Originally just going under the title Frankenstein, this latest effort from The Asylum is not to be confused with Full Moon's 1998 kiddie friendly film of the same name.

Loosely based on Mary Shelley's classic novel, this has Asylum regular Rhett Giles in the title role as doctor Victor Franks who has been working with nano-technology to try and reanimate dead cells. Told in flashback as he's being questioned by a psychologist to try and gauge his sanity while he's awaiting trial for the multiple murders of some women this follows Dr. Franks experiments on recently disabled Joel Hebner with promises of giving his patient everything he had before his accident. But his promises don't quite pay-off when his subject starts getting violent thoughts that have been transferred from the good doctor's brainwaves - which leads to our newly healed patient brutally razorblading one girl to death.

Eventually the good doctor ends-up having to try and resurrect his star patient after he shoots him dead when confronted about the truth. After messily putting nanobots into the corpse (and mangling it's face in the process) he applies electricity to the corpse and brings back a monstrous being with a mean streak. Using his newly created beast he sets-out to get revenge on anyone who went against his work which results in a few pleasingly bloody set pieces such as one girl getting her heart ripped out in the bathtub.

It doesn't get much more awesome when a movie starts off with someone gorily getting their legs ripped off and writer-director Leigh Slawner, using the name Leigh Scott, gets good use out of lighting (such as an overhead swinging lamp) and an effect that looks like a camera flash during the death scenes. However it seems that he's trying to cram too much plot into his fairly brief 84 minute runtime and eventually his movie becomes a fairly standard "monster flick" in the finale with Dr. Franks creation tearing people limb from limb in a rage.

That's not to say that Frankenstein Reborn isn't still a highly enjoyable time. Science and horror usually mixes pretty well and while some of the procedures used are somewhat sketchy it still manages to be interesting. The acting is steady all around with Giles decent in the lead and newcomer Hebner turning in an actually quite good performance as the tortured monster. The gore effects are pretty well done, the creature make-up is above average and looks pretty damn cool, and there's a bit of hacksaw nastiness in the finale for gorehounds to enjoy.

The Asylum have been making a name for themselves in the B-movie realm by releasing a new in-house production monthly and while most of them are hit-or-miss there's a few of them that have managed to rise above the pack, Frankenstein Reborn is one of them and probably The Asylum's best movie yet.

Visit The Asylum for more info. (Chris Hartley, 8/19/05)

Directed By: Leigh Scott (Leigh Slawner).
Written By: Leigh Scott (Leigh Slawner).

Starring: Rhett Giles, Tom Downey, Joel Hebner, Eliza Swenson.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: While the clarity here is prety solid the picture is plagued with problems. Throughout the entire film there's lots of scattered bits of grain and pixelization rears its ugly head more than once. It's still watchable, but these issues tend to be a little distracting.

Extras: We get a trailer (plus trailers for H.G. Wells' War Of The Worlds, Hide And Creep, Legion Of The Dead, and Jolly Roger), an okay "behind-the-scenes" featurette, five deleted scenes, a blooper reel, and a group commentary track that's just a whole slew of people involved in the film basically goofing off (and sometimes it's hard to hear some of them doing it).