Alive! It’s alive! In the final days of World War II, a platoon of Russian troops in eastern Germany stumbles upon a secret Nazi lab. There, Viktor Frankenstein (Karel Roden) — whose granddaddy created you know what — is working on an even more diabolical project. At the behest of Hitler, he is creating soldiers who are half-machine and half-human. Like people with machetes as hands and giant fans and propellers as heads. Even a creature with a drill where its face should be. (“Leave it to the Nazis to do something like this,” one Russkie soldier reasons.)
This first feature by Richard Raaphorst gets off to a slow start as the Red Army troops check out the landscape, hoping to find missing comrades. But the movie, filmed in English in the Czech Republic, gets down to serious business once Viktor and his friends join the mayhem. There’s little more in the way of plot, but that’s no problem. “Frankenstein’s Army” is funny and original, with innovative costumes and set designs. It’s sure to please horror fans.