Stretching out on a torture rack the kind of monster-movie parody that Mad magazine and "The Steve Allen Show" once nailed down so brilliantly in the 1950s, this straight-to-video concoction is THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW with all the bite removed.
On a dark and stormy night, two teenage wayfarers (Candace Cameron, Ian Bohen) stop for travellers' aid at a daunting mansion. To Dracula (Anthony Crivello), the adolescent girl represents a fresh blood recharge. To the wigged-out Dr. Frankenstein (Bobby Pickett), the lad could be the donor of a
brain for his rather moronic artificial monster. When not brushing off the advances of the resident hunchback butler, the ingenue steers clear of a mummified Elvis Presley and his manager (Jimmie Walker), who have their own reincarnation-related agenda on tap.
Too popular for his own good, the lad resists the allure of Mrs. Dracula (Sarah Douglas) who wants to give the teen stud-muffin a hickey he'll never forget. Rounding out this ghoulish guest list on Halloween is a moonstruck teen wolf whose mother (Mink Stole) wants to "groom" him for better
things. Sometimes quarreling jealously over all the attention lavished on them by the weird grownups, the young lovebirds rekindle their own romance during the course of the spooky evening while their fellow guests lament their thwarted desires in song and dance. Climaxing in a dinner table
version of the song "The Monster Mash," the musical fright-night concludes with the innocent couple bidding the various monsters farewell with their virtue, necks, and brains untouched by inhuman hands. In a reversal, the mad scientist's brain gets transferred into the body of his hunchbacked
assistant Igor whose gray matter winds up inside the noggin of Dr. Frankenstein.
All singing, all-dancing monster parodies are nothing new, but such send-ups require melodic savior faire, zesty choreography, and ingenious scripting to goose the drollery along. FRANKENSTEIN SINGS cannot lay claim to any of these basic movie-musical requirements. Since the movie features
"Hullabaloo"-derived dance numbers and showcases only one humble hit, the moldie oldie "Monster Mash," what is there for musical or horror-movie buffs to enjoy? Very little, except for a cast who sinks their teeth into the hammy opportunities provided them.
Under these amateurish circumstances, such joyful abandon cannot be underestimated. Despite a script by the duo who later cranked out the mega-hit TOY STORY, FRANKENSTEIN SINGS aims to be camp, always a tricky proposition. Brimming with outrageous puns, it relishes its own awful-ness without
finding that so-bad-its-good niche that a few cult pics like ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES have attained.
Despite the most lifeless teen protagonists this side of the High School for the Living Dead, the movie manages to kick up its fiendish heels due to a high-spirited cast, particularly viperish mantrap Douglas, puckish rock n' roller Pickett, whose Karloff take-off is perfect, and the irreplaceable
Mink Stole. FRANKENSTEIN SINGS can best be tolerated as the kind of tossed-together, middle-of-the-night merriment that is the province of telethons.
The film is derived from a stage musical, "I'm Sorry the Bridge is Out, You'll Have to Spend the Night," written by Pickett and Sheldon Allman which had a brief run at the Coronet Theater in Hollywood in 1970.(Profanity.) leave a comment
