johnnytheboy-979-648760 Clearly filmed on a budget of about what my car is worth, a large portion of that budget was evidently spent very effectively on designing and realising the monsters encountered in the latter part of the film. They are imaginative, and well executed, and for that reason alone I highly recommend it. As some have commented in the message boards, anyone that has played many first person shooter games will recognise the influences clearly, without naming names...The film other than that is fairly what you would expect. It doesn't do anything exceptionally wrong, though the characterisation is scanty at best. There are some wonderful black comedy moments scattered in there. Look out for the moment when an attempt to remove the helmet from a soldier with a head injury, for example.

al1-3 The whole movie felt like the best bits of Doom and Wolfenstein characters rolled into a 'found footage' movie. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, the action cam effect works great in a movie such as this. I was looking forward to what new creation was around the next corner, they are so well done. If you know Wolfenstein's premise then you know that a lot of the creatures in it are lab experiments that were created for Hitler's army. Undead zombies and creatures that have guns and cutting implements molded to their arms and torsos. Lots of blood and gore to please everyone! Enjoy it for what it is, entertainment, both humorous and dramatic throughout and an overall solid presentation. One to watch a few times to appreciate the effort gone into the gorgeous detailed monsters.

TheRedDeath30 This is a found footage indie horror film about a group of Russian soldiers on a mission in Germany during the last days of World War II. Believing themselves to be on a mission to rescue a group of fellow soldiers, things start turning weird when they discover the skeleton of a "something. Soon they encounter a pile of burnt nuns and believe it to be the work of those evil Nazis. Nothing would prepare them for what they are about to encounter, though, as they find the lair of a mad scientist who's been creating an army of bio-mechanical monsters for the Nazi regime. All of this is filmed by one of the Russians, who is supposed to be capturing events for propaganda production.Many people complain about the found footage aspect, but I'm not going to waste my time on that. Look people, if you know a movie is found footage going into it and you know you hate that style, just don't watch it. Why go to an Italian restaurant, then complain that they served Italian food if you know what I mean? The style is not going to go away and it's an effective tool for low-budget horror directors, so get used to it.Clearly, the strength of this movie is the creature designs. The monsters created by Dr. Frankenstein are simply amazing. Each one is completely unique, with its' own look and weapons, coming across as the hellish hybrid of Clive Barker and Silent Hill. The movie never really establishes any real atmosphere or scares, but does carry with it a very nightmarish quality due to these monsters. Where some movies would be content to make them all similar this movie really unravels like a nightmare, as each monster is more horrifying than the last.The problem with this movie is a real lack of plot or momentum. The beginning of the movie is fairly forgettable, giving us random sequences of soldiers trooping through towns or woods. Occasionally, they encounter something bizarre, but these events never really build any mood. The director misses a real chance to create a feeling that something ominous is coming. Instead, it feels like a generic war movie that suddenly changes gears without warning.Once the soldiers enter the bunker of Dr. Frankenstein, the monsters revealing themselves. At this point, the movie really starts to feel like a walk through a haunted house attraction to me. There is little dialog beyond "look behind you, aaaiiieee". There is no real plot development going on. There is no gradual establishment of atmosphere. The found footage aspect does not help this, either, because the camera is very often one angle, one perspective. The end result is that it truly feels like you are the viewer walking through a scary theme park attraction. Each corner and turn reveals a new scene, or a new monster, all of which are impressive, but you never feel that there's a connection from scene to scene, it's just moving on from one to the other. Many have compared this to a first-person shooter game, which would, also, be an apt comparison. Even when we finally meet the doctor, this trend continues. There is a little exposition into why or how he is doing these things, but it generally only serves to continue this trend of cutting from one monster scene to another, with little to connect them.There is a review on RogerEbert.com which states that this movie feels more like a promo reel than a finished product and it's true. It's almost like the creature designers sent a production company this reel with the intention of "look at these creatures we've designed for a potential movie", then someone just tacked on a beginning and said "that's a wrap, release it". As an advertisement for what this creature efx company is capable of doing, it's impressive. As a movie, it leaves a lot to be desired.

ms-omen73 Everything about Frankenstein's Army is a bit of a strange Hodge Podge of things that don't normally fit together. Lets start with the fact that the film itself is billed as a Dutch-American-Czech film, that in itself says strange things and definitely worked to pique my curiosity, as strange is often under rated as far as I'm concerned. One other thing that caught my attention with this one was the art attached to it. Sometimes we tend to take it for granted how much the poster art on any particular film colors or perception of what it may be and whether it would be worth our investment in time or money. So with so many various points pushing me towards the play button I gave in, I mean really we all know it was just a matter of time before I lost the battle anyway!The setting is WWII, and we have an elite recon unit of Russian soldiers who are making their way across the countryside, occasionally coming across some very unusual corpses. These corpse don't appear to be entirely human nor do they appear to be anything actually know to the men. War makes the nerves sketchy enough with out strange half man half something else sparking corpses showing up. Anyway I digress, our band of soldiers receive a distress call from another platoon, so our hero's rush off in aid of their comrades.While searching for their "boys" they come across a farm house, where they make the acquaintance of a German going about feeding some of the animals. (Now I should not have to tell you buuuuuuttt just in case you slept through history, the Germans were the primary enemy of WWII). They try to get info out of him in regards to the whereabouts of their fellow countryman, to no avail. After a bit of torture the German offers to take them to where they boys are, which is where things get really strange...Frankenstein's Army is a hard one to review for me because on one hand its really kind of awesome, but on the other its really not! I find myself both loving and hating it at the same time, and my viewing buddy had much the same reaction to the film. So I guess to be fair I need to speak about both sides.Some of this movie is really very successful. The story itself is fairly simple, war torn land, soldiers trying to find and rescue their comrades, and evil mad Scientist bent on finding his own solution to the raging war, fairly straight forward. Granted there are a few twist and turns I haven't expressed, but as always I do my best not to give everything away,because wheres the fun in that? The film also has some honestly creepy moments in way of visuals. The monsters that make up the Dr's.Army are awesome. Easily some of the most diverse and interesting creature I have seen in some time, and really well executed. It also has some nicely done gore effects, that work well with-in the story line and don't go overboard, which would have been easy to do in this kind of context. The film also has almost a classic feel to it, it looks aged making you feel like your watching something that would have come out in the 60s or 70s era. All of those things are really fantastic about this one.Now onto the other side, what didn't work for me in this film. The biggest singular problem in this one is that its another in the long line of Found Footage genre, which works for some things but not this one. It starts out with a bit of promise with the quality and colors of the film appearing to be what you would expect from the time period. However as it moves forward the found footage concept losses something in the translation and just doesn't at all fit. This film could have been hugely successful had they just filmed it as a straight forward film, instead of trying force it forward as found footage. It has some other slight issues here and there but they are pretty inconsequential in comparison.This is a film that would have been almost guaranteed cult film status if it had been filmed differently. It could still garner a strong following, for no other reason than the Mad Doctors creations which make the film worth watching for sure. Its just difficult to fully engage in this one, I found it impossible to really stay focused on the film, so take a word of advice, before you pop this one on. Make sure all shiny things are removed from view or you may notice a twinkle out of the corner of your eye and be pulled away completely for a few!!! *HeatherOmen* TheHorrorNation.net