Sci-Fi of 1950's Week: Frankenstein's Daughter

Welcome back for Sci-fi’s Week of the 1950’s and I thought let’s tap into a legacy that is Horror and a name that speaks of evil and twisted.  That would be none other than Frankenstein.   Yes thanks to Hollywood and its need to dragging Mary Shelly’s creation through more than its fair share of B-Movie ancestry these films have been put on the screen with their more than fair share of plot holes.  For example, how could an obsessed man mocking God’s work manage to have time to create offspring with a woman.  Surely the skibbling off in the middle of the night to animate the dead would be a turn off for most women but perhaps I am jumping the gun.  This is Frankenstein’s Daughter.

My God, he is still talking.

Elsu: Your father and grandfather never used a spoiler brain.

Oliver Frank: No. The way the female’s brain is conditioned to a man’s world.  Therefore it takes orders where the other ones didn’t.

Welcome to L.A. in 1958 as our movie begins a bushy eye browed creature with giant bucked teeth roams the streets at night just as Suzie (Sally Todd of The Unearthly, The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent, Dragnet, M Squad and G.I. Blues) returns from her date with boyfriend in tow and she shrills at the mere sight of this girl.  Open credits and cut to the next morning as Suzie’s friend Trudy (Sandra Knight of Thunder Road, Tales of Wells Fargo, Bourbon Street Beat, Tate, Surfside 6 and Tower of London) meet up for tennis of which Suzie gabs almost endlessly about this misshapen girl with her killer unibrow and terrifying teeth.   This tale brings about strange and garbled memories for Trudy as if she may have been this monster Suzie spoke of. 

Should a demented madman offer a lady a Tiparillo?

Enter Professor Morton (Felix Locher of Hell Ship Mutiny, Desert Hell, Thunder in the Sun, The Firebrand and California) who is attempting to devise a fountain of youth serum for men and his assistant Oliver Frank (Donald Murphy of Killer Leopard, Shack Out on 101, Lord Love a Duck and Swamp Girl) has a look of contempt for the elder man that would rival most serial killers.  This Frankenstein is the lowest of the low as he spikes Trudy’s drinks with the professor’s formula causing Trudy to metamorphosis into that Neolithic creature of earlier.  He somewhat convinces Suzie to go out on a date with him, tries a little park and necking of which she stomps out of the car.  Rather than apologizing for mixed signals he gets the idea of dropping into low gear and running her down.  Our suave fellow feels a female monster would be more docile and easier to control.  Clearly he needed to rent a copy of Species to point out how that was a bad concept.

Our Frankenstein is cruel, sexist and quite frankly unworthy of the family title yet gets to carry on as he does.   With cliché dialogue about man playing God, the monsters looking a bit on the gooey side and depictions of teenagers in the fifties this straight to the drive-in film is perfect for a bad movie crowd.  If you were looking for a dramatic and clever standing on this age old tale well keep on looking Jack cause nothing really redeeming here.

Gary Busey after the bike accident.