TSome of us lucky few who would haunt the weird late-night grindhouse movies they'd show on USA in the Eighties or Nineties got introduced to many wacky, creepy movies. The nauseating, perverse duo of Andy Warhol's Dracula and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein were no exception. Rare, terrifyingly "other," if you were as young as I when you first encountered them, you know they're exotic, awful, freak-fests worthy of a second look. They freaked me out and stayed with me, they may do the same for you.
31 Flavors of Horror #22
Flesh For Frankenstein
A good deal of the perversity here comes from the duo of Joe Dallesandro and Udo Kier, who exquisitely overacts as the Baron who is lusting after the perfect "nasum" for his experiments in building his specimen of uber-man-meat. His obsession with his master race is all-consuming... and highly comical. You'll savor his German accent as it emphasizes a W in the place of every R and V. (Also: "Pop-o-lates" for "populates." Love it.) Sure, he's building a male and a female, but she's an afterthought. He's got a sister-wife (eww) and a red-headed "Igor" in his assistant, Otto.One can't imagine why the Baron would be more interested in building the perfect man than in the beauty-obsessed, eyebrow-deprived Baroness, Monique Van Vooren. Considering how these siblings squabble it's a wonder he hasn't chopped her up for parts. He eschews Sis to get his freak on fingering innards down in the lab. He hand-humps his female "zombie" at one point with the immortal line: "To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life in the gallbladder." The Baron is all sexual hangups while the Baroness is all repressed need.
Kier's cerebral fey-ness is countered by Dallesandro, who still wasn't much of an actor at this point in his career. He's all meat as a farmhand from the Bronx who has somehow been transplanted to 19th century Serbia. Van Vooren keeps running into him while he's boning Farmer's Daughters. Of course she's going to want him.
(It's all meandering sass, smut, and gore from this point forward...)
