You haven't heard of it?
Probably for the best.
I think the best sign of what the quality of the movie will be like can be found in the first couple of seconds. We get what apparently was someone dabbing a piece of white paper with brown paint on a sponge for a background and the "Circle Productions Inc." logo which consists of two blue incomplete circles.
Watching people try to evacuate the World's most generic southern "old west" set ever, I get a full list of the cast. Here's the notable names:
Okay, here's the interesting names:
Narda Onyx
Cal Bolder
Estelita
I'm almost 99% sure is isn't supposed to sound like porn.
Oh, and it has an actor named Jim Davis. If nobody says "I hate Mondays" I'm going to be gravely disappointed.
We move to a Mexican family who conveniently switches to English when the camera is on them. They are the last family in the town, hoping to find out what happened to the family's son Francisco. Death and sickness plague the area, and Francisco is the latest one to "take ill.". He currently stays at the mansion painted on the backdrop.
At the mansion, a woman I can only assume is "Frankenstein's Daughter" talks to her brother (Frankenstein's son?) and praises how many electrical storms there are in the American Southwest as she starts up her latest experiment. Rather than have bolts in the neck to conduct the lightning through, she decided a better idea was to take a leftover helmet from a war movie set down the road and paint it to look like something from an 80s Disney kids film.
There's a blinking neon sign in the background I can't figure out the purpose of. Maybe it's supposed to indicate the emergency exits.
(Fun fact, apparently the equipment used in this lab was "classic" equipment used for Frankenstein movies, and was even reused for Young Frankenstein.)
The experiment seems to be a failure and the young man on the table only sits up for a moment before falling back. Frankenstein's daughter calls for her brother to get an injection to try to save him, but the brother (who just wants to go back home to Vienna) instead fills a syringe from a beaker labelled "poison" and injects the dead body with that to, I don't know, make him even more dead, I guess.
Frankenstein's daughter consults a large tome with her grandfather's notes- wait.
Grandfather? GRANDFATHER?
So this movie is only really accurate in the title in the sense that between her generation and the original Frankenstein there was apparently a son to keep the last name going? Why not call it "Jesse James Meets The Next Frankenstein?" Or how about "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein" since it's her last name, too? In fact, her brother is there so it should be called "Jesse James Meets The Frankenstein Siblings."
In case you were wondering, the movie has a 17% rating on Rottentomatoes.
Maria Frankenstein (I refuse to call her the daughter anymore) expositions that there is only one artificial brain left that her grandfather created, and her brother tries to talk her down with the fact that such mad experiments already cost the life of their grandfather and father. Maria scoffs and calls their father "weak for only being willing to do the experiments on paper.
So, uh, how did he die, then? Ink poisoning?
Let's cut away from that boring drama to Jesse James and his simpleton friend "Hank." They're engaged in a street fight for money. Jesse explains that not all of the James boys died at that famous shoot out, and he's been on the run since. Jesse and Hank meet up with "The Wild Bunch," who you might remember from a movie of the same name. They start planning a stagecoach robbery, but one member, Lonnie, isn't eager to share the loot with Jesse James, so he snitches out the gang to Andy Griffith.
At the heist, everything goes wrong. The Wild Bunch get taken out, Lonnie shoots and wounds Hank, but Hank and Jesse make their getaway. The two meet up with the family from the beginning of the movie. The daughter convinces the two to go back to their village to see "the doctor." We're thirty minutes in and so far the only people of note Jesse has met are Lonnie and this family.
After a really pointless scene where Jesse beats and kills a random
Jesse and Hank arrive and Maria agrees to "treat" Hank. So hey, we're halfway in and they finally meet!
The marshal and Lonnie arrive in the village and automatically knock on the one house where Juanita is staying. Meanwhile, Maria and Jesse talk, and she manages to provide a whole bunch of
Later Jesse and Juanita get some alone time, and Juanita tells Jesse that she doesn't trust the Frankensteins and how they've destroyed so many people and families. Way to bring them TO THE FRANKENSTEINS, Juanita.
Maria shows up afterward to put the moves on Jesse, but he turns her away. In a jealous rage, she writes a letter for Jesse to take into town ("a prescription") that actually tells whoever reads it that he is Jesse James. Jesse leaves, a convenient thunderstorm rolls in, and Hank is prepared for the experiment,
Juanita sneaks in, Hank gets the Captain Rainbow helmet put on him, and Juanita watches as Maria tries to fill Hank's new artificial brain with orders. Oh, and she names him "Igor.". Because Igor was the monster's name, right? The brother tries to poison Hank/Igor, but Maria has him kill her brother first.
Back in town, Jesse hands over the note, the pharmacist fetches Lonnie, but Lonnie botches it and gets himself shot. Jesse realizes what happened, and heads back to confront Maria. He meets Juanita on the way back, who explains what happened to Hank. Jesse goes to go back, and Juanita goes to get the marshal because she'd "rather see Jesse dead than wind up like Hank."
Jesse shows up back at the Frankenstein's house, and immediately gets taken out by Igor/Hank. Maria straps him to a table, but before she can don the helmet again to...do something to Jesse, I'm not sure what, exactly, the marshal and Juanita arrive. The marshal finds Jesse, but can't hear a six foot tall actor lumber up behind him and gets knocked out as well.
Maria summons Hank/Igor to kill Juanita, but he somehow remembers that she's his friend and turns On Maria, choking her to death. Jesse tries to talk to Hank, but Hank remembers that his brain isn't his anymore and tries to kill Jesse. Juanita picks up Jesse's gun, closes her eyes and blindly fires two shots to kill Hank.
Yeah, it's about as dull as I make it sound.
Hank gets buried (with a gravestone that reads "He was Jesse James' friend"), Juanita tries to talk Jesse into staying with her, but he decides to go riding off with the marshal instead...for some reason I can't explain. Then the movie ends.
So, how bad is this movie? I'm sincerely disappointed that there isn't an MST3K episode or a Rifftrax devoted to it. The acting is non-existent, the plot makes little sense (if in fact there is any), and e ending just sputters and dies.
Did I mention this was filmed in only eight days? Yeah. I swear that's how long went by when I was watching it.
So how do I feel? A bit better, if only because I think the part of my brain that handles pain has shriveled up somewhat after seeing this.
But hey, if you want to see it, it's now in the public domain and can be found on Youtube here. Or, if you'd rather just sample it, here's the trailer:
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