What do you get when you cross a classic Hollywood monster film with the setting of a John Hughes flick, and add in elements of gothic and slasher storytelling?  The answer to that puzzling question is Lisa Frankenstein.  Normally, this is not the kind of film this Catholic film reviewer would put in front of his eyeballs.  For one thing, I am going to go ahead and guess that not many of you out there saw any promotional material about this movie.  I barely did myself, and I actually pay attention to such things.  From what I did see, I could tell it had enough of the kinds of themes I avoid to make me not want to watch it.  Yet, I felt that skipping the theater two weeks in a row would have not been in keeping with my mission for The Legionnaire.  Besides, I am also willing to bet that even fewer of you have heard of I.S.S. (2023), the picture that debuted last weekend despite that date.  Thus, you are getting Lisa Frankenstein.  While it is not as bad as I assumed, I was definitely more right than wrong in my presumptions.  As you read further, please feel free to keep score at home as to what this daily Office of Readings adherent did not approve of while watching it.

While her last name does not match the title, Lisa Frankenstein, or just Lisa (Kathryn Newton), is on her way to a party with Taffy (Liza Soberano), Lisa’s step-sister.  We learn some things about them as they go along, namely that they have become siblings through marriage because Lisa’s mother (Jennifer Pierce Mathus) had been murdered roughly a year previously.  Taffy has been trying to get Lisa to be more social as a coping mechanism.  Taffy is also the beautiful and popular one, and while she means well, she does not realize the backhanded offenses she mixes in with her encouragement.  Lisa has been more comfortable spending most of her free time at the oddly named Bachelor’s Cemetary, where she takes rubbings of the different headstones that have been there since the early nineteenth century.  Among them, her favorite is a person with the surname Frankenstein, with a bust above it that she sometimes speaks to, wishing she could be with him.  When Taffy presses Lisa as to any guys at school on which Lisa has a crush, she admits to liking Michael Trent (Henry Eikenberry), editor of the school’s literary magazine.  To Lisa’s surprise, he comes up to her at the party.  Unfortunately, he is also accompanied by Tamara (Joey Harris), who hands Lisa a drink spiked with drugs.  As a storm begins brewing in the skies above, Lisa makes her way to a bedroom accompanied by Doug (Bryce Romero), a geeky kid who makes unwanted advances.  She is with it enough to get out of that situation, and with lightning striking nearby is able to find her way home in her addled state.  She awakens the next morning to Janet (Carla Gugino), her step-mother, angrily yelling from downstairs.  Lisa had smashed the bathroom mirror before going to bed, and Janet is saying that such behavior is evidence of Lisa’s need for institutionalization.  Lisa’s father, Dale (Joe Chrest), is vacuous, more content to go along with whatever Janet says that to stick up for his daughter.  Because of the strained relationship between Janet and Lisa, Lisa declines to go out with the rest of the family that evening.  As she is sitting in her living room watching a horror film, a person crashes through the window.  It turns out to be The Creature (Cole Sprouse), the reanimated corpse of the body lying in the grave over which Lisa has been pining.  In the course of their struggles, he notices the rubbing she took of his name, and points to it.  It is then that she realizes that it has come for because she had been speaking her longings to him, and somehow he had heard them from the beyond.  Yet, before anything romantic can happen, she is quick to point out that she is already in love with Michael.  Still, she decides to keep him a secret, pleased that a goth fantasy of hers has come true.  This proves to be of benefit the next morning when he helps her pick out an outfit for the next day at school.  Picture pique-1980s Madonna, and you got the idea.  This turns heads among those at school, including Michael’s, though Taffy is not approving of that situation.  Meanwhile, at home The Creature decides to exact some revenge on Janet for how she treats Lisa, spitting a worm into Janet’s cottage cheese and peaches.  Janet had been scheduled to head to Milwaukee for a conference, but instead stays home to confront Lisa, once again threatening to send Lisa to a mental health facility.  Instead, The Creature delivers a killing blow to the back of Janet’s head, which is convenient for him because he can now use her ear.  Lisa is unmoved by this, too, eagerly volunteering to dispose of the body.  She next targets Doug, luring him into the Bachelor’s Cemetery so that The Creature can take the teenage boy’s hand.  The next day at school, Lisa is called into the principal’s office as witnesses claim that she was the last person to see Doug alive.  Instead, she pins it on Tamara, who looks roughly like Lisa.  By this point, Lisa has made the decision to sleep with Michael, and The Creature grudgingly takes her to his house.  Instead of a willing crush, she finds Michael in bed with the supposedly frantically worried about her mother Taffy.  The Creature barges in at this moment and, well, removes Michael’s, er, manhood.  Lisa takes the distraught Taffy and chases The Creature to the Bachelor’s Cemetery, apologizing and handing Taffy her mother’s Rosary.  Lisa then finds The Creature, but she cannot bring herself to kill him with the axe she brought.  Rather, she sews Michael’s . . . member onto The Creature and they make love.  At least there is a mock wedding with him putting a candy ring on her finger?  This is their final act, as she has him put her into Taffy’s tanning bed and turn it up to full power, apparently burning her alive as the police arrive.  Yet, the last scene sees them together on a park bench, him reciting poetry after getting a new tongue from somewhere, and her wrapped in bandages like a mummy.

