Flesh for Frankenstein (1973, Paul Morrissey) (Patreon)

46/100

Can't say I'm terribly receptive to Morrissey's Warholian project here, especially vis-à-vis performance. It's admittedly an interesting choice to juxtapose campiness with model-style blankness, but Dallesandro has never appealed to me—he's trying to act and failing miserably, rather than simply existing as an onscreen ideal. Along with Kier's crazed commitment, that makes the movie's weird approximation of a softcore parody look more inept than knowing, neither erotic nor especially funny. That's Ed, I did laugh, even watching in 2-D, when a Character Who Shall Remain Unnamed delivers a dying monologue with one of his internal organs (his heart? hard to tell, honestly) on the end of a long stick that's been thrust through his chest and presumably into the faces of everyone who's wearing 3-D glasses. Actually, Flesh for Frankenstein's final scene is spectacularly good, possibly the strongest ending to a film I otherwise don't much like this side of [INCOMING HERESY!] Beau travail; Morrissey nails the tableau of corpses (arranged on a superb Cinecittà set; the film generally looks terrific for its budget), and the implication of what follows "The End," circling back to the opening scene, is genuinely chilling. There's also some impressive F/X by Carlo Rambaldi (I assume the disembodied heart and lungs are his work), and Morrissey shows real facility with the camera (albeit relying heavily on "Let's start shooting through this foreground object that distorts our view—a fish tank, a spinning mobile—and then boom up"). I can easily understand the enthusiasm of folks who have more of a taste than I do for so-bad-it's-good. Mostly tedious for me, though, in more or less the same way as is the '76 X-rated Alice in Wonderland. (Not that I've ever actually sat down and watched that from start to finish, I should note.) Hopefully, Blood for Dracula, which I plan to watch later this week, will be more my speed, if only perhaps due to Kier as the Count.