Lawbolisted Powerful

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Nigel P This is the 1973 Spanish cut. It features less flesh than the alternative 'The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein', but features inserts of Franco favourite (and future wife) Lina Romay as a gypsy girl.To cast Romay and then almost completely obscure her with over-darkened day-for-night filming is an interesting directorial choice. It's equally 'brave' to show close-ups of the Frankenstein Monster's eyes, which brazenly exposes the limitations of the 'head piece' and the lack of effort made to marry it up with actor Fernando Bilbao's face. Forget the lumbering gait of traditional Monsters – this one moves quickly, leaping and snarling as he does so.My favourite scenes involve white-cowled figures passing ghost-like through a misty woodland. These people appear to be followers of Cagliostro (Howard Vernon), who now controls not only Frankenstein's Monster, but also Melisa (Anne Libert), a blind, shrieking vampiric bird woman with plumes of green feathers adorning various portions of her body. Vernon and Libert are probably the best and least restrained actors here, providing an arch and perverse double-act that could only thrive in a Franco film. Cagliostro plans to create a female creature in order to procreate with the original Monster to create a super race. Ah yes. That old chestnut.Dennis Price, whose cultured, recognisable voice is bizarrely dubbed by some inferior actor, gives a scattered performance here as Doctor Frankenstein – that is, a performance that is scattered throughout the film in brief scenes where he is forever on the edge of death (and then beyond, M. Valdemar style) without ever having the good grace to actually expire before much of the film is done (in a scene that can most kindly be described as 'unlikely').The film's reluctance to pursue any level of coherent storyline makes a lot of it fairly ponderous viewing, and yet I rather enjoyed this. Like Frankenstein himself, Franco has stitched together bits and pieces haphazardly to form a whole. It won't sway anyone uncertain about Jess Franco's talents as a film-maker, but it reaches levels of pleasingly frightening weirdness.

Coventry Jess/Jesùs Franco (also known under approximately two dozen of pseudonyms) must be – hands down – the most audience-dividing filmmaker in history! Regardless which one of his more than 200 (!) movies that you research here on this website results in ultra-contradictory viewers' opinions. Some claim that he was a severely underrated visionary and progressive artist of surrealism, while others carelessly downgrade him to one of the most incompetent and perverted amateur directors of all times. And me? I generally tend to agree with the first bunch of people, although admittedly I can sometimes just enjoy a certain Franco movie when I'm in a very tolerant mood and/or under the influence of large amounts of alcohol. "The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein" is arguably one of Jess' most challenging efforts. It definitely contains several ingenious and innovative aspects, but at the same time you can't get passed the numerous 'what the hell' moments and almost laughable story development. Speaking of alcohol, I assume that good old Jess had to be quite drunk as well to come up with a scenario like this. Dig this: Doctor Frankenstein is busy minding his own business and joyfully creating a monster when, suddenly, a ferocious blind bird-lady invades his laboratory, kills him and takes off with his semi-resurrected monster. The bird-lady turns out to be an acolyte of the evil wizard Cagliostro who intends to build a whole race of super-monsters, males and females! I'm not entirely sure why, but I reckon it's primarily to organize massive S&M orgies and gradually obtain world domination or something. After all, isn't that the goal all evil wizards pursue? Anyways, Frankenstein's daughter Vera wants to avenge her father, but she's rapidly captured by Cagliostro and – through a lot of whipping – forced to fabricate the first female mate for the monster. What makes this film so unfathomable, I think, is the wide variety of colorful and flamboyant characters. The Bird Lady, impeccably depicted by Anne Libert, is a fascinating and disturbingly loyal shrew with bright green feathers on her arms. She's blind but sees through the hypnotic mind of her master. Cagliostro, played by Franco's shadow Howard Vernon, is a skinny freak with heinous eyes and he has a ridiculous bush of pubic hair glued to his chin. The Frankenstein monster here is, for whatever unknown reason, painted silver and stumbles around the sets like he doesn't really fit into the story. Vera Frankenstein disrespectfully brings her father back from the dead no less than three times, just to gain some additional information about his slayer and it is all for nothing, since she is soon captured and whipped. Franco does succeed in – occasionally - generating a genuinely macabre atmosphere, mainly through misty forests, uncanny costumes and sinister musical guidance. And regarding the psychedelic sexual content? Well, let's just state that Franco unquestionably was a provocative pioneer in this department. "The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein" is one of the few movies that actually make me wonder: what would Mary Shelley think? Footnote: there exists a heavily cut version entitled "The Curse of Frankenstein", not to be confused with the legendary Hammer classic starring Peter Cushing. In this version, most of the sexual content has been replaced with an additional sub plot about Lina Romay (in her very first appearance in a Franco movie) as a gypsy girl wandering through the woods and receiving mental messages from Cagliostro. The sub plot leads absolutely nowhere, but hey, what else did you expect?

