DOCTOR GORE (1973)
Director: J.G. "Pat" Patterson
Something Weird Video/Image Entertainment

After spending some quality time with a delectable turkey in Florida (BLOOD FREAK), you might want to venture north to the Carolinas to pay a visit to the infamous DOCTOR GORE, the obscure gore flick from cult film producer J.G. "Pat" Patterson. Do yourself a favor: bask in the glow of the Florida sun a tad longer, because there's nothing but yawns in North Carolina!

DOCTOR GORE (on-screen title: THE BODY SHOP) has a nice enough title to entice cult film fans expecting some good old-fashioned splatter. Unfortunately you have to wade through a lot of talk and a lot of nothing to get to the few scenes worthy of mention. The plot concerns doctor Don Brandon (Patterson himself), whose wife dies in a car accident, leading him to set out on a mission to create the perfect wife with the help of a mute hunchbacked dwarf. And so begins a basic remake/combination of FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, with lots of gore added. As in FRANKENSTEIN, Brandon pieces together the "perfect mate" with body parts of other people. They are all lovely women who are sometimes awake during their dismemberment (shades of LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET). As in BRIDE, the woman is taught how to speak and function normally...until she craves more man than the good doctor can provide!!

What's so terrible about DOCTOR GORE? Just about everything. The saving grace of the film is, of course, the gore. It's nowhere near as graphic as similar outings from Herschell Gordon Lewis (whose films are also not nearly as deathly boring as this one), but the majority of them are quite well-done. A woman whose arms and legs are amputated on the operating table and the death of the hunchback assistant are very striking. And does anyone else notice how weird it is that the repulsive Patterson manages to land young lovelies everywhere he goes, from making out with a woman on the beach to seducing a young housewife at a restaurant? There is some interesting country-western music from Bill Hicks (who is a dead ringer for Harry Novak regular Jack King), but even these scenes feel like padding. There are a lot of talky scenes of Brandon talking to himself or his assistant, the introductory scenes of his creation are bland and cliched, and maybe worst of all, the kiddie theme song that obviously rips off "My Favorite Things" is repeated ad nausem throughout the film, usually on an organ!! DOCTOR GORE is one of those rare films that you can watch in fast-forward and still understand exactly what is going on...and makes you thankful you aren't wasting more time watching the whole thing!

For such a waste of time, Something Weird's transfer of DOCTOR GORE is simply gorgeous! All the colors are perfect and leave the mouth watering. The sound is just fine, but it's the lovely color pallette that will leave many stammering...at both its beauty and how such a mess of a movie could deserve such lavish treatment! I would have rather the more interesting ASYLUM OF SATAN or infinitely more bizarre BLOOD FREAK receive this kind of tender loving care.

Unfortunately, even the extras on the disc don't make it worth owning. The batch of trailers is nice enough. THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF is a fine trailer for the 1962 Jess Franco film. Morpho is the fascinating bug-eyed somnambulist whom Orlof uses to abduct women for his skin graft experiments! BOOTS AND THE PREACHER is a rare sexploitation flick with gore (a man is impaled with a pitchfork), sex, and lots of women with big hair! There is no IMDB entry, but I'd love to see this Southern-based film!THE CURIOUS DR. HUMPP is one we've all seen before: an Argentinean sex film with horror elements, including a strange monster with a lightbulb in his head! The trailer is much better than the actual film, and features some priceless dialogue and women with hairy legs! The American sex inserts are obvious. THE DOCTOR AND THE PLAYGIRLS looks like an art film with little or no nudity passing off as a "controversial" film about the "famous doctor" who had as many women as he wanted. Whatever. DR. BLACK AND MR. HYDE is an exploitation classic. Watch this trailer and I dare you not to want to see this! Bernie Casey becomes a white dude who kills women after drinking a serum! "Don't give him no sass or he'll kick yo ass!" FANNY HILL MEETS DR. EROTICO is one of many terrible (but lost) Fanny Hill films by New York-based Barry Mahon. Would provoke yawns except this one has a horror element with a mad doctor and his Frankenstein-like creation. Looks like fun. Two H.G. Lewis trailers, THE GRUESOME TWOSOME (my personal favorite Lewis film) and THE WIZARD OF GORE, sell both films incredibly well! Plenty of gory highlights and the former features Bill Kerwin as the narrator! TWOSOME is more interesting because it's actually "hosted" by the two villains of the film, Mrs. Pringle and her psychotic son Rodney before the police come and arrest them! I, MARQUIS DE SADE looks very interesting; who knows if it still exists? The camerawork recalls the black-and-white roughies of New York-based Distribpix (especially THE BIZARRE ONES). But it seems geared more towards Russ Meyer fans. The topheavy and underrated Babette Bardot (COMMON LAW CABIN) has a striptease and is victimized by the reincarnation of the Marquis! This is one of Bardot's only three film appearances and her only non-Meyer film, so it reeks of historical value. Also look for stripper Jennie Lee. MONSTROSITY is better known as THE ATOMIC BRAIN and is forthcoming on DVD from Something Weird. Yes, this is the one with the woman who has a cat brain transplanted into her head! The trailer looks more exciting than the actual film. PROFESSOR LUST is an incredibly long trailer; the title character is on trial on obscenity charges and presents the trailer for his film as evidence!! They sure don't make previews like they used to. Even if the film sucked (does it even exist?), I would give kudos to the filmmakers for creating such a captivating trailer. The movie has a hunchback with a mutated face and plenty of nude women in a dungeon! A Peter Lorre imitator will be familiar as THE SMUT PEDDLER from the infamous lengthy trailer. THE WACKY WORLD OF DR. MORGUS is a regional horror film starring a local TV horror host, Dr. Morgus. Looks like it's worth seeing once; somehow a female foreign agent figures into the "plot".