I am sure you noted a few moments in my description of Lisa Frankenstein’s plot that had this Catholic reviewer hemming and hawing.  Still, from a purely cinematic perspective, I kind of dug what the film was attempting to do.  I am referring here to the bold crossover I mentioned in the introduction.  One reviewer I noticed claimed that the film does not quite capture the essence the movies it is emulating.  This criticism is puzzling because it is trying to cover a few bases at once.  Had it been more focused, it could be accused of outright stealing ideas.  Still, the main one it imitates is Frankenstein (1931), hence the title.  I believe this is the one to which the critic is referring.  If not, it was the one I was thinking of while viewing Lisa Frankenstein.  Lisa’s classic counterpart would be Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), the mad scientist seeking to bring dead human flesh back to life.  Dr. Frankenstein and Lisa each become obsessed with their creations.  Indeed, I will be so bold as to say that Lisa’s character is more fleshed out (pun intended) than her predecessor.  Dr. Frankenstein is a two-dimensional character, obsessed with his work, but without any reasoning for why he would be so determined to create The Monster (Boris Karloff).  Lisa, on the other hand, has an understandable motivation with the death of her mother.  The more she gives herself over to this walking corpse, the more alive she becomes, too.  There might be some darkly comedic aspects to Lisa Frankenstein, a lot of which I am not into, but it works better than I think people are willing to admit.

As a Catholic film reviewer, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Rosary in Lisa Frankenstein.  Then again, it is probably only meant as a prop, albeit a token memory of a loved one.  Given how Lisa behaves, I doubt she used the Rosary for anything other than draping it on Frankenstein’s tombstone, or putting it around Taffy’s neck towards the end. Still, since the film has the gothic elements, it is worth mentioning Catholicism’s connection to this cultural movement.  These days, the word “gothic,” often shortened to “goth,” evokes images of people with pale skin and black clothing listening to Marilyn Manson.  I am, of course, being stereotypical.  However, these terms have early connotations, ones that go even further back in time than The Cure, which is mentioned in the film.  The opening credits speak to the period I have in mind, and later Frankenstein is shown to have died in 1839.  This was the era of Edgar Allan Poe, a veritable literary god in the hearts and minds of goths historical and modern alike, who imbued his writing with Catholic imagery.  Of note was his understanding of Marian theology which he imbued in some of his works.  In a more general sense, there was among the Romantics of the time a fascination with relics.  The Church, which stretched back nearly two millennia then (and is almost to that mark now), certainly qualified as, if nothing else, a charming ruin, a quiet place to commune with the dead.  What they did not understand then, and many more today also have the same false impression, is that the Church is alive.  It has had its challenges, to be sure, but it is not something to be fondly thought of like a loved one that has passed away.  To put it differently, the Church is not to be found solely in a graveyard like Frankenstein, but living in the hearts of those who are at Mass on Sundays, or on a daily basis.  It lives every time the Rosary is used for its intended purpose rather than as a decoration.  Nonetheless, there is a historical context behind the inclusion of these beads that needs to be understood.

What keeps me from recommending Lisa Frankenstein are the elements that I have discussed in the previous paragraphs. They do not overwhelm the movie, but they are enough to just put it on the side of distasteful.  I also do not appreciate the preoccupation with death throughout its runtime.  I will give it credit for trying something unique, and for maintaining a consistent tone.  Its release is also interesting since Valentine’s Day will soon be here.  On that day, you will find me at Mass for Ash Wednesday, and I hope you will not be watching this movie.