4. Flesh For Frankenstein (1973)
Baron von Frankenstein is neglecting his manly duties towards his wife Katrin, while he tries to create a Serbian master race using various bits of cadavers and stitching them together in the time honoured Frankenstein tradition. His male creation isn't interested in sex, so the baron wants to get him a new head. A lusty farm hand called Nicholas leaves a bar with his sexually repressed friend who is going to be a monk. The baron reckons a sex starved monk would be a good head for the male creation. So he chops off the monk's head when he really should have been looking in the farm hand's direction. The farm hand is at the castle and makes a pact to satisfy Katrin's carnal desires. There is a dinner at the castle with the male and female creature - the male creature doesn't seem to recognise Nicholas. Nicholas himself keeps schtumm so he can investigate further. Despite his low libido, the male creature manages to kill Katrin in a bout of copulation. The henchman Otto has sex with the female body and disembowels her in the act. The baron tries to get the male creature on his side to kill Nicholas, but the creature shows recognition of Nicholas and mangles the baron instead. The creature decides it doesn't want to live anymore and kills itself. Nicholas is left at the mercy of the baron's kids who look pretty darn sinister in their intentions towards him. Most famous for its act of necrophiliac love towards a gall bladder, Flesh for Frankenstein (also known as Andy Warhol's Frankenstein) is another bizarre misfit among the Video Nasties. It is quite gruesome and deals with dodgy deeds such as incest, but the horror of the film is greatly tempered by lots of humour, campness and a totally over the top approach to the subject matter. It is very hard to be offended by Flesh for Frankenstein. It is handled capably by Paul Morrissey who is an accomplished director and did many of the films in the Andy Warhol canon. It is very enjoyable to see Udo Kier chew up the scenery in an extremely hammy fashion as the baron. Joe Dallesandro doesn't do much as the randy farm hand which is disappointing for his fans. Shot back to back with Blood for Dracula, Flesh for Frankenstein is the better film by far. It was one of the prosecuted films on the DPP and was not released uncut in the UK until 2006.