Hitchcoc The only thing to do with Frankenstein (at least the one we know), is the name Frankie. This is a violent film where a character from space sees fit to reek havoc wherever he goes. The acting is abysmal and the special effects are atrocious. I know that some find it campy and I will grant them that, but it is so lacking in any substance that you will forget about it a few minutes after the conclusion.

Daniel Roos The film involves a mission to Mars scheduled to be manned by a single crewmember, Capt. Frank Saunders. Like many a low-budget sci-fi film, NASA is run by two or three people at the most. In NASA's headquarters, which bears a striking resemblance to any given high school with a "John F. Kennedy Space Center" banner drapped over the entrance, Frank is unveiled in a press conference the day before the historic mission to no less than three, semi-attentive reporters. In the middle of the conference, Frank completely freezes, and is rushed off by two scientists. The reporters are curious, but quick thinking General Bowers offers them drinks, and their desire for a good story is outweighed by the urge to get some free booze.It turns out that our boy Frank is really a half-man robot (pronounced "robut" by his creator, Adam Steel), a sort of modern Frankenstein, if you will. Despite the fact that Frank has malfunctioned and become completely unresponsive two minutes into his unveiling at a press conference, he is sent out into space the next day as planned after some mild tweaking.Meanwhile, a malicious, insipid race of aliens is coming to Earth for a single purpose. It seems their planet has been destroyed by a nuclear holocaust, and these saps are the lone survivors. The aliens are led by, Princess Marcuzan (who, you would think would be queen now) and Dr. Nadir, who informs the crew: "We are extinct as a race, unless of course we can find some good breeding stock to repopulate the planet." Wow.The aliens mistake Frank's spaceship for an attack, and blow it up. Frank crashes somewhere in Puerto Rico, where he emerges damaged and begins to wander the countryside attacking random people. (Incidentally, Frank at no point resembles a classic Frankenstein or the guy on the cover of the DVD – he looks more like a bargain-basement version of Batman villain Two-Face than anything else.) The aliens also land in Puerto Rico, and start capturing girls that don't look Puerto Rican in the slightest.The film's idea of incorporating a Puerto Rican into the story comes when hero-scientist Adam Steel (love that name!) needs to make a phone call and struggles to communicate with a native. "Telephone?" Steel says, and the native is confused. Steel puts his hand to his ear in traditional phone-mime and says, "El telephono?" and the guy understands. Yikes. I'm one of the whitest white people alive and I'M offended.Fortunately for our evil alien friends, all the Earth girls are remarkably easy to capture, and beyond shrieking periodically they provide no resistance whatsoever. The first girl is caught while on a beach in a bikini, sees her boyfriend edited out of the movie before her eyes (I think it was implied that he was blown up via ray gun), and once on the ship is totally compliant and mute. She doesn't even get cheesy lines like, "Gee! Are you from outer space?" Instead, she just kind of stands there and does as she's told as the Princess and Dr. Nadir leer at her in creepy, exploitation movie fashion.It goes without saying that the aliens have themselves a monster locked up in a cage, which looks like a Mexican wrestler in an ornate costume.Naturally Steel and Karen find Frank in some isolated cave and calm him down a little, leading us to assume that his killing spree is over and he's somehow "good" again.Steel sends Karen off to get help, but she is nabbed by those pesky aliens and taken to their spaceship. Speaking of the spaceship, it's one of those cases where the exterior makes the ship appear no bigger than a one bedroom efficiency, but the interior seems to have endless room for cockpits, hallways, and holding cells. Then again, we're talking about Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster, so who am I to complain about such technicalities? The pulse-pounding chuckle-inducing conclusion sees Frank freeing the Earth girls and Karen, and fighting the spacemonster. This is where the title feels like false advertising, because Frank and the spacemonster do not meet, per se, as the title promises; they just start fighting. What a rip-off! One can only imagine the stimulating conversations these two might have, but instead they do some lackluster fighting that would have benefited from REAL Mexican wrestlers in those costumes. Frank finally gets a ray gun and starts firing randomly, until