FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN
Posted in Udo Film Reviews on October 11th, 2005(It/Fr/US/W. Ger 1973)
Alternate Titles: ANDY WARHOL’S FRANKENSTEIN; CARNE PER FRANKENSTEIN; IL MOSTRO E IN TAVOLA…BARONE FRANKENSTEIN; DE LA CHAIR POUR FRANKENSTEIN; WHERE’S FRANKENSTEIN?; UP FRANKENSTEIN; THE DEVIL AND DR FRANKENSTEIN; FRANKENSTEIN; ANDY WARHOL’S YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN; THE FRANKENSTEIN EXPERIMENT.
SpaceVision 3-D/Scope;Colour.
RT: 95mins
Pro Co: Compagnia Cinemtografica Champion-Rassam Productions-Andrew Braunsberg Productions-Bryanston Films.
Dir: Paul Morrissey;
Pro: Andrew Braunsberg;
Wrs: Paul Morrissey; Tonino Guerra (uncred); Pat Hackett (uncred);
Exec Pros: Carlo Ponti, Jean-Pierre Rassam; Andy Warhol;
Line Pro/2nd Unit Dir/Addit SFX: Anthony M. Dawson (=Antonio Margheriti).
Phot: Luigi Kuveiller;
Film Eds: Jed Johnson, Franca Silva;
Pro Des: Enrico Job;
Mus: Claudio Gizzi.
SFX: Carlo Rambaldi;
Sound FX: Roberto Arcangeli;
SpaceVision 3-D Tech Consult: Robert V. Bernier.
Cast: Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Arno Juerging, Monique van Vooren, Srdjan Zelenovic, Nicolette Elmi, Marco Liofredi, Liu Bosisio. Dalila Di Lazzaro, Florella Masselli, Cristina Galoni, Carla Mancini, Aleksic Miomir.
INTRODUCTION
In the early 1970s director Roman Polanski and his producer from MacBeth (71), Andrew Braunsberg, were toying with the idea of working on a new version of the Frankenstein legend, and particularly keen to produce it in 3-D.
Braunsberg had approached Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol’s then-manager and co-founder of The Factory arts workshop, to collaborate on the venture. Polanski then had to abandon the project to work on two other productions he was committed to, What! (73) and Chinatown (74), with Morrissey taking over the directorial reins of the movie.
As part of the complicated financial package (secured from a number of sources notably leading European movie producers Carlo Ponti and Jean-Pierre Rassam) secured to fund the production, Morrissey was required to direct an additional feature film, again a horror movie in 3-D, the combined budget for the two being set a some $800,000.
Morrissey also gave a share of his profit participation to Andy Warhol in order to link his name with the project form promotional and exploitation purposes. Although seen by many as the enfant terrible of the American arts scene, Warhol, thanks mainly to Morrissey was in fact running a very slick commercial operation with very successful returns form their investments in theatre, television and rock bands like the Velvet Underground.
The presence of Warhol’s name featuring so heavily in the movie’s marketing, along with behind the scenes machinations organised by executive producer Carlo Ponti, have since gone a long way to obscuring who, ultimately, was responsible for bringing Flesh for Frankenstein to the screen.
