The Power of Frankenstein

Lincoln International Studios’ first foray into horror was inspired by Hammer’s successful “Dracula in 1972 AD,” which brought new life to gothic horror but set it in the modern day (making it cheaper to produce)

The hastily written scripts by brothers Bishop and Deacon Lincoln were filmed back-to-back in Yugoslavia (the same area used in the film “Gymkata”) in the blazing-hot summer of 1973; both films starred mainly local Yugoslavian theatre actors, whose lines were dubbed into English by the late Mel Welles.

For Dracula, the actor’s name is under the alias “Radu Warlock,” the actor portraying the Frankenstein monster is listed only as the mysterious “Azrak.”

“The Power of Frankenstein” features a handsome young descendant of the mad scientist travelling to his family home (which looks suspiciously like Castle Dracula). There, he runs into romance, an evil hunchback and the monster, who gives a mostly mute performance. The film again provides several nude village women and an angry monster who tears his enemies apart in a gory explosion of stage blood.

The uncredited actor billed as “Azrak” is believed to be a young Austrian bodybuilder who towers over the cast until he meets his final demise, falling off a power plant dam.

Both films serve as loose modern-day adaptations of their source novels.

The films were marketed as a double feature across Europe in 1974, with additional marketing for Spectra-X, a psychedelic film process that gave the films a very “Mod” feel. They wouldn’t hit the US until 1975 when Trigon distribution ran heavily edited (all of the nudity and some of the gore were removed) but poorly promoted campaigns in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, eventually selling even more heavily edited prints to Television.

While Famous Monsters magazine deemed Radu Warlock “the new king of Horror”, other critics were not as kind. Leonard Maltin called the films “Cheap, crass exploitation of Karloff and Lugosi,” and Roger Ebert deemed the films “pointless knockoffs of movies that aren’t much better,” but in fairness, they were watching the heavily edited US versions, which sacrificed the story.

The films were only released on home video once by Dungeon Video in 1983; these were well-worn TV prints with so many missing scenes that the movie barely made up 80 minutes. A legal dispute forced all copies to be recalled by 1986, and they are now very rare and highly collectible.

When Lincoln International Studios collapsed, its film library was subject to numerous legal battles over ownership and rights. These arguments tied the films up for decades until the warehouse fire of 1992 destroyed the original masters.

Some believe the fire was arson, but it’s never been proven.