Frankenstein's Daughter (1958)

The acting in this movie is really good.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Frankenstein's evil and determined grandson Oliver Frank (a spirited and sinister performance by Donald Murphy) works with the kindly Prof. Carter Morton (a winningly sincere turn by Felix Locher) to develop a new drug. Frank uses Carter's niece Trudy (an appealing portrayal by the fetching Sandra Knight) as a guinea pig to test the drug and transforms Trudy's spunky best gal pal Suzie Lawler (a delightfully sassy Sally Todd) into a hideously disfigured monster. This movie gains considerable goofy charm from the fact that both director Richard E. Cunha and screenwriter H.E. Barrie treat the dippy premise with utmost seriousness, thereby ensuring that there's a wealth of unintentional belly laughs to be savored herein. Better yet, the monster that's supposed to be female is obviously played by a bulky guy, which makes the unsightly beast that much more grotesque. The cast have a ball with their colorful roles: John Ashley as smooth dude Johnny Bruder, Harold Lloyd Jr. as amiable hepcat Don, Wolfe Barzell as Frank's flaky assistant Elsu, and Robert Dix as the skeptical Detective Bill Dillon. As a neat-o extra plus, the Page Cavanaugh perform a couple of swingin' songs at a groovy backyard shindig. In addition, this movie warrants extra praise for delivering a few surprisingly rough moments of violence that are fairly bloody and brutal for a 50's fright feature. Both the robust over-dramatic score by Nicholas Carras and Meredith M. Nicholson's crisp black and white cinematography are up to par. A campy hoot.

ANOTHER Frankenstein descendant (Donald Murphy) is hiding under the name Dr. Frank (how clever). He's trying to make yet another human like dear old dad. He's hiding out at the home of kindly Dr. Morton (Felix Locher) and his beautiful niece Trudy (Sandra Knight). Naturally things all go from bad to worse in a boring and absolutely stupid manner. Bad movie veteran John Ashley has the thankless role of Trudy's boyfriend.Pretty horrible. It's never a good sign when a horror movie shows a monster right off within the first MINUTE! Unfortunately it's one of the dumbest looking monsters you'll ever see! It was Knight under all that makeup and you have to give her credit for going along with it. Later on Frank DOES make a full grown monster which is nothing more than a man (even though everybody calls it a woman) in a silly dime store mask with lipstick applied! This is one of those movies where victims of the "monster" just stand there politely so the slow-moving monster can kill them. Even more hilarious is when the monster politely knocks on a door to enter a house...even though "she" had broken through it the day before! To make this truly unbearable there are two or three terrible music numbers added--no doubt to pad out the running time. To its credit some of the acting isn't bad. Locher, Knight and Murphy are actually pretty good. Ashley is terrible but he's given nothing to do. Also Harold Lloyd Junior (who gets a "and introducing" in the opening credits) has a few funny moments. But, all in all, pretty dismal. A 1 all the way.

Frankenstein's Daughter (1958) * 1/2 (out of 4) Dr. Frankenstein's grandson (Donald Murphy) moves to L.A. where he becomes an assistant but in his off time he is creating another brutish monster. This film runs 86-minutes and I can't help but think it would have been much better had twenty-minutes been edited out. As it stands, this is a mildly entertaining film that has a few 'so bad it's good' laughs but in the end there's just not enough going for it to be rewarding in its running time. What does work are the monsters, which includes the one the doctor is making but we also have a second one involving a young woman (Sandra Knight) who is being drugged by the bad doctor, which transforms her into a beast. The make up effects are rather silly looking but they do create a couple interesting monsters, although it's very hard to believe that actress Sally Todd is behind the main one. Now, what really kills the film is that the two monsters get very limited screen time as most of it focuses on the doctor, the young woman and her boyfriend. All the teen drama stuff just doesn't work and I'm not sure how many scenes we need with people not believing who or what the monster is. John Ashley, Knight and Murphy turn in decent performances but quite often they garner laughs due to the rather weak screenplay they're working in. Harold Lloyd, Jr., has a small role here but doesn't impress too much either.

The film starts with a silly looking "monster" running around a suburban neighborhood scaring the locals. The special effects artists involved spared no expense--giving an actress a set of hillbilly teeth and a giant uni-brow (like Bert from Sesame Street). At first, I thought this was Frankenstein's daughter, but instead she was just a diversion--a DIFFERENT experiment by the doctor. No, apart from creating a formula to make people look like they could use a bit of dental work and electrolysis, he also was secretly working on making a monster--just like his father. You see, this sexually frustrated man is trying once again to prove the Frankenstein name and come up with his own freakish experiment. The problem is, the lady he creates looks more like a melted candle than Boris Karloff and she just didn't get around to doing all that much. And in the end, it pretty much wraps up as you'd expect--with no twists or turns to provide any interesting diversions or subplot. In fact, there's very little to like about this movie unless you enjoy seeing bad films and laughing at them (which I occasionally like to do). In this case, then this film is for you! Horrible acting, a horrid script and some of the worst makeup I have ever seen on a monster combine to make a truly horrible horror film.