
The Female Monster of Flesh for Frankenstein
Underground Film Series curator Justin Bonthuys contextualizes Paul Morrissey’s cult classic.
In his book on comedy-horror films, screenwriter and actor Bruce Hallenbeck describes the irony in the script of Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) as “[giving] the film a winking detachment, so that you find yourself convulsed with laughter during some of the goriest scenes ever filmed.”
Flesh presents perhaps an ideal representation of the compulsions, contradictions, and aspirations at the “heart” of much of avant-garde underground cinema — no pun intended. The film was originally released under the title of Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein in the United States and West Germany, and although Warhol was only a producer on the project, he likely appreciated the association of his name with this ubiquitous icon of mass culture in a manner similar to his paintings of Campbell’s soup cans and bottles of Coca-Cola. The true “brains” behind the film were those of director Paul Morrissey, who collaborated with Warhol on some of his early films and largely took charge of directing at The Factory after a failed attempt on Warhol’s life in 1968.
Morrissey steered factory output towards B-movie/exploitation-inspired fare that was more in line with Warhol’s early work Batman Dracula (1964) than his later less narrative experimental films such as Chelsea Girls (1966). The continued use of Warhol’s name, however, evoked both the gimmicky promotion tactics used by B-movie studios and an association with the world of high art.
Flesh for Frankenstein features Factory regular Joe Dallesandro alongside acclaimed character actor Udo Kier, who utters dialogue that is both infinitely quotable and — unfortunately — too explicit for inclusion in this post. While its plot mixes author Mary Shelley’s original themes of the consequences of scientific overreach with new ones concerning eugenics and racial purity, these are delivered in such a dry and derisive manner that they become almost incidental or satirical. When combined with ludicrously gory and attention-grabbing effects that were originally designed to be presented in 3D, the result is an unforgettable conflation of the serious and the banal, the grotesque and the monotonous. These elements place Flesh for Frankenstein firmly in what IU Professor Joan Hawkins describes in her book Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde as “a liminal space between the conventional categories of high art and low culture.”
This liminality is what distinguishes much of underground cinema from that of the mainstream and also provides the motivation for many of our screenings in the Underground Film Series, inviting the viewer to appreciate cinema as an artistic medium, while also allowing us to laugh at or relate to what’s on screen and reflect on what it reveals about our culture and the world around us.
Flesh for Frankenstein will be screened at IU Cinema in a new 4K restoration on January 31 as part of the Underground Film Series.

Justin Bonthuys is a Cinema and Media Studies PhD Student at IU. His eclectic tastes mean that he is as likely to enjoy a ’70s exploitation film as he is a melodrama starring his favorite actress, Bette Davis.