🛑 (Stop) 🔨 (Hammer) ⌛️ (Time): Turns out, Frankenstein IS the Monster After All
Recently it occurred to me that despite my love of the British horror films produced by Hammer Studios throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, I’ve always seen them haphazardly and have never made an effort to watch their most famous series from beginning to end. With nothing else to do and most of the blu-rays/DVDs I needed to do so already waiting on my shelf, I figured now is as good a time as any to see the Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy, Quatermass and Karnstein films in the order they were presented. And, since I’m still paying for this blog, I might as well write about it and share my thoughts with the dozen or so people who might read it.
I started with the Frankensteins largely because a few months back I bought the recent Warner Archive blu-ray for The Curse of Frankenstein and watching it made me wonder how many of the films in the series I already owned. It turned out that of the seven films, The Horror of Frankenstein was the only one I didn’t already have and that gave me an excuse to pick up the 2019 Shout Factory release. Once it arrived, I stacked them up in order and popped one in whenever I had a free 90 minutes and the feeling felt right.
My general conclusion is that it’s a genuinely great series of films with obvious highs and lows that does a lot right and a lot wrong along the way. It’s smartest choice is making the titular doctor the focus and main monster of the series rather than his creation. The fact that this decision seems to have been largely made for legal rather than creative reasons is good proof that often what seems like a barrier is actually a secret doorway to better ideas.
Having read a bunch of books about the Hammer films over the years, it was interesting to me to see when my opinions squared with the common critical consensus (The Evil of Frankenstein) and when they sharply diverged (The Horror of Frankenstein). It was also fun to see the series embrace its exploitation heart more with each subsequent entry, while also surprising to find that as a whole the series largely avoided the outright sensationalism of many of Hammer’s other films. While there’s a definite visible decline in budget/production over the series’ 17 years, it still feels recognizable as a complete entity--even when it brazenly ignores its own continuity.
1. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, Terrance Fisher)
The first and best film in the series, Curse surprisingly succeeds by treating its monster as essentially an afterthought, rather than its sole reason to exist. As a horror icon, Christopher Lee is definitely in the same league as Boris Karloff, but it’s unfair to him to compare them in this particular role. Karloff’s monster is given the opportunity to exhibit true pathos and despair over the confusion of his existence and the hatred he inspires in others, while Lee’s is never anything but a wild snarling animal, devoid of any feelings or interior monologue.
And, as mentioned above, this doesn’t feel like a mistake, but rather a smart way for Hammer to avoid a potential legal challenge from Universal. Switching the emphasis from the monster to his creator really does make them feel like two completely different films beyond the use of colour and 26 year time difference. Universal’s focus on Karloff’s creature was such that it’s entirely responsible for the famous popular confusion of who “Frankenstein” really is, while with the Hammer films it’s impossible to make that same mistake.
This is the youngest Peter Cushing ever looked.
The film starts with a young Baron just after his mother has died, leaving him in charge of his family’s castle and fortune. He promises his aunt to continue the allowance she and his cousin, Elizabeth, depend upon. He then engages the services of a tutor named Paul, but soon his knowledge of science and medicine is greater than that of his teacher and Paul takes on the role of his assistant.
Years pass and Victor and Paul run their experiments on human anatomy while Victor takes sexual advantage of his housekeeper, Justine, who foolishly believes the sex will lead to something more significant. This illusion is shattered when a grown up Elizabeth comes to join Victor at his home after her mother dies. Since she now looks like Hazel Court and is much more in line with Victor’s perception of a suitable wife, she’s welcomed, and Paul--as anyone would--immediately falls in love with her and tries to get her away from Victor, who he now recognizes is a sociopath.
Hazel Court showing why she was one of the queens of this era.
Paul’s belief is justified when Victor murders a famous professor out of a desire to get a perfect brain for his planned recreation of a human life. Unfortunately, the brain gets damaged in a scuffle with Paul and the resulting creature is a wild animal with none of the professor’s memories or intellect. Paul shoots the creature in the eye, killing it, but Victor revives it and uses it to kill Justine after she tells him she’s pregnant and knows about his illegal experiments.
The day before the wedding the creature escapes and attacks Elizabeth. Victor throws an oil lamp at it and the resulting fire causes it to fall from the roof into his lab’s convenient vat of acid. He’s arrested for the murder of Justine and tries to pin the crime on the creature, but since no evidence of it exists and Paul refuses to confirm Victor’s story, he’s given a death sentence and the last we see of the Baron is as he makes his way to the local guillotine.
Coming in at a very trim 82 minutes, The Curse of Frankenstein benefits from seldom stopping to take a breath over its runtime. Despite keeping itself largely inside its indoor sets, it never feels stagebound and talky, largely because the overall production design is gorgeous and the actors are able to make Jimmy Sangster’s dialogue work even when others might have struggled with it.
