The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (77 page)

The
Ilsa
movies are in colour, so I fine-fiddle the knobs. Snow crackles across the image as the victim screams. No colour appears. Ilsa gets out her nipple clamps, sneering in a bad accent, “vellcome to SS Experiment Kemp Sex!” The camera pulls back, and on the next slab over from the abused girl lies the unmistakable bulk of a flat-headed, clumpy-booted, electrodes-on-the-neck, Universal-copyright Pierce-Karloff-Strange Frankenstein Monster.

Puzzled and intrigued, I gnaw on a chocolate-coated ginger snap.

An ident crawl along the bottom of the picture identifies the film: Channel 1818 Feature Presentation
Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS
.

Obviously, this must be some new retitling of a familiar movie. If the colour came on, I could identify it. More twiddling is to no avail.

I dig out Weldon’s
Psychotronic Enclyclopedia
, Glut’s
The Frankenstein Catalog
and Jones’s
The Illustrated Frankenstein Movie Guide. Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS
does not make these standard reference tools. I venture further: consulting Lee’s sadly-outdated
Reference Guide to the Fantastic Film
, Willis’s three-volume
Horror and Science Fiction Films
, my bound collection of Joe Bob’s
We Are the Weird
newsletter, some back issues of
Shock Xpress
, and such variably reliable sources as the Phantom’s
Ultimate Video Guide
and the mysterious
Hoffmann’s Guide to SF, Horror and Fantasy Movies
. No one lists a Frankenstein-Ilsa crossover. This is exciting, a discovery. I feel a thrill in my water, pull out a fresh file card, and write down the title. I curse myself for having missed the credits.

To celebrate, I hold a cheddar thin in my mouth and suck gently, until saliva seeps through the biscuit and dissolves it entirely. With my tongue, I work the paste bit by bit into my gullet. The sensation is exquisite.

Officially, there are only three Ilsa movies (
Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia
) but Jesus Franco’s
Greta, Hause Ohne Männer
aka
Wanda the Wicked Warden
or
Greta the Torturer
, with Thorne in the title role of Greta-Wanda, is sometimes spuriously roped into the series. Could this be a hitherto-undiscovered entry in the Ilsa series, or some apocryphal adventure of a lookalike Greta, Gerta, Irma, Helga, Erika or Monika? The sync is just off, but I’m sure this is shot in English, not dubbed. A heel-clicking subordinate salutes and snaps “Heil Hitler, Major Ilsa” establishing this as indeed part of the Isla canon. The black and white bothers me still. Is this a flashback within a colour film? That would be a bit artsy for Ilsa.

The Nazi Bitch Queen is in an office, ranting. It’s definitely Dyanne Thorne (once seen, those melons are unmistakable) and from the relative lack of lines on her face, the movie has to be from the mid-1970s. Oddly, it looks good in black and white: less like a bad dupe which has lost colour than a film lit for monochrome. The shadows gathering in the office as night falls make the scene look better than the cheesy images I remember from other Ilsa movies. Not James Wong Howe good, but at least George Robinson good.

I look through Glut and Jones, trying to find a Thorne credit in a ’70s Frankenstein movie. Of course, just because a film is called
Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS
doesn’t mean it’s a Frankenstein movie.
Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror
is a werewolf movie and several Japanese giant monster films have Frankenstein forced into their titles for German release, since Frankenstein is a generic term for monster in Germany. This must have been retitled since Glut came out, since he lists non-Frankenstein Frankenstein titles.
With the proliferation of fly-by-night cable and video, some movies have multiple titles into double figures. I need three file cards just to list the alternate titles of
Horror of the Blood Monsters
or
No Se Debe Profanar el Sueno de los Muertos
. However, that Monster, noted in occasional cutaways, leads me to identify this tentatively as a genuine Frankenstein movie as well as an unknown Ilsa.

As the film plays on, I eat several bourbons, almost whole, chewing them like dog biscuits.

Something is definitely strange about
Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS
. I’m convinced it was shot in black and white. Ilsa strides through what looks like the Universal Studios Middle European village (built for
All Quiet on the Western Front
, it shows up in all their monster movies) accompanied by pudgy SS extras. Wherever she stands in the shot, her mammoth breasts seem to be the centre of the frame.

