Mistress Frankenstein (2000)

 

Director: John Bacchus

Screenplay: John Bacchus, Joe Ned, John Paul Fedele and Michael Raso

Cast: Darian Caine as Helena Frankenstein; Heidi Christine as The Broadway Girl; Jessie Harcourt and Jade Duboir as the Housemaids; John Paul Fedele as Dr. Frankenstein; Bennigan Feeney as Igor; Michael R. Thomas as The Monster / Gypsy / The Burgomaster / Karl The Inspector; John Bacchus as Stable Boy / Hippie Couple / Father Karl; A.J. Khan as The Hooker; John Link as Karl The Jester; Kimbo as Himself

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #265 / Cinema of the Abstract Candidate

 

Frankenstein's Monster: Now the villagers with their torches, it's an incessant pain in the ass, I'm telling you.

Dr Frankenstein: What are you gonna do, it goes with the territory.

Frankensteins Monster: It goes with the territory...

Let us not kid ourselves with Mistress Frankenstein - from Seduction Cinema, creators of The Erotic Witch Project films, this is cinema meant to titillate a heterosexual male target audience, imaging women together in prolonged sex scenes padded out with a semblance of plot. It is crass, as a maid says to another if, "as a lesbian", whether she will be deflowered by the other, and it is not defendable. I am here, reviewing this, however to see what strange ways this New Jersey based company made these films in the late 1990s and early 2000s, structured around horror and genre structures, and by this point improvised to an extreme with an openly goofy tone.

And Mistress Frankenstein is weird. Set in an ill-defined time, clearly in the modern day but with a castle (behind CGI fog) that has the normal room decor of someone's house, the next heir of the Frankenstein lineage is a putz, whose wife Helena (Darian Caine) even before her death and resurrection was puritanical to anything remotely sensual. His tuxedo wearing servant Igor (a very flamboyant Bennigan Feeney) wishes he was more interested in twerking his nipples than the doomed attempt to get Helena's attention even when he brings her back to life, more so as, as a result of a new brain Igor acquired, she develops a greater interest in other women, whilst the locals, mostly all named Karl, will get wind of this and be the angry mob who acquire burning torches on-line on www.torch.com. This sounds far more complex than the film actually is, a film instead where a random fart and poo gag happens before the opening credits, in a very modern bathroom, for the sake of it. From director John Bacchus, who started with films like The Bloody Video Horror That Made Me Puke on My Aunt Gertrude (1989), this is openly silly, very cheaply made from Seduction Cinema, with all the silliest humour, even some Dad humour, you can get. I do not think this is even an insult, as there is something charming within this even as Mistress Frankenstein is not a film I can recommend to many. Those willing to experience it watch a film where everyone on camera helped pitch in on the production, as much as people behind the camera are likely on camera at some point, and this company managed to release a lot of these films at the 2000s and the early DVD market with the mentality of a merry band producing what they fancied.

Very improvised, if you watch the outtakes (included on the old DVD release) you see that this was made by a small group of people, likely the same people off-screen behind the cameras as is onscreen, improvising what makes them laugh as they made erotica scenes only involving women. As a result, here especially, you have a schism. Softcore with the curiosity, whilst I will not suggest feminist ideals with this film, that the women are openly sexual figures, whilst all the men, even when they watch and leer on the nudity and sex, are a bunch of goofballs, inept, get distracted taking a picture of their own erection, or getting their arms ripped off. The modern Dr. Frankenstein is an dorky figure, Igor, whilst a gay stereotype, at least sympathetic as he deserves more attention from a man whose relationship with his wife Helena was doomed even before her transformation, and the stable boy gets distracted by an attractive gypsy whilst her colleagues steal everything including a pair of bongos. Only the Frankenstein's Monster, already present, has some intelligence, liking milk and cookies, and throwing his lot with the gypsies when he catches one with the aforementioned bongos. All of this as I write this, creating sound sentences, does sound completely odd, more so as an ultra low budget production. I attempted to view The Erotic Witch Project as a fascinating, forgotten cultural item, which it is, but this from the future director of Bloodz vs. Wolvez (2006) feels now is part of a vast plain of cinema which, for many, is undefendable, yet is compelling for me as a border of how cinema can be different from what you expect.

