Return of the Ghost of the Son of the 31 Days of Cheese – Day 10 – Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.

We take a brief detour from jungle pictures for a moment to ponder this film.

Why?

What on earth was the point of this?

It is an attempt – albeit poor and not well done to merge a Western with a Horror Film .

The question here is why do this? What audience were they looking for here? Did their research show a vast untapped need for Western/other gene films?  In 1966?  Much later someone did Cowboys vs. Aliens with not much success and there have been odd attempts to merge Marital Arts films with the Western as well but none did well either as a movie or at the box office.

Anyway this film and it’s companion Billy the Kid vs. Dracula represent the last two pictures directed by William ‘One Shot’ Beaudine.  As the nickname implies he was not a man to waste film on repeat takes even if the boom mike was visible or someone flubbed a line – it wasn’t like anybody was really waiting for the films he made – they were product – to stick on the bottom of a double feature and one assumes with intentional dull patches to drive the folks to the snack bar.

Anyway – the film opens with people fleeing a town in Mexico because well we soon see why – Dr. Maria Frankenstein and her brother  Rudolph (Ru is a lot older and just wants to go back to Vienna even though the police would be looking for him)are here and they have a young man – brother of the female lead – on the operating room table wearing a helmet with antenna and colored in a way which reminds one of the Jamaican flag – despite this amazing technology – the experiment is a failure – Ru doesn’t help matters by poisoning the guy when Maria asks for digitalis – he really wants to go home.

Maria is actually Frankenstein’s Granddaughter (which makes Ru his grandson) but that lacks zing as a movie title so daughter it is. Seems old grand dad left her along with the equipment and desire to do weird science several artificial brains but they are down to the last one. This time,  Maria says,  she needs a giant for her experiment to succeed and she’ll have to merge her brain with the artificial one during the process – and she didn’t do this before she wasted all the other brains why? As noted before Mad Scientists may indeed be scientists but they are not, in general,  good scientists.

She needs a giant so of course cut to

A giant,  a really big guy in the middle of a wild west brawl. He is Hank – friend of Jesse James, a man of massive size and muscle but not really long in the brain department – we are told he and Jesse are  all that is left of the James Gang after Joe Walsh left – sorry – after the great Northfield raid  But they aren’t here just to box -  they plan to meet up with the Wild Bunch to plot a robbery. Who due to Budget cuts are down to three guys .

There is one nice moment where Jesse sees that there only three Wild Bunchers,  as it were,  and says ‘where’s the rest?” so at least someone saw how silly this looked.

The robbery due to the treachery of one of the Wild Bunch goes bad and Hank is wounded – Jesse and Hank manage to get over the border into Mexico and find themselves at the Frankstien’s – where of course Maria is delighted to help the wounded man and what is helmet size by the way?

And she has the hots for Jesse as well but he is smitten by the female lead Juanita – so he rejects her.

Might I add that the guy playing Jesse has the charisma of toast so you wonder why both ladies are so taken with him.

Anyway Hank’s brain is replaced – he is now to be called E-Gor – a helmet is placed on his head – and one on the Ms Frankenstein’s head – somebody hated her to make her do that I have to say – Maria finds out  Ru has been sabotaging the experiments and has Hank-gor Kill Ru and then try to kill Jesse – there is a bit with a Sherriff who pops into the film again after vanishing after the robbery – Maria is killed, Hank-Gor is killed and Jesse  is going to prison it seems or maybe to hang we’re not sure.

Confused and weirdly slow for an 80 minute film – it’s nowhere nearly  a fun as it should have been with a title like that.

Enjoy with German sausage and tortilla chips.