Friday, January 16, 2009

Cinematic Titanic: Frankenstein, Italian Style

A while ago, I did a review of Incognito Cinema Warriors XP's second DVD, "Lady Frankenstein". It was how Frankenstein's daughter takes over his experiments, with sexy results. The movie contained a fair amount of nudity, but that was dealt with by blurring the naughty bits.

The Cinematic Titanic company came up with an alternate way to deal with any naughty bits shown in its latest DVD, "Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks." It created the Breast Blimp, which hovers at the slightest sign of unacceptable nudity. The thinking is that when the people of the future find the CT DVD's, they won't think we 21st century louts were perverts. The CT guys must foresee a day where the FCC rules the world, and censors people on the spot. In such a world, Darren Aronofsky would have lost his hand if he dared to give the finger to anyone on live TV (like what happened at the Golden Globes last week). Using a blimp wouldn't have been enough.

Anyway, it's really a way to keep CT DVD's fun for a majority of the family. No sense getting into grindhouse territory. Anyway, the movie stars Rossano Brazzi, who many people know as the star of the movie version of South Pacific. After that success, he found himself doing cheesy B movies. As David Allen Grier would say, "wrote a song about it, like to hear it, here we go..."

Some blasphemous evening,
You will meet a stranger,
Quite a sexy stranger,
who's your daughter's best friend.

I'm not kidding. Brazzi is Count Frankenstein, who is robbing graves to revive the undead, or in this case a local caveman called Goliath. When his daughter, Maria, comes home from school, she's joined by her fiance and her friend Krista, who shares an interest in the Count and his experiments. The other familiar face in this crowd is Michael Dunn, best known as Dr. Loveless in Wild Wild West. His only friend is another caveman named Ook. What follows is the usual round of tampering in God's domain, with a little sex in it.

As for the Breast Blimp, it's used twice; the first time is when Krista takes a bath, and the second time is when Maria joins Krista in a mineral bath.

Of course, the riffing is the thing, and it's fairly consistent here.

Ook is played by Boris Lugosi...Frank: What, they couldn't get Bela Karloff?

Krista is told "your milk bath is ready."..Trace: ...and boy are my nipples sore.

The Count kisses Krista...Trace: This is a taste I hadn't had in my mouth since Mitzi Gaynor.

Josh comments on the Breast Blimp: Maybe next time they can bring in something less distracting than the Breast Blimp, like the Rockettes!

Goliath makes Eegah look like Jude Law, but Mary Jo says he looks more like a "young Bette Midler". She also describes the movie perfectly...It's like someone put Frankenstein, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Little People, Big World into a Cuisinart.

After a successful year, the CT crew will take their act on the road starting in February. The first stop is San Francisco a month from now, and naturally I plan to be there. I haven't decided if I'll wear the same jumpsuit I had from Super-Con last year, but the Gizmonic hardhat will definitely make an appearance.

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