Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966) Review

The movie was released as a double feature
with Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. It makes
sense because the movies have the same
director, producer, writer, cinematographer,
and orchestrator.

JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1966)
Director: William Beaudine*

Writer: Carl Hittleman*

Producer: Carroll Case*

Editor: Hahahahaha!!! There's no editor listed!! This should tell you something about this fine film!

Cinematography: Lothrop Worth*

Music: Raoul Kraushaar*

Starring: John Lupton, Narda Onyx, Cal Bolder, Estelita Rodriguez, Jim Davis, and Steven Geray

Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes

Rating: None (Comparable to PG)

Genre: Western, Horror, Sci-Fi

Release Date: April 10, 1966

*= held the same position for Billy the Kid vs. Dracula

Things people may find “objectionable”: There is one gunfight scene that isn't that bad. There is also a little blood, but barely any. In no way is it dripping or gushing out. It's just a wound or two. Finally, there are a couple scenes involving strangling, but it isn't that violent compared with the kind of stuff you see in movies today. Though it isn't rated, I'd say it's comparable to PG.

Intro: This October was great for bad movies. The sad truth is, I only DVR-ed two, this and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, but these two were totally worth it. As promised in my review of Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, here is the review of its companion piece Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. The two movies were released as a double feature and the crew is almost identical for both. You would then assume the two movies would be similar in terms of badness and enjoyability, but this isn't the case. Though both movies are quite bad, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter is the worse, and yet more enjoyable, of he two just because of how bad it is. The writing, acting, and special effects are crap and it's ridden with historical inaccuracies and stupidity,  which serve as proof that the filmmakers just didn't give a crap. And this makes it enjoyable if you're a bad movie fan like me.

Plot: After a failed stagecoach robbery, Jesse James (Lupton) and his partner Hank Tracy (Bolder) are on the run for the law. Tracy is badly injured by a bullet wound and he needs to get to a doctor, but the two have nowhere to go, since they will be arrested if they go near any town. They soon meet a local named Juanita (Rodriguez) who leads them to a doctor in a castle a few miles out of town. This doctor is Maria Frankenstein (Onyx), the famous Frankenstein's granddaughter (the title is a misnomer) who relocated from Europe to practice more freely. With one experimental brain from her grandfather left, Maria needs new test subjects other than some local boys she has used and killed in the process. When Jesse and Hank come by, Maria sees an opportunity in Hank to help her get power. Jesse must try and save Hank and Juanita from Maria before it's too late and she begins to gain power.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography: 5/10. Not horrible, but not exceptional. I feel pretty much any guy with a camera and a tripod could've done just as good of a job. It wasn't special in the least.

     -Acting: 3/10. It's kind of interesting since I saw this movie only a few days after seeing Lincoln. The acting in Lincoln was phenomenal and worthy of all kinds of Oscars. Then you get to Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. The acting was crap. The actors could all read their lines ok, but most of them weren't great at conveying emotions. It became funny sometimes watching the actors try and fail epically at conveying emotion. The best and funniest part about the acting was the actors trying to speak spanish and totally sounding like a bunch of ignorant white guys who didn't even know what they were saying. And that's probably how it was too.

     -Writing: 3/10.

          -Story: 3/10. "Hmm... We want to make a western, but I also kinda want to make a horror film." "I got it! Let's combine them! We'll have Jesse James meet Frankenstein's daughter! That's brilliant!" I have a feeling this is how they writers came up with the idea for the story.

          -Script: 3/10. Extremely uninspiring script. It was written by the same guy who wrote Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, so you can imagine how good it is. 

     -Special Effects: 2/10. Terrible. It's fun to laugh at just how bad some of the sets are. In some shots, it's clear that there's a town for a good 40-50 feet and the rest is pretty obviously a painting. The best moment is when they zoom in on the painting to look at the castle, showing you even more clearly that it's a painting.

     -Music/Score: 3/10. Nothing at all special about the score. It didn't stick out at all. It was just kinda there.

     -Power/Emotion: 1/10. They try to make you care about the characters by putting love stories and emotional backgrounds to the characters, but it really doesn't work. I can't say I really cared that deeply about any of the characters. I think I could care more about the used kleenex I have in my pocket (which I threw out while writing this sentence) than a majority of these characters.

     -Adrenaline: 2/10. Not really exciting at all, but at least after the first 30 minutes the plot actually goes somewhere unlike Billy the Kid vs. Dracula's.