he blows up the whole idiotic alien race in what is intended to be a self-sacrificial moment.The special effects are pretty hideous even by B-movie standards. I know they had no budget, but the spaceship in flight appears to resemble a Christmas ornament leaking gas. The director intersplices stock footage of the military liberally, which only makes his sets and actors look all the more fake. To really put things in perspective, Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster was released in 1965. Four years later, Stanley Kubrick's epic 2001: A Space Odyssey was made, with special effects that hold up better than the "state of the art" digital effects in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.This cheap, exploitative schlockfest actually tries to deliver an anti-nuclear war message, a la a genuinely excellent science fiction classic The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). Sadly, such attempts are thwarted by the fact it is a dim-witted movie titled Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster. If you are a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan (like me), or if you enjoyed Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space (like me), you need to see this movie. For the rest of you: Stay very, very far away.–Daniel J. Roos (film.ispwn.com)

Scarecrow-88 Aliens from a planet devastated by an atomic war seek Earth women for new breeding stock to re-populate their nearly extinct species(..looking human with costumes reminiscent of the old Flash Gordon serials from long ago)landing in their little space pod on a stretch of land in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Princess Marcuzan(Marilyn Hanold, wearing a funny hat) & her lieutenant Dr. Nadir(Lou Cutell, with an applied dome and pointy ears)have their men interrupting NASA's series of take-offs by blowing their space vehicles to pieces. One such interruption messes up scientist Adam Steele's(a young James Karen of "Return of the Living Dead" fame)mandroid operating the vessel, creating a fusion of hysteria, confusion, and mania, while also badly damaging one side of Frank's(Robert Reilly)face. Frank comes across several innocent bi-standers trying to defend themselves, killing the folks by strangulation or machete(..one fellow was chopping wood, attempting to defend himself and being hacked to death in the process, off-screen)while traveling incoherently from one place to the next with seriously troubled programming that needs repairing. Steele and his assistant Karen(Nancy Marshall, who cares for Frank)travel with military man, General Bowers(David Kerman)to San Juan where Frank was located..the exact same place where the alien ship had landed. While kidnapping bikini-clad hotties touring the beaches or go-go dancing, Princess and Nadir test their captive women for "purification" while Steele and Karen find Frank really in a worsening state. Karen is told to go for help while Steele works on his creation but she is kidnapped by Pricess' men and caged near their pet furry monster Mull. Seeking information from Karen, soon Steele and Frank find the whereabouts of the alien ship. Steele will have Frank stay near the ship as he goes to call Bowers to cease firing on the aliens for fear of killing innocent women inside. But, Princess' men drag Frank inside(why?)and leave him on a table unguarded while they plan to blast off in fear of suffering major damage. But, Frank has other plans and a battle with the beasty Mull will commence with hopes of Karen and the other captured girls hoping to escape.Terrible make-up effects, cheap sets, badly inserted archival footage, clumsy dubbing, and hilarious monster are either a glutton of punishment or amusement for the viewer. Hanold and Cutell seem to know what kind of movie they're stuck in, and, as the evil alien leaders, play their roles with a sense of fun..a tongue-in-cheek attitude by them, with Hanold stuck in a funny costume and Cutell in silly alien make-up, they are able to chew scenery. I especially enjoy the homo-erotic sequence where Hanold's Princess is getting a good look at one of her collected specimens as Nadir grins widely. Reilly walks around in a stooper, with a silly-putty face disfigurement for a large portion of the film, when he isn't attacking some poor soul. His fight with the monster is a real hoot. Fans of Ed Wood and Grade-Z schlock will get a kick out of this more than anyone else. There's no reason why Frankenstein's name should even be mentioned in this movie or it's title. Used probably to sucker viewers to the drive-ins to see it.Some 60's songs and odd musical arrangements are layered throughout this disaster of a film. This is indeed a turkey sure to delight fans of rancid cinema.

