Frankenstein’s Army

Synopsis: This film takes place in the waning days of World War II and follows a small band of Russian troops behind German lines. The soldiers have picked up a distress call from another group of Russians and they approach an empty-looking town to search for the source of the call. What they find instead is a secret Nazi weapons program run by a mad scientist.

My Take: I usually do this part last but it might be useful to some of you to just avoid reading my breakdown of the movie and go right to the stuff I didn’t like about it. I will say that it’s kind of a neat idea, it takes the historical facts of the Nazi’s horrific human experimentation, Hitler’s occult dabblings and his paranoia, and just takes it to a horror film extreme. That said, I feel like this film would have been better with stationary cameras rather than taking the Blair Witch approach. In the many scenes in which the characters are being chased around the underground tunnels I felt like I was watching a poorly executed live-action Wolfenstein 3D movie.

The monstrous Frankenstein creations fall into the dieselpunk subgenre, some of which looked like they were taken from Silent Hill or Bioshock while others looked like props from a bad Marilyn Manson video. I think the shaky camera was meant to give us just a glimpse of the monsters in hopes that we would critique their look. Unfortunately we do get to scrutinize the monsters and most of them looked silly rather than horrifying with many of them just looking down right implausible. I know that sounds like an unfair criticism for a monster movie like this but I’m viewing it from the perspective of the plot – to create menacing but usable front-line fighters. These guys can barely navigate the buildings in which they were created, I doubt they would be effective in the war effort unless they just want make the enemy shit their pants and flee. Of course I guess this could all just be chalked up to Dr. Frankenstein’s insanity but most of the monster designs seemed to just be played out for shock value and they just ended up looking like carnival haunted house goons in rubber masks. So, in sum, Frankenstein’s Army is a dieselpunk, first-person shooter game converted into a subpar film. The breakdown of “plot” can be found below:

The Film: Frankenstein’s Army is categorized as found-footage and like most films of that category this one is shot primarily from a first-person perspective. The soldiers are pretty much run-of-the-mill war movie archetypes: the outsider (a Polish ex-pat who joined the Red Army), the war-weary commander trying to hold everyone together, the unhinged soldier who seems to want to smack everyone around and thinks he knows best how to lead the men, the shy kid who is too young for the horrors of war, and the cameraman who also seems like an outsider to the rest of the group and whose motivations for chronicling the events becomes evident as the film progresses.

As noted in the synopsis, the soldiers are searching for the source of a distress call from another group of Russian troops. As they make their way through the countryside they begin to see corpses alongside the road that have been mutilated. The men make their way to a small town blanketed in eery silence; there are very unusual war machines near the entrance to the town emblazoned with swastikas. The soldiers approach the town’s church and find a pile of nun’s that had been stacked up and burned. When the group enters the church they find that it has been gutted and outfitted more like a factory assembly line; they also notice that their radio has stopped working or that something is blocking their signal. At this point so some of the men start to poke around the church (always a wise decision) looking for a way to repair their radio or boost their signal. A few of the men split off (another wise decision) to search the town for inhabitants or signs of the other Russians.

The group of searchers stumbles upon an old man who seems to be tending to some caged animals. The soldiers tie him down and begin to torture the villager for information on the whereabouts of the other Russians and the man finally agrees to lead them to the location. The soldiers are lead to a decrepit-looking building with an ominous, poorly-lit set of stairs leading underground. The villager doesn’t seem too interested in going down there himself (hmmm, suspicious much?) but the soldiers sure as heck aren’t letting him off the hook that easy. Unfortunately for the soldiers, the villager is able to mysteriously vanish and the men start to uncover the truth about the town. They wind through a labyrinthine set of corridors and are attacked by bizarre-looking monsters.

Most of the soldiers make it back to the church in one piece but the crazy creatures have followed them and begin to rampage through the building forcing all of the soldiers into another underground passage. This passage is full of body parts, machine parts, and crazy-looking monsters who also happen to be pushing large mine carts full of said parts. During this underground escapade, the soldiers discover that the cameraman has been behind the “distress call” the whole time, using that as a ruse to get the men to investigate the town and to try and locate a Dr. Frankenstein. Apparently Stalin was made aware of the Doctor’s crazy experiments so he sent the cameraman to investigate the rumors, chronicle everything, and try to convince Frankenstein to abandon the Nazi’s and go work for the Commies instead. This bit of ruse pisses off the other soldiers for some reason and they decide to throw the cameraman down a dirty chute and ditch him.

While you might feel that the abandonment is justified but it turns out that old Stalin is also using the cameraman’s family as leverage in order to make sure the Doctor, or at least the footage of his operations, makes it back to Moscow. The cameraman even has a nice little confessional moment a la Blair Witch in which he tells his family that he tried to do his best but probably won’t make it out alive (very prophetic!). He keeps running around finding more and more layers to the production facility. The monsters working in the production factory seem only cursorily interested in chasing the cameraman as he seems able to avoid all the menacing advances pretty handily even while keeping the camera rolling. He does finally manage to get his audience with the great Dr. Frankenstein; the madman seems all too eager for fresh subjects so he monologues through his motivations and his insanity. It turns out Frankenstein is a descendant of the Dr. Frankenstein of literary fame (of course he is!) and has taken his grandfather’s research ideas and improved on them. The Doctor walks around the factory with the cameraman and shows him the works. Our cameraman even seems impressed for a time, that is until Frankenstein ties him up and threatens to “improve” our comrade. No amount of sniveling and bargaining can seem to sway the Doctor, even when the Russian reinforcements arrive and start bombing the town he seems to think he has time for one more experiment.

As the bombing gets closer Frankenstein realizes he needs to pack up and escape, leaving the poor soldier strapped to a table. Frankenstein notes that when he leaves the monsters will start to lose their obedience and kill each other and whatever else gets in their way. Before he’s able to slip out however, the shy, quiet kid from the Russian unit sneaks up and kills Frankenstein. The cameraman begs for help and the kid grapples with whether or not to assist, opting finally to let the guy die on the table. The final shot is a nice propaganda photo showing the kid, now a national hero, standing with Stalin.

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