“Frankenstein’s Bloody Nightmare” basically has its head on tight with intentions of being both experimental and surreal, and in many respects, Director Hand knows how to convey both a nightmarish and surrealist theme with a hazy picture that drifts from plain and sterile to multi-colored and intense. Hand’s film has a very noticeable Lynchian feel as yet another take on the Doctor Frankenstein character. Hand’s film is a pure mixture of sixties psychedelic grind house exploring the sheer utter madness behind a man seeking to help his wife.
Most of the film is based around truly twisted imagery that Hand seems to have a lot of fun with conjuring up much of the shades presented from “Re-Animator” that also mesh well with the plot of this man collecting victims to help his loved one. Hand has a surefire visual sense, and “Bloody Nightmare” is an experience. In spite of all our technological advances, in spite of DVDs and the rise of digital filmmaking, Super 8 still has a valid place in the film world mainly because it’s affordable, its obtainable, and it’s easily one of the most credible forms of film that allow a movie to form a sense of merit and respect. Visuals seems to be what Hand is concerned about most of the time, and that works against ‘Frankenstein’s Bloody Nightmare’s’ favor.
There’s never enough of a cohesive story, and never enough characterization beyond what we should know about the two leads, but most of the time the film is too concerned with flashing and dazzling us with almost grind house effects that it never really cools down and tries to tell a truly cogent story. Most of the time I could rarely hear the spoken dialogue and when I could, nothing seemed to be happening in terms of character motion or plot progression. In spite of being a film that’s often more concerned with visuals than truly complex storytelling, “Frankenstein’s Bloody Nightmare” is quite a demented and interesting piece of experimental/grind house horror filmmaking, and I enjoyed it.