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Frankenstain's creature (Scott Fresina) finds a portrait of its
creature and reminisces about the many tales connected to the name ...
- My Creation, My Beloved: The late 1800s - Gregore
Frankenstein (Buddy Danmiels Friedman), a direct descendant of the
legendary Victor, continues the family business (trying to create life
out of patched together cadavres), but he has sworn to never kill
anyone for his experiments. He's also deeply in love with Irma (voiced
by Monique Marissa Lukens), a brain surgeon whom he's never met but
who gives him priceless advice on his experiments via letters she
writes - and it's probably better that they never met because Gregore
looks hideous. Then Irma dies of cancer while by a string of lucky (?)
coincidences, Frankenstein comes into the possession of several
beautiful female corpses, and creates the perfect woman out of them as
a vessel for Irma's brain. But when his creature (Lilian Lev) awakens,
she's not all that happy with Gregore as a consort ...
- Crawler from the Grave: The early 1900s - Helmut Frankenstein
(Len Wein) has died, and his rival in life Vincent (John Blyth
Barrymore) leaves no stone unturned to get his ruby ring, including
pestering Helmut's wife (Tatiana DeKhytar). And when she tells him
Helmut has been buried with it, he resorts to grave robbing to get
what he wants, and cuts off Frankenstein's arm when doing so. But the
arm might not be quite as dead as it ought to be ...
- Madhouse of Death: The 1940s - Jack Anvil (Jamisin Matthews),
a not especially bright hard-boiled private eye, stumbles into Dr.
Mortality's (Mel Novak) home to sit out the storm after his car broke
down in the middle of nowhere. Too bad then Anvil's brain has just the
right size to be transplanted into Mortality's gorilla Gargantus (Adam
Meir) ...
- Dr. Karnstein's Creation: The 1950s - Dr. Karnstein (Jim
Tavaré), a descendant of the Frankensteins, has decided to move to a
castle in Transylvania with his teenage assistant Carl (Justin
Hoffmeister) to continue the family tradition. Unfortunately though
one of the corpses he robs to create his monster is that of a monster
- with the expected results ...
Now there are probably not many people that are more knowledgable about
Frankenstein in popular culture than Donald F. Glut, and
that really shines through in this movie, an anthology paying hommage to
different portrayals of the character from different eras and doing so
giving each segment its own feel and using special sets of genre mainstays
- and like all the best adaptations of the source (e.g. Bride
of Frankenstein), the film never takes itself too seriously
without ever becoming purely parodistic let alone moronic, while it
clearly shines through that Glut and company had lots of fun conceiving
the movie. Now add to that a solid cast with some especially inspired
choices - Swamp
Thing creator Len Wein and veteran actor Mel Novak of Game
of Death fame as two incarnations of the Doctor - and you've got
yourself a wildly entertaining movie. And sure it helps if you're really
into Frankenstein, but frankly, there's something to like
for everybody in this one.
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