Frankenstein's Daughter (1958)

Like with Monster from Green Hell, I don't have much to say in this introduction, as I first learned of this flick in The History of Sci-Fi and Horror, hosted by Butch Patrick, where it was briefly touched on in the documentary's first section, The Frankenstein Influence (I think that's what it was called). And when I say it was "briefly touched on," I mean that they only mentioned it in passing, with Patrick saying it was a sign that, at this point in the 50's, Hollywood was hardly interested in breaking new cinematic ground with the Frankenstein story. They also showed one clip from it, showing a silly-looking female monster raising her head up while lying on a bed (little did I know at the time that that wasn't even the title monster). But that was all I ever saw of it until the summer of 2024, when the Blu-Ray (which, like Monster from Green Hell, was released by Film Detective) was one of a number of things I picked up at G-Fest. And yes, also like Monster from Green Hell, it was from that same vendor I first mentioned in my introduction to Voodoo Man. So, anyway, how did Frankenstein's Daughter turn out? Well, while I don't hate it, as I've definitely seen much worse flicks from around this time period (you've already seen me talk about some of them, like The Screaming Skull), it's not one I find to be particularly enjoyable, either. It's just another dime-a-dozen low budget, independently-made monster flick from the drive-in era, with a cast of characters who are mostly just bland, not so great makeup designs for the monsters, a number of plodding scenes, and a third act and climax that aren't that exciting and go on much longer than they should.

After being dropped off by her boyfriend following a date, teenager Suzie Lawler screams in terror at the sudden appearance of a hideous, female creature on the nearby sidewalk. The next morning, her friend Trudy Morton awakens later than usual in her bed at the home of her uncle, Carter. While she heads off to play tennis with her boyfriend, Johnny Bruder, Suzie, and her own boyfriend, Don, her uncle, a scientist, prepares to continue the work he's been embarking on with his assistant, the mysterious and extremely critical Oliver Frank. Morton intends to create a drug that will allow people to live forever without being plagued by disease, but Frank insists that, at present, it causes certain areas of the body's exterior to become horribly disfigured. Meanwhile, at the tennis match, Suzie tells Don and Johnny what she saw, but they don't take her seriously. When Trudy arrives and hears about it, however, it makes her remember a horrible dream she had the night before, one that involved the same monstrous woman Suzie says she saw. It turns out that it was more than just a dream. Unbeknownst to Trudy and her uncle, Frank's real surname is Frankenstein, and he's the grandson of the original Dr. Frankenstein. With the help of Morgan's gardener, Elsu, who was as an assistant to Frank's father in his own experiments, he's planning to succeed where those before him failed and assemble together a "perfect being" from various body parts. As part of this experiment, he's been spiking glasses of fruit punch that he gives to Trudy with her uncle's formula, which he plans to use to preserve his creation's cells but wishes to see the effects it will have first. When he gives Trudy a stronger dose this time, she becomes all the more monstrous and runs rampant in town, getting the attention of the police. Frank, however, is able to capture her before she's shot and killed and takes her home. At the same time, Morton breaks into Rockwell Labs, where he once worked, and steals some Digenerol, which he feels will ensure his serum's success. In doing so, he unknowingly leads the police to suspect a connection between the theft and the monster. And soon, Frank manages to both complete his creation and bring it to life by murdering Suzie and grafting her head and brain onto its body.

Frankenstein's Daughter was one of only a small handful of feature films directed by Hawaiian-born Richard Cunha, who started out making industrial films and commercials, and also worked on some very early TV shows. Then, in the late 50's, he tried his hand at directing features, making four low budget sci-fi and horror flicks distributed by Astor Pictures, of which this film was the third; the others were Giant from the Unknown, She Demons, and Missile to the Moon. All of these movies were budgeted at under $80,000, shot in just six days, and released throughout 1958. According to Cunha, he and his producer Marc Frederick, with whom he'd established a production company for making these films, were given the title of Frankenstein's Daughter by the distributor and told to make a movie around it; he latter commented, "We were lucky, I guess, that they didn't say Frankenstein's Mother-in-Law." He would later call it his "biggest disappointment." Although Astor had intended for Cunha and company to produce ten more films after they'd distributed his first two as director, with Frankenstein's Daughter being the first of these, only two more were made: the aforementioned Missile to the Moon and the 1960 crime film, Girl in Room 13. After directing the English version of a German film called Dog Eat Dog, Cunha left his directing career behind. He did work a little more as a cinematographer, on TV shows like Death Valley Days and Branded, and most notably, did some uncredited additional photography work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but by the end of the 70's, he was completely retired. He actually opened up a video rental store in Oceanside, California afterward, and died in 2005, at the age of 83.

