- Directed by “Julian Breen” (David DeCoteau)
- Written by Benjamin Carr
- Starring
- Jaason Simmon
- Ben Gould
- Haven Burton
- Ethan Wilde
- George Calin
- Produced by Vlad Paunescu
- Executive produced by Charles Band
Even without the documentary evidence in the behind-the-scenes footage and other sources, it’s pretty easy to see the genesis of the Full Moon “Filmonsters!” series of videos:
- “Hey, those Goosebumps videos are going gangbusters. I bet there’s room in the market for another series of semi-spooky features aimed at older children. And at under and hour each, we wouldn’t have to pad the production to make it to 70 minutes!”
- “All of the ‘classic’ monsters — Frankenstein, Dracula, the werewolf, the mummy — are in the public domain! Sweet!”
- “Hey, where do I produce my movies? Eastern Europe. Where did the Dracula and Frankenstein and werewolf stories originate? Eastern (or at least Middle) Europe. No more trying to make the Bucharest studio stand in for Everytown, U.S.A.!”
And with that, “Filmonsters!” was born, intended to be a series of twelve updated retellings of classic monster stories for the youth market, with running times that would let them be shown in one-hour TV slots (some have alleged that the series was originally meant for broadcast or cable, and was shunted to video release when no such television market showed interest). Four of the series were announced — Frankenstein Reborn!, The Werewolf Reborn!, The Mummy Reborn!, and Dracula Reborn! — and the first two were shot and released (and preproduction begun on the third) when lack of interest caused the plug to be pulled. By my reckoning, the “Filmonsters!” series is the only juvenile Charles Band property in the late ’90s which was not overseen by Donald Kushner and Peter Locke, but the difference in production impetus isn’t readily seen on screen; no matter whose names are in the credits, lackluster kid-vid fare shot on the cheap in Romania seems to share more similarities than differences.
“It seems to be some kind of primitive Internet, but on paper!”
For the first installment of the proposed series, Band turned to regular sausage-making director David DeCoteau (here credited as “Julian Breen”) and that vat-grown conglomeration of screenwriting neurons Benjamin Carr to give us something that feels more like a sketch for a longer movie instead of a finished product (and at roughly 45 minutes, even a standard 70-minute Full Moon feature would be significantly longer).
As was the plan for the entire series, our protagonist is a transplanted American teen, in this case Anna Frankenstein (Haven Burton), arriving to a spoooooky castle someplace vaguely Germanic to stay with her uncle Victor (Jaason Simmons of “Baywatch”) after the death of her parents. Victor is a man of intense Byronic looks and passions (and hair) whose only concerns are the mysterious experiments which occupy his time, so he largely lets Anna look after herself, with the instruction that she’s not to explore the castle — she’s to occupy her time in the woods or something. Frau Herstner (Oana Stefanescue of Talisman (1998)), his — what? executive secretary? — is more forthright, telling Anna how her inconvenient intrusion there is resented.
There’s a houseful of silent servants, and Victor’s mysterious protege/right-hand man Ludwig (George Calin), but Anna can’t find anyone who will exchange two sentences with her until she runs into Thomas (Ben Gould of “Saved by the Bell”), the teenaged son of the groundskeeper. The casting of Gould as Thomas is likely the single most egregious example of bad casting since Ahnuld’s heyday of playing all-American types with inexplicable accents; despite being a native-grown illiterate, he sounds like he’s fresh from the New Jersey shore. This movie was made in Europe, so it’s not like they couldn’t have found a real European to play the European…
I cannot vouch for the SCIENCE going on here, given the dearth of beakers of colored liquids.
Their meeting, though, does provide us with the single sparkle of creativity in a rehashing that otherwise runs strictly by the numbers: Anna, dining alone, tries to engage any servant who brings her food in conversation: “Hi, I’m Anna Frankenstein — Hi — Hi, I’m Anna Frankenstein…” Thomas wanders in just as she says, “Hi, I’m George Frankenstein,” just to get someone to pay attention to her, so for the rest of the movie, he occasionally calls her “George.” I didn’t say it was a blinding flash of wit, and the fact that this tiny glimmer stands out says a lot about what you can otherwise expect from this script.
