YMMV / Frankenstein's Army

• Complete Monster: Dr. Viktor Frankenstein, the grandson of the more famous Frankenstein, is working to make an army of nightmarish cyborg flesh golems, ostensibly for Germany but in reality to purge the world--minus himself--of free will. To create his minions he massacres soldiers and civilians alike—even slaughtering a convent of nuns in order to convert their church into a zombie factory—and uses both dead and living subjects—including children—though he feels fresh meat is more effective, and for no reason other than his own depravity extracts parts from his subjects while they're fully conscious. While he claims efficiency as a goal, most, if not all, of his creations are just twisted amalgamations of flesh and machinery with no apparent purpose beyond inducing terror and slaughtering all in their way.
• Creepy Awesome: The Zombots themselves, thanks to their designs running more on Rule of Cool than Rule of Scary, with the two coolest of them probably being the Propellerhead and the Mosquito Man, due to the former being a nearly unstoppable juggernaut with a huge presence and the latter having a very cool outfit and it's unique quadrupedal method of locomotion thanks to having long drills attached to it's arms and legs.
• Designated Hero: Vassili's a psycho and a rapist, Dimitri thinks the doctor's freakish zombie cyborgs are awesome, and everyone is very racist who casually commit war-crimes. Additionally, nobody raises objections to stuffing poor Hans (the boy the squad finds in the Cannibal Larder under the church) down a slaughterhouse chute to see what's down it. Although in fairness they had no way of knowing the rotary zombot was down there. As one reviewer put it "It's hard to relate to the characters when all they have going for them is 'Oh well. At least they're not Nazis'".
• Heartwarming Moment: Despite his bigotry against non-Russians, Vassiliy eventually warms up to his Polish comrade, giving him a hug and working with him to overthrow their nasty commanding officer together.
• Nightmare Fuel: Loads of it, but the crowning example has to be a woman's severed head...attached to a teddy bear. And it twitches.
• Special Effects Failure: Though the film is meant to be amateur 16mm footage shot in the 1940s, a very unsuccessful attempt is made to disguise that it was shot on a modern professional digital camera.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Every single character in the entire movie, save for the trio of German survivors, are complete assholes (it does say something that the Nazis end up being the closest things to good people). The viewpoint Soviet squad is a bunch of hardened war criminals who razed a farmstead at the start of the movie for no reason. The muscle of the squad, Vassili, is a belligerent and bigoted asshat who's always on the verge of flying into a murderous rage, as well as being an unapologetic rapist. The main protagonist, Dimitri, is a ruthless officer who uses his comrades' families as hostages to make sure they go along with his suicide mission. When he gets marooned by the squad for his scumbaggery, any sense of catharsis is ruined by the fact that his comrades are just as bad as he is. The last survivor of the squad, Sasha, seems like a decent enough Butt-Monkey at first, but he doesn't bat an eye at the crimes of his comrades and even lets them murder a little boy in cold blood. Oh, and the aforementioned German survivors? They all die horribly, one directly murdered by the squad and the others callously killed in the crossfire as the squad battle the Zombots. A special mention goes to Eva, who gets horribly turned into a Zombot after getting knocked out by a grenade thrown by the squad.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: In contrast to the above, the practical effects for the monster designs are quite impressive. They are all visually distinct and striking, as well as repulsively grotesque. Many reviews of the film, even negative ones, have high praise for the monsters and state they are the best part of the film.

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