The most memorable character in the film, as well as the real star, is our resident Dr. Frankenstein, Oliver Frank (Donald Murphy), mostly because the guy is a complete and utter lunatic. At first, he seems to be little more than Carter Morton's cynical, snobbish assistant, always dumping on whatever procedure Morton intends to take in developing the drug that he hopes will wipe out all disease, and commenting that his formula causes disfigurement to certain areas of the outer skin. Morton wonders how Frank could know that, seeing as how they've never tested it on any actual specimens, and why he gets so uptight when asked about his background or when Morton intends to take drastic measures to get the Digenerol he needs for the experiment. As it turns out, when no one's around and he has the laboratory to himself, Frank, with the assistance of the gardener, Elsu, is assembling together a living creature from body parts, the same way as his father and grandfather. Determined to create a "perfect being," he also intends to use Morton's formula to preserve his creation's cells and, in order to test it, has been slipping it to Trudy Morton when he offers her some fruit punch. Twice, this causes her to turn into a monstrous creature that runs out into the streets and causes trouble for him, and the second time, he's forced to quickly whip up an antidote, find her, and subdue and inject her before she brings the police on him. In addition to his insane devotion to his work, Frank is also a complete and utter lech. At one point early on, he makes a move on Trudy, which she angrily rebuffs, and he later meets and makes a date with her friend, Suzie. But during said date, he proves to be really rough while making out with her, and when she refuses and even slaps him, he accuses her of taunting him and even says, "I oughta kill you," before grabbing her and forcing another kiss onto her. After she fights him off again and demands that he take her home, he proceeds to get in the car and run her down, later using her head and brain to complete his creation. When he succeeds in bringing her to life, he gets her to obey his every whim, claiming it's because, "The female brain is conditioned to a man's world."

As you can see, there's nothing at all redeeming about Frank. When he's not being a madman who's willing to commit murder to further his experiments (look how crazy he looks in the scene where he's threatening to kill Suzie), or a misogynist who's violent towards women while getting his rocks off, he's just a condescending jerk to Carter Morton, whom he thinks is an old fool who could get him in trouble with his stealing Digenerol and eventually plots to get rid of him so he can have free reign of his

lab. He's also a moron in many respects, like with how heated and defensive he gets when Morton badmouths the Frankensteins, calling them geniuses, and how he tends to lose his patience and shout at Morton, when he could easily throw him out of the house. The dumbest thing he does is when he, twice, gives Trudy the formula that temporarily turns her into a monster, which then escapes and roams about the town, scaring those who see her and risking getting the police involved, which does eventually happen. Even though he did it to see what effects the

formula would have, you'd think the first time would let him know that this was a really bad idea. And during the third act, when Trudy, once more, rebuffs his advances and makes it clear that she's going to marry her boyfriend, he's intent on doing something similar to her again, telling her, "You've always treated me as a monster, Trudy. Now you're going to be one." Finally, when he succeeds in assembling and bringing his creation to life, he sees her as nothing more than a slave who will obey his every command, including killing others, which he does to get rid of his enemies, as well as proof that he's not the lunatic that others describe him as. In the end, he dies a death that's fairly gruesome for the time.

