#100: FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD A.K.A. FRANKENSTEIN VS BARAGON

 

STARRING: Nick Adams, Kumi Mizuno and Tadao Takashima. Screenplay by Takeshi Kimura. Story by Reuben Bercovitch and Jerry Soh. Based on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Directed by Ishiro Honda. Running time 89 minutes. Originally released in 1965

As long suffering readers of this blog will know I am a committed and passionate Godzilla fan, damn I love him and the reason for that is this, Frankenstein Conquers the World, or as it's also known, Frankenstein Vs. Baragon. I first fell in love with this movie thanks to one picture featured in  Alan G. Frank's fantastic book, Horror Movies published by Octopus in 1974. I was 11 when I was given it one Christmas and this single image utterly captivated my young imagination and introduced me to the worlds of giant monsters or Kaiju as I later learned they were called and ultimately to Godzilla, who was only mentioned but not shown in the book. When back in August of this year the Barbican announced that Frankenstein Conquers the World was being screened, for the first time in the UK - EV-VER!, as part of their superb Kaiju: All Out Monster Attack season, I couldn't resist. I have been waiting 51 years to see it and my expectations could not have been higher. 

The story starts at the tail end of the war in Europe, when Nazis storm Frankenstein's castle and steal the still-beating heart of his monster and then set off, by submarine to Japan, where they hand it over a waiting Japanese submarine who then transport the chest containing the organ to a research hospital in Hiroshima, on the very day the American drops the world's first atomic bomb. Decades later, research scienitist (Nick Adams) and his attractive assistant (Kumi Mizuno) find a huge fore-headed feral 'waif' feeding off domestic pets and befriend him, alerting the media and shackling him up in a cage. He promptly grows to gigantic proportions and escapes his cage to rampage through the streets of a superb scale model Tokyo before heading off into the wilderness. BUT he's not the only huge monster on the loose, there's also a bat-eared, horn-nosed burrowing beastie by the name of Baragon wrecking havoc too, he's much more destructive and seemingly oblivious to the human lives he ends, not so old Frankie who, despite his rage and size seems to go out of his way not to injure humans, although they don't seem to see the lengths he's going to. Through an amazing series of circumstances these two behemoths finally knock heads in the forests outside Tokyo triggering a massive forest fire and so begins a fight to the death. And that's the plot to this awesome, wonderful, ridiculous and utterly silly film. 

Featuring some genuinely superb model work of Tokyo, the obligatory strange plot jumps and devices only ever seen in Japanese movies, a funky soundtrack mixed with bombastic orchestration, and wonderful 60s fashions and designs. But be warned, this was a deadly serious Toho monster movie, which thanks to its 1960s sensibilities render the film exceedingly funny to today's 'cinema savy post millennial crowd'. The cast, lead by American Nick Adams (who would go on to perfect the pulling up your trousers by the belt school of acting) spends his time in this, pouring chemicals into bottles while frowning, staring into a microscope, while frowning, dating his attractive assistant, while frowning and wearing small hats at a jaunty angle, while frowning. Mostly famous for acting along James Dean and of being Elvis Presley's 'best' friend, Adams went off to Japan to make three movies for Toho, of which Frankenstein was his first, his second and my personal favourite was the Godzilla starring Invasion of The Astro-Monster, and his third and final film Killing Bottle all for Toho and he's simply wonderful in all three, mostly because his American style of acting is in complete contrast to the pantomine of his Japanese co-stars and as such he stands out like a huge wonderful sore thumb, his own over-acting in delightful contrast to his co-stars exaggerated acting styles, imagine a Am-Dram Indiana Jones without the whip.

What made this so wonderful wasn't the American version of the film, which featured a truncated conclusion that ends with a dead Baragon being lifted up triumphantly above his head by Frankie before being thrown into a fiery pit that suddenly opens up at the base of a nearby volcano, before Franky too falls into the inferno seemingly dying in the process.

In complete contrast, the Japanese version ended so spectacularly different and wholly unexpected that I wager you'd not be able to guess what it was in a million years. You see, this time round, after Frankenstein has picked up the dead body of Baragon and hurdled him into the pit of fire that opened up at the base of the volcano a new blood-curdling shriek of rage cries out and Frankenstein turns round to watch as a gigantic octopus lumbers into view and proceeds to launch an all-out, unprovoked, attack on our Frankie. The two tussle violently, with Frank helpfully wrapping the monsters limbs around himself before he's finally pulled off the clifftop and into the sea below far below where the octopus, now in his element, finally overwhelms the giant boy and drags him below the surface to seemingly drown. 

And it's this arrival of this new monster, introduced literally in the final 5 minutes of the film which elevated this from a rather mediocre 2nd tier monster movie barely worthy of a 7/10 into something quite sublime. With no explanation, no introduction, just a shriek and a bang - a new monstrous, un-named, multi-limbed aquatic kaiju just attacks our hero and kills him. The audience who had politely clapped through the Americanized version ending just erupted in sheer delight, and the cheering, laughter and clapping and I among them, thus elevating this to be nothing short of a stone cold classic. 

8/10