Film Review: FLESH for FRANKENSTEIN (1973)

Watching both Fresh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974) in the same day made for an interesting little double feature. I detest vampire films but love the story of Frankenstein's monster so it comes to great surprise that I'm not a fan of Flesh for Frankenstein.

This film deviates from the original Mary Shelley story very little (unlike Blood for Dracula) and still has Baron Frankenstein (Udo Kier) as a doctor obsessed with creating life from death but this time he is creating both a man and female subject that he wants to mate and create the perfect human being. Instead of an Igor to help him by his side (like in the Universal version of the story) there is now Otto (Arno Jeurging) and Frankenstein is married to his sister Baroness Katrin Frankenstein (Monique van Vooren), who is a nymphomaniac. Like its companion film it is a very sexually explicit film with plenty of nudity. Both films are concerned with the way in which sex and horror are related but it is more prevalent in this film which also has several scenes of necrophilia as well.

These films are not for the uninitiated and if you don't already know what you're getting into then you'll be shocked. This is not to say that the film is good because it suffers from the same problems of its companion which is the subpar acting but it does manage to have descent production values and Kier is a delight to watch (in his over acting way). For Kier fans this film will be more interesting than Blood for Dracula as it gives him more room to be over the top in a very Tim Curry - Rocky Horror Picture Show kind of way, which isn't all bad.