Smashbomb

Search

Search results

All (4874)

Content

Awix (3310 KP) rated The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) in Movies

Feb 19, 2018 (Updated Feb 19, 2018)

It's (not really) alive!

Hammer's third Frankenstein movie is basically a soft reboot, disregarding the continuity of the first two. Down-on-his-luck Baron F (Cushing) rediscovers frozen body of his original monster (Kingston), doesn't really think through consequences of hiring someone called Zoltan the Evil Hypnotist (Woodthorpe) to help with monster-wrangling duties as he prepares to try and restore his reputation.

Hammer won the rights to reuse much imagery from the 1930s Universal Frankenstein series (that said, the monster looks more like an Easter Island statue than Boris Karloff); in their delight at this coup they seem to have forgotten to come up with a proper story for this film. Cushing is given a run for his money by the underrated character actor Peter Woodthorpe; in the end the parts are competently assembled but the spark of life remains elusive. Title seems a little harsh, as Frankenstein is certainly more sinned against than sinning on this occasion: poor choice of staff hardly constitutes 'evil', if you ask me.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Captive Wild Woman (1943) in Movies

Jan 16, 2019

Captive Wild Woman (1943)

1943 | Classics, Horror, Sci-Fi

5.0

(1 Ratings)

Movie Rating

More than usually dingbat Universal horror movie. A mad scientist (Carradine) has become the world's top expert on hormones and uses this to turn a gorilla into a beautiful woman (Acquanetta). She gets a job helping the local lion tamer, and falls in love with him even though he's happily engaged to a nice sensible girl. You can probably guess most of the rest.

Not exactly The Exorcist, but still sort of undemanding fun for the most part - you can enjoy yourself by having a good groan at the ridiculous genre tropes or playing spot the stock footage. On the other hand, sensitive modern viewers may have genuine issues with the depiction of animal mistreatment (it looks very likely that animals were indeed harmed in the making of this movie).

In the end, it takes a long time to get going and never quite gets to the interesting places you're hoping for, but it's such a silly and slight piece of work that this isn't a surprise. Passes the time amusingly.