During WWII, a band of Soviet soldiers , accompanied by a cameraman documenting their actions, stumble upon a small village overcome by horrors created by a descendant of Frankenstein (Karel Roden). Will the soldiers be able to escape the monsters created by the mad doctor, or will they too become victims of Frankenstein’s Army?
Directed by Richard Raaphorst, Frankenstein’s Army is a monster-filled flick that starts off a bit slow, but soon gets rolling with some gore and pantloads of crazy monster creations. It does my black heart good to see so many practical FX monsters roaming around in this age of CGI tomfoolery. These soldiers of doom are bristling with spikes, blades, drills, propellers, and all sorts of things to make a mess of flesh and bone.
Acting-wise, the film delivers, too. The Soviet soldiers ( Joshua Sasse, Robert Guilym, Alexander Mercury, Luke Newberry, Han Ping Tang, Andrei Zajats, Mark Stevenson) all have their own personalities anfd traits that define their characters, some not so nice. Roden does an excellent job as the nightmare-making scientist, carrying the Frankenstein tradition to the next level, making corpse/machine hybrids well equipped to kill.
The only real problem I have with Frankenstein’s Army is that it falls into the category of ‘found footage’, the footage in question being that shot by the man sent to record everything under orders . It works for the most part, but , if it were me in a den of killing machines, each one more horrible than the next, popping up around every corner, I wouldn’t be real worried about documenting it, looking through the camera lens…I’d be dropping , or better yet, throwing the damn thing at one of those monstrosities and getting the Hell out of there, Stalin’s orders be damned. It’s one thing to shoot footage of soldiers fighting Nazis and monsters from a distance, but up close, running for your life, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Besides, the whole ‘found footage’ thing is pretty much played out at this point, I think.
Still, film style aside, I did enjoy Frankenstein’s Army. The story and acting are well done, and there’s enough red stuff and monsters to keep any true horror fan happy. If you haven’t, go watch it already.