Anyway. Both bored and curious, Anna sets out to find out what’s in the basement that her uncle’s working on. Prowling the courtyard at night trying to peer down the airshafts, she and Thomas just happen to be there when…
…Well, let’s back up. The mad science lab is in the basement, so there are going to be no arcs of lightning reanimating the Doctor’s creation. What there is is a pit in the basement floor into which Victor and Ludwig lower their subject (appropriately wrapped in gauze, as per Frankensteinian regulations); they throw some switches, wait a few seconds, and presto! When they bring up the vaguely human-shaped bundle strapped to its steel framework, it twitches, then strains against its bonds, then breaks free and runs out into the night, making the moaning roar which conclusively identifies either the Frankenstein monster or a recent diner at Taco Bell. Anna and Thomas see this figure from afar before it escapes the confines of the castle into the woods.
All the best cosmetic surgery procedures are done in Europe.
How does it look, you ask? Kinda willowy, actually. I suppose it’s in deference to the teenaged protagonist that the monster (Ethan Wilde) isn’t the kind of hulking brute we normally see (I’d rather not believe that Wil Wheaton’s turn as a stitched-together monstrosity in 1995’s Mr. Stitch inspired a deliberate trend in such movies). The face is held together with artfully livid stitching down the right side, and of course the cranium is as close to squarish as they could get without the Universal Studios legal ninja team sniffing around. The general impression is that calling this movie “Teenage Frankenstein Reborn!” would not be inconceivable.
Victor and Ludwig knock themselves out searching the woods, to no avail. Meanwhile, Anna walks right out the next morning and bumps into the monster, and naturally takes pity on him, because nothing inspires friendship like an ugly, scarred guy who can only communicate in grunts dressed in rags. She even has time to go back with some children’s books (did I detect a Tintin cover?) and start to teach him concepts like “friend.”
Naturally, it all has to end up with a showdown in the lab, a semi-tragic ending, etc. So let’s just cut to the chase and assess this mini-movie instead of describing it.
The Frankenstein monster, or a random MySpace portrait? You be the judge!
Aside from the glimmering script tidbit above, the other commendable feature is Victor Frankenstein’s portrayal as a romantic tragic figure rather than a hubristic scientist obsessed with Tampering In God’s Domain. Granted, he looks like he just stepped off a bodice-ripper cover, but he’s still written and acted as myopic rather than callous. (Oddly enough, all of the negative character traits we’ve come to expect from Dr. Frankenstein and his ilk are transposed to Ludwig; instead of an Igor-like assistant, Ludwig functions as the darker half of the Frankenstein psyche.)
And the biggest complaint about the movie isn’t that it does much wrong, but that it simply doesn’t do much. Every occasion for drama is glossed over in perfunctory manner. Right from the start, we would think that a recently-orphaned teenaged girl showing up at the house of the uncle she’s never met to be treated as a nuisance might elicit some emotion; instead it’s played as such a cliché (which it is) that there’s no need to even gesture in the direction of the human drama that such a situation should contain. When Anna decides to explore, it’s simply from boredom, and the (implicit in too many movies) assumption that it’s a teenager’s right to give his or her curiosity full reign with no angst about possible consequences. When Anna meets the monster, there’s no sorrowing for its ugliness or hesitation that something so physically warped and tortured might be dangerous; she simply befriends it as if that were the most natural reaction in the world.
And the rationale for skipping all of the drama is simple; depth does not translate into impetus. With forty-five minutes to tell the full story, anything which doesn’t advance the plot to the next scene is excess baggage. And I’m not just talking about Carr’s script, either; the main thrust of DeCoteau’s directing is to get through the current scene with a minimum of fuss so we can move on to the next scene with a minimum of fuss.
“My ambition for my entire life has been to create a living being as pretty as me!”
It’s rare that I see a Full Moon flick, especially from the late ’90s, which was crammed into too little time; my usual complaint is that a teaspoon of plot was made to stretch like Silly Putty to cover a minimal 70-minute running time. On the other hand, the version of Frankenstein told here follows the traditional path of least resistance so consistently that maybe an expanded version would only put its flaws of unoriginality on greater display.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 2
- breasts: 0
- explosions: 8
- ominous thunderstorms: 0 (in a Frankenstein movie? Inconceivable!)
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
