I've another dose of indie film here, but one that again shows you just what a subjective pastiche the horror genre can be. I've no doubt there will be crowd that will totally get off on Frankenstein's Army. I'm just not in that crowd. Let me explain...
Done in the "found footage" style, though as my good friend Mike Watt of Happy Cloud Pictures (check out his stuff, such as Resurrection Game and Feast of Flesh), the film stock is NOT anything like what you saw out of the era, such as color and level of resolution and how the lights look (but hey, if it was in black and white, you wouldn't have all the GOREGOREGORE!!)...anyway...
It is World War 2, the Eastern Front. A squad of Soviet infantry operating behind the lines stumbles across what looks like some kind of lab. After finding disturbing clues that the Germans shelled their own real estate, they turn the power on and find the damn place crawling with clockwork creatures that are a combo of madcap mechanics and corpsely flesh. Slowly, they begin to lose numbers to these things, as they get closer to the source of the mystery...Dr. Frankenstein, the one who made the monster, had a grandson. And the kid is bugfrick nuts.
And that is what it comes down to. The Soviet soldiers reveal great inhumanity all along the campaign trail and you really didn't feel that much for the bastards, considering their callousness as in no real way balanced out. Frankenstein is WAY crazier than his grandfather, who really was just too ambitious for his own good. However, it really doesn't lend well to the movie plots. Sure, he's throwing these monsters together but it is not clear what his goal is. As Mr. Spock once said, "Madness has no motive, or reason. But it may have a goal." But this guy, he mumbles some stuff, but it frankly makes no sense, not even in an insane kind of way. Finally, sure, the critters were the work of "genius" in the way they operated at all, but they made no sense. Just crazy patchworks, not really effective at combat. The Russians lost their lives not due to the lethal effectiveness of the monsters, just these "hardened soldiers" played horror movie stupid to the hilt.
The movie was really just an exercise in gore and mayhem. If that is the way you like your horror, this might do you. But, if you like a point, interesting characters, a reason for being re. the villainy and if you are going to go "found footage", authenticity, you will be out on all counts.
Pass.
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