By 1957, science fiction movies had become a regular part of Hollywood's output, though by then they were aimed mostly at kids. Also, Universal just released their classic horror movies to theater as the "Shock" package. Attention was slowly shifting from science fiction to horror; a Frankenstein story, combining both genres, was clearly a wise business decision. (The same year, AIP made "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.") But no one expected the movie to have the impact it did.
"The Curse of Frankenstein" was one of the first films to feature relatively explicit gore and violence, with shots of detached eyeballs, brains and hands. There's an especially gruesome shot of Christopher Lee, as Frankenstein's Monster (here called "the Creature") being gorily shot in the eye. But while the movie's violence may have gotten people in the door, it was the attitude and Peter Cushing that had the most influence.
The screenplay is by Terence Fisher, and gives little evidence that he ever read Mary W. Shelley's original novel, or even saw one of the classic Universal movies. (Indeed, fearing lawsuits, Hammer veered as far as possible away from the Universal imagery and approach.) