Frankenstein's Daughter

Frankenstein’s Daughter

Released: 1958

MPAA Rating: None

Genre: Zombie

Nuts and Bolts: A duplicitous scientist manipulates an old man into helping him create life from lifelessness. The shocking secret behind Frankenstein’s Daughter is TOO terrifying to reveal!

Summary: Don Pennitini (token dumb greaser) drops his girlfriend Suzie Lawler (token blonde bimbo) off in front of her home. Before she can go inside her house, she is accosted by a gruesomely hairy buck-toothed girl that makes Mimi Bobeck look like Raquel Welsh. Suzie gets away however, but the experience really spooks her.

The following morning, Trudy Morton wakes up late for her tennis match. Her old-ass uncle Carter comes into the room and she tells him of this awful nightmare she had. Trudy prepares to meet her friends while Uncle Carter goes back downstairs.

From here we learn that Carter Morton is a scientist who is trying to develop a serum that will eliminate diseased cells from the bloodstream of a human patient. All he needs in order to cross the threshold is an experimental drug called Digeneral. His assistant is Doctor Oliver Frank. Frank is a smarmy bastard who seems to know a lot more about Carter’s experiments than he cares to let on. Oliver warns Carter that the Digeneral is untested and may lead to physical deformities. Since Ollie is something of a prick, the old man pretty much ignores his warnings.

Later that day, Trudy meets up with her friends: Suzie, Don and boyfriend Johnny Bruder. Johnny sports a pompadour so obnoxious looking that even Buster Poindexter would be embarrassed to associate with him. (Hey, what can I say? This was the 1950s. EVERYBODY had a shitty haircut back then.) Suzie relays the grim experience she suffered the night before. Trudy is upset by this tale of buck-toothed monster women because it bears too close a resemblance to the nightmare she awoke from just a few hours ago. Don thinks Suzie is full of shit and the two argue about it for a bit.

Back at the Morton house, Carter and Oliver are engaged in their own quarrel. Oliver may very well be Carter’s assistant, but more often than not, he likes to act as if HE were the one truly running the show. (He is actually, but its still enough to send the old man’s nut into a twitch.) Carter needs more Digeneral in order to continue his work. He decides to break into Rockwell Laboratories (where he used to work) and steal some. Oliver doesn’t like this one bit. If Carter is caught, it will bring the cops snooping around and that is something that Ollie has NO desire to deal with. (Hmm. Wonder what skeleton Oliver has in HIS closet, eh?) Carter leaves the house just as Trudy returns home. Oliver has nothing better to do with his time so he decides to go over and feel the old gal up. Now Trudy being the virtuous girl that she is doesn’t take kindly to men twice her age honking on her hooters. She belts Oliver a slap across the face worthy of Ric Flair. WHOOOO!

Pissed off all to hell, Oliver retreats to the lab and this is where we learn his cleverly hidden secret. His name is NOT really Oliver Frank. It’s actually Oliver FrankENSTEIN and he is the grandson of some bloke who built hisself a munster some years ago. Like his ancestors, Frankenstein wants to take up the family practice and create his own fully functional human being. He even has his own little toady that runs around bringing him body parts and shit. This is Elsu. Elsu is an elderly chap who helped procure bodies for both Ollie’s father AND grandfather. (I guess he got that hunchback problem corrected at some point down the road.) Elsu is not only Oliver’s secret spanking boy, but he is also the Morton family gardener. Elsu’s a bit of a dumb-fuck as well. Ollie sent him out on an errand to procure for him a healthy human head. Instead he brings back a bloody severed hand. Idiot.

We also learn that Oliver has been experimenting with the Digeneral as well. (Well, he had to learn about the side effects from someplace didn’t he?) He has been spiking the fruit punch with the shit and giving it to Trudy. This in turn has been turning the alluring brunette into a hunched over swollen eyed hairy eye-browed buck-toothed goon. Fortunately for Trudy, the effects are only temporary. Trudy’s memories of these transformations are always hazy and she writes them off as being some sort of bizarre nightmare. Still bitter that Trudy bitch-slapped him earlier, Ollie decides to give her a shot of ugly-on-the-rocks. Again, Trudy falls for the ‘fruit-punch’ trick and she slowly transforms into the living she-cow. Trudy is dressed in a bathing suit at the time and this sort of becomes a running joke throughout the course of the film. Heifer-woman goes out into the streets and begins terrorizing the neighborhood. This attracts the attention of Lieutenant Boyle, Brighton’s hard-boiled take-charge chief of police sort of guy. The cops chase after cow-beast for a little bit until she hides in an alley. Oliver comes up behind her and gives her a sedative. He takes her back to the house quicker than you can say Moo.

