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With a title like Blackenstein you pretty much know that you aren’t going to watching a serious piece of horror. Serious is about as far removed from the truth as you could possibly get from this Blaxsploitation nugget of fun. Any cover that has “To stop this mutha takes one bad brutha” should dispel any illusions as to what is contained within. The fact that there is no “bad brutha” is beside the point.
As you might have guessed this is a loose (read very loose) play on the classic Frankenstein story. One that has been thrust into the world of Foxy Brown and John Shaft, thrown in a blender and then hung out to dry. Ah, if only it was that good!
The story follows Dr Winifred Walker (played by the stunningly named Ivory Stone) who travels from New York to California to be with her fiancé Eddie. Poor Eddie is currently a resident of the Veterans Hospital due to an unfortunate mishap with a grenade that parted Eddie from his arms and legs. Not that you would know this, as his legs are perfectly visible underneath the bed sheets. Moving on though.
Also in the very same area of California is the cleverly named Dr Stein, who conveniently happens to be Winifred’s old teacher as well as a Nobel Prize winning transplant surgeon. He also lives in a Gothic-looking house that seems to effect the weather. What do I mean by this? Well, the weather could be bright sunshine everywhere else, but as soon as we see the house it has suddenly become nighttime and incredibly thundery. Just watch and you’ll see what I mean.
Anyway, I digress. What happens next is exactly what you would expect to happen, Eddie is moved into the Stein residence so that they can rebuild his body. A procedure that goes swimmingly until Dr Stein’s hired help decides to mess with some of the chemicals used in the surgery, resulting in, yep you know it, the birth of, gimme a drum roll muthafucka, Blackenstein!
Blackenstein is pure trash, enjoyable trash, but most definitely trash. There is just so much wrong with this movie that I probably don’t have room to write it all down. I will however try to.
First off, the cast are just plain terrible. Wooden acting would be doing a disservice to trees, thankfully though the script is kept to a bare minimum, the director instead preferring to have many scenes with just music to accompany the action.
What script there is just hurts to listen to. Watch for the passionate declaration of love scene and you too will find yourself laughing and cringing in equal measures. Another scene where a policeman asks another to call an ambulance as this is a Code Red, which obviously isn’t that important as he slowly makes his way off screen.
The special effects, what there is, are fairly ropey. The is the odd disemboweling here and there which are done fairly well, albeit in a it’s so dark we can’t really see what’s going on kind of way.
Probably the biggest flaw though is the continuity. Some scenes really don’t make much sense. For example, Big Eddie leaves his room, walks through the house and the next thing you know he has arrived at the side door of the Veterans Hospital. Were these buildings next to each other? If so why did they need an ambulance to get Eddie to the house in the first place?
However, despite this movies numerous, and I mean numerous, flaws it does have a certain charm. Don’t get me wrong, this is a badly made movie, but I did have fun watching it. It’s the sort of movie to watch when you need a good laugh, and believe me you will be laughing a lot.
As for any extras on this release, there aren’t any save a few trailers for other Xenon releases. Utter piss in that department. I mean, a dodgy commentary to accompany the dodgy movie wouldn’t have gone amiss.
To sum up this release I’ll just add this. It’s a fairly well known fact that I don’t like the phrase “so bad it’s good”, purely because it makes no discernible sense. Blackenstein is bad, very bad, that doesn’t mean that you won’t get any enjoyment from it though.
