FRANKENSTEIN 1970

FRANKENSTEIN 1970 (1958) was, like so many other mid-century science fiction/horror films, a movie I first encountered in the pages of FAMOUS MONSTERS.A Frankenstein movie starring Boris Karloff and set in the far distant year of 1970 sounded way cool. I never got around to seeing it when I was a kid but I watched it the other day and was profoundly disappointed.

For starters, the title is somewhat misleading because there's nothing in the film that even remotely tries to depict the then 12-years into the future world of 1970. It's a marketing gimmick, pure and simple. And although Karloff gives it his best, he's hampered by a sub par script by Richard H. Landau and George Worthington Yates (from a story by Aubrey Schenck and Charles A. Moses) and an extraordinarily weak cast of supporting players whose acting abilities range from passable to non-existent.

The story concerns a television film crew and cast who are shooting a "documentary" about the Frankenstein family and its' horrific legacy in Castle Frankenstein itself. Baron Victor Von Frankenstein (Karloff), is their gracious host but he's up to something in his hidden, underground laboratory. The scar-faced and limping Baron appears to have suffered at the hands of the Nazis during World War II and he seeks to make a living creature with his own pre-war perfect features. This costs money of course (he desperately needs an atomic reactor) and he's willing to host the film crew in exchange for a fee. By the way, just where does one go to purchase an off-the-shelf atomic reactor?

Of course, things go wrong as various members of the Baron's staff and the film crew stumble across a giant, swathed-in bandages body in the basement and meet their untimely ends. It ends with the "monster" killing the Baron (didn't see that coming!) and the face of the monster revealed as Karloff''s own.

Shot in CinemaScope by Carl E. Guthrie, FRANKENSTEIN 1970 is nonetheless visually unimaginative with director Howard W. Koch either afraid of or unwilling to use edits. He lets long scenes play out in single takes that seem to go on and on, the camera tracking across a borrowed set while actors spout their lines. It's all stagy and static. There's little to no atmosphere or suspense save in the "gotcha" opening scene where a woman is pursued through the nighttime forest by a monstrous beast.

Karloff is the only reason to watch this turkey, a lackluster piece of genre clap trap that trades heavily on the names of both Karloff and Frankenstein to garner an audience.  It's strictly low-budget, barely competent junk. Thumbs down.