Frank is aided in his experiments by Elsu (Wolfe Barzell), the Mortons' old gardener who, in actuality, aided Frank's father in his own experiments. Though he's willing to kill in order to get Frank the "parts" that he needs, arranging for a car crash early on, there's a limit to how far Elsu is willing to go. He has affection for Trudy (though he comes off as a creepy old man when he tries to show it) and doesn't like the idea of Frank inoculating her with the formula that makes her become a monster, and is also shocked when he murders Suzie to make use of her head and brain. Unlike Frank, he sees the creature as a living, breathing being, not just some tool, and doesn't like it when he keeps her shut away for a long time. Moreover, when Frank makes it clear that he intends to use her to kill if necessary, Elsu begins to rebel, saying, "That is evil... That wasn't the plan in the beginning. You said you wanted to accomplish the building of a human being. This is no good." He refuses to help, saying that Frank has completed the experiment and he's had enough of all this macabre stuff (a contradiction, given how sinister Elsu acted about causing the accident at the beginning, but he admits that even he doesn't know where this sudden bout of morals is coming from). He really draws the line when Frank, after Trudy rebuffs his advances for the last time, prepares to make her into a monster as well. With that, he threatens to go to the police and tell them everything, despite what it'll mean for him. Thus, Frank has his creation kill Elsu, which she does, despite Elsu trying to talk her down by saying he's her friend and took care of her.

Initially, it seems as though Trudy Morton (Sandra Knight) is going to be the protagonist or, at the very least, a significant character, as it's clear from the beginning, when she talks about not sleeping well the night before and having a nightmare, that she's the monster who comes down the sidewalk during the film's opening and scares the bejesus out of Suzie. And then, early on, when Oliver Frank hits on her early on, only to get rebuffed, he later inoculates her with the serum, causing her to become even more hideous and run rampant throughout town. That, coupled with my recognizing her monster form from that clip in The History of Sci-Fi and Horror, made me sure that she was the title monster. But, once Frank recaptures her during her second night our and cures her, her significance in the plot drops dramatically. In fact, while Trudy does recall another "nightmare" where she saw herself as the monster that Suzie encountered, and she notes that, both times, it was wearing the same clothes she last remembers wearing before she lost consciousness, neither she nor anyone else pieces together that it was actually her. For the rest of the movie, she just notices strange things going on around her house and, at one point, comes face-to-face with Frank's creation, only for him and everyone else to convince her that she really didn't see it after she awakens from passing out in terror. During the third act, Frank, again, makes a move on her, and then tries to turn her into a monster once more, but she manages to escape while Frank has his monster kill Elsu. In the end, the monster nearly kills both her and her boyfriend/fiance, Johnny, with Trudy making no attempt at all to help when Johnny fights the creature by himself, even when Frank isn't restraining her (her reactions to everything that happens during that climax are very stunted and poorly acted). In the end, they both make it out and plan to marry soon.

As laughable as Trudy's initial monster form is, coming off as more like a bad version of Mr. Hyde than anything Frankenstein-related, with those big, bushy eyebrows, darkened eyes, ugly teeth, and messy hair (also, according to Suzie, her skin turns a blue color), it's actually better than the look of Frank's ultimate creation, which we'll get into. Also, when Frank gives her the serum for the second time, you can see a subtle, cost-effective progression in the transformation when she staggers into her bedroom,

with a lot of black appearing around her eyes, before she collapses onto the bed, then raises her head up to show she's now in monster form. And here, this turns out to only be the preliminary stage, for when she walks over to a mirror and looks up at it, she's now even more hideous, i.e. silly-looking, with big, googly eyes, nastier-looking skin, and crazier hair. According to Richard Cunha when he answered a number of questions sent to him by Tom Weaver in the early 80's, while Sandra Knight did wear that initial makeup (and was apparently so hysterical at how she looked that she about had a nervous breakdown), someone else wore the more advanced stage, which you can tell is just a mask.

John Ashley, who plays Trudy's boyfriend, Johnny Bruder, is top-billed, mainly because he'd recently starred in a good number of movies for AIP (he acknowledged in an interview with Tom Weaver that, as low budget as they were, this was, "Really rock bottom,"). However, his role is even less significant than Trudy's, as he does little more than play the part of the best-looking guy in the movie, as well as mostly act dismissive about her claims of seeing and possibly even being a monster, although that doesn't stop her from agreeing to marry him. While there was really no question of it before, during the third act, he does start to come off as more of a decent guy when, upon learning that Trudy's uncle has been arrested, he goes down there to see if he can help and also gets his father, who's a lawyer, involved. And during the climax, while staving off Frank's creation, Johnny ends up mortally wounding Frank in a horrific manner: he throws a bottle of acid at the monster, only to miss and hit Frank in the face with it.

