Read more about Blackenstein at: Wikipedia Official Site: Severin Films Blackenstein, also known as Black Frankenstein, is a 1973 American blaxploitation horror film directed by William A. Levey and starring John Hart, Ivory Stone, Andrea King, Roosevelt Jackson, Joe De Sue, Nick Bolin, and Liz Renay. It is loosely based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Released on August 3, 1973, it was made in an attempt to cash in on the success of Blacula; released the previous year by American International Pictures. However, Blackenstein fared poorly in comparison to its predecessor, with most reviews agreeing that the film was "a totally inept mixture of the worst horror and blaxploitation films". Big and burly African-American soldier Eddie Turner (Joe De Sue) stepped on a land mine while serving in Vietnam and lost both arms and both legs. His physicist fiancée Doctor Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone) thinks she has found help for him in her white former teacher and colleague Doctor Stein (John Hart) who has recently won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "solving the DNA genetic code". In a tour of Doctor Stein's castle-like Los Angeles home, Winifred is introduced to his other patients: the ninety-year-old Eleanor who looks to be only fifty (Andrea King) thanks to Stein's treatments, and the bald Bruno (Nick Bolan) whose lower legs have been successfully re-attached via "laser beam fusion" and Stein's "DNA solution". Winifred is startled when she sees one of Bruno's legs is tiger-striped, which Doctor Stein attributes to "an unknown RNA problem" which he hopes to correct during the course of treatment. His sinister black assistant Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson) seems overly interested in her reaction to this sight and in her in general. Meanwhile, the stoically suffering Eddie is being verbally abused by an obnoxious white orderly (Bob Brophy) at the local Veteran's Hospital. When Doctors Stein and Walker arrive to ask if he would be interested in submitting to experimental limb transplant surgery that could correct his condition, he consents. Doctor Stein gives Eddie new replacement arms using his DNA solution, and Eddie seems to be recovering well until Malcomb confesses his attraction to Winifred. Winifed tries to let him down gently, explaining that she intends to marry Eddie as soon as the surgeries are complete, and Malcomb seems to accept her statement, but he later vindictively sabotages the DNA solution used during Eddie's leg surgeries with the contaminated RNA, causing the former soldier to start to devolve into a primitive brutish state with hairy hands and a Neanderthal-like brow ridge. As his condition worsens and he loses the mental capacity for speech and rational thought, the stony-faced Eddie becomes a slowly shambling monster resembling an African-American version of the iconic Boris Karloff monster with a squarish Afro instead of the usual scars and neck bolts. Although he lies in a near catatonic state by day, compelled by horrible cannibalistic urges the black suit and turtleneck-clad Eddie secretly leaves the house late each night in search of victims who he dismembers, disembowels and devours zombie-style, always returning in time each morning for his ongoing schedule of DNA injections with his doctors none the wiser.
Blackenstein has not been a contender in any CBUB matches.
|