Search - The Rites of Frankenstein on DVD

Legendary!! Nice print and subtitled too!!!

Dirtypearl | Indianapolis, IN | 08/16/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Jesus Franco's """La Maldicion de Frankenstein""" is now on dvd in the US. I am very excited about this and other future releases. Image Entertainment's release of this marks the first time I have seen this. I was aware of muddy bootleg copies for years, but somehow always avoided them. Franco seems to be a love it or hate it affair with over 180+ titles in his oeurve, it's sure there is some crap amongst the good. This was actually much better than I expected. Widescreen print and the use of great cinematography really stands out. The castle is the same one featured in A VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD. Beautiful landscapes and Anne Libert's menacing bird sounds. The quality of the alternate footage is a bit rough but it's still nice to see it.

For Franco enthusiasts, get this!"

Franco's Most Effective Film

Edward D. Terhune | Basking Ridge, NJ United States | 10/04/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"For the uninitiated, Franco is very definitely an acquired taste, and his work is wildly uneven. At their worst, his films are wretched and virtually unwatchable. At their best, they're quite effective in evoking a claustrophobic, hallucinatory mood of menace and horror. This is probably my favorite of his numerous cinematic "atrocities" (although I like "Vampyros Lesbos" almost as well). Absurd, nonsensical, senseless, full of beautiful women and mindless violence and horny monsters...it's all these things and more. Some of its more hauntingly exotic imagery includes Anne Libert as Melissa, a blind bird woman with long talons, feathers, and a taste for human blood. It may sound silly to some, but I found it quite disturbing listening to her shrill bird sounds as she slowly and torturously drained the blood of a bound human victim. Dennis Price is alternately idiotic and terrifying as the constantly-revived Dr. Frankenstein. The whole experience is sort of a low-budget combination of cheesy horror film and LSD-trip. As I've said, this will not be everybody's cup of tea. But for those willing to try something different, even a little twisted and cracked, it may be exactly what the doctor (Dr. Frankenstein, that is) ordered."

Medium Franco

Timothy Ramzyk | Milwaukee, WI United States | 04/02/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"There's good Franco, bad Franco, trippy Franco, sleazy Franco, and downright unwatchable Franco. It is often best to let someone else test the waters on the bulk of his sizable cannon, before you take the plunge either with your time or money. I'd heard plenty of both good and bad things about Rites of Frankenstein, so predictably I suppose it landed somewhere in the middle.

On the eve of bringing life to his creation Frankenstein is murdered, and his monster is stolen by the mythical Cagliostro. Seeking vengeance for her fathers murder Frankenstein's daughter (also a scientist) finds Cagliostro's castle, but enslaved by Cagliostro's will, is forced to create a female to mate with her father's creation. That's the bare-bones of it, but being a Franco film there is plenty of "stream-of-consciousness" plotting that involves variations of characters that populate many other Franco films.

Like most of Franco's watchable efforts, the rewards are in his audacious moments of surreal and delirious invention, and the film does have it's share of the otherworldly. Cagliostro's henchmen carting a coffin across the beach, and a mist-shrouded forest of the walking-dead are just such moments. Like many Franco films of this period, it also has a fun improvisational jazz score that plays effectively against it's period settings.

However, at a mere 85 minutes it seems long, and there is also a lot of repetition. For example, at one point Cagliostro's "bird-woman" assistant makes the same speech about the monsters pending copulation three times in a row, as if she were on a stage stalling for someone who missed their cue. There is also a lot of slapdash day-for-night photography were it becomes really hard to see who is doing what to whom. The Frankenstein monster is of the classic Universal square-head style, but he is painted with silver greasepaint which amusingly, is always rubbing off on his clothes and other actors. Still, if your a Franco fan your used to letting such details go.

Probably the biggest disappointment with this specific DVD is that it contains the sexually tame Spanish cut. The disk has few blurry clips from the spicier English Language version as extras, which only serve to tease you, that it would have been a bit more fun than the version you do get. Also the English dubbing sounded better realized than the Spanish to me. Other than that, is a pretty decent anamorphic widescreen presentation."