FRANKENSTEIN'S GREAT AUNT TILLIE (1984) Movie Review

Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie (1984) d. Myron J. Gold (UK/Mexico) (100 min)

Six days before the loan defaults on the Frankenstein estate (with proceeds reverting back to the greedy town elders, led by Aldo Ray), a long-lost relative of the Baron (Donald Pleasence) shows up in Mucklefugger along with his sister Matilda (Yvonne Furneaux) and his sexy and busty consort Randy (June Wilkinson). Matilda wants to win the town’s car race, the Baron wants to find the mythical buried treasure in the castle, and Randy wants to lie down and rest her aching back. Naturally, they uncover the blue-skinned remains of the original creature (Miguel Angel Fuentes) and set about resurrecting him because, well, because it’s a Frankenstein movie.

Wow. A full decade after Mel Brooks knocked it out of the park with Young Frankenstein, good old writer/director Myron J. Gold comes along to show us how devastatingly unfunny a classic horror/comedy can be. Pleasence rambles and gambols his way through the flick, playing fast and loose with diction and motivation, and Furneaux is a long, long way from her heyday working for Terence Fisher (The Mummy), Roman Polanski (Repulsion), and Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita).

With her 43-22-37 measurements, Wilkinson was a blonde bombshell in the vein of Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren during the early 1960s. 20 years on from her Playboy model heyday, she still, ahem, fills out the requisite eye candy role and proves a capable enough comedienne, but Gold’s feeble script does not give her enough to do to save the day.

The enormous Fuentes, whose massive frame inhabited such superior efforts as Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, Firewalker with Chuck Norris, and sporting a woolly loincloth opposite Ringo Starr in Caveman, is game enough but won't be eclipsing Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, or Peter Boyle anytime soon in the Frankenstein's Monster sweepstakes.

Everyone else, including Zsa Zsa Gabor in a brief cameo, seems to be trying as hard as they can to pump some energy into this rotting corpse of celluloid with the effort felt and no pulse to be found.

What a mess.


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