The Tormented/Lady Frankenstein 2001 Horror Movie Review

Joseph Cotton was among the most interesting actors to emerge from Orson Well’s Mercury Theatre ensemble, and after his appearance in CITIZEN KANE he was much in demand as both leading man and character actor, appearing in such classic films as SHADOW OF A DOUBT, GASLIGHT, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY and THE THIRD MAN.  With the advent of television, he moved into that arena, and between films and television he worked steadily until his 1981 retirement.  Even so, as time passed the quality of his material began to diminish, and by the end of his career he was known as an actor who would play in almost anything for a buck.


Such was the case with the 1971 “international” production named LADY FRANKENSTEIN, a riff on the Mary Shelly classic that was essentially a sexploitation flick in the style of England’s Hammmer Studios but without that studio’s eye for script, detail, and production values.  In this particular outing, Cotton is Dr. Frankenstein, whose daughter Tania (Rosalba Neri) has returned from medical school and, somewhat to his, wants to follow in her father’s footsteps.


Cotton appears in only the first third or so of the film: having created the monster, he is killed by it.  Tania seduces Frankenstein’s lab assistant into the creation of a new monster: they kill a good-looking lad and put the assistant’s brain into his body, theoretically ensuring a good time for all.  But Tania is perfidious, and the first monster is still on the rampage, and the new monster is beginning to have second thoughts about the whole thing.


Cotton gives the first part of the film a certain stability—but this is actually the more boring part of the movie.  Neri finishes up with a lot of over acting and there’s some fairly gratuitious nudity here and there along with a lot of unconvincing make-up effects and a fair amount of unconvincing gore.  Both plot and script begin to fall apart fairly early on, and by the time the movie ended I was pretty much over it.  It’s an instance of the poster art being better than the film itself.


GFT, Amazon Reviewer