―We’re from the future, and it’s time to kick some Frankenstein ass.
And no, this is not Bill & Ted’s Another Bogus Journey to put Frankenstein into the Iron Maiden… Army of Frankensteins is a… movie… where weird shit happens, all over the place, literally. Made by a group of young, ambitious and hyperactive amateurs that apparently had the time of their lives while making it. And not to be confused with Frankenstein’s Army, which was released the same year as this. The plot for Army of Frankensteins goes, uuhm… starts something like this:
We’re in Virginia, the year is 1809 in the middle of a civil war. A nurse named Maggie is escaping from a group of Confederacy soldiers. She runs into some dude…and is about to have sex… suddenly, a horde of Frankenstein’s monsters show up and rips the dude’s arm off. Maggie runs screaming into the woods.
We jump to present time where the young grocery clerk is preparing to propose to his girlfriend Ashley. And that goes straight into the shitter as Ashley is an NPC who’s not programmed to be proposed to. She loves him though, even though the stiff and wooden high-school play-acting and dialogues is as convincing as Mr. Beast’s creepy smile.
After the failed proposal, Alan walks home and gets beaten by two slobs. A kid with a gun comes and rescues him and makes sure that he gets zapped unconscious so he can bring him to a warehouse lab where he wakes up, in a dentist chair. He gets met by a strange old man that he earlier met in the grocery, and yes, he is Victor Frankenstein himself. He goes by the name Dr. Tanner Finski, but he’s not fooling anyone. The twelve-year old kid is, of course, Igor (yes, really). Victor rips out his right eyeball which he puts into his Frankenmonster. After some more shit happens, an interdimensional portal gets opened that creates several dozen of Frankenmonsters before they all get sucked in and transferred back to 1865, in the midst of the battleground of the American Civil War. Of course.
So… where do we go from here? The script says… who the fuck knows. We just make shit up as we go along. Alan and Victor get rushed to the nearest medical tent, where Maggie also comes in. Maggie who? The maid we saw in the beginning. And Igor? He’s somewhere, getting chased by Frankenmonsters. Some soldier with one of the many epic fake mustaches takes a green serum from Igor. Alan sees visions of the original Frankenmonster’s POV. They must die…ALL OF THEM, Victor shouts before he dies. Alan teams up with Igor, Maggie and a Union soldier with a fake mustache to kick some Frankenstein ass… and a handful of Confederates/South Boys on the way, because, well, it’s the civil war, boy!
While it all sounds big and epic on paper, it looks like some role-play gathering at the local woods, where you can say that, well, some people got hurt. Army of Frankensteins is full-on homemade goofy schlock from start to finish and doesn’t try to be much else. There’s some legit qualities to point out here though, such as some solid make-up effects and cheesy fake n’ heavy mustaches that never seem to fall off, even during the battle scenes. The gore is cheap and the use of green screens is what to expect. The plot gets sillier when even Abraham Lincoln chimes in, here looking like he has stage 4 stomach cancer. God bless. And yeah, then there’s Mega Man. Yup, because, why not. Pure infantile amateur-hour movie madness and fun enough if you’re in the right mood. So there you have it. It’s on your favorite streaming site, Tubi.
Director: Ryan Bellgardt
Writers: Ryan Bellgardt, Josh McKamie, Andy Swanson
Country & year: USA, 2013
Actors: Jordan Farris, Christian Bellgardt, John Ferguson, Eric Gesecus, Rett Terrell, Raychelle McDonald, Thomas Cunningham, Lucas Ross, Billy Bean, Shellie Arizu Sterling, Jami Harris Shine
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2620490/