Suzie Lawler (Sally Todd), the young woman who, at the beginning of the movie, sees Trudy's initial monster form after her boyfriend, Don (Harold Lloyd Jr.), drops her off after a date (she has to push him away when he gets a bit too frisky and he leaves rather angrily), finds that, like Trudy, no one believes her story. She gets really frustrated about it and when the monster is seen again and this time is talked about in the newspaper, she's even more irked when Trudy tells her that she "dreamed" about being said monster,

accusing her of trying to steal her thunder. It turns out that Suzie is a bit of an attention whore, and holds a grudge against Trudy for supposedly stealing Johnny away from her. Thus, she decides to ask Oliver Frank on a date purely out of spite, thinking Trudy is interested in him as well. This proves to be a grave mistake, as Frank is first forceful and aggressive with her, and when Suzie pulls away from him and asks to be taken home, he runs her over (she doesn't do much to save herself in that instance, though, and really didn't take the hint that this guy was a psycho beforehand) and uses her head and brain as the finishing touches for his creation. Don, meanwhile, is little more than just a goofball, not taking Suzie's claims seriously until it hits the papers. According to her, he called her numerous times to apologize but she never gave him the chance. At the pool party that Trudy and Johnny put on, Don is clearly pretty miserable without Suzie and tries to make up for it by pulling a prank on Trudy, jumping out of a bush in the backyard with a monster mask on. Though Trudy isn't angry about it, she gets back at him by forcing him to sing at the party (not that he's terrible at it, mind you). At the end of the movie, when everything about Frank has been uncovered, Don comes by with a newspaper about it, but Trudy and Johnny aren't interested, with the latter pushing him into the pool when he doesn't take the hint.

Carter Morton (Felix Maurice Locher) is the typical well-meaning old scientist who, on the one hand, acts as a very nice parental figure to his niece, always looking out and concerned for her, and even encourages her to have some friends over for a pool party. He's also working to create a drug that will benefit mankind, specifically one that will wipe out all disease and destructive cells. But, on the other hand, he's willing to go as far as to break into Rockwell Labs, where he once worked, in order to get a hold of a drug that he feels will make all the difference. He also has to put up with Oliver Frank as his assistant, who's either being condescending and judgmental towards his methods or is constantly overstepping his boundaries and yelling at him, particularly whenever he does something that might get the police involved, much to Morton's growing frustration. In fact, not only do his thefts indeed lead the police to suspect there's a link between them and the monster sightings, but when Morton has to steal some more Digenerol after losing his initial batch, he upsets his heart condition. Not long afterward, Frank grows tired of having to share the laboratory and attempts to kill him right then and there. Morton is only saved when Lieutenant Boyle comes by to question him, since he used to work at Rockwell Labs. Frank, however, spills the beans about his thefts and convinces Boyle to take Morton down to the station, which is the last time he's seen onscreen. When Johnny goes down to try to help Morton, Boyle tells him that he's ended up in the hospital, likely due to more strain on his heart condition, and shortly after Trudy arrives upon escaping Frank, they learn that Morton passed away, never learning what exactly Frank was up to.

At first, Lieutenant Boyle (John Zaremba) and his partner, Detective Bill Dillon (Robert Dix), don't take the monster sightings in town seriously, but when enough people see Trudy's monstrous form, they decide to investigate, in case it's a prank that might get out of hand. The two of them see the Trudy monster and even fire on her, but Frank manages to subdue and take her back to the house before they can capture or kill her. They then talk with Mr. Rockwell, president of Rockwell Labs, and learn about the

recent theft of Digenerol and the negative effects it has, leading them to draw a link between it and the monster sightings. Later, they get a report of another theft of the drug at Rockwell Labs and the murder of a man at the warehouse district at the hands of Frank's ultimate creation after she escapes from the house. Things come to a head when Boyle comes by Carter Morton's home to speak with him, since he used to work at Rockwell Labs. Learning from Morton and Frank that the former did indeed steal the Digenerol, as well as Morton's accusation that Frank tried to murder him, Boyle takes Morton down to the station, where he later has a relapse of his heart condition and dies. When Trudy arrives at the station after escaping Frank and his monster, saying that Frank admitted his name is really Frankenstein and the monster is his creation, Boyle now feels there may be something to her story. He and Dillon go over to interrogate Frank, who, naturally, denies what Trudy said, although they do have their suspicions that he's not being honest about what's been going on. Boyle then leaves to go to the hospital to retrieve Morton's keys, leaving Dillon behind at the house. It doesn't take him long to find the monster and uncover the truth about Frank, but Frank has her kill him. During the climax, Boyle arrives back at the house in time to fire some bullets at the monster, but he has no part in saving Trudy and Johnny.

