User reviews

I have a little fondness for this movie. It was on TV quite often when I was a little skippy. It was always on The Ghoul who was a horror host in the Detroit area. Most of the time we were watching to see him but the movies weren't always bad. This one was a little above the rest.

To finance his experiments the last of the Frankensteins (Karloff) allows a film crew to shoot a movie/TV show on the grounds of his estate. Of course the Doc is building a creature down in his secret laboratory. Not only does Frankenstein need cash, he needs a few spare parts for his project as well. The film crew and servants provide him with these - unwillingly of course.

The film crew is really annoying. Seeing them getting bumped off by the bandage-swathed monster is quite fun. Many have complained that Karloff was hamming it up. I disagree as he was dealing with a one-dimensional character.

The ending is kind of predictable. But there are worse ways to spend your time than watching this.

When I was a little guy, my dad and I used to watch creature features on Friday nights and I loved the low budget scares on this show. Now as a middle aged guy who occasionally watches one of these "scary movies" I am amused and amazed at how easily I was scared and fooled. When I saw Frankenstein 1970 was going to be broadcast, I was ready to be disappointed. However I was fooled again.

Is this a great movie, NO. Is it a fun movie YES! Any movie who has as the the hero "Red" Berry is low budget. It does however have the great Karloff. He is wonderful. His monologue for the "movie in the movie" is great. Karloff was starting to show his incredibly painful arthritis at this time of his life and it does pain one to think of the agony he is going through. But he is Karloff and actually portrays a Frankenstein for the first time in his career. He does not disappoint.

If you love 1950 horrors and you like Karloff you will enjoy this movie. The acting is mediocre (except Karloff) and the Monster Hokey but give it a try.

MORD39 RATING: **1/2 (of ****)

As a kid I recall being disappointed when catching FRANKENSTEIN 1970 on TV. I was expecting the 1931 original, and at the age of 8 or 9 I was understandably disappointed. But now as an adult I can appreciate this 1950's monster flick for what it is.

Most fans dismiss this film, but I believe it has much going for it. For one thing, we get Boris Karloff as the Baron. Too many folks have panned his hammy performance, but I think he is deliciously sinister and over-ripe. His character reminds me of the Boris puppet from the MAD MONSTER PARTY film, and I'm surprised that more viewers don't find his performance endearing.

The film boasts a surprise opening and a surprise ending (I won't give them away), and in between that we get to see a gloomy castle filled with an underground secret laboratory and hidden passageways. Boris plays eerie music on his organ, and he's creating a monster that runs around killing people. Is this not what makes a fun horror pic?

True, the monster isn't very convincing...but neither are most fifties creatures, so why all the fuss? Besides, the monster only looks as he does due to the fact that the bandages and head cast have not yet been removed.

With foggy swamps, unexplored corridors, and a mad Karloff, fans could do far worse than FRANKENSTEIN 1970.

The last association that Boris Karloff had with the Frankenstein character came in this low budget Allied Artists film that I remember seeing in the theater in 1958. It was not the best of endings.

This time Boris Karloff is playing the last descendant of the Frankenstein clan who's an old man and who in his youth was tortured by the Nazis in an effort to divulge Frankenstein family secrets. It left him quite understandably twisted.

Karloff is putting up with a movie company who is shooting on his castle grounds, no doubt shooting a film like Frankenstein 1970, a low budget thriller. The money they're paying him however is paying for an atomic reactor, something his ancestor didn't have, maybe that's the missing ingredient.

Of course the bodies start falling, four of them to be precise as Karloff searches for what he needs to revive the Frankenstein monster which he has found and preserved.

Boris Karloff and his contemporary Bela Lugosi did both great horror films and a lot of junk. Frankenstein 1970 sad to say falls in the latter category.

