Frankenstein’s Army – zombie Nazis everywhere
Frankenstein’s Army has got to be one of the weirdest films I have seen in a long time. To be fair, I’m not exactly a horror movie connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination. The last found footage style movie I saw was Blair Witch Project. That said, this film is overflowing with bizarre creatures from a deranged imagination. The absolute absurdity of the plot and characters is enough to make my head spin. From the first grainy frame to the last (all in glorious Blu-ray HD of course), Frankenstein’s Army runs unapologetically full tilt toward madness.
What in the hell is this?
The short version of the plot is that a squadron of Russian soldiers finds themselves behind enemy lines toward the end of WWII. With them is a documentary maker, through whose camera we witness the events of the film. They’re lured to a quaint and oddly deserted town in the middle of nowhere. They set up a base in a freaking weirdly retrofitted church after finding a smoking pile of nuns outside. That’s when they make the brilliant decision to split up the party to investigate the eerily quiet town nearby. Shit gets weird fast and things go inexorably wrong.
The costuming was amazing and over the top from the first of the zombots to the last. My personal favorite was the mosquito man. Frankly, I would have loved to have listened in on the brainstorming session that yielded the staggering array of monsters present in the film. In this cavalcade of the grotesque, I don’t think that I noticed a single mechano-zombie-thing used more than twice. I do wish that there was a little more exploration of some of the less utilitarian models. The teddy bear woman seemed like she was going to be a plot device instead of simply an oddity and I felt a little let down that she isn’t. Even so, the visuals were quite impressive; especially when you consider that there seemed to be no use of CGI. They can, unfortunately, go a little too far with things like the propeller headed thing which ends up being weird or laughable instead of frightening.
The sets were another incredibly impressive part of this film. The sweeping countryside, the farm houses, and the weirdly industrially overhauled church really support the feel of an authentic location for the time period. The aesthetic dichotomy between the killing floors of Viktor’s laboratory area and his private quarters is striking and highlights the level of detachment that this madman has from the work he does. While he has a lab area where he callously butchers living subjects as they scream for mercy, he also maintains an office with family photos and even a teddy bear. It’s a brilliant device that tells much more about him than is revealed through any dialogue.
Not a perfect monster
My only real complaint is that as someone who rarely indulges in horror films, I had thought that I would find myself at least jumping at some point. There was definitely an excessive amount of gore and violence, but nothing that took me by absolute surprise. That’s probably more to do with my own personal level of expectation than the movie itself. It’s certainly not lacking in blood, entrails, dismembered limbs, or downright unimaginable combinations of man and machine. I simply felt that there was a complete lack of a “gotcha” moment. During the obligatory confession sequence would have been great.
Overall, I felt like Frankenstein’s Army was a decent film with its use of off camera violence in lieu of crazy CG effects and its imaginative parade of monstrosities. Karel Roden was a suitably sociopathic mad doctor with only the best of twisted intentions. The Russian soldiers seemed like an oddly stitched together group that was potentially full of plot hooks which were never explored, though it’s hard to fault a film for having too many interesting characters. It’s at least worth checking out the trailer if this sounds at all interesting to you.
Frankenstein’s Army is available now on DVD and Blu-Ray from Amazon.