Photos like this prove that Lee could have given his creature some Karloff-like pathos, but nothing like this can be seen in the actual movie.
The VIP, of course, is Cushing, who manages to be completely compelling while also being totally unlikeable. His Victor is less an anti-hero and more an outright, unapologetic villain with Robert Urqheart’s Paul taking on the film’s nominal hero role (even though you could pretty easily cut his character out of the narrative if you wanted to). Sangster and Cushing go out of their way to make the Baron a truly dastardly figure with his total contempt for Justine and coldblooded murder of Professor Bernstein, who is presented as being as innocent and blameless as a child before Victor pushes him off an indoor balcony.
As stated above, Lee isn’t given any opportunity to do much as the creature beyond stumble, snarl and react when shot. The patchwork makeup job is effective and a definite departure from Jack Pierce’s iconic Universal design. It’s also the second most overtly monstrous design a Frankenstein creature will exhibit in the series, with only the hulking behemoth in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell beating it.
While dismissed by many as trash when it was first released, seen today it’s a sumptuous classy affair thanks mostly to director Terrance Fisher’s refusal to treat the material as straight pulp. With four more Frankenstein adventures in his future, he’s largely responsible for the franchise’s overall success and general immunity from the tastelessness that would inform some of the Hammer films as they went on.
2. The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958, Terrence Fisher)
They should change “dashing” to “dushing” just so it rhymes with this dude.
Turns out the Baron didn’t get his head cut off! Before this impromptu surgery could be completed, he’s saved by the executioner’s assistant, Karl--a hunchback who Frankenstein has promised can be given new life in a new body. A poor priest is guillotined and buried in his place and the Baron reinvents himself as a society doctor named Stein in a new city. When not treating hypochondriac matriarchs and their horny daughters, he treats patients at a local poverty ward--but this turns out to be less an act of charity and more a convenient way to shop around for the body parts he needs for his experiments.
Another local doctor named Hans recognizes the Baron and blackmails him into making him his assistant. Together they successfully transplant Karl’s brain into a new body, but there are two problems. Karl is disturbed to find out that the Baron plans to tour Europe exhibiting his successful experiment, despite the fact that Karl only agreed to undergo the procedure out of a desire to stop being treated like a freak. Also, for some reason, the transplant makes Karl crave human flesh.
Karl is freed by Margaret, a beautiful young nurse at the poverty ward who is only in the film to look really pretty and free Karl when the script demands it. He kills to sate his newfound appetite before dying at a high society event where everyone hears him call out Frankenstein by his real name.
Sadly, Eunice Grayson is given very little to do as Margaret, but at least they allowed her to talk, which is more than Katy Wild and Madeline Smith got.
The Baron flees to the poverty ward, where word of who he really is and what he has done has spread to the patients. They attack him, but he is saved when Hans successfully transplants his brain into a new body they’d crafted after learning from the mistakes they made with Karl. We next see the Baron in his new body (which, tbh, looks exactly like his old one) in London, where he is now a society doctor named Franck.
The Revenge of Frankenstein was made a year after the first film and is the rare sequel that works virtually as well as the original--with many people believing it’s the better film of the two. I wouldn’t go quite that far, since I found myself annoyed by how overtly tacked on Eunice Grayson’s Margaret is into the narrative, which is a major problem the entire series has with its female characters (at least Grayson could be thankful they didn’t make her mute like Katy Wild and Madelaine Smith). Like the first film, it’s made with flair and style and is far more invested in Frankenstein’s villainy than that of his creation.
Michael Gwynn does a great job playing a man who cannot stop himself from becoming a monster and still remains more human than the man responsible for his condition.
Unlike Curse, though, Revenge goes in a completely different direction with its experiment. Despite the lengths he goes to help the Baron, Karl remains a sympathetic figure who just wants to be left alone and lead a normal life--a fate denied him by both god and the doctor. Played by Oscar Quitlak (in his hunchback form) and Michael Gwynne (after the transplant), Karl is presented as much more pathetic and sad than Lee’s creature--who was oblivious to its own monstrosity. Karl, however, is as horrified by his newfound hunger as he is helpless to fight it.
Visually, Revenge is just as impressive as the first film and feels more expansive with its variety of locations. Fisher carries on doing everything he did right the first time with a definite “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” wisdom. Beyond a slightly larger scope the major difference here is the inclusion of some sly humour designed to slip past the censors--including a fun exchange at the beginning where it’s clear that the Baron’s high society patients make their appointments more because they want to be examined by the handsome doctor than because of anything they might actually be feeling.
