was paired with the struggling Natalie Wood drama INSIDE DAISY CLOVER! One can't help wondering how and why it came to be, but the facts have been elusive until now.

The trio of screenwriters, who all went on to success in literary and academic circles, come clean on how they got involved with the movie in an essay provided in a 16-page insert booklet. It's a good read, putting the movie in fresh perspective as it's explained that the story was a comedy at first, but since the writers had nothing to do with it once they finished the script (over two drunken weekends), they can't give much information on the shooting. Dark Sky mattes a slightly scratched 35mm print for widescreen viewing, and it looks and sounds clean enough, but doesn't give the curious enough answers. Other than the booklet, a small image gallery and the hysterical trailer, the disc offers no extras. It's a bit disappointing that there's no commentrak from director Robert Gaffney (who also worked on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and SUPERFLY T.N.T.), cinematographer Saul Midwall (who shot THE HUSTLER and 12 ANGRY MEN) or any other survivors, but it's nice to finally have this oddball title preserved on DVD.

Copyright © 2006 Brian Thomas, author of the massive book VideoHound's DRAGON: ASIAN ACTION & CULT FLICKS.
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