Frankenstein Island

CinemaSerf 6/7/2023 2:24:51PM 8.4

I've been struggling hard to find a film as bad as "Mesa of Lost Women" (1953) and I think I might just have found it. A bunch of hot air balloonists (says it all, already, really) land on a remote island to find it already populated by beautiful, scantily-clad Amazon women and rather clunky looking mutants. Upon closer inspection they discover that the whole island is one vast experiment being run by the grand-daughter (I was constantly distracted by her wig) of "Dr. Frankenstein" who has married the equivalent offspring of "Dr. Van Helsing" - but he is bed-ridden and her experiments are all about getting him back up on his feet. Guided by some sagely, omnipotent "appearances" by John Carradine the film ambles along with no real purpose, an amazingly well-equipped modern laboratory and a truly woeful script that appears to have forced Jerry Warren to change his name to a suitably literary "Jaques Lecouter" either to distance himself entirely from this drivel, or to faintly attempt to give the writing a certain degree gf gravitas. In any case, none of that actually matters - it's dreadful - and the ending presents us with a machine gun that we would have paid real money to possess 90 minutes earlier.