Though the film’s ending begs several questions, it’s a very fun twist that, unfortunately, Hammer completely ignores in the next film. The idea that the doctor has achieved a kind of immortality by being able to throw his brain into different bodies could have taken the series in some interesting directions (including allowing it to move on into the 20th century like the Dracula series did), but rather than try something different the studio decided that for its third film they’d take a major step backwards and we’d get to see why sometimes lawyers help more than they hurt.
3. The Evil of Frankenstein (1964, Freddie Francis)
Hammer waited six years after Revenge before deciding to make a third Frankenstein film, but Terrance Fisher wasn’t available (he was busy jumping from The Gorgon to The Horror of It All and The Earth Died Screaming around this time), so Freddie Francis was given directing duties.
Hammer’s attempt to recreate the style and feeling of the Universal Frankenstein series proved to be a huge disaster.
Unlike Fisher, who was tasked with creating films that bore little resemblance to Universal’s Frankenstein movies, Francis was asked to do the exact opposite. Evil was being co-produced and released in the States by Universal, so this time Hammer had complete freedom to riff on Jack Pierce’s monster design and other elements they’d previously avoided out of fear of legal action.
The result is my pick for the worst film in the series (although many disagree as we’ll see later).
The mistake is obvious as soon as the creature appears on screen. Played by a hulking wrestler named Kiwi Kingston, you can see the basic dimensions and shape of Karloff’s monster in its design, but the execution is so poor that it looks more like paper mache than dead flesh--reminding viewers of John Bloom in Al Adamson’s Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, which is a comparison no one would ever want to be a part of.
But this wouldn’t matter if the film’s other aspects worked and they don’t. Francis doesn’t have Fisher’s feel for the gothic setting and atmosphere and by ignoring Revenge’s fun twist and essentially rebooting the series to be what the first two films deliberately weren’t, it feels like they’re trying to correct a problem that never existed.
The Evil of Frankenstein answers the question, “What if we wrote a version of the title character who was really, really, really stupid?”
The film begins with the Baron returning to his hometown with Hans (it’s hard to say if it’s the same Hans from Revenge, since it’s a different actor--along with all of the other ways they ignore previous continuity) after having been caught conducting their experiments in another city.
Frankenstein tells Hans that he was forced to leave his home when the creature from his first successful experiment escaped from his castle and went on a rampage before being killed. Despite still being wanted for his crimes, he believes it’s worth the risk to return since he can sell everything he left behind to fund new experiments in a safer location. But this plan is upended when it turns out the locals ransacked his castle after he fled and everything valuable he owned is gone.
Undeterred the two of them decide to venture out into the village, where a carnival is underway. They stop inside the busy tavern and Frankenstein cannot keep his temper when he sees one of his rings on the hand of the local burgomaster. Their identities revealed, they flee into a tent where a traveling hypnotist puts on a show. When the authorities follow the Baron and Hans into the tent, the hypnotist, Zoltan, gets on their bad side and is ordered to shut down his show and leave town. That same night the Baron and Hans break into the burgomaster’s home in an attempt to steal back Victor’s valuables, but they are caught and chased off by the police.
Katy Wild is adorable as Rena, the mute beggar girl, but she wouldn’t be the last of the series’ heroines who’d be reduced to being a silent beauty.
As they escape they end up in the mountains and are rescued by a pretty but feral beggar girl who cannot speak. She takes them to the cave she calls home and Frankenstein is stunned to discover that his original creature is frozen in a solid block of ice. They melt the ice, free the creature and Frankenstein brings it back to physical life, but is unable to restore its mind. Remembering the hypnotist they encountered earlier, Frankenstein concludes that Zoltan may be able to help them. He turns out to be right, but doesn’t count on Zoltan taking complete control of the creature, who he uses to extract revenge on the men who kicked him out of town.
Frankenstein decides to put a stop to this, so Zoltan orders the creature to kill him, but the creature attacks Zoltan instead. As is to be expected by now, the entire lab bursts into flames and Hans and the beggar girl escape while Frankenstein and the creature are presumably killed in the inferno.
Despite what I’ve already suggested, Evil’s biggest problem isn’t its attempt to recreate the formula of the Universal films, but the way it depicts its main character. In Curse and Revenge, Victor Frankenstein is a cunning, remorseless sociopath who is willing to do anything to achieve his scientific goals and as much as we hate him, his genius and determination make him a compelling villain. Meanwhile in Evil, the entire plot of the film depends on him being an idiot. He’s an idiot for returning to the place where he’s wanted by the law; he’s an idiot for not realizing his castle would be immediately ransacked after he fled; he’s an idiot for giving away who he is to the burgomaster; he’s an idiot for trying to rob the burgomaster; he’s an idiot for trusting Zoltan, and so on.
Because of this, Frankenstein comes off even worse than the actual monster with the paper mache face. The film makes Zoltan the real villain and Peter Woodthrope does a really good job in the role, but in the previous two movies the Baron would have easily crushed him without a thought. And rather than this making Frankenstein seem more sympathetic, it just makes him look like a loser.
This shot sums up everything you need to know about Caron Gardner’s “Burgomaster’s Wife”. She’s the second most prominent female character in the film and she doesn’t even have her own name.
When it comes to its female characters, Evil fails to reach even the series’ very low bar. Hazel Court and Valerie Gaunt both managed to leave big impressions in Curse, if just by virtue of their charisma. Revenge reduces Eunice Grayson to a total afterthought, but at least she can speak. In Evil the only two women who are allowed any kind of screen time are Katy Wild’s beggar girl, Rena, and Caron Gardner’s “Burgomaster’s Wife” who not only doesn’t have her own name, but is only there to provide some cleavage in the handful of scenes she appears in. Wild manages to do as much as she can with the thankless role, but it says a lot that they made her a mute just so they wouldn’t have to write dialogue for her.
Fortunately, the next film in the series would correct this and hand the directing reins back to the guy who knew what he was doing.
4. Frankenstein Created Woman (1967, Terrance Fisher)
Made 11 years after Roger Vadim’s breakthrough ...And God Created Woman, it’s hard to say if Hammer’s cheeky title for its fourth Frankenstein film landed with audiences the way they intended--with the implication that our protagonist has been playing God throughout all of his adventures--but at bare minimum it’s a huge improvement over the previous entry, even if it doesn’t rise to the same level as the first two films.
Created Woman solves the issue of resolving Frankenstein’s fate in Evil by totally ignoring it and pretending like that whole film never happened. And, to switch up the formula a bit, it changes his focus from the anatomical to the metaphysical as his experiments now consist of him attempting to transfer souls into dead bodies instead of living brains.
The film begins with a drunken man being taken to the guillotine for murder. His attitude appears to be oblivious merriment until he sees his son watching in the distances. He becomes belligerent, demanding that they don’t allow the boy to witness his father’s execution, but his cries are ignored and his son sees his father die violently. Years later that boy, Hans (a different Hans? He would kinda have to be) is now working for Frankenstein.
This is Hammer’s version of a woman so deformed only the kind son of a murderer would have anything to do with her.
After the Baron and a drunken doctor named Hertz enjoy a successful experiment they send Hans out to get some champagne at the local tavern, where he meets with Christina, a shy young woman who hides her scared face behind her long hair. While at the tavern, three spoiled dandies come in and mock and abuse Christina and her father, the tavern’s owner. After Christina’s father refuses to give them credit, they return later than night, steal some wine and beat him to death. While this is happening, Hans is making love with Christina.
The next day, witnesses note seeing Hans entering the tavern before the owner was murdered. Since his alibi would hurt Christina’s reputation, he refuses to say where he really was and he is convicted and executed for the murder. The news of his death, along with that of her father, drives Christina to commit suicide by drowning herself. The townsmen take her body to Frankenstein and Hertz, who jump on the opportunity to take their experiments to the next level by transplanting Hans’ soul into her body.
Honestly? I liked her more when she was “ugly”.
This not only brings Christina back to life, but it also cures her physical deformities and she is transformed into a jaw droppingly beautiful young woman. Despite her not remembering what happened before she drowned, Christina’s body is taken over by the spirit of Hans, who compels her to take murderous revenge on the men who murdered her father and allowed him to die for their crime. She successfully kills the first two before Frankenstein realizes what she is doing. He tries to stop her from killing the third man, but is too late and once Christina/Hans has gotten their revenge, they return to the water where she originally tried to end her sadness.
It’s tempting, in light of all we’ve learned about Trans identities since Created Woman was made to try and invest some insight into a film that depicts a woman with the soul of a man, but for all it does right, the film almost defiantly ignores the implications of its own concept in favour of a straight ahead revenge feature starring a Playboy Playmate as its killer.
Probably best known (outside of Playboy) for her role as one of “Mudd’s Women” in a classic episode of Star Trek, Susan Denberg is certainly gorgeous but doesn’t have the same impact as other Hammer leading ladies like Ingrid Pitt, Valerie Leon, Caroline Munro and Madeline Smith. In fact, she makes more of an impression early on in the film when we’re supposed to believe men find her hideous than she does after her transformation into full Playmate glory. Despite the film’s setting, her natural German speaking voice was dubbed by another actress with more standard dulcet English tones.
I have no idea what still this movie is from, because this definitely isn’t in Frankenstein Created Woman, but I would watch it in a heartbeat.
While a significant improvement over the previous film, Created Woman also doesn’t give us a Baron at the height of his villainy. While still a prick and totally opportunistic, the plot puts him too much to the periphery for him to really matter and this feels like the first film in the series where he’s a side character rather than the lead. Despite this, though, Denberg isn’t given a chance to take over as its main character, which leaves the film a bit rudderless.
