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US Mall 1 - Blackenstein
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List Price: $9.98
Our Price: $2.49
Your Save: $ 7.49 ( 75% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Xenon
Starring: John Hart, Ivory Stone, Joe De Sue, Roosevelt Jackson, Andrea King
Directed By: William A. Levey
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786304588048
Format: Color
ISBN: 6304588046
Label: Xenon
Manufacturer: Xenon
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Xenon
Release Date: 1997-09-02
Studio: Xenon
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Movie With Everything You Could Want--As Long As It Isn't Good
Comment: Want to recreate a night of ultra late-night 1970s TV in your very own home? Just slip in a copy of "Blackenstein" and you'll feel as if you're tripping back to that groovy time when you crashed on the couch in your parents' basement rec room and really got into some midnight movie or other. "Blackenstein" has it all--including a flawlessly scratched and grainy print transferred right onto the DVD.
You want bad acting? You got it. Factual/continuity/technical errors? Yep. Plot holes that an 18-wheeler could be driven through? Sure. REALLY bad dialogue ("since the doctor won the Nobel Peace Prize for medicine....")? It abounds. Scenes in which someone appears to have forgotten the camera running and, for no apparent reason, decided to include the resulting footage in the film? You bet. You name it--if it can be done wrong, it was done wrong in this movie.
And for all that, I thoroughly enjoyed this film, because I was laughing my head off most of the way through. "Blackenstein" is ALMOST, but not quite, what the Wayans Brothers would have made as a student film. Seen as a bad joke, it's one of the best guilty pleasures ever put on cinema. If you're expecting a legitimate monster movie, however....just forget it.
Some things are truly so bad they're good, and "Blackenstein" fits the bill as well as any other cinematic oopsie I've ever seen. And it's short enough at 87 minutes that if it does leave a bad taste in your mouth, you'll still have time to put in a "real" movie and possibly salvage your evening.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Stunningly inept filmmaking...
Comment: Short version:
Blackenstein: The Black Frankenstein is an awful, awful movie. Quite possibly the worst ever made.
Longer version:
It's a shame that Blackenstein isn't widely known. If it had the cult following that it "deserves," then it would appear on a lot more "Worst Movies Ever Made" lists. I've seen a lot of bad movies in my time, but Blackenstein certainly gives Manos, the Hands of Fate and Plan 9 from Outer Space a run for their money at the top of my list as the very worst.
Where do you start to describe a movie that makes Ed Wood look like a near-genius? This movie was edited with all the grace and subtlety of a meat cleaver. The dialogue (when there is dialogue) is laughable. The premise of the movie itself is ridiculous (A man steps on a landmine, loses all of his limbs, but otherwise survives unscathed? Shouldn't he at least be missing his lower jaw, or an eye, or his hearing, or SOMETHING???)
The movie's continuity defies the laws of time and space in ways I haven't seen since "Plan 9." There's an entrance to the Veteran's Hospital that appears to be located in an abandoned factory/warehouse. The factory/warehouse itself may or may not be right next door to the mansion. Time shifts from day to night to dusk to night to dusk without any sense of whether or not an actual day has gone by. After a while, you just have to stop trying to figure it out, and let them take you along for the ride.
The music is the most poorly selected and poorly placed that I've ever encountered in a movie. Who knew that an 8-track cassette of "Good King Wenceslas" was a primo choice for makeout music? Not to mention the moments that the music suddenly fades out in the middle of a scene. And, if this is a blaxploitation horror movie, shouldn't there be less classical music and more whahkuh-chickuh-whahkuh-chickuh guitars?
And then there's the scene where Blackenstein is aimlessly wandering around FOR FOUR STRAIGHT MINUTES. There's a man without any arms or legs, whose limbs are clearly visible under the sheets as he's being removed from an ambulance. There are DNA genetic codes being cracked by a "doctor" who is using some of the same equipment that was used in the lab of the original Frankenstein movie. They're injecting liquid DNA into their patients! I could go on and on, but ultimately, this movie must be seen to be believed.
There are so many questions left unanswered. But it sure is entertaining to watch it again and come up with more questions, such as: Why didn't Mystery Science Theater 3000 get their hands on this one? Why do all of those cops show up at the end of the movie, and where on Earth do they go? Why doesn't the DVD box's tagline ("To stop this mutha takes one bad brutha") have ANYTHING to do with the movie?
I'm pretty sure that watching Blackenstein is the very definition of the phrase "hurts so good..."
Customer Rating:
Summary: To stop this mutha takes one bad brutha...
Comment: Back in the early 1970s someone (producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, I believe) got the bright idea to mix the genres of blaxploitation and horror, the result being the film Blacula (1972), which did well enough commercially to warrant a sequel titled Scream Blacula Scream (1973). Neither film was particularly favored by critics, but audiences enjoyed them, as they soon developed cult followings. This prompted others to try their hand at the newly formed hybrid genre, including producer Frank R. Saletri with his release of Blackenstein (1973), which he also wrote. Directed by William A. Levey (Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman, Skatetown, U.S.A.), the film stars John Hart ("The Lone Ranger", "Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans") and Ivory Stone, in her only silver screen appearance. Also appearing is Joe De Sue, Roosevelt Jackson (China Heat), Andrea King (The Lemon Drop Kid), and a list of others really not worth mentioning (after watching the film last night I'm betting those that were mentioned probably wish they weren't).
