Review – Frankenstein 1970

Several times I’d noticed this picture on my Tivo box’s list of upcoming horror movies, but somehow I just never seemed to be in the mood for a production with that grainy color and loud clothing and all the other trappings of low budget film-making from the 70s. So when the mood finally did strike me and I gave this one a try, it came as quite a surprise to find that it’s actually a black-and-white thriller from the 1950s, the title implying the monster’s presence in a future that turns out to be, well, a lot more like the decade when it was shot than the decade when it supposedly took place. Boris Karloff plays the mad scientist, and sadly this is from the point in his career when he’d deteriorated enough to make his performances hard to watch. The monster is also no great shakes. It spends almost the entire production wrapped in a thick coating of bandages, almost making this more of a mummy movie than a Frankenstein picture. I suppose they had to keep his head covered in order to set up the “shocking” ending, but the resulting departure from sub-genre conventions turns out to be an uneven trade. Mildly amusing