Still, it flies by fast and does a good job of showing how the series benefits from reconsidering the ways the Baron goes about his experiments.
5. Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969, Terrence Fisher)
Out of the later films in the series, Destroyed comes the closest to feeling like a direct sequel to Revenge. Once again, the Baron is a total bastard (the worst he’ll end up being in the entire series) and the creature is very similar to--and even more sympathetic than--Karl from the second film.
To quote the great poet, “GODDDDD-DAYYYYUM!”
Fisher and Cushing make it clear that our flat out evil version of the character is back when the film begins with him decapitating a dude out on the street. The way the scene is shot gives you a good idea what it would have been like if the studio had decided to jump on the obvious “What if Frankenstein was Jack the Ripper?” plotline they never got around to doing.
But before he can put his newly stolen head to good use, he’s forced to flee his lab and ends up at a boarding house owned by a very beautiful young woman named Anna. Anna’s mother is ill and the money she earns renting out rooms are not enough to pay for her care, so her devoted boyfriend, Karl, helps make up the difference by stealing cocaine from his job at a psychiatric hospital and selling it on the black market. Seconds after the Baron overhears them talking about this, he blackmails them, forcing Anna to kick out the rest of her boarders and Karl to aid him in his experiments.
By coincidence, one of the patients at Karl’s hospital is a former colleague of Frankenstein’s who has been driven mad by his work in reanimating the dead. The Baron believes this Dr. Brandt’s research was on the verge of a breakthrough crucial for his own experiments but this information is locked inside Brandt’s damaged mind.
When Brandt has a heart attack, Frankenstein fears this information will be lost forever, so--with Karl’s help--he transplants Brandt’s brain into the body of the Professor who runs the asylum. They take him to a new location, even though Karl fears that Frankenstein will abandon him and Anna in the remote area as soon as he has the information he wants from Brandt. When Brandt awakes inside his new body, he is seemingly cured of his madness but terrified of what Frankenstein will do with him or--even worse--his beloved wife Ella. He convinces Anna to free him, which enrages Frankenstein so much, he stabs her to death with a scalpel.
One of the rare instances where the doctor bothers to think about his clothes while doing mad scientist stuff.
Brandt escapes to his former home and--in a moving scene--tries to convince his terrified wife of who he really is and how she’s not safe while Frankenstein is still alive. She can’t bring herself to believe him and he allows her to leave the house while he waits for the Baron to come for him.
Frankenstein arrives at Brandt’s home. Brandt sets it on fire, but Frankenstein escapes only to run into Karl who attacks him for murdering Anna. Brandt refuses to allow anyone else to have his revenge, so he kills Karl and carries the Baron back into the burning building, where they remain as the credits roll.
Learning from the mistake the series made with the neutered versions of the character found in the previous two films, this time Fisher and Cushing give us a truly diabolical Baron Von Frankenstein, who totally justifies the film’s title. If anything, they--I suspect at the behest of the studio--go a bit too far in at least one scene that marks the one real moment where the series feels as exploitative as the other Hammer films it usually rose above.
“Haha…Wait. You want us to shoot WHAT?”
Midway through the film Frankenstein attacks and rapes Anna. Given the way he treated Justine in the first film, this act of violence itself isn’t out of the question or out of character, it’s just so extraneous and shoehorned in--like one of those scenes in a Roger Corman Filipino action movie that was clearly shot in the States when the original cut came in 5 to 10 minutes too short. It doesn’t further the plot, develop the characters or do anything to justify being in the finished film. It just happens and then isn’t mentioned again and everything we see happen afterwards would still have happened if we hadn’t seen it. And you can tell by the perfunctory way Cushing performs it and Fisher shoots it that neither wanted anything to do with it and just had to accept it as part of their paycheque.
Fortunately, the film rises above this one sour moment and--like I said--really feels like a direct continuation of Curse and Revenge in the best way possible. It also earns bonus points for giving us Veronica Carlson, who feels like the first female performer in the series to be given the chance to make the kind of mark Hazel Court did in Curse--a fact the studio seemed to acknowledge when it hired her to return in the next Frankenstein film.
6. The Horror of Frankenstein (1970, Jimmy Sangster)
I hate it when people insist I’m being a contrarian, because it suggests I’m going against the common consensus just to be an asshole rather than because I actually disagree with everyone. So, I’m not being a contrarian when I say that--despite its reputation as the worst film in the series--The Horror of Frankenstein ended up being my favourite of the seven films.
Dennis Price’s cheerful graverobber is one of the highlights in the most underrated film in the entire series.
That’s not to say I think it’s the best. I’ve already established that I think that honour goes to Curse, but Horror is definitely my favourite and largely for the exact same reasons everyone else seems to hate it.