     -Intelligence: 1/10. The movie was created for cheap entertainment and a quick profit, and that's really all it's good for. See stupidity section below.

     -Stupidity: 9/10. Oh this factors in quite a bit. First of all, the name is stupid and the idea is stupid. The point of this and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula was to make a quick profit off the name alone, and their goal was achieved. Also, holy crap, the historical inaccuracies! Here's a list of just a couple below, plus a really stupid shot.
          -Historical Inaccuracies: Part of the stupidity section, but needed another section to cover them all. For this, let's assume the movie takes place in the 1870s or early 1880s, since Jesse James died in 1882. Yes, I really did take the time to look this up and find these shots.

Licking an envelope

               -Licking an envelope: The glued envelopes you lick, or "gummed envelopes" were invented around the 1890s. The invention of envelopes you lick came at least 5 years after the movie is supposed to take place.

Plastic Helmet

Backwards desk. Notice the drawers

      -Plastic Helmets: It's pretty clear that the mind-helmet thing Maria uses to kickstart Igor/Hank has at least some plastic in it. The plastic we know today wasn't invented until 1907, at least 25 years after the movie is supposed to take place.
          -This Shot--------->: Notice how Maria Frankenstein is sitting at a desk. Also notice how all the drawers and place where she puts her chair are facing the audience. In other words, she's sitting on the wrong side of the desk. Yes, the desk is backwards, Ladies and Gentlemen.

     -Humor: Intentional: 1/10; Unintentional: 5/10. Laughing at the stupidity and historical inaccuracies was fun. The acting was also hilariously bad at times. Definitely an entertaining bad movie when you pay attention to some of the details. Much funnier than its counterpart, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.

     -Best Credit: None. They had a pretty minuscule cast and crew.

     -Final Score: Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter was both worse and better than Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. While it was a worse movie, this made it watchable and entertaining, unlike its counterpart. If you're looking for a stupid movie and/or cheap entertainment, watch Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter instead of Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. If nothing else, make sure you count the historical inaccuracies. And you think I trashed it? This article argues that it's the worst Western ever made.

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Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966) Review

When it was released, it was released as a
double feature with Jesse James Meets
Frankenstein's Daughter, which I also
took the liberty of recording. I will write
a review of it soon.

BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA (1966)

Director: William Beaudine

Writer: Carl Hittleman

Producer: Carroll Case

Editor: Roy V. Livingston

Cinematography: Lothrop B. Worth

Music: Raoul Kraushaar

Starring: John Carradine, Chuck Courtney, Melinda Plowman, Virginia Christine, and Bing Russell.

Runtime: 1 hour 13 minutes

Rating: Not Rated. Comparable to PG

Genre: Horror, Western, Drama

Release Date: April 10, 1966

Intro: (Please bear with me. I know it's November now, but I started writing this in October. It's a good intro though, so I decided to keep it.) I love October. The weather starts to get cooler and it actually starts to rain again (I mention it a lot in my review of Drive), the baseball playoffs are on a lot and those consume a lot of my time, and, of course since it's near Halloween, there are tons of cheesy horror movies being shown on TV. This is where I found Billy the Kid vs. Dracula. While perusing through channels, I found it and immediately set up the DVR to record it. I mean, can you really pass up recording a movie called Billy the Kid vs. Dracula? I sure as hell couldn't. It turns out that the movie is about as stupid as you'd imagine it would be. Billy the Kid vs. Dracula had very little hope and budget starting out, and with the hope and budget it has, it doesn't do much with it.

Plot: In the Old West, a mother and her brother are heading from the East to see her daughter named Betty that she haven't seen since she was a child and her brother has never seen. On the way there, the wagon picks up a mysterious foreign traveler with weird attraction to the picture of the mother's daughter in a locket she has. When they stop for the night, an nearby indian girl is mysteriously killed by two incisions on the neck (hint) and the indians stereotypically rampage and kill everyone on the wagon train except for the strange man (Carradine). The strange man (It's Dracula, ok?) finds the locket in the wreckage of the wagon and assumes the personality of Betty's uncle she's never met named James Underhill. Meanwhile, Betty and her boyfriend Billy the Kid (or just Billy) are planning to get married when "her uncle James" shows up and tries to pull the two apart, since Dracula wants Betty for himself. While Dracula tries to trick and seduce Betty and ultimately make a her a vampire, the foreign housekeepers and Billy suspect something is wrong and try to save Betty before it's too late.

