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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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10
= Highest Rating |
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If
you're expecting something enjoyable along the
lines of Blacula then
forget it. Blackenstein
is a blaxploitation picture without a solitary
trace of funk, an inept horror film whose dime
store production values, pathetic acting and clumsy
direction can't even manage to be unintentionally
funny —
it's just smelly-dog-crap-on-the-bottom-of-your-shoe
awful. Given the inane story's potential
for Velveeta-coated goodness I actually felt dissed
by the flick when it was finally over.
A
young African-American PhD, Dr. Winifred Walker
(Ivory Stone),
arrives at the southern California mansion of
her former university mentor, Dr. Stein (John
Hart), to become his research assistant. The main
reason she took the position was to be near her
boyfriend, Eddie (Joe De Sue), who's just come
home from the Vietnam War minus his arms and legs
from a land mine explosion. Winifred hopes that
Dr. Stein, winner of the prestigious Nobel Peace
Prize for (ahem) Medicine, can help rehabilitate
Eddie with some kind of experimental therapy —
conveniently he's the world's leading authority
on DNA research and limb transplantation.
Stein accompanies Winifred to the veteran's hospital
where Eddie is a patient and, after visiting with
him, has the wounded man moved to the mansion
to begin treatment.
With
some injections of "DNA formula" and
the attachment of spare pairs of limbs —
it's never mentioned where Stein got 'em —
Eddie makes remarkable progress. Before you know
it he's able to embrace Winifred with his new
arms as the couple plans their future together.
This potentially happy ending isn't appreciated
by Malcolm (Roosevelt Jackson), Stein's odd-voiced,
stiffly formal servant.
Malcolm, it seems, fell in love with the winsome
Winifred the moment she arrived at the mansion.
After she rejects his clumsy advances, the vengeful
Malcolm decides to get even by switching Eddie's
DNA formula with another solution. Winifred and
Stein are puzzled about the sudden reversal of
Eddie's progress, especially as his head begins
taking on a pronounced square shape. Unknown to
them, at night Eddie takes his new legs for a
long and very slow stroll away from the
mansion, somehow making it all the way to the
veteran's hospital where he rips the arm off an
orderly who cruelly tormented him during his stay
there. Morphed by the wrong formula into a poor
man's image of the Frankenstein Monster, Eddie
continues his nocturnal killing spree by strangling
and ripping the guts out of anyone he encounters.
(The gore footage is so lame and phony-looking
that I can't assign a 'Blood 'n' Guts' icon to
this review.) The unlucky sap can't help it, of
course; it's all Malcolm's fault. The conniving
servant ultimately pays for his crime but Eddie,
too, will have to be destroyed in the end.
Blackenstein
is a real endurance test, one which I readily
failed. I actually turned the movie off for a
few hours and otherwise occupied myself before
returning for the second half, something that
is definitely not my policy to do. (After all,
I made it through Mesa of
Lost Women and Lust
for Frankenstein in single sittings.) The
movie should be funny, at the very least
unintentionally so; instead it just lays there
like Eddie before receiving his limb transplants.
When the film finally becomes ambulatory it still
creeps along like molasses in January... In one
scene our titular monster takes one minute
and fifteen seconds to simply cross a room,
a cinematic moment that seems to last an eternity.
(When your monster makes Kharis the Mummy look
like the Roadrunner in comparison, you might as
well hang it up.) Two-thirds the way through,
the film decides to take a break by switching
to a nightclub where we get two wretchedly unfunny
jokes from a charisma-free M.C. ("A man
walks into a bar with a dog...") and
a blues number from a singer. Had Dolemite been
performing there instead, the movie might at least
have had five minutes of watchable footage.
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In
terms of aural/visual quality the Blackenstein
disc is a disappointment. Apparently taken from
a worn VHS dupe, the full-screen transfer is quite
grainy and damaged. Many scenes are almost too dark
to tell what's going on. Dialog is understandable
but the audio track is plagued by omnipresent static.
A slate of six trailers is the
disc's only bonus feature: for the Dolemite
sequel The Human Tornado;
contemporary urban crime dramas Durdy
Game and Tar;
'mondo' reality film Fubar,
about white rednecks; and the documentaries Tupac
Shakur: Before I Wake and Welcome
To Death Row. These can be played individually
or as a block. 10/26/03 |
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