Schlock Corridor: Day Thirty

FRANKENSTEIN'S ARMY

"Russian troops pushing into Germany discover that the Nazis have created monstrous new soldiers pieced together from body parts of the dead."

 

While watching Frankenstein's Army, I kept getting this odd feeling of déjà vu. Many of the imaginative monster designs looked strangely familiar, although I had never before seen the film. The name of the director, Richard Rasphorst, even rang a bell.

After the film ended, the pieces all fell into place, and I remembered Worst Case Scenario. In 2003, Raaphorst and his friends made a promo reel for a planned feature called Worst Case Scenario, which would tell the story of a cadre of bizarre-looking Nazi zombies descending upon a world championship soccer match. Raaphorst sent me a copy of his promo reel on DVD in 2004, having a few left over after disseminating the majority of them to various outlets in an effort to secure funding for the feature film. 

I loved the promo reel, showing it to my friends multiple times and marveling at the clever zombie design work. I was very excited to see the inevitable feature film... then years passed, and I heard nothing more about Worst Case Scenario. Eventually, I forgot about the film completely, and the promotional DVD sat on a shelf, unwatched for nine years. 

I'd heard of Frankenstein's Army, the found footage horror film having made a minor splash last year, but the movie just slipped through the cracks for me, until I discovered it on Netflix earlier this month, deciding to watch it during my 31 Days Of Schlock celebration. I learned after the fact that several of the monster designs from Worst Case Scenario were recycled for Frankenstein's Army after the former project never materialized, which is what caused my Spider Sense to tingle while watching the movie. I was glad to learn that all of that creativity didn't go to waste.  

I enthusiastically settled in to watch Frankenstein's Army this afternoon, eager to see what this wacky movie had in store for me. After all, last year I was pleasantly surprised by The Frankenstein Theory, another found footage spin on the classic story, so Frankenstein's Army sounded right up my alley. 

The film details a Russian platoon's top-secret mission to track down the mad scientist Viktor Frankenstein behind enemy lines in the waning days of World War 2, in an attempt to recruit the resurrection specialist for the Soviet cause. The soldiers discover a seemingly abandoned German village populated by Frankenstein's bloodthirsty "zombots", under the direct control of Frankenstein himself. 

Decimated by the undead legion, the surviving soldiers become prisoners, and Frankenstein shoves half of a Nazi brain into one of the Soviet soldiers' skulls in an insane effort to seek mutual understanding between Communists and Fascists, everybody dies, and the movie ends. 

Frankenstein's Army is kind of a terrible movie, which is difficult for me to admit, because I was very much looking forward to watching it. The concept is goofy and exciting, and the creature designs are kitschy and clever and fun. Even the performances, for the most part, are decent enough. 

But the found footage element is what kills the movie for me. I already had a hard time suspending my disbelief regarding the impossible film camera that captures all the events of the story, but the "amateur soldier" shaky-cam cinematography coupled with the extensive post-production grading used to make the clean, digital footage look like old, grainy film just served as a barrier for me, keeping me at arms length throughout the movie. I couldn't take any interest in the story because the artistic techniques chosen to present the story became an insurmountable obstacle. 

This leads me to my other major problem with the film: the monsters. The designs, as I said previously, are fantastic, really the only reason to watch the movie. But the constantly moving camera never settles on any of the great monsters for more than a second at a time, which is just frustrating. I understand the point of the found footage conceit, providing only glimpses of the monsters to let the viewer's imagination run wild, but this kind of approach is a travesty when your film features such brilliant and eye-catching creature design work. 

I'm trying to say that Frankenstein's Army should not have been a found footage film. The story and monster effects would have been better served by a more conventional narrative approach, something designed to showcase the "zombots", which are the whole reason the movie exists in the first place. The found footage gimmick just kills the film for me. I really wanted to love Frankenstein's Army, but the movie just wouldn't let me. What a shame. 

YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT!