 Hello and welcome to today's edition of Frightfully Forgotten's Trash or Treasure, but before we get started, what are we drinking? The Heretic Smoked Lager. Today, we're gonna be talking about 1974's Blackenstein. Yeah. A couple of years back, we did our top five underrated Frankenstein films, and it didn't make the cut, but it's still worth talking about. So, is it Trash or Treasure? This movie was directed by William A. Levy. Did a lot of exploitative- Soft-core porn, type stuff. John Hart is in this, and he did tons of TV and movie stuff, dating all the way back to 1937. And Ivory Stone is in this, and this was her only movie. Blackenstein starts off with our main character, Dr. Winifred Walker. She's visiting her old teacher from her university days, Dr. Stein. Of course, his name is Dr. Stein. He's doing some cutting-edge research. She tells him this tragic thing had just happened. Her boyfriend, Eddie, who went over to Vietnam, stepped on a landmine. He was horribly disfigured. He had his arms and his legs blown off. That's pretty bad luck. Like, jeez. All that's left is your dark soul. He shows her around his mansion. Some of these patients he's working on, research that he's doing, he's able to do some crazy things, like turn back the clock. He's got this 90-year-old woman who he's de-aged. A man who had lost a leg, and he had actually grafted on a new leg. And it's taken very well because of this special DNA serum. So Dr. Walker takes Dr. Stein to go visit Eddie in the hospital. Before they get there, poor Eddie is not feeling too well. He's got no arms or legs, and he's laying there. Could I have some ice cream? And this asshole early guy starts giving him the fucking gears. Our taxes pay for you laying here eating our ice cream. So Dr. Stein asks Eddie if he wants to try this new procedure of actually grafting on new arms and legs. He actually is not really into it, but he goes along with it anyways, kind of for Winifred. So they take Eddie back to the laboratory, and it's all colorful, and there's all those sparks and everything. Like, you need that to reattach arms and legs. Oh, this is lightning. Eddie is slowly making a recovery. Dr. Stein pulls the blankets off, and limbs are growing back. Malcolm, however, seems to have gotten a hard on for this Winifred, comes out of nowhere. I love you. I've always loved you. I would do anything in the world for you. He's known her for like two days. He turns him down flat, really pisses him off. He really pisses him off to no end. Winifred is getting the last of the serum ready. Malcolm tampers with it. They pump him full of that stuff, and he slowly starts to regress. Neanderthal, he has an eyebrow thing, and he starts growing all his hair on his hands. They keep him in the dungeon for no reason. It's all locked in that cage. Eddie ends up breaking out of his dungeon. He goes to hunt down that asshole orderly who did him wrong there when he was in the bed. It's suddenly he's in a big zoo, isn't it? And his shiny boots. Those shiny boots already get those from in the dungeon. I don't know, but he's pretty stylish, though. That's where we're going to end the plot. But is Black and Stein trash or treasure? So let's get to the treasure first. The fact that they even made a movie called Black and Stein is pretty amazing. So I guess that's treasure. The use of lighting and shadows is really cool in this. I like the way they use the shadows to kind of harken back to the old 1930s Frankenstein movies, the shadow of the monster walking, because it didn't make it feel more like a Frankenstein film. And they use the shadows for the kills. They don't need to show the whole effect. The kills themselves are actually pretty decent, right? For the type of movie that this is. It's a very low-budget movie. So the effects, they're not overly flashy. It does work, right? We mentioned the shadows. See the arms come off, cut quick, and then you see the guts, you know, of somebody. And the guts look pretty good, like when he tears the guts out of that woman, he's all, yeah, he's all kind of eating them. Another treasure for this film is the orderly. That actor who plays the orderly kind of steals the show. He stands out because he's so damn good, and that little speech he has is pretty fucking funny. And he's probably the best actor of the whole movie, too. Just that little five-minute bit that he has. The cheesy music, too, actually, is kind of a treasure for this. They're kind of using that old do-do-do-do-do. Yeah, that stock Transylvania-type music that they probably just ripped off of some other movies somewhere. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I wish it was more funky. Yeah. The music was more like, yeah. Which brings us now to the trash of Black and Stein. The acting is horrible. Oh, God. Even the guy who plays Dr. Stein, that John Hart guy, he's been around for so long, you thought he'd be good by now, but even he sucks. The dialogue and the script itself are pretty fucking horrible, too, right? The guy who plays Malcolm is so shitty. Like, there's no character at all. Even when he confesses his love to Dr. Walker, there's no emotion or anything. I love you. I've always loved you. And Eddie. Eddie, man, he's so bad. Could I have some ice cream? My throat's dry. Yeah. He's like, he doesn't look like he's in pain or anything. Like, the guy's got no limbs. No, no, he's just laying there. Like, he's just useless. Like, why did they cast this guy? It's not like he's even some big hulk of a man that, like, okay, when he is the monster, it works. You could have cast so many people in that role. It would have been 10 times better than, could I have some ice cream? Yeah, they probably could have picked anybody off the damn street. That would have been better than him. Even the way Black and Stein looks is goofy. You know, which I guess it kind of should be, because it's a goofy movie. But they put him in the Frankenstein outfit, like, at least make him more funky or something different. Something to make him a bit more memorable. Kind of cool boots, but that's about it all. The 70s boots, and that's it. Yeah, that's it. He kind of reminds me of one of those old cartoon characters, the gangsters, that have got the huge body and then they're freeing like that, you know? Yeah, that's exactly what he looks like. The pacing for this movie is just god-awful, too. Like, it takes way too long for any of you to turn into Black and Stein. It's like 40 minutes into the movie or whatever. Then when he does turn into Black and Stein, it's still super slow, because there's all that wasted time of him just... Yeah. Super long shots of him, like walking from one end of the room to the other. Like, you're gonna cut that like a long time ago. We know he's walking. Yeah, yeah. You just show him leaving the building. We don't need to show him going from room to room and down the stairs. And the funny thing is, because as slow as he is, how does he get everywhere so quick? I don't know. Like, suddenly he's just at that hospital. I don't know how far it is. It's like, at that speed, it would be like daytime by the time he got there. This is time for him to turn back around and go to sleep again. For a movie that's only an hour and 15 minutes, how can it feel this slow? It should feel like it's... Yeah, it's like hitting all the paces quick. And all that wasted time, like there's a scene in a nightclub where it shows this guy who's like kind of hosting the nightclub. Tell this super long, like five minute joke that's not even funny. And then it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't lead anywhere. It just goes outside and has a smoke. And like, that's the end of it. Like, what? Why do you even have it? You couldn't use those five minutes for something else. Yeah. The setting for the movie is not very inventive at all. It's kind of like they used somebody's house or whatever, right? Rather than trying to create sets. Editing and the structure of this movie is kind of all pissy. Like we said, that nightclub scene doesn't need to be there at all. But there's also scenes that kind of just suddenly they happen, you don't know how we got there. Near the end, suddenly that Malcolm guy's like trying to rape Dr. Walker. Yeah. But how do they, you don't know how they got in that room together. She's already kind of unclothed already. And he's like half naked too. Like, how did we get there? And then suddenly Black and Stein's like on the stairs on his way up to go save her. But how did he know? And like, how did he get up to the stairs? Like it's like we missed a big chunk of the movie. Probably filmed it. Put in that nightclub guy by accident instead. Yeah. The footage they really needed. It was the guy's brother or something doing the editing. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna put him in. The ending is, it's almost pointless. It comes out of nowhere. Yeah, it's like they just have to wrap the movie up. Invokes no emotion whatsoever. Wagon shows up with dogs inside. And the dogs come out and just tear Black and Stein to pieces. Like, limb to limb. That's the end of the movie. It's like credit star. It comes out of nowhere. It's like what, they ran out of money or something? And like they couldn't finish filming the movie. Like, oh, we gotta wrap it up tonight. How are we gonna do it? I don't know, there's some dogs over here. Let's, like. All those mean ass Dobermans too. It's okay to get a swerve every once in a while, but you're really expecting that Dr. Walker's gonna have to kill Eddie. You know, the lovin' for life. Cause he's a monster now. There'd be some tragic thing. Ooh, you know. There's nothing. She's not even there. She's nowhere even near the scene at the end where he dies. These dogs just come and eat him and then, that's it. That's the end of Black and Stein. There's no closure with this ending whatsoever. No. It leads you to not give a shit about the rest of the movie too, right? Black and Stein, Trash or Treasure? It's Trash. Black and Stein is Trash. The only reason I watched it the second time is for this review. If I didn't have to do this review, I would never have touched it again. I was intrigued by it. Well, me too. That's why I watched it a few years ago for the top five underrated Frankenstein movies. Got kind of intrigued cause I had never seen Blackula. I checked it out and yes, Blackula is much better than Black and Stein. So if you wanna choose between the two, throw this one away and watch Blackula instead cause it's actually pretty enjoyable. Way funkier, more fun, and it's just a better movie all around. Too bad Black and Stein was so bad that they didn't continue making these. Should have seen Blunch Black and Bloater Blame. I would have loved to have seen Blunch Black and Bloater Blame. Woo, funky. So until next time, keep drinking.