Despite being over half a century old, Horror represents a trend we’ve become much more familiar with in recent years. By today’s standards it’s less a sequel and more a “reboot” designed to take the series in a new direction. When Jimmy Sangster was sent Jeremy Burnham’s script he was surprised to find that it was basically a remake of his screenplay for Curse. After he declined a request to rewrite it, he was offered the chance to direct it and he agreed. Having already made a serious version of the material, he decided to rewrite the script as a black comedy.
And that’s why a lot of old school Hammer fans HATE it.
But as much as I like the previous films, I really enjoyed Sangster’s sardonic take on the material and think that Ralph Bates does a remarkable job taking over a role that Cushing made so iconic.
Horror begins with a young Frankenstein murdering his father so he can fulfil his dream of going to medical school, where he quickly impregnates the dean’s beautiful daughter. Rather than marry her, he returns home with his friend, Wilhelm. On their way there they see a father and daughter being robbed by highwaymen. Frankenstein doesn’t want to get involved, but Wilhelm insists on stopping the robbery. When it turns out Frankenstein went to school with the daughter, Elizabeth, he has no problem taking all the praise for the rescue he had no intention of making. Not only does he shoot one of the robbers, he also relieves the man of his head.
This is a Kate O’Mara photo gallery now.
Back at his family castle, they’re greeted by Alys, his housekeeper, whose main duties include wearing an extremely low cut dress and sleeping with whoever pays her salary. When it turns out her talents don’t include cooking she ends up hiring Stephen, another former school friend.
More Kate.
The reunions continue when they are visited by Lt. Becker, another schoolmate who is now the head of the local authorities. He asks them about the robbery they intercepted and seems justifiably suspicious about his old friend’s motives.
To get the anatomical materials he needs for his experiments, the Baron acquires the services of a genial graverobber (whose wife does most of the digging). After a local boating disaster, the graverobber’s wife is spared the shovel as the couple picks up more than enough bodies off the shoreline.
As he constructs his perfect body, he looks to find an ideal brain to go with it. He settles on the one belonging to Elizabeth’s father, who he promptly murders. Elizabeth finds out her father was in massive debt and is suddenly homeless and penniless. The Baron agrees to let her stay with him, which upsets Alys. Wilhelm is also disturbed by his friend’s actions and threatens to go to the authorities. Frankenstein plays it cool before electrocuting Wilhelm and dissolving his body in a vat of acid. The same fate is reserved for the graverobber who also gets on the doctor’s bad side.
As is custom in these films, the intended brain is accidentally damaged before it’s transplanted into the new body. Rather than showing the same intelligence as Elizabeth’s father, the creature is a mute monster who murders a man after escaping from the castle. Stephen ends up being arrested for the murder.
Never enough Kate.
Alys, who has learned about her master’s experiments, threatens to expose him if he doesn’t marry her and force Elizabeth to leave the castle. He has the creature murder her and does the same to the graverobber’s wife after she comes to him suggesting she believes he’s why her husband is missing.
With Alys gone, he asks Elizabeth to live with him permanently in the castle--as his housekeeper. She’s shocked and disappointed, but has no other option and agrees.
Stephen is only spared from the guillotine when the graverobber’s wife’s body is found and seems to confirm his story of seeing a large monster murder the man on the side of the road. The monster is seen by a little girl whose father reports the sighting to Lt. Becker. The creature returns to the castle and Elizabeth faints when she sees it. Frankenstein convinces the reluctant creature to hand over the beautiful blonde back to him and--knowing the authorities are on their way--gives the creature a sedative and hides it out of sight in his acid tub.
Lt. Becker arrives at the castle with the little girl and her father. As the Baron argues with the Lt. the little girl cannot help herself from touching the strange objects in the lab. Before he can stop her, she pulls the cord that pours the acid into the tub, completely dissolving the creature. With all evidence of his crimes gone, Frankenstein is left alone to start his experiment all over again.
Ralph Bates (right) was Hammer’s pick for a younger, sexier Baron Von Frankenstein. Today he’s better remembered for being Martine Beswick’s other half in Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde.
In many ways, Ralph Bates’ Baron is as big of a bastard as Cushing at his worst (although at least all of his sex is consensual). But, unlike Cushing, who made his Frankenstein a cold, calculating figure, Bates plays him as a charming and seductive cad who people are drawn to until it’s too late. It’s a different interpretation of the role, but I really enjoy it. While it doesn’t derail the previous films, there are times in the Cushing films where you really do wonder why anyone would have anything to do with this asshole, while Bates at least makes it plausible that people enjoy his company.
Joan Rice gives a very funny and winning performance as the graverobber’s wife. Today she’s best known for playing Maid Marion in the live action Walt Disney version of The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men.