Things people may find “objectionable”: Not that much. There are a couple BWC shots and a couple scenes with minor blood, but nothing major. One thing that might offend some is that the Indians are extremely stereotyped and portrayed in a way that would have you believe that the directors are a bunch of xenophobic white guys. And you know what? You're probably right.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography:

     -Acting: 5/10. John Carradine, who plays Dracula, is actually what you may consider a "real actor." He's kind of like Vincent Price and Nicholas Cage in that he's a pretty good actor, but at least towards the end of his career, he picked really crappy movies to star in for whatever reason (seriously, Cage needs to fire his agent). His performance is more cheesy than anything else, but I'd blame that on the director. Everyone else can't act that well, but it's not truly awful acting like the kind that is seen in I Eat Your Skin.

     -Writing: 4/10.

          -Story: 4/10. I really didn't see much creativity in the story, as it's pretty formulaic aside from the whole Billy the Kid meeting Dracula thing. It did have kind of a cool vampire legend twist that was intriguing and something I hadn't heard before, but the rest of the story was worthless and cliché.

          -Script: 4/10. Very forgettable script. Wasn't great but wasn't awful like the one in The Last Airbender. I wouldn't consider the script a strength or a weakness. It was just kind of there.

     -Special Effects: 1/10. Laughably terrible special effects. The best special effects were the super-fake flying bat (see picture below).

Two of the greatest shots from the movie: the über fake bat and Dracula's creeper stare.
 If someone looks at you like Dracula is in the picture on the left, call the police immediately.

     -Music/Score: 3/10. The music was very lame and cheesy. They got a lot of work out of the one harpist the hired, as every single time Dracula does his creepy stare (see picture above), a harp plays the exact same pattern. everything else just seems cheesy and formulaic. There was absolutely no creativity in writing this score.

     -Power/Emotion: 3/10. They kinda try to get you to care about the characters, but it doesn't work exceedingly well. In their defense, the writers' work was probably done when the movie's name convinced people to spend their $5 on this movie, creating a small, quick, profit.

     -Adrenaline: 4/10. The movie is really pretty boring until the end. The story gets caught up into this whole character development and love story crap and forgets what the audience is there to see: Billy the Kid fighting Dracula. It is pretty entertaining at the end, but it isn't that suspenseful.

     -Intelligence: 3/10. This movie really doesn't make you think at all. It's pretty mindless and serves pretty much only as cheap entertainment, which was its purpose.

     -Stupidity: 7/10. The title of this movie should give you a good insight into what

     -Humor: Intentional: 1/10. Unintentional: 5/10. The movie attempts to have a little bit of humor in it, but it fails for the most part. The movie is unintentionally hilarious because of the fake flying bat, Dracula's creepy stares (see picture above for these two) and mostly because of this lovely scene below, which is during the climax of the movie:

The funniest scene in the movie, and how Billy takes out the vampire after

 using many bullets to no effect and losing a fist fight to him.

     -Best Credit: None, sadly.

     -Final Score: The bottom line is you just shouldn't make genre mashups involving westerns and try to make them serious. I think Cowboys and Aliens failed for the same reason. Trying to mash genres is hard enough, but it's even harder when you try to make it serious. Still, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula fails more than Cowboys and Aliens because of the lack of budget and A-list actors. I would recommend this to any b-movie fans out there looking to kill about an hour and a half. If nothing else, the death scene and the scenes with the bat are entertaining and a brilliant way to kill time.

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I Eat Your Skin (1964) Review

I EAT YOUR SKIN (1964)

I Eat Your Skin was originally named Voodoo Blood Bath,
but the name was changed so it could be released as a double
feature with the grindhouse movie I Drink Your Blood. The
movie has nothing to do with cannibalism. Here's the trailer.
Notice how there are no scenes shown from I Eat Your Skin.

