Drafted into Frankenstein's Army

It's hard to believe the Frankenstein story is nearly 200 years old. Mary Shelley's novel was first published in 1818, when she was just 21. How someone so young dreamed up the idea of a mad doctor playing God by trying to reanimate the bodies of the dead is a question even the author herself ruminated on later in life. But she couldn't possibly have conceived of where her idea would be taken 195 years later in Frankenstein's Army.

This twist on the tale follows a Russian army unit in the last days of World War II that stumbles onto a secret Nazi laboratory run by a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein. And that's all you really need to know about the plot.

Frankenstein's Army starts slow, which is usually not a good thing, especially in a film that's less than an hour and a half long. But once things start happening we step right off into the deep end of a ghoulish assault by creatures straight out of Josef Mengele's nightmares. And it's those monsters that make this movie.

They're original and genuinely horrifying, part dead Nazis and part steam-punk machines from Hell. There's a monster named Razor Teeth, one that's half-Nazi, half giant mosquito, a guy with huge pincers for hands, and the rest you'll just have to see for yourself. Multiple times in the hour and 24 minutes I found myself asking, "Oh, what the hell is that?!" 

This is also not for the squeamish. It's a gore-fest. We're talking a pile of burned up nuns. Bins full of body parts, helmets crushed onto heads, sawed-off skull tops, eviscerations, decapitations, and a scene with a kid in the Hitler Youth that's certain to make even hardened horror veterans say, "Wow. I can't believe they did that." 

Don't look for great performances or a lot of plot because this is more of a showcase for Frankenstein's experiments than it is a well-crafted tale. It's like spending an hour and a half in the most demented, twisted haunted house attraction imaginable, run by a seriously depraved mad scientist. It is great horror fun.

For all its greatness, though, Frankenstein's Army has one incredible snag: It's a found-footage film.

Let me take this moment to tell the entire movie-making world something that fans are in universal agreement on: We hate the found-footage technique. It's a shaky, dizzy annoyance. And sooner or later the film makers always have to come up with some contrived situation to keep the camera going and filming the action. Someone has to set a camera on a shelf or hand it to a friend, and of course, they film everything, because who doesn't film trips to the bathroom or while they're lumbering around in a mostly dark room? Who wouldn't keep the camera on the monster while it chases them? 

The makers of this movie admit in the making-of documentary that doing single-camera presented a seriously complicated challenge. Well, no kidding. When you can't use multiple angles, have to go from zooms to wide angle by having the character carrying the camera change lenses, etc. it makes it hard to tell your story sometimes.

There are a couple of moments when it worked: When the soldiers are confronted in the tunnels by the Zombots (the name in the credits for Frankenstein's creations.) During those scenes I was reminded of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Resident Evil or some other horror video game. You are totally immersed.

But other times I begged for traditional camera shots. Several scenes would've been so much better had the film makers not hamstrung our point of view.

The bottom line is this: You will either become so fascinated with the monsters and action that you will ignore the shaky, single-camera crap - like I did - or you won't be able to get over it and it will ruin an otherwise fine horror movie for you. But you should at least try to ignore it and give the movie a chance.

I give it four stars, and it would've been higher if not for the found-footage aspect. It's available on DVD (with extras) from Netflix and for sale online and in retail stores.