How could a movie title like Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966) ever live up to the delirious scenario it promises? It's the sort of film that's more fun to imagine than to actually see but that didn't stop the filmmakers from building their creation from spare parts and unleashing it on a public that couldn't resist a wacky premise like that. Roger Corman, king of the quickie exploitation programmer, built a cottage industry on this approach: Create the title first and then make the movie. It's a formula that worked and produced such memorable marquee items as Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent (1957) and Rock All Night (1957). Some of the films were even unexpectedly good, displaying an oddball charm and knack for black comedy - The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), A Bucket of Blood (1959). Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, however, was not the brainchild of Corman but a gimmick hatched by Joe Levine's Circle Productions. Combining two genres which were in a state of decline in the mid-sixties - the Western and the Horror film - screenwriter Carl K. Hittleman brought together two of the West's most famous outlaws and paired them with some infamous horror royalty. The results, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966) and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, were designed as a drive-in double feature from the get-go with Carroll Case serving as producer on both and 73-year-old William Beaudine handling the directorial chores.

Neither film was strong enough to warrant a solo release but as a double bill they proved to be an irresistible and profitable combo which quickly recouped their low-budget production costs - both films were shot in eight days on the ranch of former serial star Ray "Crash" Corrigan (Flash Gordon) in Simi Valley, California. While it may be difficult to find an enthusiastic admirer of either film, most trash film aficionados tend to favor Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter over its co-feature, despite John Carradine's presence as Dracula in the latter (Carradine often referred to Billy the Kid vs. Dracula as his worst movie which was quite an admission for a man with more than 200 film credits to his name). The reason for this is simple: Narda Onyx! As Dr. Maria Frankenstein, she gives new meaning to the term "over the top" as she tears into her risible dialogue with wild-eyed abandon. Whenever she in on-camera, you can bet the scenery will be chewed if not swallowed whole.

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter gets everything wrong from the start beginning with its title. Dr. Marie Frankenstein is not the daughter of Baron Frankenstein but his great-granddaughter and the reason she and her brother Rudolph (Steven Geray) have relocated from Vienna to an unnamed town in the southwest - Transylvania, New Mexico? - is because of its frequent electrical storms. Apparently Europe didn't have those and they are needed to power Maria's brain experiments. After running out of brain donors - mainly children abducted from local families - Maria acquires a new lab rat in the form of Hank Tracy, a sidekick of Jesse James's who has been injured in a gunfight. She transforms Hank into Igor, a mindless slave to her will, but nothing seems to go right for our genius. Her attempts to seduce Jesse fail miserably - he prefers the Mexican villager Juanita (Estelita Rodriguez) - and even her own brother betrays her by intentionally botching almost every experiment. In a climax that prefigures the much more sexually explicit Lady Frankenstein (1971), Maria finally gets the rough treatment she craves from her own creation.

This was the last feature film directed by William Beaudine who got his start in the film industry in 1909, doing odd jobs for producer/director D. W. Griffith. You can't exactly say Beaudine went out in a blaze of glory but Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter has a certain loopy charm if encountered in the right frame of mind (drunk, stoned, semi-conscious or on the verge of suicide). Yes, it has long, dull stretches, the sets are pitiful, the action sequences are lame, the acting borders on the somnambulistic except for Ms. Onyx and the basic horror/western gimmick never gels. Then again, it's hard to resist a movie where the mad scientist has a temper tantrum and angrily turns on its troublesome creation, yelling "Igor, go to your room!" If only Narda Onyx could have been in every scene - and with Ed Wood directing instead of William Beaudine!

Producer: Carroll Case
Director: William Beaudine
Screenplay: Carl Hittleman
Cinematography: Lothrop Worth
Film Editing: Roy V. Livingston
Art Direction: Paul Sylos
Music: Raoul Kraushaar
Cast: John Lupton (Jesse James), Narda Onyx (Dr. Maria Frankenstein), Estelita Rodriguez (Juanita Lopez), Cal Bolder (Hank Tracy/Igor), Jim Davis (Marshal MacPhee), Steven Geray (Dr. Rudolph Frankenstein).
C-88m.

by Jeff Stafford