So, a guy watches movies...

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter

2011-01-14T08:50:00.000-05:00

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter

Circle Productions, Inc.

Embassy Pictures Corp. – 1965

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter is, purely and simply, an exploitation film. The film starts and works it's way from the title to the ending in a fashion I've come to love and enjoy in the same manner of which I've seen Maxwell House coffee advertised.

Let's face it. We have a notorious, old-West gun-slinging beloved criminal meeting a proposed ancestor to a scientist who's mad undertakings and creation gave birth to a character who has appeared with everyone from Abbott & Costello to Alvin & The Chipmunks. This is a dream factory production. This is the kind of premise I would imagine being composed by putting Halloween candy in a Lone Ranger tin lunchbox. This is the machinations of insanity that should surely generate free energy by having original authors spin in their graves come to life. I love it.

But, as I've said before, it is an exploitation film. The title is a lie.

It isn't Frankenstein's daughter who we see in the film. It's Frankenstein's granddaughter.

I can more than understand the bait-and-switch title. After all, reading Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Granddaughter is more than a mouth full of words to get out; and doesn't exactly catch attention as easily.

Once you get past that, though, this is still a grand experience to behold.

It's here where I should mention that the print of the film I have appears to have an odd grain to it; appearing to be behind some sort of filter. I often see ghosting in frames as if there's a jitter that never makes it far enough out of timing to be overtly apparent.

Our feature opens in grandiose, cheap, science-fiction tonal music reminiscent of a bowed saw or theremin.

The color looks washed. The pastels of the film, while still bright and somewhat entrancing, are washed out, and the cinematography appears to be less quality than Technocolor, but no less beautiful.

Our first scene opens on what appears to be an adobe brick village in what can be assumed to either be the Southwestern United States or Northern Mexico. That is, if you can call a one-shot view of a single street a village. Or even a Hamlet. The population appears to be nearly wholly or largely Hispanic. Near the back of the town is an obviously painted sound-stage backdrop of a two-story manor with bright yellow windows in a strange day-for-afternoon shot. Credits in large, yellow, Serif font pass by as we see the majority of the people left in town packing their belongings onto burro-yolked carts and leaving.

Once our credits end, the film cuts to a man speaking Spanish in his home. There's a portrait of Jesus with a halo glowing and illuminating his form in the back of the room. The man, Manuel Lopez, patriarch of his family, is hitting the hard drink of his choice, orange juice, to a degree once reserved for men who had lost entire fortunes and sunk into wild turkey or southern comfort.

The man's wife, Nina, enters the room and a conversation strikes up as to wither or not everyone has left town. We learn that there has been an apparent scare of sickness taking children to explain the voluntary evacuation. The man questions his wife about their daughter, Juanita's, whereabouts. We're told that Juanita has gone to “the house”, that very same painted house we saw during the credits, to see her sick brother, Francisco.

Juanita returns home. She says that she was not permitted to see her brother; that he was very sick. It's revealed that the house has two occupants, and, that since the two moved there, the town has had nothing but death and sorrow.

Now, I have to pause a minute to talk about Juanita's actress. She's played by Estella Rodriguez. As of this writing, this is her latest credited film on IMDB. I have to say that that's a real pity, because she speaks with a heavily Spanish influenced English accent and has a natural flare for chewing scenery. There's a natural brilliance in her performance that I could watch all day to a point where I'm saddened that she didn't branch away from a staple of Westerns into more enjoyable sci-fi cheese.

Francisco has been proclaimed to have had “The Sickness.” His parents say that it must be God's will he is sick. There's a squabble among the family as to the implications to the statement. We are told that the family will wait for news of Francisco's ultimate fate and we gain a scene transition.

The scene cuts to the outside of a castle-like architecture. The building is heavy stone-architecture and it looks incredibly out of place when compared to the adobe structure of the Mexican village below it at the bottom of the hill.

I hope you've got a hat to hold on to, because the dialogue switches from a Spanish accent that's thick enough to be cut with a knife to a German accent so thick that the first knife will be wholly unprepared, break, and have to be replaced with a different knife altogether.

We're introduced to our film's antagonists in the window of the structure. There is a grayed, elder man and a younger, middle-aged appearing woman. The man is wearing a Germanic pin-stripe outer coat and the woman appears to be third-runner-up for being the Swiss Miss spokeswoman. The two are brothers and sisters, doctors, and, predictably as clockwork, trying to carry on the work of their Grandfather, the late Victor Frankenstein.

We're given clunky exposition between the two as to why they came to be where they are. As they gaze out of a window to drink in weather befitting their work, “America” (as a whole, evidently) is prone to the lightning storms they need to carry out their experiments.

We're given an immediate split between the siblings on their views of the experiments. The woman, Maria, is for carrying out her grandfather's work in the name of fame and prestige. She wants to be able to bring and control new life from the dead. Conversely, her brother, Rudolph, is opposed to the end result of their undertakings. He wishes only to return home to Vienna and be through with the entire undertaking.

The two Frankensteins end their chatter to renew their work. They enter into the room and we see the brief appearance onscreen of Francisco Lopez. There are charts on the walls of human anatomy and several beakers filled with varying colors of fluid. Francisco is laid out on a table with a tricolor-ed, retired army helmet on his head. There are over-air TV antennae taped to the helmet to give electrical effects. The rest of the Frankentseins' equipment consists of three or so large, gray-painted consoles with flashing buttons, two-to-three spark platters, and more neon lights than the Old West should be able to shake a stick at.

The first seen experiment, all those before it, and throughout, are somewhat successful. Maria asks for a shot of adrenaline to help the subjects awaken. However, her brother, Rudolph, is quite sneaky in sabotaging the injection—using poison in place of the requested drug.

This recent failure doesn't seem to detain Maria. She assumes the reason for her failure is using children, to spite having just said that it was because they had only connected brain waves to the patient. Maria insults her brother, telling him he should have stayed in Vienna and given pink pills to little old ladies.

Maria begins expositing about the work of her grandfather, who built artificial brains to place in his subjects. This was a recipe only he knew. Maria only has one artificial brain left in her possession—and she proclaims that, if her last experiment is a failure, she is prepared to die as well.

The artificial brain itself is either a candy brain or a toy brain that is set in a large glass jar with what may be red cream soda surrounding it. The brain is activated by adding pop rocks to the soda and pressing an air pump through a tube to have the brain pulse.

Through the rest of the scene there's only pointless restatement of goals. Maria may as well tuck her thumbs into her armpits, flap her arms, and make clucking noises at her brother.

Maria praises their circumstances and tells her brother they may as well stay where they are, as the police would be hunting them if they dared to leave isolation.

The film changes locations to a brightly lit Western town. The coloring is nice and there's a bright background tune accenting a brawl outside of a local saloon.

We have Cal Bolder playing the role of Hank Tracy. This isn't a memorable performance through the film. The man seems to have made a career of being a background character on shows from Adventures in Paradise, Bonanza, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., an episode of the original Star Trek, and several other credits.

Hank is shown battling a combatant named Stacy for bet money. Standing close by are the Saloon owner and Jesse James.

Jesse James is played by John Lupton. Lupton, as I'm surprised to find out, has been on television from 1951 to 1994 in shows spanning from Cavalcade of America, to Broken Arrow, to Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Hawaii 5-O, The Virginian, The F.B.I., Kung Fu, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, B.J. and the Bear, Who's the Boss, and The Young and the Restless.

Here, however, and, this may just be directorial choice, Lupton comes off as trying to impersonate Clark Gable and looking as if he's Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett.

Hank defeats Stacy and asks for prize money. The Saloon owner tries to weasel his way out of paying up and Tracy reveals that it's Jesse James he's holding out on.

There's dialogue to the tune of the James gang having been gunned down at Northridge. Jesse states that not all of the James gang was killed and that he was indeed Jesse.

The saloon owner hands over the money and all go inside to eat.

After a transition we see a scout keeping watch near a hideout.

We see members of “The Wild Bunch” inside of a shack or hobble. It's a cheap, wooden, gray set that moves in it's entirety whenever someone so much as touches a wall.

The two brothers of The Wild Bunch are having a verbal squabble over having called Jesse James to help in an upcoming heist. The leader of The Wild Bunch is identified as Butch Curry.

At this point, there are so many historical inaccuracies that it may as well be it's own art form. So, buckle in.

To get on with things, it's agreed among the two groups that they're going to rob a bank stage.

The younger Curry brother goes into town and tells the Sheriff that he wants out of the life of crime as he sells out his brother, James, and everyone else involved in exchange for not getting involved in any more trouble.

Let me start condensing this mess.

The robbery goes as expected. The younger Curry brother betrays his gang and Jesse's. The remainder of The Wild Bunch is dead, and Hank Tracy is injured—a bullet would to his chest.

James and Tracy escape into the wilderness where they meet with the Mexican family from the first scenes of the film. James and Tracy, playing the family for a chance to rest and eat, try to play off the bullet wound as sickness. Juanita spots the rouse immediately and waits until nightfall to refer our outlaw protagonists to the Villa Frankenstein for medical attention.

The Frankensteins welcome James and Tracy into their home. Tracy is taken into the laboratory for bullet removal while Ms. Frankenstein attempts to get in good with James.

The bullet is removed, Juanita eventually shows up to check on our desperados, and we receive the greatest line of dialogue to ever be spoken on camera.

“Some day, when all the Frankensteins are gone, my people will return to this land.”

Ms. Frankenstein plots revenge on James for spurning her advances. She sends him into town with a note that she claims is a prescription.

James rides into town to fetch medicine. He hands the note to the local pharmacist (apothecary?), who opens the slip of paper to reveal a tip off that this person is Jesse James, and that he should alert the sheriff.

The druggist ducks out the back entrance of the shop and tips of the sell out Curry brother to James's arrival. There's a small shoot-out and James books it back to the Frankenstein's to see what's really going on.

James runs into Juanita on the way. There's a brief squabble about getting help, and we see James arrive at the Frankenstein's to find that Tracy has become a successful transfer of brains and is now a servant of the Lady Frankenstein. She calls Tracy “Igor”.

James tries to talk Tracy back to his senses, but, it's to no avail.

Juanita and the sheriff arrive on the scene. Igor quickly knocks the sheriff out and quickly gets James into a deathgrip.

With things looking their bleakest, Juanita enters the room and takes the sheriff's revolver and fires into Tracy, killing him dead—with her eyes closed. Seriously.

With peace restored, Tracy dead, and Ms. Frankenstein having met a demise that is unclear to my memory, Juanita and James have a final farewell. James is escorted back to town to stand trial for his deeds and the film ends.

“Some day, when all the Frankensteins are gone, my people will return to this land.”

Stamp Day for Superman

2010-07-08T14:17:00.002-04:00

The Adventures of Superman