Horror icon Boris Karloff, during the mid-1950s, significantly slowed down his prodigious output of the '30s and '40s. After 1953, fans would have to wait a full four years before his next horror picture, "Voodoo Island," was released, and that one is generally acknowledged as one of Boris' few stinkers. The British actor seemed to rebound a bit in 1958, however, with the releases of "Frankenstein 1970"--a shlocky yet entertaining picture--and the very-well-done British film "Grip of the Strangler." "Frankenstein 1970" was the fifth Frankenstein film that Karloff had participated in, following the classic original in 1931, the eternal glory that is 1935's "Bride of Frankenstein," 1939's excellent "Son of Frankenstein" and 1944's "House of Frankenstein," but--no surprise--the film in question is any number of rungs down the scale, qualitywise, as compared to those great others.

Here, the 70-year-old Karloff plays Victor von Frankenstein, the final descendant of the infamous House. Needing additional funds to purchase the atomic reactor that will enable him to complete his experiments (and at this point, need it even be mentioned what those experiments consist of?), he rents out his ancestral castle near Frankfurt to an American TV production company that is making a movie to celebrate Frankenstein's 240th anniversary. (Never mind that that would make for a birth date of 1730, if the film actually does take place in 1970, and that Mary Shelley's original novel came out in 1818, although admittedly set in "17--." Also, never mind the fact that the film makes no attempt to look as if it's transpiring 12 years in its then future.) But when body parts, such as brains and eyes, are in short supply, what is the good Baron supposed to do, other than use parts from the retainers, film crew and nubile actresses on hand?

"Frankenstein 1970" is a film that I never got to see as a little kid, despite its ubiquitous presence on television back then. When I mentioned to my Psychotronic Guru, Rob, that I had just acquired the DVD to watch, he enthused about the film's opening scene, which he said he'd found terrifying when he saw it in a theater over 50 years ago. Film historian Tom Weaver says the same thing on the DVD's commentary regarding this sequence, in which a claw-taloned maniac pursues a screaming, hysterical blonde through a fog-shrouded landscape and into a swamp, and in truth, that scene IS the best and scariest moment in the film; the only scary moment, as it turns out. For the rest of it, the picture is a tad slow moving, occasionally dull, with many scenes of the Baron puttering around with his creation in his lab, dictating his progress into a running tape recorder. The resultant monster is one of the most ridiculous looking in any Frankenstein film; indeed, swaddled in mummylike wrappings as he is, we never even get a good look at the pathetic thing, until the picture's admittedly startling final moment. A lumbering bundle of bandages, with a head that looks like a giant cardboard box residing under the wrappings, the monster here is an object of laughter, not fright. Eyeball-less as it is, the monster seems to get around just fine, leading the viewer to wonder just why the Baron is so obsessed with procuring orbs for his creation. Besides the monster, the film's laboratory equipment and creation sequence FX pale mightily in comparison to those earlier four Frankenstein films, which all featured stunning-looking lab sets and amazing creation sequences (particularly "Bride"). Still, it must be said that director Howard W. Koch (later, the producer of such classic films as "The Manchurian Candidate," "The President's Analyst," "The Odd Couple" and "Plaza Suite") makes nice use of his CinemaScope frame, that the score by Paul Dunlap is occasionally gripping, and that cinematographer Carl E. Guthrie has provided some moody B&W visuals. The film also offers fans of grisly horror some very mild gross-outs, such as a jar of spilled eyeballs, the massaging of a human heart, Boris' tale of the tongueless commandant, and a corpse-grinding machine (an inspiration for Ted V. Mikels, perhaps?). Basically, however, the film is of interest mainly because of Uncle Boris, who gets to overact deliciously and impress his many fans, once again, with that wonderfully mellifluous voice. As in the 1934 classic "The Black Cat," Boris also gets to play some chilling music on his home organ, always a dismal thrill! Bottom line: Filmed as it was in only eight days (!) in January '58, "Frankenstein 1970," cheezy as it is, remains a surprisingly decent, oddball entertainment. After 1958, fans would have to wait another five years before Karloff's next horror pictures, which he made under director Roger Corman. So this film, and "Grip of the Strangler," had to hold them for a while (in addition to TV's "Thriller," of course, which Boris hosted from 1960-'62). And really, where else can you find a line like "Torch, scorch, unforch"?

