Frankenstein 2000 (1992) User Reviews (10)

Not One Of D'Amato's Highlights!

[Witchfinder-General-666 · 3/10 · 6 February 2008]

Generally speaking, I am a huge admirer of the late Joe D'Amato. His greatest films, "Buio Omega" (1979) and "Antropophagus" (1980) are absolute highlights of disturbing Italian Horror exploitation, and many of the other films that earned this highly prolific filmmaker his reputation as the King of Sleaze, are also essential for any fan of Italian Exploitation cinema. That being said, he is also responsible for a number of stinkers, and his latter day Horror film "Ritorno Dalla Morte" aka. "Frankenstein 2000" of 1991 is definitely one of the very crappy films in D'Amato's impressive repertoire of almost 200 films. D'Amato had his heyday in the 70s and early 80s, when the Exploitation cinema was booming. In the early 90s, when the great days of Horror and Exploitation were generally over, D'Amato's work had also become less valuable, and by the mid 90s he switched to directing porn only.

"Ritorno Dalla Morte" obviously had an extremely low budget, even for the standards of D'Amato, who usually knew how to make the best out of a low budget. Even so, D'Amato, a true master of exploitation, still manages to put in some gore (although it's very tame for his standards). The movie was probably shot within a few days and doesn't even bother to come up with logic in its plot. Nevertheless, the film is quite entertaining. It was a great treat to see Donald O'Brien, the great star of many Italian Westerns, Horror films and Exploitation flicks star in one of his last roles here. The cast furthermore includes another regular of Italian cult cinema, Maurice Poli, who is probably best known for his role in Mario Bava's "Cani Arrabiati".

Another funny point for me was that the movie is set in my home country, Austria, somewhere in the countryside. The many absolutely ridiculous aspects of this film make it therefore especially funny for an Austrian. An entire little town is run by a rich guy and his private security firm, for example, and there is a bizarre disco named 'Heil', decorated with swastikas, in the middle of town (the display of Nazi-symbols has been banned in Austria since 1945). Horror fans will also recognize some plot similarities to a true Gothic Horror great, the Hammer Studios' "Frankenstein Created Woman" of 1967.

D'Amato has directed masterpieces like "Buio Omega", but also many stinkers, and "Frankenstein 2000" definitely belongs to the latter category. Nevertheless, it is fun to watch for Italian Horror buffs even if only for its fun value and for its star, the great Donal O'Brien in the lead. 3/10

Frankenschlock.

[BA_Harrison · 5/10 · 4 April 2012]

Until I checked here, I had no idea that Frankenstein 2000 was the work of Joe D'amato, the prolific director once again hiding behind one of his many pseudonyms; it all makes sense now, the inane script, the poor direction, the lousy acting, Laura Gemser as costume designer—all the evidence points to the King of Italian sleaze.

Sadly, this is far from prime D'amato, lacking the outrageous sex and gore that typifies his most popular flicks. The plot is both derivative and preposterous, a desperate mix of psychic and physical horror that rips off several other movies, most notably Aussie horror Patrick. D'amato's direction is at the lower end of his ability, years of working on hardcore porn having clearly dulled his artistic acuity. The film is also severely hampered by the foreign actors in his cast who fail to display any emotion in their lines and repeatedly stall while delivering them, sounding like Speak and Spell machines as a result.

Those who enjoy really crap Italian horror will undoubtedly glean some enjoyment from the sheer ineptitude of the whole thing and there is some fun to be had with the laughable gore—a few brief decapitations and a hilarious scene in which a guy has his head crushed, the eyes popping from the sockets—but hardcore D'amato fans will be severely disappointed.

Frankenstein 2000 gets a 4.5/10 from me, generously rounded up to 5 for several really dumb moments that beggar belief: a Mick Fleetwood lookalike chasing an irritating blond moppet with an axe; a fancy dress party at an Austrian nightclub adorned with swastikas; and a terrified woman, menaced by the 'monster', climbing onto a sofa for safety rather than legging it.

