Never too late to dig graves...

Rating: 5/10 (2 April 2007)

With the possible exception of the current occupant of the White House, few things have provoked more sharply divided opinions than this movie. People either slobber over it or throw up on it. The first time I ever tried to watch it (on some cable network or other) I turned it off in the middle of the big scene where the female vampires attack, stoutly averring that there was no way to get drunk enough to watch the rest of it without slipping into a coma. Since then, I have come round to the opinion that this movie really does sort of grow on you. (Yes, I know, so do skin tags, warts and carbuncles.) That's why I'm actually giving it five out of ten stars. Yes, that's right, I said five out of ten. Consider:
1. Who would have believed that Universal's long-delayed sequel to "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" could have made the original film look like a polished work of art by comparison?
2. What other movie can you think of, in which the Frankenstein monster is actually the most sensitive, intelligent character?
3. Where else can you hear so many different people all trying to imitate Bela Lugosi, without any of them even coming close?
4. What other movie had its script written by 50 monkeys who were really trying to reproduce the complete text of Hamlet by accident?
5. Where else can you see a heroine get so relentlessly bashed, smashed and slammed around, walking away from all of it with no more ill effects than Wile E. Coyote, only to be killed in the end by a relatively minor collision with a CG werewolf? (Presumably all those massive internal injuries finally caught up with her.)
6. Well, most people don't like physics anyway, do they?
I could go on endlessly with such niggling observations, but the point is, let's give Stephen Sommers credit where credit is due. He had a much bigger budget than Ed Wood could have ever dreamt of, and yet he still managed to make an even more ridiculous movie than "Plan 9." You can't learn that in a physics class. Even more importantly, maybe someday there might be a next generation of MST3K. Can you imagine what a good time they could have with this one? In any case, it's definitely good for laughs, which is more than you can say for much of the crap that comes out of Hollywood nowadays.