Lesser Boris Karloff horror picture, notable for being the first time he played an actual member of the Frankenstein family. In his earlier (better) Frankenstein movies, he played either the monster or a non-Frankenstein scientist. This movie and the later Mad Monster Party are, I believe, the only times he played an actual Frankenstein. The story has Karloff playing Baron Victor von Frankenstein, descendant of the Frankenstein that caused all that trouble way back when. The good Baron, disfigured by Nazis during WWII, is in dire financial straits and needs money to continue his own experiments. Ask what kind of experiments and I'll look at you funny. To make some money the Baron allows a horror movie to be shot at Castle Frankenstein. Soon things are getting a little crazy and members of the film crew are being killed off by the Baron for reasons that should be pretty to predict.

Karloff always stood out in his horror films but here he plays to the rafters, no doubt overcompensating for the talky and dull script. Rudolph Anders is good as his friend and Don "Red" Barry does a decent job as the Carl Denham-esque movie director. There are a couple of pretty ladies around as well. Two of the better scenes are fake-outs that turn out to be scenes for the movie-within-a-movie. Perhaps if this movie had been more like that one it would have been more fun. As it is, it's a pretty dreary affair that drags on and on. The effects are poor and the monster, when it actually does something, is laughable. Basically this movie is a slow death by words. Only recommendable to Karloff completists.

This is not a down right awful film... it's actually quite fun to watch. This might not be the best film Karloff has starred in but it's entertaining! It's nice to see Karloff in a role reversal of Frankenstein. He is the scientist who created The Monster in this film.

I have to agree with other reviewers that it is Karloff's presence in the movie that makes this one worth watching over again. Some of the film is laughable - which really creates the "fun" in watching the film.

Love the semi-Gothic atmosphere - and the surprise at the end of it.

All in all this is a good weekend popcorn flick! Worth watching if you like anything Frankenstein and/or Boris Karloff! 7/10

Atmosphere is important in any horror film and this movie has it in spades. Unfortunately, that's all it has. Really very little to recommend here. Karloff is good in this movie but completely wasted in this effort and far too campy and hammy to really chill the audience. The monster itself is also a huge problem. Not so much when we first see the monster but as it progresses in its various stages of creation, it just gets sillier and sillier. The music tries to scare up a few chills whenever the monster appears but it is all really wasted. The best thing about the movie as I previously stated is the atmosphere. I especially like movies that have isolated creepy castles in them that are filled with secret passageways and hidden laboratories from which all those mad scientists conduct their business. The opening sequence of the film is by far the best part of the movie but the surprise ending tries to come close only that it is really telegraphed all throughout the movie and really isn't much of a surprise when you think about it. Although this is by far not the worst Karloff film it is not the best either. It's really too bad that Karloff, if he wanted to spoof the Frankenstein character he played, that he should have offered to play the part in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.

This movie is all around bad. Karloff as Dr. Frankenstein is weird but you won't even notice because the story is so stupid and boring. I almost stopped watching when he hypnotized a guy but I had to see how bad it would get. And of course the title doesn't make any sense. 1 star is the lowest rating you can give, I would give -1.

Nostalgic for me in many ways. I managed to sneak into the theater in my home-town in '58 (it was an "X" certificate then) to watch it. Karloff was an old "relic" even then!!! I remember thinking just how futuristic 1970 seemed. Believe it or not, people were talking planetary COLONISATION by the 70's, back in those days. (Actually, what the hell HAS happened the last three decades?)

Anyway back to the plot - there ISN'T one! Karloff shambles around his old shadowy and fog-machine driven castle occasionally doing the Dr Phibes bit on his organ. The monster is a cack-fest and everyone should be having a good time.

Ok Ok, sad in a way to see Karloff basically sending up his own classic role, but hey its STILL Boris Karloff!

