If Ken Russell, Mario Bava, and Luis Bunuel had collaborated on a film the results wouldn't have been much different from "Flesh for Frankenstein." This movie should be required viewing for all pre-med students: if they can take this, they should be ready to dissect corpses. Not since "Sin City" have I seen limbs and organs strewed around the screen so cheerfully. Unlike "Sin City," which had a kabuki, stylized quality that blunted much of the horror, "Flesh for Frankenstein" has an unabashed nastiness that doesn't pull any punches. At the same time it's beautifully photographed; like much Italian giallo (Bava, Argento) even the most horrific images are rendered eerily beautiful by the lush color and widescreen. Udo Kier plays Baron Frankenstein as a proto-Nazi obsessed with creating a master race; Monique Van Vooren is deliciously campy as his oversexed wife and Joe Dallesandro, with his flat Brooklyn accent, resembles a young Marlon Brando as Nicholas the stable boy, the only decent human being in the film. Many have commented that he was out of place in the movie, but that was the point: he was the all-American good guy lost in a world of sleek but slimy eurotrash. Particularly disturbing were the two almost-mute children, who resemble nothing so much as Wednesday and Pugsley Addams. Like Bunuel's "Viridiana" there is an unmistakable hint of incest: the Baron and Katharine are clearly brother and sister, and they seem to be grooming their children to take their place. This movie joins "Salo" and "El Topo" in the pantheon of disturbing 70s cult films.
Review of Flesh for Frankenstein
