When reviewing movies, you really got to be careful with your opinions and expectations. Take for example Army of Frankensteins. On the outside, it’s a movie filled with terrible CGI, awful acting and a plot that is all over the place. The thing is, Army of Frankensteins was made on a budget of $65,000, with local talent filling the roles. If you think about it that way, the movie does deserve a few pats on the back. Still, even with a low budget, you got to ask the makers of the movie how they thought most of what they made was even remotely good. Also, who’s idea was it to make the movie a whopping 109 minutes. That is way too long for a cheesy horror flick. Anway, as most who read my reviews already know, I’m very lax on my opinion of films and more often than not, I’ll recommend you check it out, even if I hated the thing, and Army of Frankensteins does fall into that category, but be warned, it’s probably going to be more of a struggle to find something good in it than bad. Read on for the full review…
PRODUCT INFORMATION
DISCS: 1
RUN-TIME: 109 min
ASPECT RATIO: 2.35:1
RESOLUTION: 1080p
AUDIO: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 & 2.0
SUBTITLES: English
REGION: A
RATING: NR
PRODUCTION DATE: 2014
RELEASE DATE: Sept 1st, 2015
PLOT SUMMARY
An unstoppable terror is set loose upon a nation divided… and history will never be the same!
After a failed attempt to propose to his girlfriend, Alan Jones (Jordan Farris) is beaten within an inch of his life by a street gang. Transported to the mysterious lab of Dr. Tanner Finski and his kid genius assistant Igor, Alan becomes the subject in a series of horrible experiments as part of the doctor’s plan to reanimate the legendary Frankenstein monster. But all bets are off when these experiments lead to a hole being ripped in space and time, pulling an army’s worth of the infamous creatures from hundreds of parallel universes and sending them all back to the 19th century – directly into the heart of a bloody battle between the North and South!
An over-the-top sci-fi/horror hybrid, Army Of Frankensteins is an outrageous film that dares to examine a history that never happened: The War Between The States… of Life and Death!
MOVIE
After getting kidnapped by a deranged doctor and terrible kid actor, Alan Jones (Jordan Farris) ends up losing his good eye to a Frankenstein monster and travels back in time to the Civil War, with a bunch of duplicate Franks in tow. (Okay, first things first, the monster in Frankenstein was never called Frankenstein, so please, stop doing that!) Alan meets up with his great, great grandfather or something and starts fighting for the North, while the evil South gets a hold of the same serum that brought the monster to life and creates their own beast. Honest Abe shows up for a few useless scenes and before you know it, you’ve wasted almost two hours of your life.
Army of Frankensteins is chock full of all sorts of bad stuff. It’s got terrible acting from everyone involved, save maybe for Eric Gesecus, who plays the Monster. The story is certainly original, but the characters, writing and scenes are all over the place. First we are fighting the monsters, next they are helping everyone out. You also have to contend with a random love triangle, which comes out of left field. If that isn’t enough problems, the green screen work in this movie is atrocious. Just terrible. (Yes, I know the budget is low, but why the hell can you not afford to shoot in a real field?!?)
The only positive thing I can say for Army of Frankensteins, is the wonderful practical FX work done on it. The gore is pretty good and the makeup is actually pretty sweet looking. It seems like most of the budget went into practical work, so it’s sad to see how much shitty CGI was used.
BLU-RAY
Scream Factory has released Army of Frankensteins on Blu-ray and honestly, not much can be said for it. The video is okay, but the film itself is so bad looking, you can’t say it looks great (those fake mustaches sure do look real fake though.) The audio is served up in two choices, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0, but I found even some scenes had weird audio dropouts, which seems more like a fault of the film and not the disc. Only special feature is a trailer that makes the movie look much better than it really is.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
– Trailer
VERDICT
Army of Frankensteins might have a few people out there that enjoy it and I applaud the makers on getting out there and doing something with the money they had. However, the actual film is a mess and even worse, boring. The Blu from Scream Factory is your standard slapped together release, so nothing to write home about. If you enjoyed the movie, then please, pick it up, but if you haven’t seen it yet, maybe give it a shot for free first.
RATING
