Review of Frankenthumb

Introduction

Steve Oedekerk`s O Entertainment brings us another filmette in the Thumb installments, following the successful production of Thumb Wars. This time Mary Shelley`s gothic horror classic, Frankenstein, gets the makeover treatment.

Dr. Frankenthumb wants to create the perfect human being and partners a dead body with a stolen brain. Unfortunately things don`t quite turn out as expected and Frankenthumb creates a monster which rampages out of control. Frankenthumb has a bit of damage limitation to do though as the village mob want action, and they hunt down the monster.

Video

This was shot on video with a 1.33:1 fullframe so the DVD preserves this and presents us with a nice clean video transfer. Colours and contrast are fine and I couldn`t spot any problems visually. Some of the CGI is okay while some shots are a bit cheesy, but I think this just works in favour of the film. As does the poor thumb acting, it`s all in keeping with the premise of a cheap film.

Audio

English, French, German and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtracks are featured here. For a small scale film, the sound here is good. It`s clear and without any other noticeable technical problems at all. The surrounds are hardly used except for some ambient sound which is a shame for a creepy story.

Features

Easy to navigate menus with minimal animation and with only a small selection of extras:

• Storyboards - A small selection of scenes running as a slideshow, taken from throughout the film without any commentary.

• Audio Commentary with Steve Oederkerk (Writer), Mike Deprez (DP), Jorg Dubin (Production Designer), Dave Merrell (Visual Effects Supervisor), Paul Marshal (Producer), and finally David Bourla (Director) via speakerphone. It`s a fun commentary and gets silly.

• Cast Interviews (3:32) - Guess what? Interviews with cast thumbs from the film. Not particularly interesting.

• Outtakes (1:24) - Just what you would expect, some silliness and scripted outtakes. Not interesting after the first viewing.

• Trailers for Thumb films: Thumb Wars, Frankenthumb, Bat Thumb, Thumbtanic, The God Thumb and The Blair Thumb.

• Subtitle Selection - English and Dutch.

Conclusion

Oh dear. Oh very dear. After seeing Thumb Wars: The Phantom Cuticle, I thought the man behind the whole thumb acting phenomena would have it made. I mean, no one else is doing anything like acting with body parts, let alone thumbs. So I was intrigued to see what parodies could be made of other well known favourites, hence Frankenthumb. Talk about a big disappointment.

After just ten minutes, I was struggling to watch Frankenthumb to the end, and it`s only about 32 minutes long. The gags are worse than some of the Christmas Cracker jokes I`ve read and the annoying Italian stereotype is hugely annoying. Maybe it was funny on the page, but Frankenthumb certainly isn`t funny to me in anyway. I think most of the ideas had been put in front of the camera with Thumb Wars so there`s little else to do and watching Frankenthumb shows a lack of inspiration. There`s even a cameo appearance from Franken Batthumb!

The scripting is poor and the thumb acting is poor. I think Thumb Studios needs to pay more attention to the script as well as sets and performance. The next thumb films are: WTW World Thumb Wrestling, Thumbatrix and The Thumbersons so I hope these are a big improvement.

The feature itself here is poor with the only saving grace being the good audio commentary, but this is not something I`d spend money on, no matter how cheap I see it. Thumb Wars good, Frankenthumb bad.