The plot involves Ilsa establishing a Nazi experiment camp in a ruined castle. Cringing villagers avoid Ilsa’s goose-stepping buddies. The village is called Visaria. I guess it’s supposed to be in Czechoslovakia or Poland. It’s hard to tell, because it seems more like generic Eastern Europe than a real country. The burgomeister wears
Lederhosen
and an alpine hat with a peacock feather.

Visaria.

I flip back in Glut and Jones, trying to track down a niggling memory. I am right. Visaria is the name of the village in the later Universal horror films: 1940s monster rallies like
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
and
House of Dracula
. Whoever wrote
Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS
must be a monster trivia junkie. I assume Forry Ackerman will get a cameo, and the Ken Strickfaden lab equipment will be dusted off. That suggests the
auteur
touch of Al Adamson, who always liked to borrow leftover props from the Universals for atrocities like
Dracula vs. Frankenstein
. This looks too good to be an Adamson (no acid trip, no Russ Tamblyn, no bikers) but I feel I’m getting this movie pinned down. Maybe it’s from about the same vintage as
Blackenstein
, the one with the Karloff-style monster sporting a flat afro.

I write: 1972 to 1975? American. Stars Dyanne Thorne (as Ilsa). The tortured girl looked like Uschi Digart.

Then Lionel Atwill shows up as a police inspector with a prosthetic arm and an eagle-crested cap, with Dwight Frye and Skelton Knaggs as the most cringing of cringing villagers. They are from the ’40s, like the sets and the photography, and I’m lost.

Bourbon biscuit crumbs turn to ashes in my mouth.

Even if – and it’s inconceivable – I’m wrong and the leading woman isn’t Dyanne Thorne but a lookalike, then the scene with
the rat and the nipple clamps could never have been shot in the ’40s. Even for the private delectation of Lionel Atwill’s houseguests. Ilsa doesn’t have the lipsticky, marcelled look of the women in ’40s horror films. Her hippie eye make-up and butch haircut are ’70s to the bleached-blonde roots.

I swallow and am forced to assume this is a
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
gimmick, mixing footage from different films. Perhaps it has been overdubbed with wisecracksby
Saturday Night Live
regulars. I listen to the dialogue as Ilsa dresses down Inspector Atwill, and can’t catch any deliberate camp. One-shots of Ilsa and Atwill alternate and I try to see inconsistencies in the backgrounds. The match is good.

Then Ilsa peels off her elbow-length black leather glove and slaps Atwill across the face with it. Thorne’s Ilsa, from the ’70s, is
in the same shot
with Atwill’s Inspector, from the ’40s, and their physical interaction is too complicated to be faked. Ilsa rips apart Atwill’s many-buttoned uniform, yanking off his artificial arm, and squats on him, hip-thrusting against the stump that sticks out of his shoulder. Thorne’s orgasmic moaning is as unconvincing as ever but Atwill looks as though he’s getting something out of the scene. Unsatisfied, Ilsa gets up and rearranges her SS skirt, then has Atwill summarily executed. Black blood squirts out of his burst eye. The ketchupy ’70s gore looks nastier, more convincing in hand-me-down ’40s expressionist black and white.

The telephone rings and the answering machine cuts in. It’s Ciaran, complaining about maintenance. She jabbers on, an uncertain edge to her voice, and I concentrate on important things.

This is definitely a crossover movie. I fervently wish I had seen it from the beginning so I could tell whether the title card was original or spliced in. Actually, trying to track this one down is pointless. Whatever it’s really called, it’s impossible.

It’s the usual Ilsa story but the supporting characters are from the Universal monster series. Major Ilsa is the last grand-daughter of the original Henry Frankenstein and the castle is her ancestral home. That would make her the character played by Ilona Massey in
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
. Dyanne Thorne is even wearing an Ilona Massey beauty mark, which shifts alarmingly around her mouth from scene to scene with typical Ilsa continuity. She is supposed to be working on the creation of a race of super-Nazis for Hitler, but spends more time having weird sex and torturing people than contributing to the war effort.

To help her out around the laboratory, where Glenn Strange lies supine on the table, Ilsa drags Dr Pretorius, Ernest Thesiger’s swish mad scientist from
Bride of Frankenstein
, and Ygor, Bela Lugosi’s
broken-necked gypsy from
Son
. . . and
Ghost of Frankenstein
, out of their concentration camps. Pretorius keeps adjusting his pink triangle to set off his lab coat and Ygor leers gruesomely at Ilsa, tongue dangling a foot or so out of his mouth.

