The other night Nightangel came over with a selection of new films just arrived from the US. His selection is always magnificent and it's often so hard to choose between what looks like a terrible spaghetti western, a terrible Deer Hunter/Apocalypse Now rip-off or a Jess Franco film.
Sometimes the films are surprisingly good. Alone in the Dark, for example, had some great moments in it, but we didn't hold that against it.
This particular night, armed with his fresh batch, Nightangel presented us with a very difficult choice. Four films with three of them requiring immediate viewing. We ended up watching the supremely magnificent Frankenstein meets the Space Monster.
As if the title on its own wasn't enough to suggest this film is one of the most bankrupt concepts turned productions, the proof is really in the watching. Coming in at 77 minutes, there must have been at least 30 mintues of stock footage: NASA rockets launching; NASA rockets exploding; Army soldiers entering helicopters; Army helicopters taking off; Airforce jets flying over rural areas.
The real genius in Frankenstein meets the Space Monster comes in the form of it's outrageously eclectic soundtrack. Music is not used to add emotion to any particular scene, rather it seems to exist purely as a chance to avoid having to record actors talking. There were entire scenes in which actors went through a conversation which was never heard because the latest song by The Distant Cousins or The Poets (no, I've never heard of them either) was playing instead.
They just don't make shit, morally bankrupt films like that anymore. Nowadays if they make a bad film, it's just a bad film with a big budget that takes itself too seriously. I don't think anyone on the set of Frankenstein meets the Space Monster had any illusions about what sort of film they're making and that just makes it all the more fun.