Many critics of the film dismiss its humour, but I found it to often be smarter than I was led to believe. Yes, there are some groaners (most infamously when Frankenstein causes a severed arm to flash the--depending on the cut you saw--V-sign/middle finger), but I genuinely laughed out loud several times, especially during the scenes with Dennis Price’s graverobber and his wife, Joan Rice. Price’s presence here seems appropriate given how many have compared Horror to Kind Hearts and Coronets, Price’s masterpiece where he plays a man who happily kills his way into the aristocracy (not for nothing, but it’s my second favourite movie of all time). His scenes alone elevate the film to something far greater than its denigrators would suggest.
It says something that in a film where Frankenstein has a higher personal body count than his creature does, that his most asshole moment comes when he tells Elizabeth she can be his housekeeper. Given the kind of relationship he had with Alys we know that he expects her to serve him the same way she would if he was her husband, but without any of the benefits, and that she can’t refuse because doing so would mean being homeless and destitute--a position she’s only in because he murdered her father. Some critics have suggested this somehow speaks to Sangster’s misogyny (sensing for some reason that he approves of what the character is doing), but I found it to be the most damning proof of what a true monster this version of Frankenstein really is.
Horror also benefits from the return of Carlson, who is even more gorgeous here than she was in Destroyed, and--especially--Kata O’Mara, who makes Alys so sexy and saucy that you can’t wait for her to return after her scenes are over. Interestingly, despite the film’s depiction of Frankenstein as a non-stop fuck machine, the film is just as chaste nudity-wise as the rest of the series. Apparently the reason for this is that O’Mara was self-conscious about her new breast implants, which is why she’s covered with a bedsheet in all of her sex scenes despite her having some of the most over the top cleavage in Hammer’s history of over the top cleavage.
Sadly, like most reboots, this one failed to stick and it was decided that Cushing would return for what ended up being the last film in the series.
7. Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1974, Terrance Fisher)
After the failure of Horror, Hammer decided to reunite Cushing and Fisher and the result is probably the least successful of their collaborations, but still a fairly entertaining film for the series to go out on.
The film begins with a graverobber making a delivery, but this time his client isn’t Dr. Frankenstein, but instead a handsome young surgeon named Helder. The graverobber ends up narcing on Helder, who is promptly sent to the same psychiatric asylum where Frankenstein is believed to have died. Helder has read everything the Baron wrote and is keen to learn as much as he can about him.
But it turns out he won’t have to get any of this information second hand, since Frankenstein faked his death and is now blackmailing the asylum’s director into allowing him to serve as its doctor, where he is assisted by a very beautiful mute young woman named Sarah, who all of the patients refer to as “The Angel”.
It’s very easy to accept that all of the asylum’s patients would be in love with Madeline Smith’s “Angel”, but it’s much harder to buy that she would unquestioningly go along with Dr. Frankenstein’s more disturbing experiments.
After finding out Helder’s profession, Frankenstein asks him to take on some of his duties, so he can spend more time on his other research. During their first rounds, Frankenstein tells Helder about a monstrous patient who bent the bars of his window and injured himself falling 30 feet to the rocks below. Despite his serious wounds, the man--who Frankenstein describes as more animal than human--took days to die. He also introduces Helder to a genius professor with a history of violence and a talented sculptor whose brain has withered away to nothing.
The next morning, Helder wakes up early and sees a funeral taking place in the outside graveyard. The disturbed pallbearers accidentally drop the wooden coffin and the body of the sculptor falls out with his hands noticeably missing from his body. Later that night, Helder hears the sounds of a wounded animal, which he follows into the Baron’s room. He sees Sarah enter a secret room and follows her into it. Just as he’s about to discover the source of the moaning, he’s caught by Frankenstein, who reveals that he revived the brute who jumped out of his cell’s window and has given him the sculptor’s hands.
Helder comments on the crudity of Frankenstein’s surgical stitching and the Baron confesses that his hands were burned in an experiment and that Sarah is now the one who does the sewing up for him. Helder volunteers to replace her and they work on replacing the eyes the creature lost during his fall.
This wig was a CHOICE.
As usual, Frankenstein wants to replace the creature’s brain with that of someone more intelligent. The professor seems like an ideal candidate, but Helder won’t allow Frankenstein to murder him. Instead, the Baron leaves a document in the professor’s cell suggesting that his mental condition is incurable, which causes him to hang himself.
They swap the brains and the creature gains the ability to talk, albeit haltingly. But, despite the professor’s genius, the creature’s body overwhelms it and it slowly begins reverting back to its animal nature. Frankenstein believes he can stop this happening with a second swap and tells Helder that this time he wants to use Sarah’s brain. Helder is horrified by the suggestion and Frankenstein explains to him that she wasn’t born mute, but instead stopped speaking after her father--the director of the asylum--tried to rape her. It turns out that the professor was only in the asylum to treat a nervous condition, but fought off the director when he caught him attacking Sarah, which is what got him labelled a “violent” patient. Frankenstein used this info to blackmail the director into faking his death and making him the head doctor.
