USA. 2000.
Crew
Director – John Bacchus [Zachary Snygg], Screenplay – John Bacchus, Michael Beckerman, Clancy Fitzsimmons & Joe Ned, Producer – Michael Beckerman, Photography – Giorgy Benaskovich, Special Effects – Frank “Caress” Terranova. Production Company – Seduction Cinema.
Cast
Darian Caine (Helena Frankenstein), John Paul Fedele (Dr Frankenstein), Heidi Christine (The Broadway Girl), Victoria Vega (Angry Wife), Jade Dubior & Jessie Harcourt (The Housemaids), Bennigan Feeney (Igor), Michael R. Thomas (The Monster), Zachary W. Snygg (Stable Boy), A.J. Khan (The Hooker), John Link (Karl the Jester)
Plot
Dr Frankenstein’s wife Helena is killed in a horse-riding accident. He plans to revive her on his laboratory table. However, his assistant Igor finds that the brain he plans to substitute has been eaten by the dog. He goes and buys the cheapest brain he can find – a lesbian brain – and substitutes that. Immediately after Frankenstein revives her, Helena escapes from the laboratory and wanders about seducing other women.
The Frankenstein Film has a long history on cinema screens going back to the silent era. The genre was popularised by the Universal’s Frankenstein (1931) starring Boris Karloff as the monster and then Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) starring Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein, both of which led to a string of sequels. In addition, there has been a mountain of remakes, other sequels, modernisations, parodies and monster team-ups. (I have a detailed listing of these here at Frankenstein Films).
Mary Shelley would probably be rotating in her grave enough to power a few electrical generators of her own at the thought of the erotic Frankenstein film – nevertheless this has become its own peculiar niche. See the likes of Sexcula (1974), The Erotic Adventures of Frankenstein (1975), Frankenstein – Italian Style (1977), Lust for Frankenstein (1998) and Bikini Frankenstein (2010). While the Dracula/vampire film perfectly suits itself to erotica, finding something erotic about corpses dug up from the grave and scarred misshapen bodies resurrected from the dead can surely at face value only hold appeal to the necrophile.
Mistress Frankenstein was one of the productions from Seduction Cinema, a New Jersey-based company that specialised in producing glossy softcore erotica for the video and cable market throughout the 2000s. Their output has consisted of a number of erotic takes on other popular genre works and themes as evidenced by such titles as Crimson Nights (2000), The Erotic Witch Project (2000), The Erotic Time Machine (2002), Lust in the Mummy’s Tomb (2002), Mummy Raider (2002), Play-Mate of the Apes (2002), My Vampire Lover (2002), Satan’s School for Lust (2002), Vampire Obsession (2002), Vampire Queen (2002), Dr. Jekyll & Mistress Hyde (2003), Vampire Vixens (2003), Lust for Dracula (2004), Bikini Girls on Dinosaur Planet (2005), G-String Vampire (2005), An Erotic Werewolf in London (2006), Kinky Kong (2006), The Insatiable IronBabe (2008), Batbabe: The Dark Nightie (2009) and Mad Maxine: Frisky Road (2018).
Mistress Frankenstein feels as though it is conducted with resources that are less than those of a children’s party. It is also a film where nobody involved seems to be taking anything seriously. People affect some really fake accents – even the monster (Michael R. Thomas) talks with a badly affected posh British accent. Rather than the imbecilic hunchbacked lab assistant, Igor (Bennigan Feeney) is played as a very gay butler. The worse parts are when we get to a horse that is played by two people in a pantomime horse costume. And then after the horse is killed, the stable boy asks Frankenstein’s wife (Darian Caine) to put a blindfold and takes her for a piggyback ride with he pretending to be a horse. As said, this is a film where people have given up even the remotest pretence that they are taking any of it seriously.
There are some nods and jokes towards the classic Frankenstein film. The monster is learning to speak and picks up its grunts by mimicking Frankenstein who rushes to the toilet with diarrhoea. There are jokes from people who have at least watched the Frankenstein films about villagers with burning torches and the inspector getting his wooden arm torn out. There’s a play on Igor dropping the brain he goes to steal and getting a criminal brain where here he goes to the brain shop and all he can buy is a lesbian brain – I am not sure I even want to try to unpack the sexual politics of swapping a criminal brain for a lesbian brain because it is the cheapest available!
One is used to adult films that have the most minimal of plots needed to carry them between unclothed scenes. However, the ones in Mistress Frankenstein lack even any coherence. In terms of erotica, the scenes are excruciating to watch. All of these are performed by women with very fake looking boob implants, which prove distracting. As usual for Seduction Cinema, the erotic scenes only consist of breasts, some pubic and very occasional labial glimpses, while all the scenes are girl-on-girl and no guy-girl action. All of the sex scenes appear to have been photographed in the same motel room.
John Bacchus (real name Zachary Snygg) has made a host of other erotic films in a similar vein, most of which are parodies of other films or tv shows with the likes of The Vampire’s Seduction (1996), Girl Explores Girl: The Alien Encounter (1998), The Erotic Witch Project (2000) and sequels, The Erotic Ghost (2001), Erotic Survivor (2001), Gladiator Eroticvs: The Lesbian Warriors (2001), The Erotic Time Machine (2002), Play-Mate of the Apes (2002), Vampire Obsession (2002), Vampire Vixens (2003), Curious Obsessions (2006), Kinky Kong (2006), The Insatiable IronBabe (2008), Naughty Novelist (2008), Batbabe: The Dark Nightie (2009), Bravengers: Age of Buldgetron (2017) and Mad Maxine: Frisky Road (2018). Outside of adult material, Snygg has also made the horror films The Bloody Video Horror That Made Me Puke on My Aunt Gertrude (1989), Purgatory Blues (2001), The Voodoo Warriors (2003), Vampiyaz (2004), Zombiez (2005), Bloodz vs. Wolvez (2006), Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottenhell (2014) and Monsters in the Closet (2022).