Boyle later returns to his office where he learns about the break-ins at Rockwell Laboratories.

The next day Trudy is back to normal and he gal-pal Suzie comes over to visit her. The two argue about something so ridiculous that it is not even worth mentioning and the curvy blonde storms off in a huff. Before she leaves, she runs into Mac-Daddy Pimpenstein. Suzie hits on him and the two make plans to go out on a date.

That night, Oliver and Suzie are in his car on some far off deserted highway. Having no clue as to the concept of foreplay, Frankenstein does his level best to force himself onto Suzie. Suzie isn’t into this overly aggressive old-school Neanderthal system of mating and she wallops him one across the chops. (Man, this guy strikes out more often Charlie Brown.) She gets out of the car and proceeds to walk home. Well our boy Ollie has a temper on him that would put Bill Bixby to shame. He gears up his Malibu and runs the crazy bitch over! Wrapping her body in a tarp, he brings her back to the lab.

Now this isn’t just your average everyday garden-variety, run-of-the-mill, wine-cellar-turned-secret-mad-scientist-laboratory mind you. Nope. This one comes equipped with one of those new-fangled fancy shmancy secret rooms behind the bookcase. This room is SO secret in fact, that even Carter Morton (the OWNER of the house) isn’t aware of its existence! Oliver takes Suzie’s smashed up head and sews it onto the monster body that he’s been building behind Carter’s back. Despite the fact that Suzie has fresh tire tracks etched into her face, her brain is still in tip-top shape. (At least for now.)

Oliver is anxious to get his new toy up and running, but first he has to get that pestering old man out of the way. He smashes Carter’s supply of Digeneral forcing the old fuck to go back out onto the streets to steal some more. With the old man gone, Oliver and his love-daddy Elsu are free to experiment with their creation. They go through the whole bright flashing lights/loud machinery bit until finally…voila! Home made monster. Now we actually get a LOOK at the thing. The creature is genderized as a ‘she’ because it has Suzie’s brain. But it is clearly a male body on the thing and boy is it U-G-L-Y! (Why is it that only lead singers from washed up 80s pop bands can seem to create a monster which is at least semi-attractive? And just how many licks DOES it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? Sigh. The world may never know.) Anyway, this monstrous she-man stumbles out of the lab and lumbers its way upstairs. It rips a curtain off the back door before busting through to get outside. (???) Wandering around town aimlessly, it comes upon a warehouse worker dallying around outside a storage facility. It tenderizes its prey with a few karate chops to the neck before crushing the guy between two heavy steel garage doors. Why it does this is anybody’s guess.

Back at the house, Trudy comes upon Oliver arguing with Elsu. She overhears a bit of their conversation and realizes that Ollie is up to something shaky. She tries to question him about it but there is a knock at the door. Expecting her boyfriend Johnny Bruder, she opens the door. Believe it or not, it is the MONSTER waiting on the other side. The monster actually fucking KNOCKED on the door! (This scene alone firmly establishes this film for inclusion in the ‘so bad its good’ category.) Trudy faints and falls to the floor. The monster is sedated and taken down into the secret lab. She comes to just as Johnny arrives at the house. His presence here serves no purpose other than to inform Trudy that Suzie has disappeared.

Everything is quiet for the next few days. Suzie hosts a barbeque party and invites all of the local geeks to attend. We are even treated to ten minutes worth of a rockabilly sing-along. (Oy. Christ I hate the 50s. If there were one time period that I wish I could eradicate forever from the pages of history, it would be that.)

Back inside the house, Oliver has decided that the old man has become too much of a liability. He goes upstairs and begins strangling the shit out of the old fucker. Just before Oliver gets the chance to fully crush Carter’s windpipe, there’s another knock at the door. No it’s not the polite she-monster this time, but rather it is Lieutenant Boyle. For some reason, Carter waits ten minutes or so before telling the cop that this nut-job just tried to strangle him. But Ollie is pretty smooth and convinces the cops that Carter is just a nutcase. The old man confesses to stealing the chemicals from Rockwell and is arrested. He dies later while in custody. (Bad ticker.)