SYNOPSIS
19th century Serbia. Within a large castle, two small children are seen playing in a room full of animals and toys. At one stage they use scalpels to dissect and finally decapitate a doll. Later that day, the children are being driven through the castle grounds by their mother, the Baroness Frankenstein, in a horse and cart. The Baroness stops the cart to scold three of her employees for shirking their duties, before continuing her journey. Within the castle itself, Baron Frankenstein and his assistant, Otto are bickering over the unkempt state of the place. The assistant bemoans the fact that he has worked very hard to maintain the facility and eventually Frankenstein relents and tells him that he is in fact a great help in the Baron’s work. He is particularly impressed with the last group of body parts that Otto acquired, to be used as an experiment to create the first male and female members of a new Serbian master race. Having created a woman, all that is needed now is the perfect male head, personifying the ideal Serbian physique. To this end he has decided to investigate the male population in the nearby village. Outside the building the Baron meets his wife who tells him that she has removed the children from the local school because she does not approve of the education they are receiving or any of their classmates. Frankenstein agrees to discuss the matter fully that night at dinner. In the Baron’s hidden laboratory in another part of the castle, the female creature he has assembled for his purposes is prepared for further treatment while left-over male body parts are disposed of by Otto. At dinner the Baron and Baroness bicker over a variety of subjects including the children’s education, and how badly they were treated by their own parents. Frankenstein suggests that his wife take the children out for a picnic the following day and she reluctantly agrees. In the morning, one of the estate workers, Nicholas, who was scolded the previous day by the Baroness is digging some holes in a field which, unknown to him, are to be used to dispose of body parts. He is accompanied by his best friend, Sacha. They discuss Sacha’s decision to enter the priesthood, even though is friend has never seen him pray or talk about religion. He managed to convince him to visit the local bordello before leaving for his new vocation. Back at the laboratory the Baron and Otto are examining a new batch of internal organs to be used in the creation of his master race. While on the picnic with her children, the Baroness stumbles onto Nicholas cavorting with girlfriend. She recognises him from the previous day and threatens to have him disciplined. He is to report to the castle the next day to determine his future on the estate. In the Baron’s laboratory the human creature is almost complete apart from the head. In order to immediately start the procreation of a master race, Frankenstein determines that the donor of the head must be driven by sensual and libidinous impulses and decides that the best place to locate such a person would be the local brothel. That night Nicholas and Sacha arrive at the whorehouse, witnessed by Otto and Baron. The Baron takes a particular interest in Sacha, who seems to fit his description of the ideal Serbian…
REVIEW
For many years after it initial release, there was some debate in critical circles over who actually directed this work. Some of the confusion surrounding the credits may be attributed to the activities of some of the movie’s backers, in particular executive producer Carlo Ponti.
For the Italian domestic release, Ponti had Flesh for Frankenstein registered as an exclusively Italian production for the purposes of retrospective quota and tax avoidance purposes. This was in spite of the fact that the film had an American writer/director and lead roles largely taken up by foreign nationals.
In order to get round this, Ponti (an Italian who adopted French citizenship in the mid-1960s but continued to conduct business mainly from his original homeland) issued two sets of credits in different markets for the movie. In Italy and the rest of Europe (where the property became a French/Italian or French/Italian/West German co-production depending on when and where the film was being released), Paul Morrissey’s credit was relegated to that of “Supervising Producer” or “Supervising Director” with the actual director’s role being given to prolific journeyman Antonio Margheriti under his usual Anthony M. Dawson pseudonym.
Carlo Ponti has been accused on many occasions of illegitimately exploiting loopholes in European tax and quota regulations and reportedly his intrigues behind the scenes on Flesh for Frankenstein are fairly typical of his approach to international co-productions. This cavalier attitude to the law is one of several reasons that the Italian authorities have repeatedly tried to indict Ponti on a variety of tax evasion charges.
In other markets, notably the US and the Far East, the situation was somewhat different.
There the film became best-known under the title Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, with Morrissey’s client’s association with the project (which was almost exclusively symbolic) being promoted above all else to the extent that the actual director’s own contributions were almost completely ignored. This caused a great deal of acrimony between Warhol and Morrissey and eventually led to the latter formally severing ties (which were already unravelling by the time this film went into production) with The Factory shortly after the release of Flesh for Frankenstein and its companion Blood for Dracula.
Regarding the confusion over the European release of this production, when actually viewing the film it is perhaps understandable why this situation arose.
Visually at least, Flesh for Frankenstein closely resembles a typical late period Italian gothic number along the lines of Nella Stretta Morso del Ragno (70) and La Morte Negli Occhi del Gatto (73) with its stylish and atmospheric photography, strong production direction and lush orchestral score, all with a uniquely Italian ambience about them.
Although in interviews Paul Morrissey has been dismissive of Antonio Margheriti’s work as a director, he was considered, along with Mario Bava (La Maschera del Demonio 60) and Riccardo Freda (L’Orrible Segreto del Dr Hichcock 62), one of the founding fathers of Italian fantastic cinema with horror movies like the landmark La Danza Macabre (63, co-directed with Sergio Corbucci) and I Lunghi Capelli della Morte (64) and space operas such as Space Men (60) and I Criminali della Galassia (64). He is also seen by the industry as something of a technical craftsman, who contributed a range of special effects not just to his own productions but to other filmmakers (often uncredited), and therefore the ideal choice for being involved with a production employing a complex 3-D process.