D'Amato's swan song to the horror genre

[udar55 · 5/10 · 22 November 2013]

Georgia (Cinzia Monreale) is a woman with psychic abilities who is always having premonitions of her son being beheaded. One day she is attacked at home by some kids who belong to a local biker gang and is saved by Ric (Donald O'Brien), a former boxer turned handyman. When the corrupt local authorities place the crime on Ric, he hangs himself in his cell. That is okay because Georgia, who is now in a coma, somehow reanimates his dead body and uses him as an instrument for revenge.

By the time the '90s had rolled around, the Italian exploitation industry was petering out. Nowhere was this more apparent than in this Joe D'Amato horror effort that is better suited by its original, more literal title (RITORNO DALLA MORTE meaning RETURN FROM DEATH). Folks hoping for an exciting variation on the Mary Shelley legend will be sadly disappointed in this one as the "monster" doesn't appear until an hour in and this is more of a variation of PATRICK (1978) than a mad scientist. This is strictly by the numbers for D'Amato, who already seemed to have his foot out the door to return to the much more lucrative porn business (he would release one more horror film, THE CRAWLERS (1993), but that was shot before this). I will say the look of O'Brien, who apparently had a stroke before filming this, is pretty good with his skull held on by big clamps and there are some goofy gore effects in the last half hour. The biggest kick I got from it was D'Amato - who famously had Americans watching the Super Bowl in tuxedos in MONSTER HUNTER (1981) - showing he still has no clue about other cultures by having a group of neo-Nazi bad guys having a costume party.

Jaw-dropping in its ineptitude.

[Moshing Hoods · 14 December 2001]

You'd think that after directing so many movies, Massacessi would have managed to learn SOMETHING about the art of film-making. However, this is clearly not the case. FRANKENSTEIN 2000 really stands out as being a spectacularly terrible effort from a film-maker whose career has plumbed the depths of ineptitude on more than one occasion. The acting is possibly the worst I've ever seen, as unlike most of the old Euro-horrors, the dialogue seems to have been recorded real-time rather than dubbed afterwards. I can only assume that many of the actors couldn't actually speak English, as their delivery of some of the lines is absolutely HILARIOUS. The special effects are utterly abysmal. During an autopsy scene, you can clearly see a "corpse" breathing; the animal offal draped over its abdomen undulating suspiciously.

Hilarious, and probably worth a look to see just how bad a rushed film can turn out.

Extremely boring, avoid!

[Kungfuzombie · 2/10 · 1 February 2000]

This movie is really boring, the most low budget B-horrormovies are pretty ok because there is something to laugh about, but in this movie nothing happens until after one hour or so!!

And just when you think the gore starts another disappointment kicks in, almost no gore! So why bother to watch? Only for hardcore collectors i think!

Joe's last try at horror...

[sabata · 5/10 · 29 August 1999]

This was Joe's last try at a horror movie and it's an average one. The film starts out very, very slow and then after the halfway point, it gets a little more exciting when the actual horror plot kicks in. At that point it got a little nostalgic, I felt like I was watching the Euro-trash that came out in the early 80's. That was a nice feeling.

Sad

[BandSAboutMovies · 2/10 · 15 December 2021]

This would be the last non-adult film that Joe D'Amato would direct. But if he's going out, he's bringing along some old friends like Cinzia Monreale (who was in his Buio Omega), Maurice Poli (Papaya dei Cairibi) and Donald O'Brien (Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Immagini di un convento).

It's shot in Austria, which may explain the Teutonic decorated dorm room. I don't know. I do know that O'Brien is a handyman accused of putting Monreale (who many will recognize as the blind Emily from The Beyond) into a coma and the rich kids that get away with it while also making his death look like a suicide. So she brings him back from the dead an hour in and everyone dies.