In MY mind though, I still see a 13 year old boy staring up in wonder at a big screen with an evil monster on the loose. It was fun, it was THEN......best tribute you can pay it now is to just enjoy it for what it is/was.

Evidently the Grinch stole the script and left them with nothing to work with. What an oddly disjointed and bizarre film. The monster just minimally is revealed at the end. It is fun watching Boris Karloff though.

Well, it's Frankenstein, it's Boris Karloff, but it certainly ain't James Whale. I knew that this film didn't carry a great reputation, nevertheless I've been curious to see it for many years because it never seemed to crop up on television here in the UK.

As the film started off, I began to think it might not be quite as bad as I'd feared. I rather liked the concept of a modern descendent of the original, infamous Dr Frankenstein, who is also a scientist and who was tortured and disfigured by the Nazis during the war because he refused to work for them. And that he would reluctantly open his castle doors to a film crew in order that he could continue to finance his own rather costly atomic experiments seemed sound enough.

After that, some of the ingredients for a good story are there - secret laboratory hidden under a crypt, Frankenstein lusting after the beautiful leading actress in the film unit, Frankenstein secretly trying to replicate his ancestor's experiment in creating a man, the creature bumping off members of the film crew... But if that sounds like good stuff, it really isn't. A lot of the dialogue is pure plot exposition. The film spectacularly fails to be scary or atmospheric, and the 'monster' is really low-budget and so naff that you really can't believe that a grown woman would scream and faint upon seeing it. Furthermore, it's supposed to have no eyes, yet it doesn't seem to struggle with blindness at all, finding its way to specific targets quite easily.

After arriving in Frankenstein's castle, the film crew appear in little rush to actually do any work and mostly hang around waiting to be bumped off one by one. Meanwhile there are rather tedious sequences of Frankenstein alone in his lab, talking to a tape recorder whilst he progresses his experiments. Thank goodness this is Boris Karloff, because he is one of those rare actors who could make such dry material watchable. It's pretty much he alone who carries this film.

For the time, I suppose it was an attempt to modernise the Frankenstein story that was made with the best of intentions, but it's sloppy, cheap and now rather even more dated that the 1931 version. The association of Karloff with the Frankenstein franchise gives this particular entry an allure that, on balance, the production doesn't really deserve. But enjoy it for all its cheesiness.

While allowing a film crew to make a movie at his castle, the Baron decides to use the opportunity to finish his ancestor's brain-swapping experiments and begins using the crew to help complete them before he lets the hulking creation loose upon the unsuspecting filmmakers.

This wasn't all that bad of an entry. This one has its moments and features some good stuff from time to time, and a lot of this comes from the overall setup found here. That is namely at the beginning where the film-crew twist makes the action-packed chase through the swamplands or his monologue down in the crypt a bit jolting, and the constant scenes of action being interrupted by the filmmaking process give the film a great angle at first. The location works nicely as well, being the kind of grand Gothic design that manages to have all it's usual theatrics played up rather nicely such as the chase through the forest features them running through the fog-enshrouded swamplands while the big scenes in the castle showcase the grand layout of the facility while down below this features all the technological machinery which gives a nice contrast to the old-school atmosphere, especially in the times spent in the lab trying to reanimate the body which is pure old-school sci-fi goodness. These scenes featuring the creature protecting his lair from the film's crew-members who come stumbling upon the area which results in a somewhat enjoyable final half to this one where the series of confrontations down in the lab manages to generate some enjoyable action with a rousing finish. These here do raise it although it does have a few rather big issues here. Its main issue is that it's just marred by a criminal lack of energy and enthusiasm when it's not dealing with the baron's antics, as the film-crew aren't that interesting and hardly ever do anything. These here make the film such a drag that it grinds to a halt during the non-film-shoot scenes, and that isn't helped at all by the other troublesome nature featured here in the endless discussions which center around the use of the machinery and his family heritage. These discussions go nowhere and all they end up doing is highlight how much filler they do seem to be, as there's little of interest here that isn't recapped from other entries involving the adaptation. That also leads into the other rather big flaw here, the overall cheapness which is featured throughout here. From the cramped-in feeling of the castle, the type of film that's being shot there and the execution of the special effects as the monster looks like a joke in concept and remains incredibly laughable which proves to be a big downfall. The other big problem is the finale as the entire thing is over so quickly it's impossible to realize what had happened until the credits start to roll. These issues make this one a real missed opportunity since this one could've been decent.

