Character actor Whit Bissell gets top billing as Dr. Frankenstein, a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein. Bissell, just in from his native England and with no trace of a British accent, lectures his colleagues on his radical ideas of sewing assorted parts together to form a human being. Naturally, these idiots cannot comprehend his genius, which is precisely how I feel every time I lecture.
Bissell engages a physics professor (Robert Burton) to help with his experiments. Coincidentally, moments later, there is a terrible car crash right outside Bissell's house. Bissell and Burton abscond with one of the corpses. Burton feels squeamish, but Bissell reminds him that with the terrible wreck and bodies burned beyond recognition, no one will ever notice a body is missing. Apparently, these two clowns have never seen an episode of "Forensic Files." They store the body in Bissell's private morgue, where Bissell explains that he keeps a collection of spare parts. NAPA has nothing on this guy. The next day, Bissell saws off two hands and a leg from the carcass. He disposes of these appendages by feeding them to his alligator. But apparently Bissell has just run out of replacement parts. In another coincidence, a plane full of athletes has just crashed. So Bissell picks up two hands from a wrestler and one leg from a football player, and voila - a monster who talks like Gary Conway is born. Bissell coaxes Conway to articulate:
"Speak, you've got a civil tongue in your head, I know you have because I sewed it back myself."
Conway has one major problem. (Actually, he has several, seeing as how he is made up of miscellaneous people parts.) His face is disfigured, so he has to remain in the basement. But he manages to wander out one night, and there is the obligatory "Peeping Monster" scene when some blonde chick decides to prance around in a nightgown while her curtains are open. These babes never learn.
All this is happening under the nose and breasts of the lovely Phyllis Coates, who plays Bissell's live-in nurse/assistant/booty call. Coates is busy planning their wedding, while Bissell is busy cutting and pasting. Eventually Coates figures out what is going on, which means it will soon be mealtime for the alligator. Bissell explains her absence to Burton by saying she is "gone, disappeared. 'Ah perfidy, thy name is woman.' Quit me cold ... Isn't that the way of women? To make us poor men suffer for their blunders." Shakespeare would be annoyed.
Bissell and Conway go out looking for a face and find the ideal one: Conway's. Conway's face is grafted onto Conway's body and now, incredibly, he looks just like Conway. But another problem arises. Everyone in the area will recognize Conway's face (including the cast of "Burke's Law"), so Bissell comes up with an ingenious plan to get Conway out of the country. Since he put Conway together, he will simply disassemble Conway, ship the parts to England, and reassemble him there. This reminds me of the directions in my old car manuals: "Installation is the reverse of removal."
I have to give credit to Bissell for attempting to portray the romantic lead, mad scientist, and Shakespeare aficionado. It doesn't work, but he tried. Burton serves mainly as a punching bag. Coates is not too believable as the naïve fiancée, but she's fun to look at. Conway is good-looking and muscle bound, which is another way of saying he shows no acting talent. Paul Dunlap's score is irritating and loud, with someone pounding the piano keys into submission.
0 out of 1 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink