I’ll admit I wasn’t completely sold on Dear God No! when it first came to British shores. The post-grindhouse approach invariably hinges on a degree of artifice which is always going to leave a bad taste in the mouth for some viewers. However, with time and further viewings, not to mention holding it up alongside similar films that have been made since, it became clear that Dear God No! had a sincerity, a certain purity of intent (believe me, I’m well aware how wrong it seems to imply there’s anything ‘pure’ about it) that held it up as almost certainly the best film of its kind to emerge this past decade. As such, when Bickert announced plans to shoot an even more ridiculous sequel in Frankenstein Created Bikers, damned if I wasn’t anxious to see that right away, to the extent that I happily donated to the film’s Kickstarter fund – hence my contributor copy Blu-ray arrived at long last this past weekend.
I should stress right away, I can’t provide a synopsis of Frankenstein Created Bikers without also giving away substantial spoilers for Dear God No! – so if in doubt, don’t read on…
Of course, in these days of digital photography, ‘final reel’ is usually just a figure of speech. Not in this case, though, as probably the key selling point of the Frankenstein Created Bikers crowdsourcing campaign was their steadfast intention of shooting on 35mm film (a step up from Dear God No!, which used super-16mm). Indeed, they went so far as to declare it might very well be the final 35mm horror movie – although, in the interim, Anna Biller’s 35mm-shot The Love Witch arrived to considerable aplomb, bursting that bubble just a little. I’m really not the person to ask as to whether or not 35mm is as good as dead, but I certainly hope not, as both Bickert’s and Biller’s movies demonstrate how damn good the format still looks, and how, despite advances in the field, DV still can’t quite capture that same organic quality.
Another key selling point on which Bickert and co have undoubtedly delivered was their plan to make a bona fide exploitation epic – and, at 125 minutes in length (a good 40 minutes longer than Dear God No!), Frankenstein Created Bikers certainly is something of an epic. It’s in this, I think, that the film is most likely to divide opinion. For myself, I’ve said time and again that films which stretch beyond the two hour mark often taste my patience, and I’m afraid to say FCB is no exception. If it was literally two hours of wall-to-wall carnage, nudity and absurdity, that would be one thing (yes, I’m a man of simple tastes), but Bickert’s script squeezes in a somewhat surprising amount of plot and character detail that wasn’t so much at the forefront in his earlier film, and this is frequently conveyed via lengthy dialogue scenes which at times prove a bit extraneous. Between ‘Frankenstein’s experiments, his fractured relationship with his Igor figure Klaus (yet another indie horror icon, Laurence R Harvey), Klaus’s secret plot against his master, Risk’s Val, her plot for revenge and her rather messed-up relationships with her father and brothers, the Impalers and their struggles to adapt to the undead life, Jett’s burgeoning romance with Edna Marco (the returning Madeline Brumby) who is now a severed head kept alive The Brain That Wouldn’t Die-style, plus Ellie Church’s Candy plunging into a horrific odyssey in her struggles to escape, and the local cops trying to figure out what’s going on before falling victim to Val’s ubiquitous car bombs… you get the point. There is a hell of a lot going on in this movie, making the whole endeavour a fair bit slower-paced than we might like for an exploitation B-movie, and I daresay a fair chunk of it could have been left on the cutting room floor without the film feeling any weaker for it.
Even so, this is not to say FCB doesn’t still deliver on the X-rated pleasures exploitation lovers expect. Again, the opening sequence sets the tone pretty well with an abundance of retro-flavoured gore and nudity playing out to old school party metal, and there’s plenty more where that came from as the action rolls on. Still, in some respects things are a little tamer than Dear God No!, particularly as – a few threats aside – rape is left almost completely out of the equation this time around. But this is not to say we don’t have some brutal sequences here: Ellie Church’s character in particular is really put through the wringer, forced to endure some genuinely unpleasant ordeals. For the most part, though, Frankenstein Created Bikers really revels in its fucked-upness for the sheer fun of it; I’m not going to spoil the best bits, but rest assured there are some wonderfully transgressive moments which are sure to spark either gasps of horror or barks of laughter (and I know which side I fall on there). And, in common with Dear God No!, Bickert again proves he’s a walking profanisaurus, filling the mouths of his actors with reams of the most creative and colourful vulgarities you’re ever likely to hear.
This feels a fairly redundant statement at this point, but obviously Frankenstein Created Bikers was never going to be to all tastes. If you didn’t like Dear God No! and you don’t like grindhousey films in general, then quite clearly this is not one to put on your to-view list. For everyone else, there is clearly a lot of fun to be had with this sequel, even if it may somewhat outstay its welcome.
Limited edition Frankenstein Created Bikers Blu-ray/DVD combos are still available here – and if you’d like to know more, give Frankenstein Created Bikers a like on Facebook.