Saturday, April 12, 2008

TOHO massacres Frankenstein

Movie • FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD • 1965
This wasn’t as good as I remembered. There was a time when giant monster movies were all the rage, and everyone was trying to capitalize on the successes of Godzilla and King Kong including TOHO themselves. This is one of those efforts that clearly failed. It’s another movie warning of the dangers of fiddling with atomic bombs, but they twist it up like a churro with warnings of nazis and cloning. A lot is implied, but very little is explained. The writers, and thus the characters jump to all sorts of conclusions.
There is a contrived battle with the giant monster, Baragon that ends so poorly, I wondered how much time they had to write this. It’s as if they realized they created a seriously lame character in this giant Frankenstein boy, and figured they’d flush it down the toilet before it got too big to feed.
The acting is fun and over-the-top the way it should be, but the movie itself doesn’t come together. Definitely see it if you are into the goofball side of giant monster movies, but don’t expect it to be as much fun as a genuine Godzilla movie.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I so remember this movie from when I was growing up in NY on WPIX saturday mornings. Good times.