Incognito Cinema Warriors XP - Lady Frankenstein

A review by Nick Peron

The concept of movie riffing is nothing new, centuries ago, our ancient ancestors used to make wisecracks at the expense of poorly drawn cave paintings. In the middle ages, it was common place for locals to go to plays and make jokes during Shakespeare plays (Even though Shakespeare didn't exist back then!) In the modern era, we were given Mystery Science Theater 3000. After a ten year run the series ended, and it's various creators and crew members have gone on to different projects. Naturally, the fan community would branch out and do their own take on the movie riffing. With the advancement of the internet, and the easy access to and the creation of new technologies which make the possibility for someone like you or me to do create a similar concept relatively easily.

Incognito Cinema Warriors XP is just such a project, it's a new series of movie riffing by some hardcore fans of Mystery Science Theater. When the people at Agony Wolf Productions got in touch with me and asked me to check out their labor of love, I said sure. Let's take a look at what these guys have got. We are all self proclaimed movie riffers, and at worse what I could be looking at is just that. But what I really saw blew my mind.

They had sent me up a copy of their second episode, which features the 1972 Italian film Lady Frankenstein. I'll get into that later, let me talk about the guys at ICWXP.

The premise behind ICWXP is this: There is a zombie outbreak, and Rikk Wolf, a surviving member of a squad of soldiers that were supposed to stop them ends up hiding out in an abandoned movie theater. There he is joined by two robots and subjected to bad movies by a mad scientist. The movie is broken up with host segments, where Rikk and his bots discuss the film or get involved in various skits. There are a lot of elements to this series that are very similar to that of Mystery Science Theater 3000, in fact, those who are quick to judge it may simply pass it off as a MST3K clone. To do so would be a great injustice to the work these guys put into this show, because they are funny. Damn funny. And really good at making jokes about the movies they watch.

The characters have a great chemistry, and their riffing bounce off each other, these guys have honed what they have done to a craft that rivals that of the contemporary riffers. I guess part of the reason why I find the riffs so funny is because a lot of them are at a point of reference that I get without having to hop onto Wikipedia and figuring out the pop culture reference. I also like that their humor encompasses not only pop culture references, but observational humor, and there is a dash of toilet humor to make it interesting. Not enough that it's constantly vulgar or profane (not that that would bother me any, but it can develop into a crutch if used to often -- for a good example, just check out my writing at dorkswithoutfaces.)

The theme song is one of the most bitching theme songs I've ever seen for a TV show this side of Metalocalypse (Yeah, can you guess it's done in the key of metal? Yeah, I knew you could! You get a cookie!)

Like I said above, the movie they watch is called Lady Frankenstein. But through the "host segments" of this episode (their second) Rikk and the Bot's have an uninvited visitor: a disgusting slob who hangs out in the lobby of the theater, eats their food, leaves a mess and other disgusting things including hooking up with a zombie girl.

Another interesting angle these guys take with their movie riffing is to have previews of other movies, and riffing these movie previews. Which is new for this kind of entertainment. The preview they sit through is for a movie called Bloody Pit of Horror which stars Mickey Hargitay who is also featured in Lady Frankenstein. This movie is based (and I suspect very loosely) on the writings of the Marque De Sade. Lots of footage of a guy in a red hood torturing women. It also has a guy in a skeleton costume (Think the bad kids in Karate Kid) dodging plastic bats on strings. It looks like it has all the creature comforts of a bad movie.

Getting onto the main feature, Lady Frankenstein. While you may have never heard of the movie before, if you've ever listened to Rob Zombie, then you've probably heard the tag line about it: "Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead?" Taken right off the movie trailer and featured in his song Living Dead Girl.

So does Lady Frankenstein have an insatiable love for the dead? Well not quite but I'm getting ahead of myself here. The movie features Dr. Frankenstein who has a gimped up assistant named Charles, and they're trying to revive the dead. Naturally that's not a cool thing to do and everyone in town wants to give Ol' Doc Frankenstein the torch and pitchfork treatment. Things are complicated when Frankstein's daughter comes home from medical school and wants to help her father in his experiments. Dr. Frank forbids this, however when his latest mockery of god comes to life and kills him, there's nobody to stop his daughter from doing what she wants.

And this is where things start to get weird..... See, Charles has a boner for Frankenstein's daughter, and while she loves his mind she's not about to get it on with a gimp who is old enough to be her daddy. But not to worry, she has a solution: Let's kill the retarded stable hand and put your brain in his body! Trust me, it goes all downhill from there, and we venture into some dark territory.

Thankfully the ICWXP guys are there to make jokes at the movies expense, their riffing is hilarious and bang on, and I would recommend ICWXP to anybody who loves MST3K. It's a ne take on a classic format and these guys are pros at what they do. If you want to check out their stuff, go visit their website http://www.icwxp.com/ where you can see unique online content and order their episodes on DVD (They have two episodes available right now and a third one on the way.) I strongly recommend this series.