Paul Andrews Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster starts at Cape Kennedy as NASA unveil Captain Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly) as the man to pilot the spaceship Mayflower 2 to Mars, Frank seems alright but what the press don't know is that he is in fact a synthetic android designed, created & operated by Dr. Adam Steele (James Karen) & his female assistant Karen Grant (Nancy Marshall). The day of the launch arrives & everything goes smoothly at first, then an alien spacecraft blows the Mayflower 2 up fearing it a missile. The survivors from an atomic war devastated planet the aliens intend to land on Earth & steal our women to repopulate their own planet!Directed by Robert Gaffney (it looks like his brother Ross Gaffney did the music) this infamous 60's sci-fi flick can be viewed in either one of two ways, it's either a horribly made incompetent waste of celluloid or it's a highly entertaining slice of 60's sci-fi fun. I think it all depends on your personal taste & mine dictate that I thought Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster was a total hoot from start to finish & a extremely entertaining way to pass 75 minutes. Yes that's right, Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster only lasts for 75 minutes, it certainly moves along at a snappy pace & the story is so silly that I couldn't help be entertained by it. There is no on screen writers credit but three names credited with the 'story' including George Garrett who went on to become the Poet Laureate of Virginia! Sometimes truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Anyway, I must confess to liking Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster quite a lot. It's utterly silly with a bunch of aliens kidnapping girls in order to repopulate their planet (despite what the IMDb say the name of their planet is never mentioned & Mars is only used as a destination for Frank), sure you can poke holes in it & laugh at it all day long but that's half of the entertainment value for me. The dialogue for the majority of the film is OK & it's only occasionally that it becomes unintentionally hilarious, the story has a few sub plots going on & is surprisingly better than a lot of sci-fi cheapies from this era & the whole film has a certain likability about it.Director Gaffney does OK, there's nothing that one might consider totally incompetent here. OK some of the special effects of the time don't stand up to today's scrutiny but that comes from the time it was made rather than pure incompetence or bad film-making. The Spacemonster itself is known as Mall & I have to say I thought it was a decent looking monster, I'm not saying it's going to impress anyone in 2008 but as far as men in rubber monster suit creations from the 50's & 60's go it looks pretty good. Despite near top billing in the title it only appears for about five minutes & doesn't get to do much, I liked the way Gaffney filmed it as well with extreme close-ups & shots from low down looking up at it. One thing that stands out in Frankenstein meets the Spacemonster is the extensive use of stock footage, for a film that lasts for 75 minutes probably about a third of that run time is stock footage. Having said that the stock footage at the end of the army is actually quite well edited into the film. The aliens look silly, they all have unconvincing bald caps on & daft looking Mr. Spock style pointed ears. There's quite an effective early scene when Frank (the tenuous link with the Frankenstein title) has the skin on his scalp pulled back & he has half a brain & a lot of valves & circuitry, when he crash lands back on Earth half his face is melted & goes on to kill a man with a machete for no reason, scenes which would probably have been quite strong & graphic scenes back in '65 although these days they are tame.With a supposed budget of about $60,000 the film looks alright, the black and white cinematography & camera-work are both acceptable & the Puerto Rican locations where some of the film was shot look nice. There's an early film role for the Return of the Living Dead (1985) star James Karen while Lou Cutell as the alien Dr. Nadir puts in a performance you have to see to believe. The rest of the cast vary, some are predictably terrible while others are nowhere near as wooden as I expected.Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster doesn't feature Frankenstein at all & the Spacemonster only appears for five minutes so don't believe the title, however I throughly enjoyed every minute of it. I'm not saying for one second that Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonter is a good film, what I'm saying is it's an entertaining one with lots of charm & laugh value. Put it this way & call me mad if you want to but I would rather watch Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster any day of the week than some critically acclaimed boring drama say for example No Country For Old Men (2007) which won four Oscars last night including Best Picture.