As the film begins we see an African American woman named Dr. Winifred Walker (Stone) arriving in California by plane, renting a car, and driving to a large house in the hills owned by her former teacher named Dr. Stein (Hart), who, as we learn later, has recently won the Nobel prize for solving the human genetic code, no less. Oh brother...anyway, seems Winifred's boyfriend, one Eddie Turner (De Sue), has recently returned from service overseas sans his arms and legs (he had an unfortunate incident with a landmine), and Winifred's hoping Dr. Stein can make him whole again. Stein agrees to help, and has Eddie transferred to his home, which actually doubles as a pseudo research facility where the doctor performs his wacky experimental testing (Dr, Stein has a whole lot of electrical gizmos whose only purpose seems to be in creating electricity arcs). As Winifred and Dr. Stein surgically graft some limbs on Eddie (which isn't shown) and begin juicing him up with DNA injections, Malcolm (Jackson), Stein's monosyllabic assistant, falls hard for Winifred, but she turns him out (she's in love with Eddie), to which Malcolm decides to tinker with Eddie's injection formula, enough so to turn him into a hulking, hideous, homicidal brute complete with his very own uni-brow who wears Beetle boots. While Winifred and Dr. Stein try to figure out the cause of Eddie's de-evolution (Dr. Stein's solution is to up the injection dosage), monster Eddie begins sneaking out at night, at first taking revenge on those who wronged him (like the idiotic, sadistic orderly at the VA hospital), but eventually killing anyone (or anything) that comes across his path. This, of course, draws the attention of the authorities, eventually leading up to a confrontational sequence hardly worth sticking around for...
First off I must say I wasn't expecting much coming into this film as I was resigned to it being a novelty at best. Problem was, once the novelty wore off, about a third of the way in, it turned into something akin to Chinese water torture, but, being the tenacious movie viewer I am, I plowed ever forward...hey, I figure if I could sit through Jerry Warren's abysmal Frankenstein Island (1981), I could sit through anything (I won't kid you, as Blackenstein did put that notion to the test). What Blackenstein lacked in competency, it made up for in an overall sense of suck. You know, I've always admired those renegade filmmakers who don't constrain themselves in terms of such antiquated ideas like a coherent plot, something which others would consider a fundamental aspect of a feature. To be fair, there is something of a plot here, all of about ten minutes worth (the movie runs about 87 minutes). I guess one doesn't need a lengthy plot when one has something like 982 establishing shots. For those not familiar, an establishing shot is one which gives the viewer an idea where parts of a movie are taking place, an example being if a film is set in California, we might see a character flying into a Los Angeles airport. For some reason director Levey decided it was necessary to show endless exterior shots of Dr. Stein's house, even though it had been established numerous times previously that's where we were at...I guessing this was an effort to pad out the running time, but it could have been a result of lousy direction. Regardless, if this were the only problem with the movie, I could have let it slide, but there was so much more...the continuity was out of whack (there were many sequences that were supposed to take place at night, except it was obviously shot during the daytime, and vice versa), the pacing was disjointed, due primarily to awkward cut away shots, the film was poorly lit, and the fact whomever placed the music within the film had little idea how to do so appropriately. There were a number of times some ominous piece of music would start playing, even though the scene didn't call for it...there was also a good dose of soul music included, which didn't really fit in all that well (at least the music chosen), but I half expected that given the blaxploitation elements of the feature. As far as the actors go, there were two types here...those who've had a viable career in the past, but have found themselves stuck appearing in films like this, and those who've never appeared in a film prior (or since) this feature (the actor who played Eddie had the personality of a two by four). There was some blood and unnecessary gore (monster Eddie seemed to enjoy pulling peoples faux spaghetti guts from their mutilated corpses), along with a bit of welcomed nekkidness (there's one decent topless scene). As I said, there's not much of a story, but that's okay because the film is padded out with stupid crapola like a crummy comic (sadly monster Eddie never catches up to this guy) performing in a sleazy nightclub (his material is most definitely rank), followed by an African American woman belting out a soulful tune. I'm sure if we spoke to the makers of this film today they'd probably make the claim Blackenstein was intended as a parody, but I'll call it what it is, a soulless, craptastic piece of flotsam, one created with the hopes of cashing in on the Blacula films, and failing miserably. I'm going to give this two stars rather than one for the following reasons...
1. It gave me the opportunity to see Frankenstein's monster with an afro.
2. The topless girl outside the nightclub.
3. It was good for a few laughs.
4. The DVD artwork is entertaining.
5. Despite the film's overall dismalness, it was still better than Frankenstein Island.
The picture, presented in fullscreen, on this Xenon Pictures DVD release, comes across okay, and the audio is clear (there was no mention of the actual format of the latter). There are chapter stops, but not much in the way of extras except preview trailers of other Xenon DVD releases including Dolemite: The Human Tornado (1976), Durdy Game (2002), Fubar (2002), Tar (1997), Tupac Shakur: Before I Wake (2001), and Welcome to Death Row (2001).
Cookieman108
Customer Rating:
Summary: movies like this one killed the blackexplotion movement
Comment: in the 70's black actor and film makers found a voice in the film world. with movies like "shaft","super fly", and "coffy" movies with black stars and directors were big hits. then the blackexplotion films got hit with low grade movies like this one and it helped kill the market.
blackenstein is one of the worst made films of the whole era and features the worst acting,writing, and directing ever seen. but if you like to watch bad movies and laugh you may find some thing good here,otherwise stay away!!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: This Is Just Ridiculous!
Comment: O.K., let me start by saying that I love Black Cinema. I try to support Black filmmakers and actors/actresses, but come on. I purchased this movie some time ago (I really just want to forget I spent money on this)and couldn't believe my eyes. I don't want to sound harsh, but this movie was just plain baaadddd! I think someone was trying to take the frankenstein legend in a different direction, but it never reached its destination. Enough said, just don't waste your money or your time. Sorry.
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