When your workmanship isn’t quite what it should be.
Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958) is one of those uneasy explorations of humanity’s arrogant intrusion on the territory of the divine, and the inevitable pushback in reaction, all in the incongruous context of 1950s America. We open on elderly, independent researcher Carter Morton’s lab, where he’s working on some ill-defined project with the assistance of supercilious Oliver Frank, who hardly gives him any respect. When Morton leaves to steal some Digenerol from a former employer, though, we learn that “Frank” is actually the grandson of the infamous Dr. Frankenstein, and his assistance of Morton is a cover for his own research, in which he’s assisted by the gardener and long time friend of Frankenstein, Elsu. Elsu’s task?
To bring fresh bodies. After all, Dr. Frankenstein can’t work without raw materials.
Some people tolerate caffeine better than others. Like Trudy.
Morton has, of course, a young and nubile niece, Trudy, and she likes to host parties of other young men & women, which make for a bit of a meat-market effect, at least for Elsu. Fortunately, the storytellers exercised restraint and so only two or three bodies, oh maybe four, pile up, while Dr. Frankenstein, in between bouts of monster-construction, tries to inflict his flaming passion on any nubility that happens to come his way. These efforts have predictably morose results, but not as morose as what passes for his final project, a truly hideous yet cheesy resulting mismash of man, woman, and maybe too much makeup, which I found unsettlingly vulnerable to suggestion from anyone who wanted to shout at it. Him. Her.
In the end, Trudy and her fiancée manage to hold off both the monster and the good doctor long enough to find the trusty vial of acid, and soon the doctor is dead and the monster in flames, leaving us with the saccharine couple playing tonsil hockey, despite all the dead bodies.
I suppose, if we wanted to lend this movie some credibility, we could talk about how this is one of those stories which seeks to execute a rear-guard action against the oncoming ogre of science. After all, the creation of life is traditionally the realm of the divine, not the mundane. Nor is Dr. Frankenstein a do-gooder who happens to stumble into quicksand, but rather a repulsive picture of arrogance, an egotist who only seeks to prove his family’s superiority, and thus it should come as no surprise that some divine creature has basically ground him under her heel as a comeuppance. Perhaps it’s more vivid to say that she has held him upside down in the quicksand until the bubbles of air ceased to rise. Your pick.
Self-indulgent? Sure. Did he deserve to die from a face full of acid? I’ll let you decide. But you may regret those 90 minutes of your life if you do choose to watch this modest addition to the monster horror genre.