As for the title character (Harry Wilson), "she" has little-to-no character of her own, although there is some pathos to be had in how her creator sees her as nothing more than both his ultimate creation and a blindly obedient servant who will carry out his every command, treating her like an animal even when she's being docile. As I said, Elsu is much more gentle towards her, and also sees her as a living breathing creature that shouldn't be kept locked away all the time. That's not quite enough to keep her from killing him when Frank commands her to, but she is clearly conflicted about it. Speaking of killing, when the monster escapes from the house after first being brought to life, she heads down to the warehouse district and kills a man working there, though only truly attacks when he smacks her with a crowbar out of fear. And at the end of the movie, when Frank himself dies after accidentally getting acid thrown in his face, the monster is distraught over her creator's death, and is distracted enough to where she catches her left sleeve on fire, ultimately burning alive as a result.

Then, there's the makeup design and outfit, which are ridiculous, to say the least. While the makeup job for the monster's face is certainly not the absolute worst Frankenstein monster design there's ever been, with a hideously deformed right side and a more human-like but still brutish left side, and big, bushy eyebrows, you may notice that it's hardly the most feminine-looking creature, especially since she's supposed to have Suzie's head and brain. In fact, when Detective Dillon comes across the monster near the end of the

movie, Frank says, "Don't you recognize her? Suzie Lawler. Though she's not quite as pretty as she was," to which you're likely to thank, "No kidding." According to makeup man Harry Thomas, the reason for this fiasco is because he wasn't told the monster was meant to be female until he'd already created the mask, and thus, could then only put lipstick on the side one of the mouth. I find this a bit hard to believe, though, since, even though it was a very low budget and they likely didn't have a spare copy of the script

to give to him, as he said, didn't he at least know that the movie's title was Frankenstein's Daughter? Like I mentioned earlier, Richard Cunha said it all started with that title, chosen by the distributor, so Thomas should've at least had some inkling of what was expected. Of course, it's also possible that their memories weren't lining up when they were interviewed. In any case, not only is the monster's design disastrous for a female (Cunha said he literally cried upon seeing it), but so is her outfit, which

consists of what looks like a jacket with a white stripe down the center, some dark pants, the classic big heavy boots and bolts in the neck, rubber gloves on the hands, small coils running from her shoulders down the length of her arms, and bandages wrapped around the bottom, sides, and top of her head. And Harry Wilson does more than his fair share of snarling and growling in the role, and the pained screams when the monster burns alive at the end are actually kind of disturbing.

As it was a very low budget movie shot in just a week, you can forgive Frankenstein's Daughter for not exactly being the pinnacle of filmmaking, as Cunha didn't have the time or the money, nor probably not even the inclination, to get really fancy with his cinematography and editing. When looked at in high-definition, you can see that the movie is competently made, with some good use of shadows and lighting during the many nighttime scenes, and there are some notable shots, like the one on Frank during his doomed date with Suzie, where he looks

completely insane, with a close-up on his crazed eyes highlighted by a shaft of light across them, as he mentally considers using Suzie's brain for his monster; one with Boyle and Dillon reflected in a mirror in the living room when Frank first begins speaking with them; one with Elsu's face in the foreground while Frank stands in the background; and a glimpse at the monster's shadow as she comes down the stairs at Trudy and Johnny near the end. Also, they came up with a simple, economic way to depict

Trudy's transformation by having her looking more and more monstrous between cuts. However, there are some scenes where the direction and editing are just awkward, an example being when Frank kills Suzie, which has these awkward close-ups on her face as he begins to approach her menacingly and a very quick push-in towards her as she stands in the middle of the road, screaming, as he comes at her and runs her down.

