by Jean-Claude Carriere as Benoit Becker
originally 1957 Fleuve Noir
English translation 2016 Grey Tiger
Jean-Claude Carriere is a respected screenwriter and collaborator with Luis Bunel. He also wrote a series of mediocre Frankenstein continuations.
Frankenstein's Tower is set in 1875. A disgraced mesmerist turned hobo creeper named Vrollo reanimates and controls Frankenstein' Monster, called Gouroull here. Gouroll snaps a couple necks and kidnaps the fair maiden Helen. The creature overcomes Vrollo's influence and kills him, then moves on to menacing Helen.
The townsfolk can't get in the castle where Gourollo is holed up, so they enlist the aid of a Hindu snake charmer to send an army of poisonous snakes in after them. Sure.
Helen escapes, Gourollo escapes, and we're left with almost 30 pages of epilogue and afterword of a 158 page book. I wouldn't mind the short page length if it was filled with more monster and less French talkiness. And if I hadn't paid as much as I had - these are really more suitable for $1.99 ebooks than $11 paperbacks.
I appreciate Frankenstein's monster being evil (or at least amoral) and murderous, as opposed to the sympathetic approach usually given in the 20th Century, but at least in this installment he doesn't get a lot of page time. This version suffers from either a poor, direct translation, or the fact that the French use way too many words. Read Donald Glut for a better version of the same concept.
Overpriced paperback from Amazon.
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