10 Offbeat And Frequently Silly Frankenstein Films

5. Flesh For Frankenstein (1973)

Also known as Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, this film is one of the more graphic and violent interpretations of the Frankenstein story. Baron von Frankenstein is obsessed with creating the perfect Serbian race and he is attempting to achieve this by sewing together body parts to make both a male and female monster. The male has a non existent libido to Frankenstein's chagrin. He goes out with henchman Otto to pinch a suitable man's brain. Randy farmhand Nicholas exits a brothel with his sexually repressed friend who wants to be a monk. Otto and the Baron pounce on them and Otto cuts off the monk's head. Nicholas features in the film as a sex toy for Katrin, the Baron's neglected wife. The Baron swaps the head of the monster and when they sit down to dinner, Nicholas recognises his friend but says nothing so he can go snooping. The Baron wants to swap heads again, the Baroness dies after the male monster shags her to death, Otto kills the female creature by disembowelling her during sex. Can Nicholas work his way out of this crazy situation? Filmed back to back with Andy Warhol's Dracula, Flesh for Frankenstein is a much better film which takes the story of Frankenstein to extreme lengths including necrophilia, incest, dismemberment, guts and gore galore. So egregious are these excesses, Flesh for Frankenstein was accorded official Video Nasty status and it was banned in the UK in 1983. I guess the censors just don't like sexual penetration of a dead woman's gall bladder. Terrific fun for fans of 'yuck' cinema (there is something disgusting happening in the film every two minutes) you get the added bonus of Udo Kier camping it up as Baron von Frankenstein and Warhol favourite Joe Dallesandro as the randy farm hand Nicholas who talks in a New York accent. It's not a film which is going to draw universal praise, but as a perverted and sordid interpretation of the Frankenstein story, it satisfies a certain audience.