After a few more senseless exposition scenes, Oliver decides to confront Trudy. He finally reveals that he is the grandson of Frankenstein and that he has created a woman that will love him like no other. (Or something to that effect.) He takes Trudy down into the lab and straps her to a table. He plans on injecting her full of Digeneral making her a buck-toothed cow-hag forever. Elsu finally develops a conscience by this point and betrays Doctor Frankenstein. (Don’t these guys ever learn? The dim-witted toady ALWAYS turns on you towards the end!) Frankenstein orders the monster to kill Elsu.

A short while later, Lt. Boyle and Detective Dillon return to the house to interview Oliver. Boyle leaves to answer another call leaving Dillon alone with Frankenstein. Ultimately, he too becomes a victim of the savage he-woman. By this point, Johnny Bruder arrives on the scene and rescues Trudy. Frankenstein orders the monster to kill them as well. Johnny tries to avoid the creature’s grasp and eventually picks up a jar filled with acid. Hurling the projectile at the monster, it misses and shatters in Frankenstein’s face. The acid instantaneously eats into the maniac’s skin killing him. As the monster is flailing about, its arm comes too close to a lit Bunsen burner. Catching on fire, the creature’s body erupts into flames faster than Michael Jackson during a Pepsi commercial. It too finally falls over dead. Johnny and Trudy leave and everything ends happily ever after.

Acting/Dialogue: This flick boasts the typical shitty acting inherent in most films of the time period. It’s not obnoxiously abysmal, but its hardly award winning either. I suppose the worst actor would be whoever got stuck wearing the monster costume. But in all fairness, he/she does wind up with the best dialogue. No one can say “Glrrphhghrh!” quite like this guy can.

Gore: There is one really gruesome scene in this that is easy to miss. When Oliver brings Suzie’s body into the lab, her leg is sticking out of the bottom of the sheet. Her leg is bloody and mangled and her shin is SNAPPED in half! This scene alone bumps this dud up at least one notch on the ole head-o-meter. This is some awesome fucking shit!

Guilty Pleasures: The version of this movie that I saw was part of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark’s Midnight Madness anthology. That being said, we are treated to some tongue in cheek boob jokes and Elvira’s ubiquitously impressive cleavage.

The Good: This is probably one of the better schlock films of the 1950s. It’s just cheesy enough to be laughable, but not so horrifically stupid that it numbs the senses. Like its predecessors it follows the same old tried-and-true Frankenstein formula; Mad scientist with delusions of grandeur who tries to stand head and shoulders above the accomplishments of his forbearers. This character however deviates from the Frankenstein template in one major way. Typically, a token Frankenstein conducts his experiments for the BENEFIT of humanity. They always start off with the best intentions but their priorities become obsessively askew somewhere along the way. This is not the case with Ollie here. He was obsessed to begin with. This guy is a complete misogynist with absolutely no redeemable qualities what-so-fucking-ever. I don’t need to consult Sigmund Freud to know that this guy suffers from an infinitesimally small pecker. His penis envy bouts of rage are rampant throughout the film. First he tries to rub his love-daddy up on Trudy who slaps the shit out of him. Now upon rejection, most guys would either: forget the embarrassing incident and move along to greener pastures; or they would refer to the object of their spurning as a dyke before trolling on for a new score. But not this guy. No, instead he handles rejection by transmogrifying the object of his affection into a hideous monster! And he only gets WORSE after that! He tries the same stunt on Suzie Lawler and is actually surprised when Suzie slaps the enamel off his teeth. Not having any monster maker formula ready, he decides to run her ass over instead. (Sadly, incidents like this really have happened in the real world. And I’m not talking about that crappy MTV show either.)

I liked the idea that this latest descendent of Victor the Frank has to use somebody else’s crib in order to do his work. In just about every other tale, the scientist conducts his experiments from within his castle or what have you and the local villagers are pretty much aware that he’s fucking around with some kind of oddball experiment. They are usually fairly tolerable of the goon until the end product begins strangling neighborhood children. But Oliver realizes that those sorts of shenanigans aren’t going to fly in Brighton. And so, he must conduct himself surreptitiously. He’s pretty smooth too. He plays this old codger like a harp from hell and even convinces the police that Morton is a crackpot. He manipulates Trudy fairly easily as well by making her think that every sour idea that pops into her head is the result of either stress or a bad dream. This is a quality of 1950s cinema that always makes me laugh. Why is it that when a woman disagrees with a man no matter how insignificant the reason, it is always because she’s under stress and not thinking straight or else she’s obviously suffering from some sort of psychotic delusion? It never enters these pricks’ minds that they might just be flat out fucking wrong! Now I’m typically one to gregariously extend a middle finger to the politically correct, but thank God for Women’s Lib.