The sex scenes are near hardcore, but extremely silly. Ilsa needs a man who can sustain an erection for a whole night and most of the next morning if she is to achieve full satisfaction. She thinks she is in luck when virile Larry Talbot tears off his clothes as the full moon rises. In an unprecedented shot, yak hair swarms around the Wolf Man’s crotch. Jack Pierce must really have given Lon Chaney Jr a hard time with that lap dissolve. Ilsa and the Wolf Man go at it all over the castle, with ridiculous grunting and gasping and Franz Waxman’s Wedding Bells score from
Bride of Frankenstein
, but there’s big disappointment at dawn as the moon goes down and the werewolf turns back into dumb old flabby Larry-Lon. Ilsa yells abuse at the befuddled and limp American, and batters him to death with a silver cane.

After this, Ilsa is so crabby she shoves the burgomeister’s irritating daughter into the sulphur pits below the castle. As the little girl goes under, we cut to Ygor-Bela snickering over a lamp positioned under his chin to make him look scary.

In theory, Universal’s creature features have contemporary settings.
Dracula
and
The Wolf Man
clearly establish 1931 and 1941 for the dates of the action, so their sequels must take place in the years of their production.
Ghost of Frankenstein
(1941),
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
(1943),
House of Frankenstein
(1944) and
House of Dracula
(1945), the Visaria movies, are all set in an unspecified Eastern Europe of torch-bearing peasant mobs, gypsy musicians and saluting policemen. Though Atwill in
Son of Frankenstein
complains that he missed out on the First World War because the monster tore his arm off when he was a boy, no one ever mentions the then-current War. In its crazed way,
Frankenstein Meets the She-Wolf of the SS
is more “realistic”. The War, as reflected in the Nazi pornos of the 1970s, has leaked into the enclosed world of Universal horror.

I mix Kettle Chips and Jaffa cakes, washing them down with Appletiser.

Predictably, at sunset, a distinguished visitor arrives at the castle, nattily-dressed in top hat, white tie and tails, peering hypnotically over his long nose. John Carradine announces himself as Baron Latos. As Ilsa escorts him to her boudoir, Carradine’s floor-length cloak sweeps into a wing shape. An animated bat lands on Ilsa’s breasts and writhes, pushing her back onto a canopied four-poster bed. Reverting to human form, Dracula nuzzles his moustache between Ilsa’s thighs. The Count unbuttons his immaculate trouser
fly to uncurl a white length of vampire manhood and pleasures Ilsa all through the night. The end, though, is inevitable. At sunrise, Dracula turns to ashes on top of an unsatisfied and infuriated Ilsa.

A sunburst of realization: Channel 1818 isn’t showing movies that were made, but movies that can be
imagined
.

Appletiser blurts out of my nose at the conceptual breakthrough.

The ending is guessable: Dr Pretorius charges the Monster and he gets up off his slab in time to be the insatiable stud Ilsa has looked for throughout the picture. Glenn Strange, naked but for asphalt-spreader’s boots, pounds away at Ilsa’s tender parts for what seems like hours as revolting partisan peasants burn down the castle around their ears. The Monster’s tool is in proportion with the rest of him, scarred with collodion applications. As Ilsa finally comes like a skyrocket, burning beams fall on the bed and an end title flickers.

As usual on cheapo movie channels, the film fades before the end credits so there’s no chance of noting down the copyright date. I howl in frustration and throw away the file card. With no concrete information, I might just as well not have watched the film.

In anger, I batter the cushions of my sofa. Then, I’m drawn back to the television. Over a frozen frame of Boris Karloff as the Monster in a Beatle Wig, Channel 1818 announces the rest of the evening’s movie program.

King Kong Meets Frankenstein
. Willis O’Brien’s dream project.

The Marx Brothers Meet the Monsters
. Through the bungling of Igolini (Chico), Professor Wolf J. Frankenstein (Groucho) puts the Monster’s brain into Harpo’s skull. Margaret Dumont is Dracula’s Daughter.

House of the Wolf Man
. A 1946 Universal, directed by Jean Yarbrough. Otto Kruger and Rondo Hatton tamper with the brains of Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange.

Dr Orloff, Sex Slave of Frankenstein
. Directed by Jesus Franco, with Howard Vernon and Dennis Price, plus hardcore spliced in a decade after Price’s death.