To add further confusion to the issue is the political stance of adopted by the screenplay, credited solely to Morrissey on English-language prints, which seems at odds with the views of the self-proclaimed (and very vocal) right-wing conservative.
Reportedly when the film was first announced as a Roman Polanski project, Carlo Ponti had a treatment commissioned from Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra. Although the prolific Guerra has had a very varied career as a writer, he is best known for his collaborations with left-leaning neo-realist directors like Michaelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio De Sica and the Taviani Brothers. If Guerra’s treatment is in fact the basis for Paul Morrissey’s script (on which he collaborated with another Factory alumnus Pat Hackett), then the film was probably originally intended as an attack on the social order which led to the horrors of World War One and eventually the rise of European fascism. Guerra is particularly critical of European aristocracy represented by Baron and Baroness Frankenstein who are seen as psychotic, obsessed with racial purity and social class as well as being the result of generations of in-breeding. Of course, an alternative version of how the characters are represented on-screen could be that it represents a very jaundiced American opinion of Europeans generally, especially given that most of the other people in the movie are seen as stupid peasants with little interest outside of sex and alcohol, usually considered a conservative view of the world.
If these aspects of Flesh for Frankenstein’s production throw up confusion regarding the allocation of credits, there are other elements that mark it out as a Paul Morrissey picture.
While involved with the operation of The Factory it was actually Morrissey who introduced Andy Warhol to the concept of “directing” in his filmmaking activities, sometime in the mid-to-late 1960s. Prior to this, the artist’s productions had consisted mainly of placing models in an improvised situation with the results being “observed” by a camera locked into a fixed position, an approach typified by the likes of Sleep and Blow Job (both 63).
Morrissey also later introduced narrative elements into Factory output and eventually took over most of the filmmaking projects created by the workshop, although they were always attributed to Warhol himself. The breakthrough movie from this period is considered to be the bizarre mock western Lonesome Cowboys (68), in which again Warhol’s name features most prominently, although it is the result almost entirely of Morrissey’s efforts.
Before embarking on these European ventures, Morrissey’s approach to filmmaking had involved creating a series of dramatic vignettes within a very loose overall narrative framework. The director would then work with the performers on improvising the material that would appear on screen. This approach was originally intended for Flesh for Frankenstein, but had to be extensively modified due to technical limitations imposed by the SpaceVision 3-D process.
In addition to the improvised nature of much of Morrissey’s work, on a technical level, he much preferred a much more naturalist approach using basic lighting techniques, hand-held cameras and long, static takes. Again, due to the fact that stereoscopic technology was being employed, Morrissey had to revise his approach.
SpaceVision, created by Robert V. Bernier and first employed on Arch Oboler’s now very obscure alien invasion flick The Bubble (66), used a complicated polarised visual process that, while proving to be efficient at creating the illusion of 3-D depth, had serious problems regarding focus slippage. To overcome this, camera positioning and movement had to be extensively pre-planned. Also to get the most from the Spacevision process, considered something of a major advance on other stereoscopic systems, which made the most of objects in the fore and background to create the illusion of depth, rather than just chucking objects at the camera lens, it was essential that the camera kept moving most of the time, requiring the use of cranes and dollys as well as pans.
The illusion of depth is particularly well achieved on location footage, such as the Baroness’s carriage ride through the forest with her children, but required production designer Enrico Job carry out additional work on his sets to accommodate the process, something he achieved with some success due to imaginative placing of props within individual settings.
Also proving problematic was the fact that, when projected on a cinema screen, SpaceVision had a similar aspect ratio to CinemaScope or Panavision, rather than the Academy ratio that Paul Morrissey favoured in his other movies.
These restrictions meant that the director had to largely abandon pure improvisation and resort to scripting several scenes in advance of their shooting (although this reportedly often took place only the day before they were due to be performed). Among the scenes that suggest more tightly controlled scripting include those between Joe Dallesandro (The Gardener 75) and Monique van Vooren (Sugar Cookies 73) and van Vooren and Udo Kier (Expose 75).
The air of improvisation still pervades much of the material, however. This is especially true of those involving the Baron and his assistant Otto (Arno Juerging, Sieben Tage Frist 69). Like Lonesome Cowboys (which features an hysterical routine involving the characters using ballet exercises in order to walk like proper cowboys), Flesh for Frankenstein uses a mixture of inane and ripe melodramatic dialogue to parody genre conventions. Much humour is had from scenes where Kier and Juerging are routinely disembowelling one of their experiments or carrying out some other atrocity, all the while indulging in some totally innocuous idle chatter. Examples of this include the Baron trying to convince a sceptical Otto that he has in fact a lot of experience of brothels, Frankenstein complaining about how dirty the castle is and at the corpse-strewn climax, the assistant bemoaning to a trussed up Dallesandro that while he did all the field work for the Baron;s experiments, the latter received all the praise.
Other scenes that seem improvised include the awkwardly handled dialogue between Dallesandro and his best friend, played by Srdjian Zelenovic, along with those taking place in the bordello. This sequence, with its heavily made up prostitutes resembling the drag queens who litter Morrissey’s other productions, seems the most like a typical Morrissey piece of filmmaking.
An important Morrissey touch, which again underlines his status as director, is the presence of Joe Dallesandro. Dallesandro was the first true superstar created by the Factory, best remembered for what, collectively, became the pinnacle of the workshop’s filmmaking enterprises, the much-banned and initially critically derided “Flesh” trilogy, consisting of Flesh (68), Trash (70) and Heat (72). Here, as in those earlier works, the frequently nude actor is the object of desire for both male and female characters. He is desired by his friend Zelenovic (as evidenced by the way he gazes at Dallesandro in the brothel scene) and becomes the passive male sex object of an older woman in the form of the Baroness.
Of course some of Antonio Margheriti’s own productions during this period featured material of questionable taste such as the bawdy comedy western Blood Money (74) and the kung fu buddy comedy Schiaffoni e Karate (73), where graphic eyeball gouging is treated as slapstick, the excesses on show in Flesh for Frankenstein seems to indicate that it is part of a tradition of “trash” filmmaking in independent American cinema whose members included the likes of John Waters (Multiple Maniacs 69), Herschell Gordon Lewis (The Gore Gore Girls 72) and Andy Milligan (The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here! 72) of which Paul Morrissey’s own non-Factory project, Women in Revolt (71) could be also considered part of. Of particular prominence is the way in which the director positively wallows in the gore and splatter effects created by Carlo Rambaldi (Una Lucertola la Pelle di Donna 71).
Among the sequences that will stick in the viewer’s mind is an elaborately mounted decapitation, in which the disembodied head is thrust into the camera, while the body staggers about geysering blood, eventually being subdued by Juerging repeatedly battering it with a lump of wood.
At the corpse-strewn climax in the Baron’s laboratory, Udo Kier first has his hand hacked off in an iron gate, the blood gushing toward the audience, before being speared by his own creation (Srdjian Zelenovic) with a wooden shaft, his vital organs dangling off the end. Also at the climax, the Baron’s assistant (Arno Juerging, Sieben Tage Frist 69) tries to make love to the female monster (Dalila Di Lazzaro, L’Ultimo Treno della Notte 75) but only succeeds in ripping her innards out onto the floor.
A truly shocking scene, mainly because it seems so out of place among the rest of the very blackly comic material, also involves Juerging’s character and his rape/disembowelment of the housekeeper (Liu Boisisio, La Signora degli Orrori 77), which ends with her entrails dangling down a drain.
Other scenes designed to provoke audiences include Kier becoming sexually aroused as he fondles the stomach cavity and contents of the female creature, the very audible licking of Joe Dallesandro’s armpits by Monique van Vooren and probably most startling of all, where the Baron fucks the corpse of the Di Lazzaro on the operating table, all the while fondling her digestive organs and exclaiming, “To know death, Otto, one must fuck it in the gallbladder!”. He then scolds Otto for staring at him.
