This Franco Frankenstein feature is far better than his feeble Dracula films I've seen: his 1970, more-or-less faithful "Count Dracula" adaptation featuring Christopher Lee and Klaus Kinski, and his lesbian sexploitation reworking of Bram Stoker's tale, "Vampyros Lesbos" (1971). Those productions weren't only cheap, but also cluttered with filler and relied upon zoom shots as an overriding aesthetic--most ridiculously in a scene in "Count Dracula" involving taxidermied animal heads supposedly come to life. This take of Frankenstein includes zoom-ins, of course, as well his usual soft-focus views, but there's also an abundance of high and low-angle camera shots, use of wide-angle lenses, colored lighting (along with a silver monster), shaky tracking shots and close-ups and oscillating perspectives, which are often quickly cut together. An early scene by the windows of the castle balcony between the mad doctor Cagliostro and his blind, soothsaying vampire companion Melisa is an especially lovely sequence of shots--richly inhabiting a beautiful location and fluid camerawork and montage.
The story is weird, but is a more concise and thematically faithful rendering of Mary Shelley's narrative in some respects than Franco's bowdlerizing of Stoker's book. There's a stitched together quality to the editing and plot construction here that feels almost haphazard, including bits from "Dracula" (Melisa as a vamp, the hypnotizing stuff, and there's a character named "Dr. Seward") as well as "Frankenstein," mixed together with the titilating sexploitation of bondage, an apparent sex cult that likes to watch, and copious amounts of nudity if you're viewing one of the better international "erotic" versions of the film (reportedly, that other Franco from Spain dictated clothes for the native Spanish cut). The part about Frankenstein's daughter avenging her father and his reputation, including by reanimating his cadaver multiple times, is similar to the plot of another Frankenstein sexploitation B-picture from Europe, "Lady Frankenstein" (1971). The plot to have the Frankenstein monster copulate with a female mate pieced together by Cagliostro also echos "Flesh for Frankenstein," which was also released in 1973. An extended scene of the monster whipping a bondaged couple until one of them faints to their death upon pointed stakes while that cult looks on seems entirely new, though. We're already talking about novels that involved bloodsucking, grave robbing, cadavers and the undead and murder, so it's hard to make any cinematic transmutation seem filthy by comparison, although Franco gives it his best shot.
To top it off, Franco's superior visual sense here is underscored by the focus on sight: Melisa's physical blindness but her supernatural sense; the sex cult of spectators; as well as the concentration on eyes in some scenes, such as when Cagliostro uses his mesmerizing powers on Vera Frankenstein.
The story is weird, but is a more concise and thematically faithful rendering of Mary Shelley's narrative in some respects than Franco's bowdlerizing of Stoker's book. There's a stitched together quality to the editing and plot construction here that feels almost haphazard, including bits from "Dracula" (Melisa as a vamp, the hypnotizing stuff, and there's a character named "Dr. Seward") as well as "Frankenstein," mixed together with the titilating sexploitation of bondage, an apparent sex cult that likes to watch, and copious amounts of nudity if you're viewing one of the better international "erotic" versions of the film (reportedly, that other Franco from Spain dictated clothes for the native Spanish cut). The part about Frankenstein's daughter avenging her father and his reputation, including by reanimating his cadaver multiple times, is similar to the plot of another Frankenstein sexploitation B-picture from Europe, "Lady Frankenstein" (1971). The plot to have the Frankenstein monster copulate with a female mate pieced together by Cagliostro also echos "Flesh for Frankenstein," which was also released in 1973. An extended scene of the monster whipping a bondaged couple until one of them faints to their death upon pointed stakes while that cult looks on seems entirely new, though. We're already talking about novels that involved bloodsucking, grave robbing, cadavers and the undead and murder, so it's hard to make any cinematic transmutation seem filthy by comparison, although Franco gives it his best shot.
To top it off, Franco's superior visual sense here is underscored by the focus on sight: Melisa's physical blindness but her supernatural sense; the sex cult of spectators; as well as the concentration on eyes in some scenes, such as when Cagliostro uses his mesmerizing powers on Vera Frankenstein.