Trafficking in tastelessness, encompassing a comedic streak and in no danger of awards chatter, the indie-horror effort Frankenstein’s Hungry Dead is directed and co-written by Pretty Dead Things’ prolific Richard Griffin. His jacking-around movie works better than its clumsy title suggests. The plot is no great shakes, either, as some stuck-up high school students face a life-changing choice: two hours of detention or a trip to a wax museum? (Spoiler: They pick the latter.)
The site in question is where the eyepatch-sporting Charles Frank — aka Dr. Frankenstein (Griffin regular Michael Thurber, The Sins of Dracula) — crafts his wax creations using body parts acquired from unwitting bodies, like those belonging to the unwitting teens. They’re easy to catch when they’re participating in such shenanigans as having sex in a coffin and when they’re just plain dumb: “Hey, you’re that boring museum tour guide! Well, fuck you, boring museum tour guide!” (And so it is with “fuck”: all in the delivery.)
Hungry Dead’s advantage? Spirit. I’ve always been a sucker for movies set in wax museums, and if Griffin isn’t, he’s sure done a good job of designing the ruse. This pic both parodies and praises such old-school scares, not to mention your above-average episode of the original-recipe Scooby-Doo. Griffin works so often and so quickly that viewers never know whether the result will be worth a watch (The Disco Exorcist) or not (Murder University); Frankenstein’s Hungry Dead steps into the plus column. —Rod Lott
Read the original review in Exploitation Retrospect: The Journal of Junk Culture & Fringe Media #53
I mistakenly read this title as “Frankenstein’s Hungry Dad.” Now I want that film.