Very well executed

The Worst Film Ever

Good movie but grossly overrated

best movie i've ever seen.

After having seen my first ever Jess Franco title, (the fun,but very flawed Women Without Innocence)I decided,that with still having great memories from Danny Boyle's excellent adaptation,that I would take a look at Franco's take on Frankenstein's creature.The plot:Taking possession of a man's mind and body,a demonic spirit called Cagliostro decides to take control of a corpse,that has recently been re-animated by a local doctor called Frankenstein.Celerbrating his success,Frankenstein's cerebration's are cut short,when Cagliostro, (and a group of fellow demonic spirits that he has brought with him) take control of the creature,and force it to kill its creator.A few days later:Attending her father's funeral,Frankenstein's daughter Vera is told by a former friend of her dad's, (Doctor Seward) that he has fears that her fathers final,mysterious creation may have gone terribly wrong.Being determined to track down the person who killed her dad,Vera soon finds out that Cagliostro is planning to use her dad's creation,for a creation that her father could never have imagined.View on the film:For the soundtrack and distinctive appearance of the film,writer/director and co-star Jess Franco closely works with composer Daniel White to soak the movie in a hauntingly surreal atmosphere,with echoing voices and distorted screams rippling across the screen.Emphasising the soundtracks features,Franco gives the movie a strikingly avant-garde look,with Cagliostro's "cult" and the residence of the village being set a against a trance style backdrop,which help to give the film a wonderfully chilling feel.Despite Dennis Price giving a fun performance as Dr Frankenstein,and Lina Romay making her film debut, (in the composite cut) the screenplay by Franco is sadly unable to match the confident appearance that he displays in his directing,with Franco mostly leaving the creature/monster roots of the story behind,and instead trying to target everything from occult terror to murder mystery chiller, without ever really being keep in step with Frankenstein's creation.

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (1973) *** (out of 4)Dr. Frankenstein (Dennis Price) finally makes his monster human after putting a brain into his skull but shortly afterwards the doctor and his assistant are murdered and the monster stolen by a mysterious bird woman who was sent by the evil Cagliostro (Howard Vernon). Soon Dr. Frankenstein's daughter (Beatriz Savon) seeks revenge for the death of her father.Jess Franco's THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN is without question a rather wild, over-the-top and downright batshit crazy film that rarely makes a bit of sense but that's what makes it so darn entertaining. The movie is a complete head-scratcher and it makes you wonder what must have been going on inside of Franco's mind but there's no question that it's a major improvement over his Dracula, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN.This film here, like most of the director's work, is available in two versions. The French version is also known as the "hot" or the "nude" version as as you might guess it contains a lot of female and male nudity. This here is certainly the version you'll want to check out because, well, if you're going to watch an "erotic" movie then it might as well feature nudity. This version adds a lot of erotic stuff, which adds up on the camp factor but with that said there's still reasons to watch the non-nude Spanish version. The Spanish version has Lina Romay in the role of a gypsy and this is missing from the French version.Again, if you're coming to this film expecting something normal then you might be as nutty as Franco himself. The plot of this thing is rather crazy and all over the place. The fact that there's a bird woman here with green feathers on her body is a clear indication that you're not meant to take this too serious. The silver toned Frankenstein monster is another interesting visual but so is a sequence where all sorts of masked weirdos are watching the events. Add in some bizarre torture scenes and some really whacked out scenes of Dr. Frankenstein being brought back to life and you've got a wild little picture.

Cagliostro (Howard Vernon) and his bird woman creation, Melissa (Anne Libert) work tirelessly to create a female mate for the silver skinned creature created by Dr. Frankenstein (Dennis Price).A wild ride deep into Jess Franco terrain. This is an unhinged, no-budget attempt to redo the Universal horror motifs in the style of Italian Erotic Comics. It works, at least in the nude/uncovered version, simply because Franco and his cast immediately go way over the top and stay there: ratty set design, the silver skinned monster who looks like the confused survivor of a spray painting attack, the nude whipping scene, the mysterious sect led by the perverse, totalitarian Cagliostro, Melissa-the flesh eating human vulture who predicts pleasure and death, are typical "Jess Franco" elements, but this time he stages them with such Sadean glee that those who "get it" will be utterly transfixed while those who hate will cite it as another file in the case against the director. It's a long way from James Whale...The version made for Spain contains additional scenes featuring Lina Romay as a gypsy and omits all of the outrageous nudity which is so essential to Franco's aesthetic (or anti-aesthetic). The score is an iconoclastic collection of sonic blasts, jarring cues and odd sounds.

MORD 39 RATING: 0 (of ****)I have no objections to low-budgeted horror films of the foreign nature...but when they're boring beyond endurance, it's mind-numbing.Jess Franco is one of the worst directors in the horror genre (I'll give him respect by not saying "of all time"), but this piece of garbage makes his COUNT DRACULA (1970) look like a masterpiece. I can't critique this film very well, as I literally had no idea what I was looking at. The monster is painted silver, someone gets whipped, and that's all I am sure of. Dull, dull, dull.A sort of companion piece to this dreck was DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN. While it too was poor, it was far less plodding than this one. As of this writing, EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN is not easy to find...and that's the best thing to be said about it.