And sometimes, this improvised cheaply made film managed something. Helena dies due to an unfortunate horse riding accident, and when I say "horse", the horse named Hilary was two people in a cheap two-person horse costume. The horse is shot by the stable boy upon Dr. Frankenstein's request, who blindfolds Helna and lets her ride on his back, only for her to strike her head barely in a tree, stuck there, and die instantly. That scene with the horse alone is why I have gotten interested in Seduction Cinema as, managing to get into Blockbusters and even British DVD rental stores like Global Video, you get bizarre moments like this. That shot specifically, of the stable boy shooting the horse, was legitimately funny regardless of context for how unexpected it is to witness. Among this reoccurring group of people who are in these films (director John Bacchus himself, who plays the stable boy among other roles, and actresses like Darian Caine to A.J. Khan), they let themselves indulge in their weird sense of humour, a world of its own where even Kimbo, the man in a gorilla suit who appeared in The Erotic Witch Project, is in this film in a cameo alongside a variety of other films by the company from this period with IMDB credit.

The sex scenes are long - trying to watch this not for titillation is ridiculous in itself. Scored to porn elevator vaporwave music with a lot of saxophone, the film has a lot of sex, with some scenes in-between, and where the interest lies for me is what ties them together in a format, before the internet became fully usable by many and porn clips could just be downloaded that excised this. There are very time dated references to being "2k complaint", prop nipple clamps are two wooden laundry pegs connected with tinfoil, and a brain is acquired from Clive's Body Shop, where you learn a politician's brain is cheap and difficult to sell off. Possibly indebted a little to Frankenhooker (1990), Frank Henenlotter's cult film from New York City, Darian Crane's Helena post resurrection shuffles along, in a mini skirt and tube top, to be with as many women as she can, the hotel room always used clearly informing the viewer most of this film is shot in one person's house.

In context, all of this is peculiar, where most will be frustrated with its randomness or the length of the sex scenes. It barely attempts a plot, one which never leads to anywhere as a jester, a random very hairy man is costume, appears at Dr. Frankenstein's window, in his very modern garden, spying at his resurrection of his wife and lets the Burgomaster be aware of this. I think it says a lot of this film where, as erotica meant to sell, the end credits sequence is Kimbo the gorilla playing at a keyboard in a hall as the Jester goes into a long monologue, involving his seed, as Frankenstein's Monster ballroom dances with a woman. This is bizarre, and this would have been on a rental stand in Global Video in my country, as it got a release in the British DVD market, all because there was a time where an audience wanting titillation existed for the new DVD format. A group such as Seduction Cinema could fill that market whilst doing whatever they thought would be funny.

This is more so the case as, not trying to parody the template of a film such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), this feels less inhibited, with a scene or two with a sitcom laugh track, to eco hippy parodies appearing for a scene, complaining of Dr. Frankenstein's environment harm let alone playing God, for a joke. Including the scene transitions, of peoples' heads spinning against a super imposed rainbow, this clearly knows it is eccentric and working with very little. Again, caution is advised against something like this being watched by anyone even if you do not factor in that erotic content, as that is a subjective thing dependent on the viewer. More an issue in this case is that Mistress Frankenstein would put people off for how cheap and how openly ridiculous it is, barely strung together and aware of this. It does not feel ironic either, but made as much in pleasing itself as it does to fit a market.

Even for that market, which exists into the modern day even with hardcore pornography available, this had the creative decision for one of its last scenes to have an epilepsy inducing threesome, set to black with the image flashing in and out, with moans repeated almost a cappella in rhythm to the music, which does raise questions of films like this even fitting the softcore market as suitable licenses. Especially as the early 2000s is a territory still open to consider, this, like any other outsider cinema, is going to be more interesting to view as a snapshot of the era. Less because they are good films but to imagine what they represent of the era, shot within weeks with the fashions and items at hand. That, and how, like an old Something Weird Video release for a decade before, I have found myself with Seduction Video films getting increasingly stranger the few I have seen, and this is bonkers to say the least when I did not expect this level of eccentricity.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Haphazard/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None