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DVD Review“Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster”By Dan Century
In the opening scenes of Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster we meet the Princess and Doctor Nadir, paranoid space aliens who don’t want to conquer earth – they only want to borrow the finest earth women for breeding purposes. The Princess and Nadir hover above the earth casually shooting down NASA rockets, waiting for the right time to commence the booty snatching. Dr. Nadir, is one of the greatest B-Movie characters of all time. He looks and acts like an effeminate John Lovitz in eye-liner, Spock ears, a bald cap and a bejeweled wrestling cape. The entire production is campy, low budget and ridiculous – like Plan 9 from Outer Space with twice the budget, which isn’t saying much. Back at NASA Captain Frank Saunders is set to be the first man to travel to Mars. But, Frank is not a man – he’s a robot comprised of human parts, the guts from a 13” Zenith television and a few transistor radios. He’s a space age Frankenstein monster! In one over the top scene Jim Karen, the guy who used to do Shop Rite commercials, peels back Frank’s scalp to reveal a brain that is half living tissue and half electronic equipment: transistors, vacuum tubes, condensers, tangled wires. And it looks real – it looks like they ripped out half the actor’s brain, broke a TV set and stuffed the guts in his skull. I wanted to vomit and laugh at the same time. NASA sends Frank to Mars, but before he gets too far Dr. Nadir and the Princess blow up Frank’s rocket, which crashes back to earth in Puerto Rico. That’s not a tragic accident – that’s a fabulous vacation! And I’m pretty sure the folks that made this film used the Puerto Rico location as an excuse for a little R&R on the company’s dime. There’s even a bizarre montage of Jim Karen and his assistant cruising around San Juan in a motor scooter. Anyway, Frank is fucked up and on the loose in Puerto Rico, and the Princess and Dr. Nadir send spacemen after him to finish the job they started. Slack-jawed Frank is hilarious as he stumbles around the beach, and even funnier after a spaceman shoots him in the head revealing what looks like a 1960’s transistor radio stuck in mud. The Princess reveals Phase 2: her plan to “acquire breeding stock.” Their first victim is a voluptuous young blond in a polka-dot bikini (which changes color from one scene to the next). The Space men vaporize her fat, oafish husband and take her back to the mothership, where she is forced to endure an awesome body “inspection.” The spacemen continue their kidnapping spree, invading a swinging sixties pool party with plenty of fine young specimens to choose from. The scene is pretty hilarious as they explode a dude who was doing the twist on the diving board. Frankly, they did humanity a service from removing him from the gene pool. All this leads to an epic battle between the space aliens, some stock footage of the military, Frank, and Mull, a pig-skull gorilla space creature. Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster is one of the best B-Movies ever made. I dare say it’s more entertaining than Plan 9 from Outer Space, and it’s a must-see film for any MST3K fan. Contact Information: Click to Buy! |
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Why couldn’t Mystery Science Theater 3000 have
featured this film? That’s my question. It would have been awesome!
‘Nuff said, but I’ll say more.
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