Frankenstein 1970 (1958) [REVIEW] | Nuclear; Stein

I remember i had a class on genre horror films and TV, and i remember my teacher (while touching upon the latter days of italian horror in the ’60s and ’70s) discussed how – and i gonna paraphrase here – when genre movies start to implement meta elements, it’s usually a sign of how worn out it has become, of a status of current decay, in the sense that often horror films tended to retreat on self-referentiality and opting for the “film within a film” framing more out of desperation, in a search of some semblance of freshness to offer viewers, while de facto contributing to the genre’s eventually collapsing on itself, before it can find new stories or ways to tell them.

Obviously the meta approach in itself isn’t “bad”, but one of the examples brought up was The Crimson Executioner, a 1965 film better known as Bloody Pit Of Horror, which was a sort of desperate attempt at keeping gothic horror relevant in the mid-to-late 60s, and did use the meta angle, but was extremely campy, more akin to “fumetti neri”, as in comic books dealing in crimes, dark subject matters, more geared towards adult, like the famous Diabolik.

While 7 years apart from each other and Bloody Pit Of Horror being in color, i couldn’t help but think of that cheesy flick when i watched Frankenstein 70, as they both use the gothic trappings of the castle setting, though this one sets out to tribute to the older Frankenstein films of the 30s and 40s, but also try to update the Frankenstein myth for the atom age era.

It wasn’t even the first one, far from it, just one year earlier we got both the low budget I Was A Teenage Frankenstein from AIP and Hammer’s Curse Of Frankenstein (which started their Frankenstein series), plus later in 1958 we got Frankenstein’s Daughter, so there was no shortage of Frankenstein films, no siree.

Frankenstein 70 immediatly has that laughable name, which was even more laughable before, Frankenstein 60, as if 2 instead of 12 years made it set in the “distant future”… it didn’t.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 53: Primitive War (2025)

I wasn’t aware of Primitive War until a friend recommended looking up the trailer some time ago, and indeed it looked promising and actually kinda cool, like an actual effort and not just the usual low budget dinosaur drivel that we get nowadays.

I mean, if going for the Vietnam route worked for King Kong, it can work for a dinosaur film as well, why not? It’s at least something to shake up the formula.

And it also released earlier this year, so i didn’t have to dust this off from the crypt or something.

in 1968, during the Vietnam war, a Green Beret platoon goes missing during an operation, so a search & rescue team, named Vulture Squad, is tasked with a recon mission to locate the missing platoon, only for them to be attacked by dinosaurs.

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12 Days of Dino Dicember # 49: War Of The God Monsters AKA The Flying Monster (1985)

I know this is technically Giant Monster March material, but it’s Christmas, and kaiju are often dinosaurs in some way, so let’s have some technically correct fun with this obscure South-Korean kaiju film, The Flying Monster, better known as War Of The God Monsters because it is law for genre cinema films like these to have multiple titles.

1985 was definitely an interesting year for kaiju film as this was most likely made as a response to the North-Korean produced Bulgasari, itself made because of Return Of Godzilla debutting one year prior. Then King Kong Lives almost killed all of this new found momentum.

Directed by Jeong-yong Kim, War Of the God Monsters/ The Flying Monster (originally titled “Bicheongoesu “, which would translate literally to “(The) Undead Beast”), and it does somewhat still fits for Dino Dicember, the plot IS about a shunned professor trying to prove that dinosaurs still exist, with a young reporter trying to get a story from him.

But at it turns out, “Vegamunk” is right, as various giant dinosaurs (and a Pterodactyl kinda thing, the titular “flying monster” i suppose) suddendly appear, forcing the odd to confront the peril and find a way to save the world from the kaijusauruses.

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