Anyway, if you can suffer through Oliver Frank’s chauvinism, I think you’ll find that Frankenstein’s Daughter is a film that proves to be entertaining and it keeps your attention leveled at the screen. It’s one of the first Frankenstein flicks to take place in America and it shies away from the old torch-bearing, pitchfork-carrying, let’s-kill-the-crazy-fucker-in-his-castle shtick. I think this is a pretty cool fucking low budget flick. And you should too.

The Bad: Now while I had a lot of fun watching this movie, there are a few elements that irrevocably ensnare the entire affair in the confines of the cheese factory.

First off, is the monster itself. Facially, this thing is uglier than a bag full of assholes. One side of its face looks like it suffered a stroke while the other side looks as if two porcupines used it as a matt in a tag-team wrestling tournament. This isn’t a complaint mind you; this is actually its GOOD qualities. But the fearsomeness of the creature is completely undermined by the ridiculous looking garb it is forced to wear. It runs around in a black leather suit that resembles a disco-less version of the costume worn by the three evil Kryptonians in Superman II. It also has on these bulky black plumber’s gloves. The creature lumbers about like a bloody fucking robot jerking its arms forward and backward. Christ, it looks like that funky robot dance that was popular in the 80s. If the critter wasn’t a complete fashion victim, it MIGHT look kind of creepy. But the combination of robotic arm gestures and vinyl overalls just makes this thing come off as looking rather silly. Now I am hardly one to pick nits when it comes to a film like this, but didn’t Oliver mention earlier that Suzie’s brain was still good? If that is the case, then why did the creature become a slavering flipper-armed retard? And what was the point to this creature’s existence? He/She races out of the house and kills a dockworker. Traditionally, the Frankenstein monster doesn’t kill anyone unless its provoked. But this critter just kills arbitrarily. It also kills whomever Oliver tells it too. This falls hand in hand with Frankenstein’s theory that women are subservient to a male command structure. Whatever.

There’s another really poor element to this flick. At one point, Carter Morton makes a disparaging reference to the legend of the Frankenstein family. Oliver gets REALLY defensive at this and it becomes plainly obvious to the audience that there is more to this guy than meets the eye. However, it should have been obvious to Carter as well. Now Oliver stuck me as a pretty slick dude, so I have a hard time believing that he would totally lose his cool like this.

There is only one aspect to this flick that REALLY scales it back a few notches on the head-o-meter. During Trudy’s barbeque, we are forced to suffer through the ever dreadful and hauntingly feared sing-along. This rockabilly group named Paige Cavanaugh and his Trio perform TWO complete songs in their entirety! I guess this loser was the brother of the director or something. This is the most ridiculous and excruciating part of the whole film. How can I possibly respect Doctor Frankenstein’s nefarious experiments with inanimate tissue knowing that the poor boy is forced to listen to this crap while doing it? That’s probably why the monster caught on fire at the end of the flick. It didn’t stumble into the Bunsen burner, as it would have us believe. It committed suicide! And not because it found itself forced to live in this torturous disfigured existence. It just simply believed that death would be a more merciless fate than taking the chance of hearing this crap one more time. By the time the group gets around to singing “Daddy bird” you will find yourself fairly primed to take your own life. But if you can keep the knife away from your wrist long enough to see the rest of the flick, I think you’ll be happy with what you see.

Great Lines:

“[Presenting a flower]…From the garden. I didn’t like killing it. But some things are more beautiful in death.” --Elsu offering Trudy a rose from his garden.

“She tried to kill me! A terrible looking creature! In a bathing suit!” --A frantic woman in the arms of Lieutenant Boyle.

“Tonight you’ll be alive again you vixen!” --Oliver Frank shouting over the lifeless body of his creation.

“Father and grandfather…never used a female brain before.”

“But now we’re aware that the female brain is conditioned to a man’s world and therefore takes orders whereas the other ones didn’t.” --Elsu and Oliver talking about the difference between creating a female Frankenstein monster as opposed to a male one.

“You satisfied now, you meddling kids?” --Oliver doing an impersonation of a villain from an episode of Scooby Doo.

Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 severed heads. (I would have given this a six, but the black vinyl jumpsuit is just too god awful to speak of.)

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