LADY FRANKENSTEIN
released 3 september 1971 | 15 | blu-ray Director mel Welles Cast rosalba Neri, Joseph Cotten, paul muller, peter Whiteman
By the early ’70s, Hammer
were ramping up the sex and violence in their gothic horrors, but they could never go this far!
Lady Frankenstein sidelines both the Baron (Joseph Cotten) and the creature, with his daughter centre-stage as she transplants the brain of dad’s assistant into a hunky stablehand to (as a poster put it) “satisfy her strange desires”.
With its mittel-European setting and torch-wielding villagers, it’s firmly in the Hammer tradition, but with no holds barred: a scene where the creature hurls not a child but a naked woman into the river sums up the approach.
The location work and sets impress, as do the score’s echoey drones. Rosalba Neri is an imperious, seductive lead, and despite the flesh on display there’s some justification for directorial claims of feminist intent, given that she’s playing an assertive female surgeon. A sleazy, bracing mix of the traditional and transgressive.
Extras Choice of 99-minute cut/the 84-minute US version; Alan Jones and Kim Newman provide amused commentary on the former. There’s an excellent Making Of (35 minutes), and a German doc from 2007 (44 minutes). Plus: a featurette on a “spook show” that showcased the film; details of the BBFC cuts; alternate clothed takes; galleries; Italian photonovel; trailers; TV spots. Ian Berriman