Released: August 8, 1965

Rated: not rated

Length:  90 minutes approx.

Cast: Tadao Takashima (as Dr. Yuzo Kawaji), Nick Adams (as Dr. James Bowen), Koji Furuhata (as Furankenshutain), Yoshio Tsuchiya (as Mr. Kawai)

Wow! A movie from Toho that doesn’t look anything like a Toho film. At least, not if you judge it only from the opening couple of scenes. If you’re used to Godzilla and any of his "friends" movies, then you’ll probably find this one odd.

We open with a graveyard and a storm. Then we have a transition to a snowy "castle" type place. We enter some kind of lab with one whacked scientist. He seems to be listening to an opaque plastic chest and I thought I heard something knocking from the inside. (I was wrong, but I’ll tell you about it later.) Some soldiers bust into the place and take the chest while the scientist acts strange.

Now we switch to a scene of submarines being bombed. What is going on?! Finally we get to a Japanese scientist (who I think appeared as a doctor in Ghidrah) who opens the box and we find a "heart" beating in some red liquid. The heart bobs instead of beats and it looks like more like a dried up "Killer Tomato" then a heart. Can you say stupid rubber chew toy? I knew you could! (Oh yeah. It’s the "immortal" heart of Frankenstein.)

Next we find ourselves with a doctor (Nick Adams!) and a nurse. They seem to be researching something. The nurse leaves for the night and sees an odd boy run into the woods. The boy took a dog and supposedly ate it. Then we go to a school the next morning and watch a class discover a chopped up rabbit. That was disgusting and would probably not be a good thing for little kids to see.

After more animals disappear, the people decide to capture the boy. The nurse ends up being the only one that he’ll listen to. (Her name is something like Suiko: Su-ee-ko) Anyway, the kid is really ugly. If you’ve seen Frankenstein, then that wasn’t enough. He’s a lot uglier than the original!!!

Well, now we have to find an antagonist. Thus we switch to some other place and watch an earthquake occur. After it’s over, we glimpse a monster in a large crevice in the earth. The monster is never named, but in a Godzilla film, it is called Baragon, so that’s what I’m calling it here, too. (Especially as Frankenstein really should be the one called "monster".)

One of the two doctors goes back to Germany (where the heart was discovered) and chats with another nutty looking scientist to find out more about Frankenstein. He finds that Franky can have his limbs lobbed off and they’ll grow back.

The boy has grown quite a bit in this little bit of time. The doctor that went to the scientist comes back and says they should hack off an arm or something to see if the boy is Frankenstein. Suiko doesn’t like that idea, so they sleep on it. Later on, it looks like the doctor is going to do it in secret, but he gets interrupted by some reporters who want to take some picture of Franky. Unfortunately, without Suiko there, Franky gets agitated and breaks out of the cage/cell.

Now we have a two story tall ugly wandering the streets! The police and army try shooting the boy, but we all know that once a creature gets a couple of stories tall, nothing any human can do will harm it. They are just an annoyance. This is probably some of the best footage in the film. Why? Because the props look good. They’re at the right scale and they look pretty realistic. I don’t know why some of the Godzilla films didn’t get this treatment!

Anyway, Franky runs off to the hills and we’re left watching the police and the scientists play with a moving hand. It’s weird! And it’s unoriginal!!! "The Addam’s Family" did a better job with their hand then this one, but it’s still kind of creepy.

We watch as Franky finds one of the most fake looking wild boars I’ve ever seen. "Mmmm, yummy…I dig hole, it fall in," thinks Franky (that’s a translation from the look on his face). Unfortunately, that’s not the last of the awful looking animals. We get to watch Baragon break up a dance party. Now there weren’t any fake animals there, unless you count the "party animals." But he does find a really DUMB looking horse. Tsuburaya, what were you thinking?!?!?!

Franky’s clothing seemed to almost grow with him for a while. I don’t know how they got clothes for a two-story kid, so they must have grown! Anyway, the original clothes disappear and we find him wearing a caveman get-up. And he actually looks better that way!

Everyone wants to kill poor Franky though. So the scientists go looking for him in the forest. Soon they get lost and when they find that their compass no longer works we hear the intrepid leader say "We’d better go that way!" Why? Because he’s the leader!!!

Anyway, they manage to wake up Baragon with an explosive acid bomb that they had wanted to use on Franky. When they try to escape, Suiko promptly falls down like all helpless Japanese women everywhere. Nick Adams tries to save her by leaning over her and gently slapping her face. Baragon tries to step on them. Somehow Franky appears out of nowhere and starts battling Baragon.

If you like WWF, then the ensuing battle will be sure to please. Baragon gets fed a rock and he gets pummeled with all sorts of handy objects, such as trees and boulders. He gets the seismic toss. He’s swung over Franky’s shoulder multiple times. Wow! That Franky is quick! When you’re not wearing a 40 pound suit you can move pretty fast!

Well, somehow, Franky manages to kill Baragon. I’m still not sure how. It could have been a chokehold or a twisting of the neck. It’s up to interpretation. Anyway, there’s this big fire going on in the background and it makes the ending scene kind of dramatic. However, the instant Baragon is dead, he and Franky start sinking into the earth. Franky is joyous and sinks in with his hands above his head. He perishes, but who knows why!? He was smarter than most of the humans in the show!

This movie stinks! There is a story and it could be said to be better than most of Toho’s other fair, but that isn’t saying much. I did enjoy looking at the stupid animals and the cool models. But that’s hardly enough to make a movie good.

I give it: