I, Frankenstein (2014)
You know, I don't really know if I, Frankenstein can technically be classified as a horror movie, but it's got gargoyles, demons and Frankensteins, so I'm going to give it a pass. I love this movie, because it's terribad, and I was glad to see it pop up on Netflix in the past week or two. It's a spiritual successor of sorts to the Underworld movies. Actually, the title was probably originally Underworld with Demons and Gargoyles Instead of Werewolves and Vampires, but they changed it when they realized it was too long. The plot is pretty simple, but it still doesn't make any sense, because it's stupid. So at the end of "Frankenstein" -- the fact that this movie sets itself up as a sequel to the novel, much as the Castlevania games are supposed to be a sequel to "Dracula," is just one of the many things about it that amuses me -- the monster kills Victor's wife and runs off to the Antarctic wastes, where his creator pursues him in search of vengeance.
It turns out Victor freezes to death in Antarctica, and I have to admit that was kind of a poorly thought out plan on his part. The monster brings back Victor's body and buries it in the cemetery outside their mansion, but then he's immediately attacked by demons and has to defend himself. Two gargoyles show up out of nowhere and, after the demons have been taken care of, decide they should take the creature back to the big church where all the gargoyles live. Leonora, queen of the Gargoyle Order, tells the creature, "My name is Leonora, queen of the Gargoyle Order," and decides to let him live for now, because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie. They also give him some weapons, and he picks a couple of beating sticks which one of the gargoyles tells him are too blunt and cumbersome to use -- which makes me wonder why they had them there in the first place. The gargoyles want the monster to help them fight demons, since there's apparently been a war going on between gargoyles and demons for a while now.
He doesn't anything to do with it, so he tells them off and then strikes out on his own for a couple hundred years, only taking out demons who come after him in the wilderness. When he comes back to civilization, he winds up in what I'm fairly sure is the city from the first Underworld movie, since it's vaguely gothic, dimly lit and nobody seems to live there. The demons, led by Demon Prince Naberius (Bill Nighy), want Frankenstein -- because it's a lot funnier when someone shows up and yells "Frankenstein!" than when the gargoyles call him "Adam" -- for totally stupid reasons. It has to be said that the demons and gargoyles have the dumbest weaknesses ever. The gargoyles can only be killed by something without a soul, which if you're going by Biblical terms, means basically anything but a human. Including demons, so they're pretty much tailor-made to be killed off by the people they're specifically fighting. The demons are even worse, as they can only be killed off by something engraved with the symbol of the Gargoyle Order. Frankenstein's metal sticks have the symbol carved on them. I assume you could carve the symbol into a ham sandwich, slap a demon in the face with it and send him back down to hell, I don't know.
Anyway, the demons want Frankenstein because they want to basically reverse-engineer the process used to create him so they can resurrect a big army of knockoff Frankensteins which can then be occupied by the demons who have already been sent back to hell during the war. I don't know why the demons in hell can't just come back without the benefit of a Frankenstein body, but I guess that's the rules or something. To that end, Bill Nighy has enlisted the aid of a couple of scientists, apparently the only two humans living in the entire city, to resurrect his army, but he needs Frankenstein to do it, since he's the only one the process has ever worked on, apparently. Naturally, Frankenstein ends up going on the run with the hot lady scientist (played by Yvonne Strahovski -- no stranger to being in charge of a shady, well-funded corporate project with the intent to bring the dead back to life).
All this sets up Frankenstein for a big fight with Naberius at the end. He picks up some even more ridiculous weapons along the way. The first Underworld movie had some of the goofiest weapons around. Some friends and I actually designed a bare-bones Underworld tabletop pen-and-paper RPG with skills based on the movie, like "Remove Trenchcoat," "Improbable Weapon Use" and "Push Civilian." I, Frankenstein doesn't ever get quite as silly on the weapons front as dual whip-swords and sunlight bullets, but it's still pretty funny.
This movie is dumb in basically every way it's possible to be dumb. That's why I like it. It's one of those movies where, if you watch the trailer and have no desire whatsoever to see it "because it looks stupid," I can't help you understand. I'm kind of tired of trying to explain the whole concept of "so bad it's good" to people, because I get the feeling it's one of those things that you either "get" or you don't, ever.
I, Frankenstein has all kinds of stuff that tickles my funny bone. Slow-motion walking with hard rock music in the background, really clumsy expository dialogue, demons who look like businessmen wearing rubber masks from Halloween Adventure, and most of all, Bill Nighy, the man, the myth, the legend. I love basically any movie with Bill in it, and I have to wonder, given his acting chops, if he sometimes does this kind of movie for laughs; so he can just cut loose and chew the scenery without worrying about it. (Actually, the first movie I ever saw him in was Underworld.) Among the funnier things, to me, is the fact that Frankenstein is still "made of twelve different pieces of eight different corpses," but he just sort of looks like Aaron Eckhart after a bar fight.
I can't explain why this movie is worth watching. If you're like me, and you enjoy a bad movie as much as a good one sometimes, this is one of the best-worst around. Just check out this trailer. (I'm also including the Spanish-language poster for it, because the title is so much better.)
Trivia: The creator of Yo, Frankenstein and co-creator of Underworld, the comically deep-voiced (and awesomely named, it must be said) Kevin Grevioux, can be seen here as Naberius' henchman Dekar, and in the Underworld movies as Raze. He apparently also based this movie on a graphic novel he wrote. Must be small-press, because I've never seen it anywhere, but still, something to watch out for.
Another bit of trivia: The people who made this movie weren't all stupid. Naberius is actually the name of a demon marquis named by Dutch demonologist Johann Weyer in the late 1500s, who may or may not be a personification of Cerberus. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Available On: Netflix.
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