Carter Morton's up-scale house, and the setting for maybe 85% of the film, was actually the home of producer Marc Frederic, including both the interiors and the swimming pool. It definitely has the air of the home of someone with a good amount of money to their name, with many scenes taking place in the study/living room, which not only has some fancy furniture in the couch and chair, but also a globe, shelves on the wall filled with tons of books, and a fireplace. The exterior pool area is also quite nice, with a large patio and barbecue section, and the pool

itself a fairly big size. However, when the movie isn't taking place there, it's in Morton's laboratory, full of the expected chemistry equipment, test tubes, and bottles, and is also where Frank secretly assembles his creation, keeping it in a storage area within Morton's old wine cellar, accessed behind some shelves filled with bottles and books. After he brings the monster to life, he keeps her in another storeroom at the top of some winding stairs in the wine cellar. These settings, as well as possibly Lt. Boyle's office

and the scene at the warehouse district where the worker is attacked, were likely shot at Screencraft Studios in Hollywood, although John Ashley said he remembered shooting the "ending" at Harold Lloyd's estate, as his son is in the movie. However, Ashley didn't specify whether he meant the climactic fight with Frank and the monster, or the true last scene with Trudy, Johnny, and Don at the pool (the latter of which, again, was at Frederic's home).

As much as the monster makeup designs leave a lot to be desired, what may surprise you the most about Frankenstein's Daughter is that it's quite bloody for its time. Before Frank inoculates Trudy with the serum a second time, Elsu brings him a severed, bloody hand (it took pausing the image and looking at it closely for me to make out what it is exactly), akin to the severed pair of hands that Victor Frankenstein purchased for his creation in Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein the previous year. When Trudy runs around town in her monster form, Boyle and Dillon

find a woman whose face she apparently clawed, and when the actual monster attacks the man at the warehouse, she crushes him between a pair of large doors and you see a bit of blood come out of his mouth. And at the end, when Frank gets the bottle of acid in his face, the brief shot of him before he collapses to the floor, which, according to Harry Thomas, was actually created using nothing more than a combination of hair gel, lens paper, and chocolate syrup, comes off as quite gruesome.

The biggest issue I have with Frankenstein's Daughter is that it's just rather dull. As entertaining as Donald Murphy can be as Oliver Frank, and as hilariously bad as the monster makeups are, a good deal of the movie is spent with these bland characters standing around and talking. In fact, there are moments where it feels like you're watching a scene play out in a very similar manner to one you saw not too long ago, specifically the two times that Frank gets irked with Carter Morton's stealing Digenerol for fear that it'll lead the police to him, and during the

third act, when Frank twice becomes shocked at Elsu refusing to help him anymore within the span of just three or so minutes, both times sneering, "You refuse?", and with Elsu then confirming and explaining why. There are also a number of scenes where Frank manipulates someone into thinking they didn't see or hear what they actually did: telling Trudy that she really didn't see the monster at the front door, convincing Morton that he left the door to the lab unlocked when he comes in to find Frank there, even though Morton just unlocked it to get in, and so on.

While it shows how Frank is just as cunning as he is a sociopath, it starts to get tiresome after a while. As for the scenes with the monsters, they're not that exciting. Trudy's monster does little more than run around town and get shot at by the police who chase her on foot, until Frank captures her and takes her back to the house. As for the main monster, we do get to see her get to her feet, stumble out of the lab and break her way through the front door (which is completely undamaged later on), and head to the warehouse

district, where she attacks and kills the one worker, but once she returns to the house, she's mostly kept restrained in that storeroom, save for when Frank has her kill Elsu (which is pathetic, as it comes off like she barely touches him) and Dillon, and the climax. And while this isn't uncommon at all for movies from this time, low budget or otherwise, there are numerous events that happen offscreen which we only hear about, like the Trudy monster peeking through windows and clawing that one woman, both of

Morton's thefts (all we ever actually see of Rockwell Labs is the one scene where the police talk with Mr. Rockwell himself at their office), the second of which causes him to collapse from heart problems after stumbling through the door, and his having an attack that eventually proves fatal after he's taken into custody.

