Shocktober 2026 - Blackenstein (1972)

“Eddie and I are so fortunate that I knew about your work.” – Dr Winifred Walker

Oh boy…

Call it momentary madness, a slight case of temporary, fleeting insanity. It’s confession time. I was putting this Shocktober together, and I felt I could showcase some barely seen B movies, comedically bad ones, and drop them in just for fun. So, drawing back to my memories, I remembered Billy the Kid vs Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter and decided to take the plunge and purchase the discs for old time’s sake. Then, heady with the crazed hysteria of B movie madness, I took the plunge. I bought this, as a good friend of mine noted quite pointedly, on purpose.

If you’re reading this, there’s a chance you’ll have read last year’s Shocktober, where I covered the two Blacula movies, which were part of the blaxploitation genre of the early-mid seventies.

Last year I wrote this; “A lot of the films from that era were detective/cop movies like Shaft & Cleopatra Jones and as I said were very much of their time, but it was inevitable that blaxploitation would enter the horror movie field with Blacula in 1972, and its subsequent sequel. As a side note I remember reading in a film magazine at the time, probably Photoplay, that other projects in the pipeline were Blackenstein and (no, I’m not making this up) The Hunchblack of Notre Dame. When I was looking around the internet, researching this article, I discovered that Blackenstein was actually made. I even found the trailer. (Click here – you won’t believe your eyes.)”

I couldn’t believe the film actually got made. The Hunchblack of Notre Dame wasn’t – but Blackenstein was. Having seen the trailer, the next stage was, I guess, inevitable. Yep – there it was, released in the U.S. on DVD.

So, what better film to close off this season’s festival than with a film I can almost guarantee that nobody has seen? A film so bad, so inept, so crazy – it’s almost beyond my capacity to describe – but I’ll give it a go.

We start off in Burbank airport, after a title sequence that subtitles “Blackenstein” with “The Black Frankenstein” just in case the first title is a little too, you know, subtle. Having just arrived in town is Dr Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone - in her first and only film appearance). She’s in town to drop in on her old teacher, Dr Stein (John Hart) and to ask for his help. It’s a big ask, to be fair. Her fiancé Eddie (Joe De Sue) stood on a landmine in Vietnam and has lost both arms and legs. She wants Dr Stein to help him, because Stein’s a kind of genius. He’s won the Nobel Peace Prize for “solving the DNA genetic code” – whatever that means.

I’m going to pause there for a second. Joe De Sue who plays Eddie is an interesting case. Like the leading lady, Blackenstein is his one and only film appearance. Now, Joe had been arrested and prosecuted for first degree murder. His lawyer got him acquitted. His lawyer was Frank R. Saletri, who decided he’d like to get into showbusiness and was the producer of this movie. Despite having no acting experience, De Sue appeared in it as a favour for getting him off the murder rap. That’s the level of acting skill we’re dealing with here, folks.

Stein agrees that his method of “laser fusing” replacement limbs in his Frankenstein style lab, along with regular injections of a special “DNA solution” will do the trick. I say his lab is Frankenstein style because it literally is, there are several of the original spark and arc emitting doodads that were used in the Universal Pictures Frankenstein films in there, hired from their creator Kenneth Strickfaden, who a couple of years later would hire them out to Mel Brooks for his production of Young Frankenstein (1974).

Stein has an assistant/butler named Malcomb – yes, the name has a silent “b” for no damn reason I can think of played by Roosevelt Jackson in (again) his screen debut. But unlike Ivory Stone and Joe De Sue, he had a brief acting career beyond this mess. Though he had to wait 19 years before being cast in anything again, and he hasn’t been heard of since. But in this, he’s comically stoic and sinister, especially when he makes his attraction to Winifred known. But by now, poor Eddie the Limbless has been moved to Stein’s castle-like mansion in L.A. and is undergoing treatment, with Winifred assisting the good Doctor. Eddie’s not the only patient, there’s an elderly lady named Eleanor having her old age reversed, there’s another named Bruno who’s had a leg transplant (there’s a small problem with it having tiger-like stripes, but this isn’t followed up in the scant plot.) All of these miracles are due to the wonders of Stein’s DNA solution.

Rejected by Winifred, Malcomb decides to sabotage Eddie’s treatment by mixing it with Bruno’s which causes Eddie to develop an overhanging brow, an improbably high, square forehead. He gets taller and loses the power of speech, which means that they transfer him from his comfortable room, to a dungeon in the basement.

Now looking like a dollar fifty Boris Karloff cosplay in black, Eddie wanders out of his dungeon nightly, with nobody noticing except his victims, who are torn apart. The main place he hangs out seems to be an old industrial building, which when he enters it becomes the Veterans’ Hospital where he was bullied by an orderly. The orderly is his first victim, he gets his arm ripped off.

At other times in the film, the same building is just an abandoned building that he can stalk victims through. The exterior never changes.

There’s no reason for his victim selection, other than the orderly – none of these have done anything to him, they’re just there to pad out the idiotically thin plot, and when director William A. Levey feels the movie needs a pick-up, provide some gratuitously un-needed cheesy topless shots.

After several evenings of wandering around aimlessly killing, (and the pace at which he walks is so painfully slow, we marvel that he actually caught anybody,) the police manage to corner Eddie in that same abandoned industrial building, and their K-9 dogs literally tear him limb from limb.

Yes, in conclusion I can actually say that I found a Frankenstein themed film that makes Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter look classy. (Well, what did we expect from a film whose advertising slogan was “To stop this mutha takes one bad brutha”?)

Next year – I’m making up for, well, THIS film in particular. Also making amends with the legends of Frankenstein and Dracula. Shocktober ’27 will feature the Hammer Studios Frankenstein/Dracula films of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

That’s next year. (For right now, I’m crawling into my crypt, closing the lid, and forgetting I ever saw Blackenstein.)

As is my custom, I’ll wish you all a happy and safe Halloween and sign off the 13 Screams by quoting the King of Horror, Boris Karloff; “May all your nightmares have a happy ending in the last reel.”

Don't forget the Piercing the Veil Shocktober Special at this link.