The shorts, however, are a dismal affair. QUEST OF THE PERFECT WOMAN: THE VAMPIRE OF MARRAKESH is a boring 1930s short of an ugly British man searching the world for the perfect woman. I had to force myself to watch this. MANIAC HOSPITAL is more interesting....in what starts out as a standard black-and-white sexploitation sex scene, it instead morphs into a color nightmare! The man and woman develop sores, a woman with bad teeth in a red dress beckons to them as they have sex, and the guy's hands turn green!! Soon he's on an operating table surrounded by surgeons who paint his chest with a red X and tear his silly-putty guts out! I can't continue, it's so bizarre it can't be explained in this review. What movie is this excerpted from?!

A real surprise of an extra is H.G. Lewis' HOW TO MAKE A DOLL. It ties in to DOCTOR GORE in that the hero of the film tries to create the perfect woman. But unlike GORE, Lewis leaves out the graphic violence this time around. The hero is Percy. a nebbish college professor who lives with his mother and various mishaps occur as he uses a machine his elderly friend invents to make a woman who will love him forever (in one instance a stereotypical gay man appears from the machine!). The computer makes wisecracks after every creation (with the voice of H.G. Lewis!). After making out with a variety of women created simply to love, Percy finds his dream girl on campus anyway. The comedy is often very lame, but the film is pretty cute and worth seeing once. But don't even try to understand the twist ending. Narration by Herschell Gordon Lewis is pretty funny, and is reminiscent of his narration for the trailers of JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT and SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS. Those of you who loved Elizabeth Perkins in THE GRUESOME TWOSOME will flip when you see her as the far-out mother with punk-blue hair jutting out in every direction and garish costumes and jewelry!! What a change of pace for this bizarre elderly actress! Also, H.G. Lewis fans will notice lead actor Robert Woods ("Percy") was the hunky stud Rocky in SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS! He apparently had a long career in spaghetti westerns as well. The transfer looks pretty good for this extra feature film, a little muddy in spots, but overall quite acceptable. The SWV watermark is ever present, though.

In addition to the obligatory trailers 'n' shorts, Something Weird has also included an audio commentary with Jeffrey C. Hogue and film historian Cynthia Starr-Soroka. It pales in comparison to Hogue's earlier commentary with Patty Breen on ASYLUM OF SATAN, but this time discusses more in-depth the history of Hogue's involvement in the exploitation industry. It's an interesting listen, but doesn't gel well with the film that's playing underneath it. An alternate title sequence for DOCTOR GORE (for the 80s video release) includes an introduction by Herschell Gordon Lewis touting Patterson as "The Master of Gore". Yeah right. How much did they pay the real Master to say that? Besides a massive gallery of comic book art with rock music by the Dead Elvi, there are not one, not two, but three Easter Eggs! Two are on the main menu: one is the trailer for DOCTOR GORE (for some reason this was forgotten in the Trailers section) and the other is a short clip from Lewis' JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT. Another Easter Egg, the trailer for the underrated AXE, is on the extras page.

Doctor gore may promise a lot, but it delivers little. Something weird video went overboard in the extras and transfer department, but the movie simply does not Follow suit. A hit-or-miss disc, it's worth a rental for curiosity's sake. Just don't get any prescriptions from this M.D. (Casey Scott)

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