Shameless reposting of my ASSIGNMENT TERROR review

In my ongoing obsession to encourage every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth to see this classically bad Paul Naschy movie I'm reposting my Reader Review from the Jabootu Site last November. That site no longer archives Reader Reviews but I came across it again in my files.

ASSIGNMENT: TERROR
Even if you're not a fan of Spain's King of Horror, Jacinto "Paul Naschy" Molina, ASSIGNMENT: TERROR is sure to please any fan of Bad Movies. It's technically part of Naschy's film series in which he played Waldemar Daninsky, a tormented man endlessly searching for a cure for his lycanthropy, but you don't have to be familiar with any other movie in the series to enjoy this entry. The premise is simplicity itself: aliens led by THE Michael Rennie (on what surely must have been The Day His Career Stood Still) plan to conquer the Earth by frightening us with a bunch of Universal Movies style monsters. Call me crazy, but I think a few Death Rays from a spaceship would go a lot further toward scaring us into submission than a few monsters running loose, but maybe their plan looked good on paper. (To be fair, the script makes noises about how using the monsters will "exploit the superstitions prevalent among the Earth Creatures." So THEN what? We'll all automatically surrender to the nearest extraterrestrial?)
To complete their nefarious plans the aliens (really just corpses animated by alien minds) round up a vampire, a mummy and Naschy's werewolf character. They also recruit what is clearly the Frankenstein Monster although nobody calls it that. Everyone calls it the "Feraxalon Monster", the "Franksalon Monster" and even at times the "Frankensalen Monster". I don't know what the reason for this is, be it legal or otherwise, but it plays on screen as if each character suffers an epileptic seizure whenever they try to pronounce the name "Frankenstein".
Adding to the fun is the awkward English dubbing that, as usual for Naschy's films, makes the dubbing in Japanese Monster Movies look absolutely seamless by comparison!
Completing this slice of B-Movie heaven are the typically bland romantic leads, in this case a supposedly suave detective and an "I don't need a personality - I'm beautiful" type woman.
Naschy/Daninsky, who is at his John Belushi look-alike best in this film, is relegated to virtually a supporting role, but naturally he works to undermine the aliens' Evil Schemes. (Alhough you have to wonder why he bothers! The aliens' plan makes the Bay of Pigs invasion look like Normandy by comparison!)
Determined to leave no cliche unturned, the story even introduces an "emotion vs intellect" subplot as the aliens begin to yield to the feelings (mostly horniness) that the Earth bodies they inhabit are making them vulnerable to.
Other things to love in this Cinematic Smorgasborg include...
The flatulent noises on the soundtrack every time the mummy makes an appearance...
The way the aliens just let the vampire keep wandering around their HQ even though he tries to kill some of them at various times. (Just lock the guy in his coffin or at least carry crucifixes you morons!)...
Love scenes accompanied by what sounds like Tampon Commercial Music...
The way the mummy kills people by giving them Leo Buscaglia Hugs...
The weird bit of werewolf lore that I've never come across outside of Naschy's movies that states a werewolf can only be killed by a silver bullet fired by a woman who loves him enough to die with him.(Would you believe a woman who likes him enough to play Scrabble with him? Sorry about that, Chief!)...
The pointless teaser about a Golem character who may have been cut for time or budget considerations...
I could go on and on but I think you get my point.
By the way, always a class act, Michael Rennie died after making this film and thus avoided sliding any further into John Carradine Chasm.
The only complaint I have about this Bad Movie Gem is the way this film also sells under a pointless "DRACULA VS FRANKENSTEIN" title. This irks me for two reasons; first, it invites confusion with the Al Adamson movie of that name and second, the vampire in this film is NOT Dracula and at no time does he do battle with the Feraxalon/Franksalon/Frankensalen Monster!
I think the bogus "Drac vs Frank" title is what keeps this classically bad movie so relatively unknown.
I have a nostalgic weakness for this film since I first saw it on my local late night Bad Movie Show in the 1970's and it always reminds me of those years of staying up from 1AM to 3AM on the weekends to watch movies like this with my friends.
Nostalgia aside, however, I highly recommend this film for all lovers of cinematic turkeys who, if they're not already Naschy fans just might be converted and find themselves tracking down other chapters of the Waldemar Daninsky saga like DR JEKYLL VS THE WOLFMAN and THE WEREWOLF VS THE YETI, etc.