Frankenstein Created Bikers (Best Trash Feature Film at The Optical Theatre Festival 2016) is an exploitation/horror/action genre film shot on 35mm, and which was written and directed by James Bickert. The director is also the author of Dear God No! (2011), of which. Frankenstein Created Bikers (aka Dear God No! 2) is the sequel.
Bickert's new film pays homage to the Hammer filmography of the 1970s (especially the "Frankenstein" cycle of the famous British film production company) but also Stuart Gordon's "Re-Animator" (1985), Joseph Green's "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" (1962) and Victor Trivas' "Beyond Horror" (1959), and then again Carlos Aured's "Terror Rises from the Grave" (1973) but also the cult "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (with Tura Satan) by Russ Meyer (1965).
Frankenstein Created Bikers encompasses several different genres and film decades providing the audience with a rich overview of famous titles, here revised and personalized. The film traverses, in particular, several exploitation subgenres (including Bikexploitation) that, intersected with each other, constitute a kind of huge spider web at the center of which is positioned a complex story from which, like threads of it, unravel the stories of the many characters that populate it.
The hub from which everything arises and into which everything converges is Dr. Marco (Paul McComiskey) and his experiments. With the help of his shady sidekick Klaus (Laurence R. Harvey) he raises from the grave the Impalers, a group of bikers led by Jett (Jett Bryant) to whom he administers a serum to keep them alive. In exchange for the miraculous substance, the bikers must provide the mad doctor with young female bodies to help him complete a human head transplant.
Meanwhile, out of prison, Val (Tristan Risk) sets out on the trail of the bikers to settle a score. The dangerous thief and assassin will be aided by a group of professional killers and some sexy strippers in topless and miniskirts but armed with machine guns. The final confrontation, however, will not only involve the resurrected biker gang and Val's gang.
Frankenstein Created Bikers is a film that astonishes mainly because of its body, so varied and substantial, because of its challenging script and thus its dialogues, rich and never banal, and above all because of the unevenness of its many characters (the cast consists of more than fifty actors including the director himself as one of the bikers). To these must obviously be added the varied genres and subgenres from which the film draws. This is undoubtedly a cinematic work studied in detail and behind which lies hard and manic work.
The vision of Frankenstein Created Bikers homages the viewer to unparalleled entertainment, during which one will have the impression of viewing a multitude of intersecting films. From the biker Jett and his friends to the mad doctor, from Val to the kidnapped girl (Ellie Church), from the assistant Klaus to the manager of the club, each character in this crazy story is well characterized and is able to arouse sympathy or dislike in the viewer but also fascination based on the actions performed and the roles played in the film.
Jett Bryant's acting performance as the resurrected biker, Tristan Risk's difficult one as the sexy heroine who pays homage to Tura Satan in "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" or even that of the chilling scientist (Paul McComiskey). Note also for Ellie Church as the kidnapped girl, for Madeline Brumby as Edna Marco but also for Laurence R. Harvey who in Bickert's film is the mad doctor's right-hand man.
The film is polished in aesthetics to the point of being perfectly retro but also deliberately trashy based on the story developments and the characters involved. From a typical 1970s atmosphere, it moves to 1980s horror but also to trash, grotesque and splatter. A common thread, then, is undoubtedly nudity, veiled or integral, and eroticism, key elements that from the beginning imprint the work to show us even three scenes of oral sex, among other things. What ensues, then, between alcohol, violence and sex, is a bouquet of genres and subgenres in which the director shows that he can juggle finely, giving from time to time, even remarkable directorial peaks for a high-profile final product.
In Frankenstein Created Bikers there is also no shortage of good doses of comedy (how not to laugh during the sequence with Reverend Chainsaw and his chainsaw) but also of horror accompanied by splatter. Of note in this regard is the commendable Special Make-up FX work by Marcus Koch together with Blake Myers, Brett Mertens and Cory Poucher. There are many mutilated bodies and heads that you will see flying, severed cleanly, cut in two by a chainsaw, smashed with a foot, disintegrated by fierce hands...yes because Bickert's film also features two monstrous creatures: a mutant and a bigfoot!
As we have already mentioned, Dear God No! 2 enjoys an important cast. Following are the names: Jett Bryant (Dear GodNo!), Laurence R. Harvey (The Human Centipede 2, The Human Centipede III - Final Sequence), Tristan Risk (American Mary, Harvest Lake), Ellie Church (Headless, Plank Face), Madeline Brumby (Dear GodNo!), Paul McComiskey, Jim Sligh, Billy Ratliff, John Collins, Shane Morton, Rob Thompson, Gia Nova, Elizabeth Davidovich, Nick Hood, Rodney Leete, Diana Prince, Jim Stacy, and a host of others including Jill Gevargizian (The Stylist), also assistant director here.