Today's Rating: Unrated/PG: Mild Violence.

This film has only ever been shown once in my neck of the woods and on a minor Sicilian TV channel at that so, despite its negative reputation, I've always wanted to see it. After all, it does have Boris Karloff playing the Baron for once…even if, for some strange reason, he is named Victor here while his notorious ancestor is called Richard!!

The film's pre-credit sequence, in which a German fraulein is being pursued through the forest by a barely-glimpsed fiend is promising enough but, as it turns out, it's also the best sequence in the whole film…which ought to give you an idea about the worthiness of the whole enterprise. However, even from this first sequence, one is made aware of the sheer ineptness of the direction: it not only cuts away from one character to another with a boring regularity but the sequence is framed in such a way as to cut the creature's head off! This factor cannot be attributed to watching a pan-and-scan version because, surprisingly enough, the film was being shown in the correct widescreen ratio. This is exacerbated as the film goes along by the director's apparent refusal (in some sequences, at least) to move the camera in any way; I don't know if this was an attempt on his part to satirize the TV medium (given that it is, after all, a TV crew which impounds on the Baron's home ground) but I'd be surprised if the thought had occurred to the director in the first place. Coming hot on the heels of Hammer's full-blooded color version, it would have been a daunting task for anyone I presume…

Of course, it goes without saying that Karloff gives it his all (particularly during a rehearsal for the upcoming TV show in which he narrates straight to the camera his ancestor's diabolical deeds) and sometimes it's hard to watch him simply walking around the castle as the evident strain this is having on his legs is palpable and there were a couple of times where I could have sworn he lost his footing! Even so, apparently this does not detain him from creating the monster and installing the all-important atomic reactor (which is barely glimpsed in the film anyhow) single-handedly. It's incredible to note that, despite his failing health, some of Karloff's best work - Roger Corman's THE RAVEN (1963), Mario Bava's BLACK SABBATH (1963) and Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS (1968) - was yet ahead of him! Still, even here - with the haphazard appearance of the Baron, whose misshapen face apparently gets "lifted" every once in a while! – the film's limitations make themselves felt. And why is it that every mad scientist out there has to be an accomplished pianist as well? Why not try your hand at an electric guitar, Herr Baron…after all, we're in the age of Chuck Berry here, aren't we? Er…no - make that 1970: "Monster making is for me, like…you know…outta sight, man"!! And how about that deadening monotone music during the laboratory sequences? Also, the less said about the goofy mummy…er…monster, the better! To top it all, there's an execrable attempt at an echo but the dialogue spoken in the cavern (the site of the Doc's lab) is totally all over the place and overlaps ad infinitum!

I know Joe Karlosi (if he's still around, that is) won't be too pleased with my review of this one as I know this is one of his guilty pleasures…but I have to say that my negative impressions were certainly amplified by the abysmal state (correct aspect ratio notwithstanding) of the print I watched which was replete with print damage and missing frames which not only managed to shorten the film to around 70 minutes (against the official 83!!) but also made the parts of the narrative and the revelatory climax particularly incoherent! Recently, there's been some talk of an upcoming Warners DVD of this one and, strange as it may sound, I hope it does materialize as I wouldn't put it past me to give this clunker another chance under more ideal circumstances. For the moment, however, I suppose even LADY FRANKENSTEIN (1971) is preferable…!