Like a lot of these 50's teen horror flicks, there's a section, just a little past the halfway point, where the movie virtually stops to focus on the pool party the teens are putting on, specifically two songs sung by Page Cavanaugh and His Trio: Special Date and Daddy-Bird, both of which involve Don providing backup vocals. As you can probably guess, the songs are cheesy and dated, especially the first, and they serve little purpose other than to pad out the run time, as well as hope to appeal to teens from that era, but the singers and everyone else look like they're enjoying themselves, so you can't help but kind of smile during them. And the sad thing is that, as corny as they are, they're the most memorable bits of music the movie has to offer.

As for the third act and climax, which really starts after Morton is taken down to police headquarters, it's little more than a series of people leaving and going back to the house, invariably being killed by the monster. Frank tries to make a move on Trudy again, revealing who he is, and when she rebuffs him, this time mostly out of fear, he drags her into the lab, where she faints at the sight of the monster, and places her onto a gurney to make her into a monster. This is when Elsu refuses to help Frank anymore, and Frank, in turn, orders the monster to kill him. But

during the chaos, when she corners Elsu in the wine cellar, Trudy uses the distraction to escape. She goes to the police station, tells Boyle and Johnny what happened, and Boyle and Dillon go to the house to interrogate Frank. There, he acts evasive and suspicious, especially about some rustling sounds upstairs, which he claims is Elsu up in his quarters. Boyle goes to the hospital to retrieve Morton's key from his body, leaving Dillon behind to wait for Elsu to "return" after Frank says he's gone out. After Boyle leaves, Dillon hears more rustling and tries to go

speak with the gardener, only for Frank to send him on the wrong track and head up to the storeroom where the monster is kept. Dillon, however, follows him and comes across the monster, only for Frank to sic her on him. After she's killed him, Trudy and Johnny arrive back at the house, only to find it dark and seemingly empty. Upon learning from Boyle over the phone that Dillon, at least, should be there, they search the place and find their way through the lab and into the wine cellar, where the monster comes

down the stairs at them. They're cornered by both her and Frank in the lab, with Frank telling the monster to kill the teenagers (he, no joke, refers to them as "meddling kids" shortly beforehand). What follows is mostly Frank and Trudy watching while Johnny puts the gurney between himself and the monster, then tries to fend her off by throwing random bottles of chemicals at her; at the same time, Boyle arrives and quickly learns something is wrong, even breaking through the exterior window to shoot at the monster.

That's when Johnny accidentally hits Frank in the face with acid and he collapses to the floor. Seeing this, the monster bends down to look at him, when she accidentally catches her left sleeve on fire from a burner on the table. The fire quickly spreads all over her, as she frantically tries to put it out by slapping at it, while Trudy and Johnny escape. They tell Boyle what happened, and he sees the monster collapse to the floor in a burning heap.

Another thing that Frankenstein's Daughter has in common with many of Richard Cunha's other films is that it was scored by Nicholas Carras who, right up to the early 90's, did the music for a number of rather low-rent movies. And as I alluded to earlier, there's not much to be said about his music here, as it's not nearly as memorable as the songs played at the pool party. It's just a bunch of generic, 50's horror/monster movie music, with no pieces or themes that really stand out, save for maybe the music that plays over the opening credits and when Trudy becomes a monster onscreen, but that's me really being generous and desperate for anything to talk about here.

While it is, for the most part, thought poorly of nowadays (not that it got the best reviews back when it was originally released), Frankenstein's Daughter does have some fans, mostly from people who grew up watching it on television and video. I, however, can't call myself one. It's not one of the worst movies I've ever seen, nor is it even among the worst things we'll be checking out this month, but it's also not one I would describe as entertainingly bad. While it is shot well enough, with some nice instances of lighting and camerawork here and there, has some surprisingly bloody and grisly images for the time, as well as some cheesy but charming songs from the time, and Donald Murphy is entertainingly demented as Oliver Frank, it's a mostly dull affair, with a bunch of bland characters you can't really get into, repetitive scenes, a forgettable score, and a third act climax that's quite flat when it should be a major setpiece. And while there is some fun to be had with how goofy the monster makeups are, that can only amuse you for so long. In my opinion, there are many other drive-in flicks from this era that are so much better.