A smarter script would have recognized Sarah’s father as the film’s worst monster, instead of playing him off as lecherous comic relief.
Before this second swap can occur, Helder decides he has to kill the creature in order to save Sarah. He drugs the creature’s food and when it’s asleep tries to stab it with a knife, but it wakes up and grabs his hand. The creature is about to kill him when Sarah discovers them and screams out loud. For the first we hear her speak, ordering the creature to let Helder go. She’s the only person it will listen to and it frees Helder before escaping into the asylum, where it finds and kills Sarah’s father.
Soon the creature is discovered and trapped into a corner by the inmates. Sarah reaches out to it and it looks at her with loving eyes, but the inmates think it’s about to attack her and they tear it apart with their bare hands.
Frankenstein isn’t too disturbed by these events and tells Helder and Sarah things will go better the next time.
Monster From Hell is interesting because it manages to both recreate and correct some of the series previous mistakes. Once again, it gives us a mute woman as its main female character but gives Madeline Smith enough room to serve as the film’s emotional centre. Unfortunately, the script makes a lot of her choices seem bizarre in the context of the narrative--forcing you to wonder why this wounded angel would allow herself to have anything to do with Frankenstein’s insanity, especially when it comes at the expense of the inmates she‘s supposed to care for.
And, once again, we’re introduced to a younger, sexier version of the doctor in Helder, who Hammer was clearly grooming to be Cushing’s replacement should the series continue. Unfortunately he lacks Bates charm and doesn’t really distinguish himself from the long line of assistants the Baron has had over the series.
After the failure of The Horror of Frankenstein, Hammer tried to make Shane Bryant the new face of the Frankenstein series, but by 1974, audiences had moved on from gothic horror.
While this version of the doctor has his eye-raising moments (especially when he casually suggests murdering Sarah for her brain), he’s much closer to the neutered doctor from Created Woman. This is apparent right from the beginning when he comes upon Sarah’s father abusing a female inmate. Previous iterations of the doctor wouldn’t have cared a bit about the woman’s well-being (and--as we’ve seen--wasn’t above committing rape himself), so it’s a bit weird to see him dress down the director for his actions--kinda like seeing Harvey Weinstein telling Bill Cosby that he’s out of line. It doesn’t help that Cushing is forced (or maybe chose) to wear a ridiculous wig that seems to do most of his acting for him in this final go-around.
While one of the most chaste films in the series (the famously well-equipped Smith spends the whole film in dowdy school marm dress that buttons all the way up to her nose), Monster From Hell does allow for the realities of its filmmaking era by being the most gory entry. For the first time we see a brain transplant in its entirety, along with the creature’s graphic eye surgery. But rather than invoking horror, these scenes are totally clinical and the biggest suspense comes from seeing them performing bloody surgery in their best clothes without any smocks protecting them from stains.
David Prowse’s “monster from hell” is definitely the most memorable of the series’ creatures, but it’s difficult to buy the fact that he was supposedly born this way and not a direct result of Frankenstein’s handiwork.
David “Darth Vader” Prowse returns to play the creature after previously taking on the role in Horror. In that film, his makeup basically consisted of a paper mache headpiece that kinda made him look like Michael Berryman on a good day, but here he’s totally unrecognizable. Monster From Hell’s hulking brute is definitely the most unique and interesting looking of the series’ creatures (if you don’t count Susan Denberg, who is the easiest to look at), but it’s really difficult to buy his appearance given his backstory as an asylum patient and not the unearthed caveman/bigfoot he much more closely resembles. It’s hard to believe that such a person in that era wouldn’t be carted around at a freak show, rather than left in a psychiatric hospital. It’s a good impulse taken just a bit too far--less would have been more.
After the goofy fun of Horror, it’s hard not to see Monster From Hell as taking itself too seriously. It doesn’t help that its most overtly comedic performance comes from John Stratton as Sarah’s rapist father. The fact that he’s treated as a joke and not the film’s worst villain gives you a good sense of the narrative’s misplaced sensibilities.
That said, I do like that the series didn’t end with a death we’d be expected to forget about in any next film that might have followed, but instead with the suggestion that there would always be another Frankenstein adventure on its way--that no matter what may happen, he’d always be out there, being a buttmunch and doing terrible things in the name of science.
Hammer Frankenstein Rankings
From Best to Worst (as objectively as I can)
From Favourite to Least Favourite (as subjectively as I can)
The Horror of Frankenstein
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed
The Curse of Frankenstein
The Revenge of Frankenstein
Frankenstein Created Woman
Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell
The Evil of Frankenstein
