Frankie and the Forgotten Creatures

Critics are dismissing it as a ‘family film’, but it is in fact a Halloween-themed animated feature. As a result, only the dubbed version is currently available, although parents may wish to supplement it with English-language classes for their children. On the plus side, the film is entertaining, clever and well crafted. On a little hill called ‘Collebrufolo’ – that’s what happens when we let the adapters and voice-over artists have their way – there’s a castle full of monsters. And they’re proper monsters: a rather inept mad scientist has concocted quite a few of them. None of them turned out particularly well. Take the child assistant with the leather head, which is two different colours and badly stitched together. Just like Frankenstein’s creature, he’s called ‘Stick Head’. Other specimens are much worse, such as the hairy, one-eyed monster the mad scientist is working on when we first meet him. Then there’s a huge caterpillar with two heads (that’ll teach them not to mess with the man in charge). Outside the castle, there’s an enraged mob, just like in all monster films: pitchforks and burning embers are used to exterminate them; the good citizens won’t tolerate them. A circus arrives; the owner realises straight away that no one in the town wants to see strongmen and bearded women – they’ve already got them at home. But he could expand his collection of oddities. Based on the graphic novels TestaCucita by Guy Bass, published in Italian by Rizzoli.