FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1958)
Label: The Film Detective
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 85 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Richard E. Cunha
Cast: John Ashley, Sandra Knight, Donald Murphy, Felix Locher, Sally Todd, John Zaremba, Wolfe Barzell, Harold Lloyd Jr., Harry Wilson
Frankenstein’s Daughter (1950) looks to have been made to cash on on the 50's youth market and the popularity of Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) which came out the year before. This has more in common with a 50's beach party movie than with either Mary Shelley's iconic creation or the Hammer derivative, but the low-budget b-movie has some mad doc charms and some gruesome imagery that should appeal to lovers of shabby vintage horror.
In it we have Dr. Oliver Frank (Donald Murphy), a descendant
of the notorious Dr. Frankenstein, who is working as an assistant to the elderly Dr. Morton (Felix Locher, Curse of the Faceless Man), who is seeking to cure all human ailment in his suburban Los Angeles basement laboratory. Unknown to the elderly doc Frank is only working with him so that he can have access to his lab in the after hours, to work on not only one, but two different 'Frankenstein' experiments of his own. Frank is following in his grandfather's mad science footsteps, with the help of a grizzled handyman Elsu (Wolfe Barzell, Bell Book and Candle). At night he drugs the doc's daughter Trudy (Sandra Knight, The Terror) and slips her some of his evil elixir which temporarily turns her into a goggle-eyed monster with gnarly buck-teeth! Simultaneously, he's stitching together a more traditional Frankenstein out of body parts, but he still needs a brain.
To that end, when a date with Trudy's sexy free-spirited friend Sally (Playboy Playmate Suzie Lawler) doesn't go all the way he runs her down with his car and transplants her brain into his freakish Frankenstein creature, which he uses to kill those who might spoil his continued experiments. Eventually he double-crosses doc Morton which takes him out of the picture, but Trudy and her boyfriend Johnny (John Ashley, The Twilight People) get wise and faceoff against the mad scientist and his monstrous creation with a fun acid-flinging finale.
At first blush Frankenstein's Daughter (1958) is a hot piece of late-50's trash, and it is, but it's pretty charming and fun taken on it's own. It's also pretty gruesome for a film of this vintage, from the bucktoothed monstrosity that Judy turns into on and off again to the hideous scarred visage of "Frankenstein's Daughter", played by a man (Harry Wilson, One Million B.C.) covered nearly head to toe and wearing a fireman's jacket (?) with it's head wrapped in bandages. It's black and white but if you look close at his scarred face you can see there's some smeared lipstick applied, you know, because it's got a woman's brain after all!
Monsters aside the best part of this flick is our mad doc Donald Murphy Dr. Oliver Frank, he looks to be having a great time playing the baddie, and he is delightfully evil. A self aggrandizing ego-maniac who is nothing but arch-eyebrowed evil from the get-go, absolutely stealing every scene he's in. Some of the sexual politics of definitely 50's cringe, like when Dr. Frank takes Sally parking, and just when it gets hot and heavy she tries to cool things down a bit, very politely I might ad, with frustrated doc retorting "hey, you agreed to park here with me!", before threatening to kill her and then doing just that!
Back to the special effects there's a pretty gruesome acid-thrown-in-face gore-gag late in the film that's pretty great and we even get a dismembered hand making an appearance. This coming pre Herschel Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast) and more gore-tastic 60's fare it must have been a but unsettling to the theater goers of the era. A totally fun bit of schlock with genuine gruesome elements that makes for a fun weekend watch' it's definitely better than it has any right to be, and it's just the right amount of cinema-fromage to please the MST3K crowd.
Audio/Video: Frankenstein's Daughter arrives on region-free Blu-ray from The Film Detective in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. The source elements are in great shape, the only blemishes of note were some white speckling, otherwise a fine looking scan with organic looking grain levels and pleasing contrast throughout, a solid presentation.
Audio comes by way of uncompressed English DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles. Dialogue is never hard to decipher and the score from Nicholas Carras (Missile to the Moon) sounds great, as do the tunes from the band Page Cavanaugh and His Trio seen in the film.
Extras kick-off with an audio commentaries with author and historian Tom Weaver, whose commentary includes interviews snippets with filmmaker Larry Blamire and writer Steven Cronenberg, plus other delightful audio snippets from Monstrous Movie Music's David Schecter n the score, Henry Thomas who did make-up on the film talking about the monster make-up controversy, plus horror host Robert Kokai, of Drac and Countess Carita, reading from the film's press book. This is a great track with lots of laughs, production stories and interesting takes on the flick.
We also get the 36-minute Richard E. Cunha: Filmmaker of the Unknown, which is a new retrospective from Ballyhoo Motion Pictures, featuring an archival interview with the famed director who was sent a series of interview questions by fan Tom Weaver in 1983. The director surprised Weaver by sending him a VHS taped video replying to his interview questions from the mall video store he operated, called Video Depot, which is so cool. This featurette is that interview edited with stills and images and it's my favorite extras on the disc. It covers his early life, the making of Missile to the Moon, Giant from the Unknown, She Demons, and Frankenstein's Daughter.
We also get the 10-minute John Ashley: Man from the B’s, a new career retrospective featuring film historian C. Courtney Joyner, who charts Ashley's arc from teen movie star in Beach movies to famed TV producer (The A-Team), with a bunch of Filipino exploitation films with Eddie Romero (Mad Doctor of Blood Island) and producing Apocalypse Now somewhere in the middle. .
The single-disc release arrives in a black keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original illustrated movie poster, which does good work showcasing the 50's cheese your about to ingest with your eyeballs. Inside there's a 10-page illustrated booklet with writing on the film from film scholar Tom Weaver
Special Features:
- Audio commentary with author and historian Tom Weaver
- Audio commentary with author and historian Tom Weaver
- 10-Page Collector's Booklet with original essay by Weaver
- Richard E. Cunha: Filmmaker of the Unknown, a new retrospective from Ballyhoo Motion Pictures, featuring an archival interview with the famed director (36 min)
- John Ashley: Man from the B’s, a new career retrospective featuring film historian C. Courtney Joyner (10 min)
Good to see another terrific bad flick gets the deluxe treatment from The Film Detective with a superior A/V presentation, attractive packaging and some truly excellent extras - it's pretty much everything a lover of shabby vintage horror cinema could ask for, and then some.
Extras: 
- Richard E. Cunha: Filmmaker of the Unknown, a new retrospective from Ballyhoo Motion Pictures, featuring an archival interview with the famed director (36 min)
- John Ashley: Man from the B’s, a new career retrospective featuring film historian C. Courtney Joyner (10 min)
Good to see another terrific bad flick gets the deluxe treatment from The Film Detective with a superior A/V presentation, attractive packaging and some truly excellent extras - it's pretty much everything a lover of shabby vintage horror cinema could ask for, and then some.
Screenshots from The Film Detective Blu-ray:
