Frankenstein vs. The Creature From Blood Cove (2005) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: Frankenstein vs. The Creature From Blood Cove (2005) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 @ 00:00:00 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

It's nice when you can find a filmmaker that embraces the classics and throws a lot of inspiration from those old gems into their modern day films. William Winckler is one of those filmmakers. Combining elements of Roger Corman, Ed Wood, Doris Wishman, Russ Meyer and others, and if you're a fan of the old classics, you'll spot the influence of these various filmmakers easily.

Frankenstein vs. The Creature From Blood Cove is a definite throwback that combines both classic and modern elements, and is in fact presented in black and white to give it a pseudo-classic feel. I say pseudo classic, because it's not made to look entirely classic. They drive around in modern vehicles, etc... The story revolves around a scientist named Dr. Monroe Lazaroff, and his assistant, the very beautiful Dr. Ula Foranti. They also have an assistant who's actually just a normal guy named Salisbury who was unfortunately somewhat disfigured when he was attacked by a previous failed experiment.

Dr. Lazaroff's brother was killed by terrorists, so he's working to bring Frankenstein's monster back to life in an effort to turn him into an assassin that would be sent around the world to take out evildoers before they have a chance to cause major problems. Now here's the problem. Their previous attempt was a creature that was created using the dna from a human, a barracuda and a black mamba snake, one of the deadliest snakes in the world. Well unfortunately, the chemical brainwashing they attemped on the creature didn't work and it escaped. Fortunately for the creature, the house the scientists had their secret lab in was right next to the ocean in a place called Blood Cove. Hence the name of the movie.

Well once the creature escaped, the scientists decide to go dig up the original Frankenstein's monster so they can use it instead. See, their whole work has been based on the original work of the original Dr. Frankenstein. The ghost of Dr. Frankenstein keeps showing up and causing problems because he doesn't approve, but that's just a little side thing. Anyway, so they go dig up the original monster and bring him back to life...again. This turns out to be problematic as well since they can't seem to get the chemical brainwashing to work on the original monster any better than it did on the new one.

Enter Bill, Desirae and Percy. Bill's a photographer for a cheesecake magazine called Frisky Kittycat. Desirae is his assistant, and Percy is the make-up guy. Percy is actually the most entertaining character in the film, as he's flamboyantly gay and is constantly saying something hilarious. Bill is played by William Winckler himself. The three are sent to Blood Cove to do a shoot with a model. During the shoot, they encounter the amphibious creature, and barely escape with their lives. Well the publisher doesn't believe them and is furious and sends them back with a different model to do a complete shoot. Once again they encounter the creature, and this time it manages to grab the model and kill her. The three folks from the magazine manage to run away and end up at the house of the scientists where they're let in to save their lives, but then held hostage until the scientists can finish their work. The whole thing of the monsters battling it out comes from the scientists trying to use the Frankenstein monster to destory their failed amphibious creature.

This film combines so many classic elements that it makes it a joy to watch. The amphibious creaure was almost like a Corman version of the Creature From the Black Lagoon, there were nude modeling scenes and even a strip show reminiscent of Russ Meyer or Doris Wishman, some of the dialogue and situations are very Ed Woodish in nature and the whole thing all meshes together into a big enjoyable blob of cheesy goodness. I must admit though that the Percy character really added an immense amount to my enjoyment of this film. He was goofy and hilarious and was an endless source of entertainment.

Now this film does suffer from one thing that usually bothers me in films, and that's that some of the line delivery sounds memorized and recited as written word for word rather than flowing naturally. Mostly it was Dr. Lazaroff that was doing it, but there were some others doing it sporadically as well. Typically this would bother me, and truthfully it does a bit, but in a film like this where it combines elements of the cheesy classics of the past where you would often hear dialogue delivered in a similar fashion, it doesn't seem so out of place.

The outfits and make up on the creatures in this film is all very well done, and again harken back to the monsters of the old Roger Corman films from the 50's and 60's. There is one little side thing I'd like to mention here too relating to the Frankenstein monster. In this issue, I reviewed another independent film called The Bag Man. In it, there's a character named Dave who's the moron long haired rocker roommate of the main character. Now I mention this because while I was watching the Frankenstein monster in this film, all I could think of was how much he reminded me of Dave from the other movie. I don't know if it was the hair or what, but I found it amusiing. Not that it has anything to do with anything, but I just wanted to mention it for no other reason really than that I like to ramble incoherently.

Frankenstein vs. The Creature From Blood Cove is a fun and entertaining film, and if you're a fan of the classics, this this is a film you're going to enjoy. As of this writing, a distribution deal is being worked out for this film, so unfortunately I am unable to provide a website link or a place where you can purchase it. Once a deal is finalized, you should be able to buy it at all the normal DVD outlets.