SUPER HAPPY RAINBOW HAT!
Read the title of this again. Again. Have you stopped laughing yet? This is a REAL MOVIE. I SWEAR! And not only is it a real movie, but I watched it, and sweet sassy molassy is it horrible. So of course you know it was a high point for me durign my long hiatus from doing things for my website like "updating it" or "writing" to watch such a film. And if you think that last sentence was sarcasm, you obviously don't realize that my taste in movies includes almost exclusively movies that are so horrible that they cause a normal person physical pain to watch, ie my favorite Sylvester Stallone movie, Judge Dredd or the fact that I really enjoyed Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
I watched this movie with a number of friends, most of whom should have realized how horrid this movie is purely from who rented it. Since we were all to meet at Mike's (the one who writes for this webpage when I'm too lazy) place to watch movies, he, I, and the sexy Amanda went together to rent movies. I guess in theory she should have stopped us, and with good reason. Among my friends there is a longstanding rule to NEVER EVER SEND ME AND MIKE TO RENT MOVIES. Chalk that up to the times we rented Blackula or Dolemite 2. But Amanda is also a lover of campy B-movies too (guys, when you find a girl that will watch a Godzilla marathon with you, you know she's a keeper), so she didn't even try to stop us from renting Shaolin Master Killer and the frighteningly confusingly named Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter.
Before I get into the review, I'm gonna talk about the other movie I just mentioned for just one moment. Shaolin Master Killer is a cheesy 70's martial arts film, and was not that exciting. But there was one good thing about it, and that is arguing about its name's true meaning. Think about it, is Shaolin Master Killer someone who kills Shaolin masters? Or perhaps a Shaolin who is the master of killing? Or could it be a Shaolin who kills masters? Its a neverending paradox of how you accent the name. For example, my first impression was that the movie would be about a guy with particularly large sideburns who killed Shaolin masters, which was completely wrong, it was about a guy who trains for 2 hours and then fights one guy to end the movie.
Now, on to Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter.
Our first impression from this movie is a simple one. Not Jesse James. Not Frankenstein. Not his daughter... MEXICANS. The story starts with a small Mexican family who are apparently the only people left in the small village of.... well, I don't recall the name of it, I watched this damn movie a full week ago. Anyway, they decide to leave the town because Frankenstein's grandchildren, Maria and Rudolf, have moved into the monastery that is painted on a giant canvas right behind the town. Their only problem is that the family's son, whose name is completely unimportant, disappeared, but they decide to leave without him.
We then cut to the son, who is unconscious on a table. Maria and Rudolf are there, and as some form of science, Maria makes the unconscious son wear a funny rainbow hat with antlers. She then somehow makes electricity flow through the hat, and she uses this to somehow attempt to take over the brain of the son. Son, however, collapses from exhaustion. Maria orders Rudolf, who is obviously her bitch, to inject the son with some serum, and then looks away so Rudolf can do whatever he damn well pleases. Rudolf, who is apparently aware that his sister has no peripheral vision whatsoever and cannot see him, immediately takes out a huge flask that has a gigantic skull and crossbones on it, and puts some of this into a syringe and injects the son. This of course kills him, as poison often does. Maria gets quite frustrated, as everyone her brother injects with poison seems to die on her. She is even more frustrated because it appears that Rudolf has now injected every single resident of the town excluding the family that just left. It appears that Rudolf is gonna have poison to spare for when they move into another giant painting behind a small Mexican town.
All this time, Jesse James has been hanging out outside a bar with his large, stupid friend Hank 'Beefcake' Tracy, who is wrasslin another man for some money. Of course Hank wins, because he's a freakin idiot with muscles instead of things like the ability to speak or think. Jesse and Hank then hook up with a gang, who for the most part aren't important, except the leader of this gang's brother, Lonny. Lonny is fat, wears a royal blue shirt under a vest that is about 2 sizes too small for him and is holding in his fat like a big western fat corset, and has teeth that are blindingly white and bigger than his mouth. He earned himself the loving nickname Fatty McTooths-a-lot from us, because its easier to say than just 'Lonny.' Well, maybe not, but its more fun. Anyway, Lonny and Jesse James don't get along very well at all, so not very well at all in fact that Lonny decides to betray his gang and his brother and Jesse and Hank to the law and report exactly when and where they were about to commit a stagecoach robbery.
Lonny's set-up works perfectly, with the Marshall killing both of Lonny's friends but not even touching Jesse and only woulding Hank, who, let me say again, is an idiot anyway. Anyway, Jesse takes Hank, who was shot square in the chest, and they run like hell, knowing that they are outmatched by about 2 jackasses with badges and Lonny, who sucks. Anyway, Jesse and Hank get away only to end up camping with, you guessed it, the three mystery Mexicans from the beginning of the movie. The next morning the parents' daughter, Juanita, is gone with Jesse and Hank, but her dad decides not to go after her. Effectively, the dad has now completely abandoned BOTH of his children. I guess its true what they say in "Kids from Shaolin" - one, two, three, Dad's a bastard!