Special mention should be made of the work of sound designer Robert Arcangeli (Chi Sei? 74) who audio effects add considerably to a number of, for some, deeply unpleasant sequences usually involving a very unhealthy interest in open wounds and scar tissue, as well as armpit licking.
Further examples of bad taste introduced by Paul Morrissey into the screenplay are the fact that the Baron and Baroness are in fact brother and sister, their odd-looking children, played by Nicolette Elmi (Il Medaglione Insanguinato 75) and Marco Liofredi, the result of an incestuous union, while the monster Frankenstein has assembled with a head taken from Srdjian Zelenovic, and intended as the father of a new master race, in fact turns out to be a sensitive homosexual.
In a crude parody of the “We belong dead!” finale to James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein (35), the monster explains to his friend Dallesandro why he must spurn his offer of help before ripping out all his stitches and eviscerating himself.
The emphasis on bad taste and other excesses also brings an air of campness to the proceedings, one of the reasons why it has attracted such a faithful following over the years. This campness is underlined by the performances that range from wildly over the top as typified by Arno Juerging (whose facial mugging is quite extraordinary) to the completely wooden as in the case of Joe Dallesandro. Dialogue meanwhile lurches from the utterly inane to the madly melodramatic, sometimes in the same sentence.
In typical 1970s fashion, the film ends on a downbeat note with Dallesandro hanging from the laboratory ceiling, awaiting the attention of the children.
Returning to the issue of Antonio Margheriti’s actual involvement in the making of Flesh for Frankenstein, coverage in small press publications and genre magazines, along with behind the scenes photographic material becoming available showing that the overall film is rightly credited to Paul Morrissey.
Margheriti’s contribution to the enterprise seems to have been mainly technical in nature, such as the creation of additional special effects and filming of insert shots for some of Carlo Rambaldi’s more complex prosthetic work. It also seems likely that he filmed two additional scenes involving the child characters on their own, the first one occurring over the titles showing them taking scalpels to their dolls with the other occurring later in the film when they are attacked by bats in a hidden room within the castle.
Morrissey himself is said to have been particularly impressed by the Italian crew’s ability to stretch a very tight budget. Of particular note in this respect is the elaborate production design by Enrico Job especially the castle’s massive dining room and the Baron’s large-scale laboratory. This is an impressive white-tiled construction, littered with surgical equipment, electrical gear and ancient cultural artefacts along with extensive passageways and stone stairwells.
One positive aspect of the requirements imposed by the use of the SpaceVision system, is that the fully mobile camera is used to quite outstanding effect by cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller (Profondo Rosso 75), that, together with the film being in the scope format, adds immeasurably to the film’s production values and injects a real sense of style into the proceedings, giving the movie the impression of being much more generously resourced than it was in reality.
In addition to the splatter and gore effects, effects maestro Carlo Rambaldi (together with Antonio Margheriti) also create some pretty realistic looking cadavers and a rather good mechanical bat attack.
Flesh for Frankenstein tends to divide viewers, with the uninitiated being put off by its extreme nature together with its wildly uneven pacing and air of what is often perceived as ineptitude (particularly the dialogue and acting), this undermining its obvious technical excellence.
To others however, what may be seen as shortcomings are in fact its attraction, especially its air of knowing campness and it delight in showing the outrageous. Even in its most truncated form, Morrissey’s film proved to be a major hit, especially in territories like the US, West Germany and Japan.
For a number of factors, Flesh for Frankenstein went dramatically over-budget, with the result that major changes were made to the way that its follow-up, Blood for Dracula, was to be produced, including the abandonment of 3-D and a much tighter scriptwriting process along with greater reliance on pre-production planning.
The next collaboration between producer Andrew Braunsberg and Morrissey would be the British-shot horror spoof The Hound of the Baskervilles (77), with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
Flesh for Frankenstein is also the title of a hard-core porn film made in 1987 by Ron Jeremy.
SpaceVision, meanwhile, has been used for a few other productions including, reportedly, the initial 1972 US run of Enrique Lopez Eguiluz’s Paul Naschy vehicle La Marca del Hombre Lobo (67), re-edited and retitled as Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror, and Paul M. Leder’s US/South Korean King Kong rip-off A*P*E* (77).
©Iain McLachlan 2003
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