And speaking as we were yesterday of Warner Home Video's fabulous forthcoming (October 6) box set of new-to-home video Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi flicks, I feel duty bound to say a little bit more about my fave of the bunch, the fabulously ahead of its time and post-modern Frankenstein 1970 (from 1958).

The plot:

Baron Victor Von Frankenstein (Karloff) has fallen on hard times; tortured by the Nazis during World War II, he is now (now being twelve years ahead of the film's actual date) badly disfigured and broke. So broke, in fact, that in a final indignity, he's reduced to letting a camera crew, led by Western star Don "Red" Barry, shoot a movie about his monster-making ancestors at his ancestral castle. Using his new found loot, however, the Baron secretly buys an atomic reactor (apparently they're easy to get in 1970) and uses it to create a hulking monster with the brain of his butler, which he then uses to to kill off the crew for yet more spare parts. Will the filmmakers within the film figure out the Baron's fiendish plot in time to finish the movie? Seriously -- you really have to ask?

Here's the original trailer to give you a vague idea of the film's slightly disreputable charm. There's very little of the aforementioned Don "Red" Barry in it, alas; apparently director Howard Koch (who went on to do Airplane, among other interesting things) didn't feel that said hero of my youth was as much of a selling point as Boris K.

Just for the record, despite the fact that the film is set in the (then) near future, there's nothing in it, visually at least, to give you the impression you're not looking at the late 50s. Nonetheless, as gimmicks go, it's one that struck the then ten-year-old me as ineffably cool, and still does.

Oh, and did I say post-modern? Well, F1970 does have a terrific (and for a drive-in picture relatively avant-garde) opening sequence, beginning with a foot-dragging gnarly-clawed monster stalking a screaming woman through a fog-bound night. Just as the scene reaches its climax, someone out of frame yells “Cut!”, the camera pulls back, and we find ourselves watching a film crew shooting a horror flick -- which is to say NOT the actual Frankenstein creature we expected from the title. Again -- a gimmick that blew my ten year old mind.

And as you may be able to glean from that Karloff still on the right, it's got a great ending, too.

In any case, you need to pre-order it, in the aforementioned fabulous box set that also includes the great Karloff/Michael Curtiz collaboration The Walking Dead, over here immediately.