Juanita's plan is to take Hank to a Monastery that just happens to be in the southwestern United States inside a giant paining behind a village where 2 mad scientists live so he can be brought back to full health. She's not to bright either, is Juanita. At some point she is saved from wild Indians by Jesse James, but this is completely random and makes so little sense that I almost forgot it happened. It was just there one moment and gone the next. The gang arrives at the monastery-in-the-painting and enter, where they are given a cheery reception by the two incredibly out of place German scientists who live there. Maria assesses Hank's wounds, and assures Jesse that he needs to run to another, inhabited town where he can get some medicine, the name of which she claims to have written inside a sealed envelope. Of course this envelope really contains a message telling the drug store man to get the sherriff to arrest Jesse James, but thats just because she's evil.
While Jesse's out of the way, Maria and Rudolf take Hank to the lab, where they take off his shirt and put a funny rainbow-antler-hat on him just like with the son from the beginning. Apparently this rainbow-antler-hat is some type of "brain transfer machine" (thats a technical term) that will implant a disembodied brain, that of someone named "Igor," into Hank's big beefy body. At least this way Hank will have a brain. Maria also puts on a crazy rainbow-antler-hat, which are apparently becoming very fashionable in monasteries in the west. About halfway through this twisted operation Rudolf tries his "wacky poison instead of medicine" act, but this time Maria sees him with the gigantic novelty beaker that has a skull and crossbones the size of Hank, and she sicks Igor on him. Igor is what she calls Hank now that his brain sticks out the top of his skull. Igor bear hugs Rudolf to death.
Meanwhile, Jesse goes to the pharmacy and meets the pharmacist, Jetson. Jetson is pissed off because he's got two out-of-control kids and a talking dog who don't respect him, his wife spends all the money that Mr. Spacely gives him, and his robot maid is a total bitch. Or something like that. Instead of filling the phoney prescription Jesse gives him, Jetson goes to fetch the sherriff, but instead comes back with Lonny. What an idiot! Lonny couldn't shoot his way out of a paper bag if he had a gun specially designed to shoot a way out of a paper bag and bag-piercing bullets, so Jesse James quickly kills him and Jetson cowers in fear, albeit a very futuristic fear... okay, just a normal fear, but his name IS Jetson, or something like that.
Jesse comes back to the giant painting pissed off that he was sent to a trap involving the hapless Jetson and the more hapless Lonny. He arrives, however, even more pissed off, since his best friend (and possible gay lover, we never find out) has been turned into a hapless zombie by a pair of hapless scientists. The hapless outlaw is easily captured by Igor, who bear hugs him until he's unconscious and then Maria straps the hapless James to a table, to prepare him for brain transfer. Heh, hapless....
Anyway, Juanita surprisingly hasn't been sitting on her ass all this time, she has actually managed to get the Marshall from near the beginning of the movie to come and help Jesse. The Marshall, unfortunately, is as useless as Hank at a political debate. He tries to untie Jesse, but then Igor bear hugs him until he is unconscious and drags him off into a corner. As that is happening, however, Juanita rushes in and unties Jesse. When Igor is sent to kill them, the Hank part of the area where his brain should be takes control, and won't attack his friends. Instead, Hank-gor strangles Maria to death, using the only non-bearhug move he knew. This sets Hank-gor on a murderous rampage, and Maria has to shoot him with one of Jesse's guns to save them both.
The movie ends witht he sherriff leading Jesse away to jail, after they looked at Hank's tombstone and Maria says she will wait for Jesse. The most hilarious pert of the entire movie is right here. Hank's tombstone says this: "Hank Tracy: He was Jesse James' friend." Think about that. He was so unimportant in life that his very tombstone defined his existance through his relationship to another person. That is the most pathetic epitaph ever. Even my tombstone, which will say, simply "Asshole," is descriptive. The only thing Hank did in his ENTIRE LIFE was be Jesse's friend. I can, of course, understand that, because whenever Hank talked it just sounded like "Duh duh duh duh... Duh duh, duh," so there was virtually no character development for him.
This complete lack of character development makes me think of another movie I recently saw, the Lord of the Rings one, and I see exactly the same thing there. If, for example, Pippin died at any point during that movie, you would just expect his grave to say "He wandered around with Frodo a lot," or if Legolas were slain, his grave would say "He was an elf who knew Gandalf." That's just my spiel to prove to you exactly how unimportant Hank was to this script.
In fact, none of the characters were important. The character of Jesse James never did anything that was trademark Jesse James, he was just an Old West outlaw. Maria was not really like Dr Frankenstein at all, except in that she was a mad scientist. Neither of these names needed to be used. This movie could have been called "An Outlaw meets a Mad Sciantist." There was no need to tarnish the good name of Jesse James like that, nor was there any excuse to make Frankenstein's progeny look like complete, bumbling idiots. If I were in charge of the estate of either of those two parties I would have sued the studio, the director, the producer, the actors, and every single person who watched this movie, as the entire production is just an 88 minute long slander suit waiting to happen.
And thank God no one is representing Lonny's estate, else they'd be a millionnaire by now.
I give it 134/149.
--Scuba Steve, January 9, 2002