I enjoyed "Frankenstein 1970," but I admit there would seem to be plenty of reasons why I ordinarily wouldn't have. It's a B-horror production, for sure, with used sets, but the castle interiors look quite good and shadows are cast everywhere, especially in the cellar crypt, and, if outside, there's plenty of fog. Moreover, it's delicious that there's a hidden laboratory within one of the tombs, and what a lab! Much of the acting isn't great, and the dialogue doesn't do the actors any favors, but Boris Karloff is so wonderfully hammy he lifts the entire project. Additionally, the entire premise of the film is absurd--generally failing at being futuristic and veering from self-referentiality into self-parody. Yet, like Frankenstein's monster, these various parts ranging in quality from good to defective are assembled into an effective, if monstrous, whole.

Supposedly set in a future 1970, almost everything in this film is very 1950s, which has only become more apparent to today's audience since 1970 is now in the past. Nothing, except for changing the timeline of the supposed 230th anniversary of the Frankenstein monster (Mary Shelley's novel was set in unspecified dates of the 18th century), would need to be altered for the film to have been, instead, set in the present late-1950s. All of Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory equipment could be explained, as most of it already is, by him being a scientific genius. Anyways, the film follows a TV crew in the making of a Frankenstein program, which apparently is part fiction and part non-fiction. They begin by staging a hilariously-bad scene of a slow modern Frankenstein monster chasing a damsel-in-distress who stupidly stops running away from him. Next, they film a scene of the last descendant of the Frankenstein family in the crypt of his inherited German castle, as he tells his family's history. For whatever reason, Karloff's character is named Victor, that designated to Shelley's protagonist, whereas his 18th-century ancestor who created the original monster is renamed "Richard Freiherr von Frankenstein."

Ironically, Victor uses the TV crew, who rent his castle, to purchase an atomic reactor for his own reanimation experiment, and then he unleashes his creature upon the crew. The apple never falls far from the tree with these Frankensteins. Taking after Peter Cushing's eponymous part in the prior year's "The Curse of Frankenstein," Karloff's doctor is a murderous character quite unlike Shelley's sympathetic and tragic figure. As it turns out, the real monster is also more ludicrous than the one portrayed in the movie-within-the-movie. For most of the film, he's more like a mummy than the kind of Frankenstein creatures audiences had already seen in the Universal and early Hammer films. Mixing up the monster movies even more so, this Victor plays an organ like he were the Phantom of the Opera, he hypnotizes his victims like he were Dracula, and he has physical deformities, including the ever-changing damage to his eye, more akin to the hunchbacked characters that populate many of the classic monster movies.

One of my favorite parts of Frankenstein films, and a major reason I enjoyed this one, are the set designs for the laboratories and their depictions of science. In addition to the Gothic horror designation, Shelley's book was also science fiction, after all. Shelley glossed over the actual creation of the monster, but many of the movies, including this one, dwell on it. Many of them have also been content to largely imitate the landmark design of the 1931 film, but not this one. Appropriately, since it's set in modern, or rather, futuristic times, the Galvanism, bubbling beakers and lightning are out, although it does retain some of the flashing gizmos from the '31 picture. Instead, there's modern home electricity plus the atomic stuff that preoccupied many horror and sci-fi pictures of the era. Frankenstein creates the monster in what looks like a CT scan machine, and he employs what look like old-fashioned giant computers, a medical imagining device, a refrigerator for body parts, synthetic skin and tape recorders. From his lab, he also listens to audio surveillance on his guests above. The only unintentionally-funny part of the lab, methinks, is the sound given to his disposal system for his victims or their belongings, which sounds like a toilet flushing.

This is also the only Frankenstein film I've seen to self-reflexively feature its own filming; although, in this case, TV. While written decades before film's invention, Shelley's creation myth works quite well as an analogy for live-action filmmaking, which like the monster involves a process of being animate, inanimate and reanimate--or life, death and rebirth. That is, live-action films of animate beings, like people, involves making them inanimate objects in the form of still photographs, which are reanimated when the film is projected. Furthermore, the assemblage of cadavers becomes the equivalent of editing. The 1931 film works quite well in this regard, but it doesn't feature a mise-en-abyme as this one does. Overall, this is a well-realized and reflexive atomic-age Frankenstein.