For those hording toilet paper

I imagine that after Karloff left Universal upon the finish of House of Frankenstein, later to star in some great Val Lewton films, he’d figured he put that part of his career behind him. I do wonder how he must have felt while starring in Frankenstein 1970, as a scar-faced, mad German surgeon who suffered the indignities of the Nazis (both in what they forced him to do surgically, and the physical mistreatment of his face and body), lived through it somehow, and longs to follow in the footsteps of his ancestral genius scientist in the creation of life. There’s this ridiculous scene where Shuter, a meek servant who accidentally stumbled into Frankenstein’s laboratory (it looks like a nuclear power plant with all the machinery) hidden in a cavernous chamber underneath his castle, where the Baron uses “instant hypnotism” to subdue him, later to use the unfortunate soul for his experiments (he does have vital organs necessary for his “man made from the bits and pieces of corpses”). So you have all these gauges, lighting buttons, wires, generators, and gizmos that make up Frankenstein’s laboratory…the props for the cavern lab are clean and under perfect operation; this whole set up is quite cool, I must say.

He has this scar down his face, and Karloff barely hides the insanity (this just isn’t a subtle performance) surfacing to the point that it creeps the cast and crew staying at the castle (using the estate to make their own schlocky horror film) as he sends off an ominous tone on his organ that has nothing but sinister behind it. This is Karloff during his career twilight, peppered with a good one here and there, but too often schlock like Frankenstein 1970 and Voodoo Island made their way to his resume.

Sometimes I enjoy schlock and performances with a honey-glazed slice of ham. As much as I love Karloff, this isn’t a performance he’ll be remembered for. At this stage of his career, the movie Targets told how the man felt about the recurring roles of boogeyman he was still stuck portraying. Like the mad scientists of the previous twenty or so years prior to Frankenstein 1970, Baron Victor has his monster sometimes mistakenly, sometimes on command killing those staying in the castle. He needed a brain, heart, eyes, and other organs necessary for his monster’s completion, and so who better than to provide those than the cast and crew? The director of the film could be Frankenstein’s downfall. When the monster is responsible for frightening to death the director’s forth wife (and script supervisor), and later killing the cameraman (the eyes are learned to be of a different blood type, so his death was unnecessary and perhaps another sign that leads to the demise of Frankenstein’s success in his experiments), Frankenstein will have the police breathing down his neck. Another development that doesn’t help Frankenstein is his obsession with the lead actress, a hot blond he obviously desires (it is one of those creepy instances where the Baron eyeballs and stares, ogles and closes in nice and tight with a lustful gaze and grin she finds unnerving and repulsive). I like the actress who played the script supervisor still unable to shake loose her love for the director who doesn’t hide his impulsive desires for any new babe cast in one of his B-movie drive-in flicks. In fact, she could very well cheat on him with his casting agent. She has snap, attitude, sting, zing, and bite in her deliveries opposite the man she once truly loved and now remains loyal to for whatever reason she can hardly explain. The director doesn’t even offer a response a lot of the time (unless it is hurtful comments on her supposedly fading “ingénue beauty”) because what she says is truth. The film, of course, allows Karloff to go into a long monologue in his family’s ancestral crypt (located near the hidden chamber containing the lab) about his father and the history associated with that name Frankenstein.

I’m not about to embark on a rant about how this is a sleeper worthy of discovery and is unfairly obscure. This is 80 minutes you could use for any number of other Karloff flicks, from the 30s to when this movie was made (’59). It has Karloff with a face in a constant state of growl and wickedness. I think what does add color to his character is the back story regarding what the Nazis did to him, and it provides (along with wanting to live up to his family name) a reasoning behind why he’s a human wreck. He’s a genius, no doubt, and a surgical/anatomical marvel, but what he initiates with the creation of his monster, the lengths he’s willing to go, describes a total disregard for human life. I mean, he even allows his monster to kill his long-time agent just for the eyes! “The inquisitive commandant.” Speaking of the agent, he knows that his client (and old family friend) could be responsible for the disappearances of the crew staying in the castle, and Frankenstein pretty much tells him that he had cut the tongue out of a man (who kept questioning him too much) who provoked him. The agent doesn’t hide that he suspects Frankenstein, even following him into the family crypt because the Baron promised answers!

And to cap it all off, the Baron agreed to allow his grounds and castle to be used by the film crew in exchange for the funding and delivery of an atomic machine! For electricity, Frankenstein leads them to believe. The cops fail to even question where that lab is located even though the film director knows Frankenstein has one. So the film isn’t exactly polished or particularly noteworthy in plot developments. The characters (including Frankenstein) aren’t exactly endearing, either. Just a film crew picking the wrong location for their movie. Frankenstein hoping to create a monster “in his own image” (this was the part that I found rather compelling, with an ending showing the monster’s face created by Frankenstein in “his likeness”), and doing so rather loudly (he might as well have laid out the red carpet for his eventual destruction).