Frankenstein's Army at the EIFF

Steam-punk Nazi-zombie-robots beyond your wildest dreams... plus how to reanimate your dog!

In the mood for a gore-tastic Nazi-zombie-robot film? Then Frankenstein’s Army is right up your street. Richard Raaphorst’s first feature length film splatters on to the screens at the end of this month delivering fantastically nightmarish, half-human half-machine creatures that wreak havoc on Soviet soldiers who unwittingly stumble upon a secret Nazi lab. Sure to become a cult horror classic, this darkly comic debut delivers gore-laden carnage against a grungy steam-punk backdrop. ASCUS was delighted to get a first glimpse of the 'The Doctor' and his creations at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Photo: IFFR

Set in Eastern Europe during the Second World War, a battalion of invading Soviet infantry soldiers discover a church that has been converted into a bizarre laboratory for creating the ultimate army of zombie-robots from the notes of Dr. Viktor Frankenstein. Presented as ‘found’ footage from the video camera of Demitri, an amateur film maker within the battalion, we watch as the soldiers discover a disturbing creature that appears to have been sewn together from dismembered body-parts and rusty tools. Though blind, we soon find the beast is not to be messed with, as one soldier ends up with his intestines strewn across the floor.

Searching to find their fellow officers in the basement (uh-oh...) the soldiers enter a maze of small underground tunnels from which more ‘Zombots’ emerge and close in. The Zombots are reanimated corpses, mostly of Nazi soldiers, that have been modified by ‘The Doctor’ to create nightmarish zombie-robots in a staggering variety of forms. There are great lumbering figures with scythes or saws for hands and bulging white eyes; shuffling, growling creatures connected to thick mains electricity cables and one has a propellor in place of a head. The breadth of creativity and imagination that has gone into these designs is fantastic. The individuality of each creature reminds me of the ‘Cenobites’ from Hellraiser, yet the film brings with it the tongue-in-cheek comedic style of The Evil Dead. With a distinct lack of CGI the Zombots have been brought to life with painstakingly created costumes and it is this attention to detail along with the dark and grimy, industrial style of the set that lends the film originality and a cult status that is sure to follow.

The Doctor played by Karel Roden has the classic combinations of stoic politeness and intellectual prowess that often goes hand in hand, in these types of films, with being utterly insane. His brief description of his motivations point to some issues with his father, but do we really care why he is a crazed scientist that remodels humans into an army of zombie-robots that do his bidding? Or do we simple want to see what happens when he transplants half the brain of a Nazi with half the brain of a Communist then reanimates the host body with 50 thousand Volts? Yeah, thought so.

Photo:Dread Central

Obviously this film is immersed wholly in science-fiction. Or is it? In the early 2000’s The Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research in Pittsburgh, USA conducted experiments in which they successfully ‘reanimated’ dead dogs. The dogs were placed in a state of ‘suspended animation’ by replacing their blood with a near freezing saline solution that contained glucose and oxygen. The dogs were clinically dead for 3 hours after which time the blood was replaced and a little like the Zombots, they received electric shocks to bring them back to life. Although some had permanent brain damage, nearly all the dogs return to full functionality. Understandably the centre dislikes the term ‘zombie-dog’, as their research is aimed at saving lives. If used on humans this procedure could buy more time for mortally wounded patients that are, for example, bleeding-out and need to be transported long distances to get to a hospital, as soldiers injured in the battlefield might.

The reanimated dog experiment harks back to those conducted during the Second World War by Soviets scientists and detailed in the 1940 documentary Experiments in the Revival of Organisms. This film shows a decapitated dogs head being supplied with blood and able to respond to external stimuli: licking its chops and blinking. Eerily, this sort of thing is even more common place nowadays as we keep various animal organs alive in laboratories independent of their owners, for medical research purposes. 

To discover more experiments designed to reanimate humans, we need to go back to when the medical practice laws were a little more lax. In 1803 Professor Giovanni Aldini conducted public experiments on recently put to death criminals, to incite ‘galvanic reanimation’ of the dead. This consisted of applying electrical currents to the bodies which reanimated them, but only enough to twitch and jerk their muscles. It was these experiments that inspired Mary Shelley’s famous gothic novel Frankenstein in which a scientist creates a grotesque creature from old body parts and brings it back to life via electrocution. Is the crazed, yet brilliant Dr. Victor Frankenstein of Frankenstein’s Army the son of Shelley’s scientist or perhaps, he himself? Apparently the The Doctor’s father once said “man would be more productive with hammers and screwdrivers for fingers”, but maybe he was just a little eccentric. 

Frankenstein’s Army is a must-see for any sci-fi-horror fan. The gloriously freaky zombots are the stars of the show with a good supporting cast of soldiers to let their blood and guts out in classic horror-comedy style. As to its grounding in reality, the researchers in Pittsburg are set to be trialling their experiment to ‘reanimate’ humans in the near future, though with better motivations than our good Dr. Frankenstein had.