The movie starts suddenly on a small cliff. What appears to be a man in animal skins (a caveman I suppose) is on top of the cliff throwing things at people below. The people are dressed in 18-19th century garments and are throwing things, up at the caveman. Sadly you know this will be a bad/cheap movie from the start as there appears to be a man in jeans and a turtleneck in the crowd of villagers. Did the movie run out of costumes up front or was this guy crashing the movie? Eventually, the villagers overwhelm the lone caveman and proceed to beat him to death with clubs & rocks. Then the titles.
Marie Frankenstein (the doctor's daughter) is on her way home to her family's country castle, with her fiancé and a female friend tagging along for spring break. According to the good doctor, the Neanderthal man's (a.k.a. caveman) appearance is not a fluke, but is explained by "science". They somehow live in the nearby caves and have for hundreds of years. His experiment is the reanimation of that ex-caveman, now called "Goliath".
This is a typical Italian knock-off/mash up of movie genres. I have had numerous experiences with these, from spaghetti westerns to giallo to the epics and even the apocalyptic future. This one is the Italian version (much cheaper) of a Hammer film with gratuitous nudity. It does try to portray Dr. Frankenstein as a misunderstood character, who is good by nature and circumstances and others have tarnished his image (the Wicked effect). This aspect is muffled by the gratuitous nudity, some horrible dubbing, extremely low budget and the "freaks". When you add 2 Neanderthals cavemen (one living in a cave and the other necrotic), a revenge driven ex-employed dwarf (Michael Dunn, most renowned for his role in Star Trek's Plato's Stepchildren episode) and a mustached, adulterer hunchback (Boris Lugosi, Karloff & Lugosi's Italian love child), what good can come from it?
Basically, it was the dwarfs fault. Firing the dwarf causes the series of events that we are all aware of : monster escapes, innocent people are killed, villagers riot with torches, the monster & Frankenstein are killed by the end. There is not much horror, logic, acting, suspension of disbelief, nudity or much of anything else in this movie except a painfully long run time. You will struggle with the dialog, as some of it sounds like English, but in the end all you come away with is that the rule of the mob is that the mob rules. That and the idea that a long, nude mineral bath can fix just about anything.
Marie Frankenstein (the doctor's daughter) is on her way home to her family's country castle, with her fiancé and a female friend tagging along for spring break. According to the good doctor, the Neanderthal man's (a.k.a. caveman) appearance is not a fluke, but is explained by "science". They somehow live in the nearby caves and have for hundreds of years. His experiment is the reanimation of that ex-caveman, now called "Goliath".
This is a typical Italian knock-off/mash up of movie genres. I have had numerous experiences with these, from spaghetti westerns to giallo to the epics and even the apocalyptic future. This one is the Italian version (much cheaper) of a Hammer film with gratuitous nudity. It does try to portray Dr. Frankenstein as a misunderstood character, who is good by nature and circumstances and others have tarnished his image (the Wicked effect). This aspect is muffled by the gratuitous nudity, some horrible dubbing, extremely low budget and the "freaks". When you add 2 Neanderthals cavemen (one living in a cave and the other necrotic), a revenge driven ex-employed dwarf (Michael Dunn, most renowned for his role in Star Trek's Plato's Stepchildren episode) and a mustached, adulterer hunchback (Boris Lugosi, Karloff & Lugosi's Italian love child), what good can come from it?
Basically, it was the dwarfs fault. Firing the dwarf causes the series of events that we are all aware of : monster escapes, innocent people are killed, villagers riot with torches, the monster & Frankenstein are killed by the end. There is not much horror, logic, acting, suspension of disbelief, nudity or much of anything else in this movie except a painfully long run time. You will struggle with the dialog, as some of it sounds like English, but in the end all you come away with is that the rule of the mob is that the mob rules. That and the idea that a long, nude mineral bath can fix just about anything.