Director: Del Tenney

Writer(s): Del Tenney

Producer(s): Del Tenney, Jesse Hartman, and Dan Stapleton

Editor(s): Larry Keating

Music: Lon E. Norman

Starring: William Joyce, Heather Hewitt, Betty Hyatt Linton, Dan Stapleton, Walter Coy, and Robert Stanton

Runtime: 1 hour 20 minutes

Rating: Not Rated (Comprable to PG)

Genre: Horror

Release Date: October 29, 1971 (made in 1964)

Intro: Well it turns out this movie is a bit of a misnomer (which I explain with the caption on the poster) because well, there's absolutely no cannibalism in the entire movie. When I decided to watch it, I really didn't care. I was at a used CD and DVD store the afternoon before and I came across a DVD with a double feature of this little masterpiece and a Bela Lugosi movie called Scared to Death. It was $3 and I really couldn't resist, and thus this movie became that evening's entertainment. I Eat Your Skin was terrible in pretty much every way possible, yet its badness provided enough entertainment to make itself worth the $3 I spent on it (and I haven't even seen Scared to Death yet!).

Plot: A playboy/author named Tom Harris (Joyce) is out of ideas for his novels, so his boss, Duncan Fairchild (Stapleton) sends him on a vacation to this island where voodoo is being practiced so he can get ideas. Harris, his boss, and his boss's wife Coral (Linton) all fly a private plane to the island and make it there just before it runs out of fuel. The group soon meets up with Dr. Biladeau (Stanton) and Charles Bentley (Coy) who are doing cancer research on the island. Harris soon meets the obvious love interest in Dr. Biladeau's daughter (Hewitt). Meanwhile, natives are also doing their voodoo sacrifice thing and the group is soon attacked by horrifying(-ly bad) zombies that are supposedly created by injecting the dead with snake venom. As his love, and everyone else, falls into danger, Harris must try and save everyone from the natives and their zombies as he tries to uncover a connection.

Things people may find “objectionable”: The movie can get sexist and a little racist at times, but put in the context of the early 1960s, when the movie was made, it can be seen that these were the common views of the time, even if they are objectionable nowadays. The only really gruesome moment is when a zombie hacks off someone's head with a machete. There is absolutely no blood and the scene is done so poorly it becomes laughable, so it really isn't that bad.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography: 2/10. This movie really was the full vision of its director Del Tenney, who also co-wrote and co-produced it. Sadly, this full vision is stupid and the directing is not very good.

     -Acting: 1/10. Terrible acting. The best actors in this movie are mediocre at acting at very best. The worst performance by far (maybe in the history of mankind) is Betty Hyatt Linton as Coral Fairchild. She plays a spoiled, egotistical wife of the businessman Tom works for. Every time she opened her mouth, I wanted to go Van Gogh on myself and cut off my ears to stop the pain. I was cheering for her character to die the whole movie because I would cringe at every line she said. It's no wonder why her acting career never took off. Also, one of the main villains has a curious resemblance to Al Capone. Observe:

 Al Capone, as played by Robert De Niro in The
Untouchables. 

            A main bad guy in I Eat Your Skin.              

     -Writing: 1.5/10.

          -Story: 2/10. Stupid story with some gaping plot holes.

          -Script: 1/10. Crap. Complete and utter crap. The lines are almost all stupid. The worst lines are the ones they wrote for some of the characters to speak in spanish. They are extremely stupid and simple lines like, "No puedo hacer más!" That is about the most complex line in spanish you will get. It was so bad that I, with my three years of high school spanish, was able to point out mistakes in the spanish. 

     -Special Effects: 1/10. The movie is 48 years old, I get that and the fact that special effects back then were nowhere near as good as they are today. Having said that, the special effects are bad, even for the mid-1960s. The zombies look like they are made by simply putting a papier maché mask on the actors, and the explosions and other effects are laughably awful.

     -Music/Score: 2/10. Incredibly cheesy music throughout.

     -Power/Emotion: 2/10. I really didn't care at all about any of the characters. In fact, I was rooting for all the bad actors and actresses to die throughout just so I didn't have to endure any more of their acting.

     -Adrenaline: 2/10. Not really exciting at all. They try to make it exciting, but they fail pretty badly.

     -Stupidity: 9/10. Stupid is the movie's middle name. I think the producers picked up on that when the movie was first made, since they refused to release it for 7 years until someone needed a filler movie for a double feature. This magnificent shot contributes to the movie's overall stupidity:

Just in case you're confused, the box the zombie is holding is EXPLOSIVE.

     -Humor: Intentional: n/a, Unintentional: 5/10. The movie is not intended to be that funny. However, it ends up being funny just because of how bad the acting and the special effects are.

     -Final Score: I Eat Your Skin was truly awful in pretty much every way imaginable. Its badness both ruins and saves the movie at the same time. While its badness makes the movie bad, the badness is funny enough that it makes the movie watchable and worth my precious $3.