It's sad to be honest. It feels like Patrick more than Frankenstein and maybe it's for the best that D'Amato went off into the world of adult. But he also made The Crawlers on the way out and I'd rather think of that as his last movie.

Not the way it is but the way you imagine it could be

[joedamato-1 · 7/10 · 24 August 2006]

This is an inordinate special movie, so will be my review. Neither in a way it's terrific but nor it's awful. Same time can't say it's average. The grade is for this movie is hard to figure out. I can only say I loved it. To be quite sincere I'll encounter all the ingredients. It starts out very realistic, preparing more to a drama than horror (in a good way) First 30 minutes we get to known to the following three things: the city is under the power of governor Hoffner, Georgia (Monreale) is telepathic, Rick is a former boxer a bit sick in head but fairly a nice man and in love in Georgia (the most tragic circumstance of the movie), Georgia's gift gives her nightmares seeing a maniac after her little boy Stephen some time. Hoffner's son and his two friends make an attempt to rape Georgia. First one misses, the second time they manage. But first they knock off Rick that comes to Georgia's house with flowers. After they beat Georgia to coma, rape her and leave, police arrests Rick. Rick knows his sickness and even thinks he could do it. He doesn't talk, so nobody doubts it's his work. Then governor orders two guys from his security and the autopsy doctor to murder Rick in the cell make it like a suicide so that he never talks again… Then the atmosphere kicks in – Georgia brings Rick back to life. Rick is out to punish everybody involved in this case – three bustards, two cops and even the governor. Frankly I wasn't sure how I felt about this movie watching for the first time until I watch the second time and realized I'd love to watch it again. It seems a lot longer though it's only 93 minutes all because the script is rich and deep. Some moments are just great but there are some serious goofs unfortunately – straight after an excellent scene of resurrection follows the autopsy scene when you clearly see the corpse breathing and even winking (so does Monreale in the very end however the goof is saved by the unexpected final shot that will keep you thinking or at least watch the movie again). The Frankenstein make-up is very good but the others are not that compelling. The killing scenes start well, and even with very little gore they are nice because of the good acting. Especially I enjoyed the two security guys' murder scene. Acting provides a lot of great little moments that keep you inside it. The script is very good. Richly colourful, atmospheric, suspenseful, dramatic, dynamic, excellent score. Yes, the pleasure of this movie is the atmosphere. D'Amato is genius to shot that kind of masterpiece with such a low budget. The thing is you don't that see it the way the make-up is but the way it could be with a little more money. Really, I can assure you despite of "considered" one of D'Amato's wicker horror efforts, it surely involves Joe's talent the most (just like "Endgame" and "Absurd" – other two hard to get flicks, Joe's best, for me this is the third one) Decent movie, it's good as thriller and as drama and a little horror. It's scary not that scary as traditional but as dramatic horror, I mean it's more "Dead man's shoes" that other Frankenstein movies. 7 out of 10! Don't believe all the reviews making you believe it's crap. Genius. One word. Don't miss it. If you like being entertained be sure it's highly entertaining. I'd rather by the soundtrack. Love you Joe D'Amato. You were so good. R.I.P.

D'Amato returns, briefly and horrifically, from his erotic living death

[jaibo · 6/10 · 7 March 2010]

After spending the second half of the 1980s making soft and hardcore erotic films, Joe D'Amato made a return to his favourite genre – the horror film, a genre in which he'd scored some of his most extraordinary and crazed triumphs (Beyond the Darkness, Anthropophagus, Horrible). The film he made – Ritorno dalla morte (Return from Death) shares with its predecessors some of D'Amato's favoured techniques – depthless characterisation, scabrous political satire, a magpie-like approach to content, the last in this case involving stealing elements from not only classic Universal and more recent (Corman, Branagh) Frankenstein movies but also from Fulci's Aenigma and perhaps the 1977 Richard Burton film The Medusa Touch.

