He may be dead but this brother still has plenty of soul (I’m sorry that was terrible)…
…it’s Blackenstein
Dr Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone) seeks help from her old med school colleague Dr Stein (Jack Hart) to treat her wounded Vietnam vet beau Eddie (Joe De Sue) with an experimental limb regeneration formula. Stein’s incel coded assistant Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson) is pissed when Winifred rejects his advances, so messes with the formal resulting in Eddie being transformed into a hideous creature of superhuman size of strength….
The Toxic - - uhh I mean Blackenstein!
Blackenstein himself is a pretty awesome, lumbering around Karloff style taking out his beef on whitey (including busty John Waters fave Liz Renay and her white dog), the kills are mostly of the choke-out variety, with cuts to hokey blood (and in one point intestinal) splattered aftermath.
As a competent piece of filmmaking though? This is pretty awful. Why on earth did we dedicate an entire final reel chase sequence to some random woman who couldn’t start her dune buggy - instead of the more obvious choice whose story we are (somewhat) invested in - Dr Winifred?
And while obviously falling into the Blaxploitation genre, this also feels like labsploitation with endless shots of Dr Stein’s lab with bubbling beakers and buzzing electrodes. Clearly they were proud of the set design and it does have a kitsch charm for sure, but there is plenty of padded shots added to reach a barely 77 minute feature run time.
He may be dead but this brother still has plenty of soul (I’m sorry that was terrible)…
…it’s Blackenstein
Dr Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone) seeks help from her old med school colleague Dr Stein (Jack Hart) to treat her wounded Vietnam vet beau Eddie (Joe De Sue) with an experimental limb regeneration formula. Stein’s incel coded assistant Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson) is pissed when Winifred rejects his advances, so messes with the formal resulting in Eddie being transformed into a hideous creature of superhuman size of strength….
The Toxic - - uhh I mean Blackenstein!
Blackenstein himself is a pretty awesome, lumbering around Karloff style taking out his beef on whitey (including busty John Waters fave Liz Renay and her white dog), the kills are mostly of the choke-out variety, with cuts to hokey blood (and in one point intestinal) splattered aftermath.
As a competent piece of filmmaking though? This is pretty awful. Why on earth did we dedicate an entire final reel chase sequence to some random woman who couldn’t start her dune buggy - instead of the more obvious choice whose story we are (somewhat) invested in - Dr Winifred?
And while obviously falling into the Blaxploitation genre, this also feels like labsploitation with endless shots of Dr Stein’s lab with bubbling beakers and buzzing electrodes. Clearly they were proud of the set design and it does have a kitsch charm for sure, but there is plenty of padded shots added to reach a barely 77 minute feature run time.