Glen McCulla More movie-making madness from the archfiend of Iberian exploitation Jess Franco. This movie, known variously in its alternate guises as "The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein" and "The Curse of Frankenstein" (not to be confused with the Peter Cushing Hammer classic of the same vintage), re-utilises a great deal of the same cast and characters of Franco's roughly contemporaneous "Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein", but is thankfully a more coherent film than that effort.That's not necessarily to say that it's good, mind...The plot, such as it is, involves Dr. Frankenstein (Dennis Price once again slogging the twilight years of a once-promising career away in Eurotrash exploitation) and his assistant creating a bizarre silver monster, before being attacked by Melisa the flesh-eating bird woman (the lovely Anne Libert, also to be seen in Franco's "A Virgin Among the Living Dead"), resplendent in green feathers and not a lot else. Melisa is the slave of the immortal Cagliostro, played with relish and garnish on the side by the godlike genius of Howard Vernon, who wants to mate the creature with kidnapped lovelies such as Britt Nichols. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Meanwhile, Esmerelda the gypsy (future Mrs. Franco Lina Romay) is having her own ponderous and largely irrelevant adventures in the woods, chatting away to a batty old crone who doesn't seem to realise that she's even in the film. Understated just doesn't cover it. Cagliostro is in the meantime summoning an undead army of darkness (ie: extras wearing Halloween skellington masks and cloaks), resulting in some quite atmospheric and haunting shots of these revenants drifting through a mist-shrouded forest. Sadly, however, these dreams of conquest are destined to never come to fruition, and Cagliostro winds up plummeting over the edge of a precipice for no other reason than that the film's run-time is almost up.A truly trippy and hallucinatory experience that must be endured to be believed, this is another true Franco classic that combines the kind of story-line you made up when you were too young to know any better, needless nudity of hot chicks, and editing seemingly done on the hoof by a blind man. And a green-feathered flesh eating bird woman. What's not to love?

Paul Andrews Les Experiences Erotiques de Frankenstein, or under one of it's other alternate titles like The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, La Maldicion de Frankenstein or The Curse of Frankenstein which was the title of the version I saw, starts in Dr. Frankenstein's (Dennis Price) laboratory where he & his assistant Morpho (writer & director Jesus Franco) have just transplanted a human brain into his silver skinned monster (Fernando Bilbao) that has been able to give it the power of speech. However, they are attacked by a blind half bird half human woman named Melissa (Anne Libert) who was created by a mad reincarnated scientist named Cagliostro (Howard Vernon) who attack Frankenstein & steal his monster, before he dies Dr. Frankenstein tries to tell Dr. Seward (Alberto Dables) about what has happened, along with Inspector Tanner (Daniel White) Seward decides to investigate. Shortly after Dr. Frankenstein's daughter Vera (Beatriz Savon) turns up & with the help of her assistant Abigail (Doris Thomas) reanimates her Father who begs her to save his monster as Cagliostro is a reincarnated madman intent on creating a perfect female using various carefully chosen body parts & have her mate with his monster to create a 'master race' to replace all of humanity! As the clues point to the 'Castle of Barna' can Cagliostro be stopped?This Spanish French co-production was written & directed by Jesus Franco who also appears in the opening sequence, I have to admit that I'm not the biggest Franco fan usually but Les Experiences Erotiques de Frankenstein isn't too bad & at least he tries to inject some horror amidst the nudity & surrealism. Apparently this film exists in a couple of different versions & the one I an commenting on is the 'hot' uncut version with all the nudity intact which probably consist of someone undressing, the naked female monster, Melissa's naked body getting a few camera pans up & down it & a few rituals involving naked people. The script doesn't play like an ordinary Frankenstein adaptation as you can probably tell from my synopsis, it's all rather strange, disjointed, nonsensical & downright bizarre at times but having said that it does entertain to an extent. What is Melissa all about? She is supposedly a half bird with blue feathers & sharp claws for no good reason as far as I could tell. Cagliostro uses 'Magnetic Waves' to control people's minds but has to do it through Melissa which again is just pointless. What are those zombie types doing just standing there doing nothing in particular? Why does the monster have silver skin? Why all the baffling incantations & rituals? In a odd sort of way these surreal elements work on a basic level & Les Experiences Erotiques de Frankenstein is watchable in a way I can't quite explain. It moves along at a fair pace & never becomes boring or dull which is one good thing about it. As far as the nudity goes there isn't much to talk about actually, one naked body is pretty much the same as another although the inclusion of naked breasts & vagina's isn't necessarily a bad thing & for the girls some bloke gets his wedding tackle out. Now in terms of violence & gore it could have been bloodier, there is a brain in a jar, a severed with a sword hand, a cheap decapitation & a scene where the monster brutally whips a naked man & woman whom are tied together (don't ask). Director Franco shows that he probably would be better off directing traffic as he uses the annoying day-for-night process & he puts constant Owl hooting on the soundtrack to try & convince us that it's the middle of the night! He uses plenty of zooms which seem to go in & out of focus at random & as a whole doesn't do much to add atmosphere to the proceedings apart from a couple of nicely lit shots. Technically Les Experiences Erotiques de Frankenstein is cheap & cheerful, some of the costumes look alright while others like bed sheets, some of the locations are decent, the cinematography is OK & I must admit that the music really got on my nerve's. The special effects are far from special, that lab skeleton is obviously plastic & the monster just looks daft. The acting is of low calibre by everyone involved. Overall I thought it was watchable in a daft & silly but entertaining & fun sort of way. Much better than most of the other stuff I've seen from Franco anyway although that in itself is far from a recommendation. Worth a watch for Euro horror fans if you can find a copy.