An early sequence in the film tells us that D'Amato is in reflexive mood, showing his own technique of theft in action: the protagonist Georgia, a lonely young widow and mother with nascent telekinetic powers living in a German tourist trap town and working in a video shop, is sitting in the backroom at work surrounded by posters from various horror films (A Clockwork Orange, Friday the 13th The Final Chapter, Herzog's Nosferatu, Dracula, Nightmare on Elm Street) rediscovering her telekinetic prowess when three goons – droogs in cheap rubber horror film Halloween masks – burst in and rough her up. Georgia is blonde, and one of the other posters on the wall is of Marilyn Monroe. D'Amato self-consciously draws attention to his own position as thief, compiler, exploiter and referential homage-player to the cinema of others, a postmodern confession that this is a just another unoriginal cheap rip-off horror movie.

The tourist town in which Georgia lives and suffers deserves some comment. Its buildings and streets perfectly preserve a Baroque 18th century Bavaria which is self-consciously exploited by a local millionaire businessman who polices the town with his own private security force, and who exploits the past for his own profit. It is his own son who leads the gang of droogs that molest Georgia. Later we see him sleazing a young lady, having bought her body and soul after forcing her mother into debt. Not only is this a savage satire on the way Europe is structured today, there is also a kind of mordant self-criticism on D'Amato's part here, as his position as a sleazy auteur exploiting the cinema of the past and young actresses of the present makes the millionaire a similar kind of stand-in for himself as the faded aristocrat turned pornographer who plays the pivotal role in D'Amato's 1984 film The Alcove.

The central idea of the film is that Georgia, after being tortured by visions of her son being brutally decapitated, is bashed into a coma by the ruffians. Her friend, a retired, punch-drunk and disabled boxer named Ric, is blamed for the killing and his suicide is faked in his cell. Georgia uses her telekinetic powers to reanimate Ric (Stuart Gordon's 1985 Lovecraft adaptation Re-Animator is name-checked on the glass panel of the medical centre Georgia is kept in) and wreaks revenge on those who have wronged her. This entire situation – ripped off though it clearly is from Fulci's Aenigma – is another reflection on the director's own role. He is sharing his horrific visions with us, and then uses actors as puppets to enact his revenge on those he thinks ought to die – the hypocrites, thugs and corrupt in our society – but also himself as a part of that corrupt world. The film is a kind of arrangement of D'Amato's own public ritual suicide. After it he never made a mainstream horror film again, disappearing forever into the shady corporate world of hardcore video releases, defacing the classics of European history and culture (Carmen, Hamlet, Marc Antony, Othello, Goya et al) into obscene pornographic entertainments.

Ritorno dalla morte is not by any stretch of the imagination a decent film: it is as slow, lumbering, deadly and barely alive as one would expect a reanimated corpse to be. It is almost deliberately refuses the thrills of the genre, yet this is a man who proved in the past perfectly capable of providing them. It is perhaps better seen as the final confession of a man about what he has done with his life, offering a self-lacerating insight into the world of an exploitation filmmaker who was always hideously aware of the horror he was perpetrating. In this sense, the film is the perfect coda to an exemplary postmodern film-making career.

Frankenstein 2000

[Michael_Elliott · 26 February 2008]

Frankenstein 2000 (1991)

BOMB (out of 4)

Joe D'Amato's last horror film is among the worst films I've seen from him. A woman is raped by two thugs but the police put the blame on her homeless friend. The friend is eventually murdered in jail but the woman, while in a coma, uses her brain power to bring him back to life so he can seek vengeance. This film runs 93-minutes but I could have sworn it went on for nearly four or five hours. Every second of the film is a complete bore with horrible performances, bad dialogue and incredibly bad special effects. For some reason the woman keeps seeing her son get his head chopped off, which leads to countless scenes of his incredibly fake looking head rolling on the ground. There are a few gory scenes but all of them are poorly done. Most Euro films like this are dubbed but this one here features the German actors doing their own English, which leads to a large amount of flubbed lines. Original title: Return From Death: Frankenstein 2000.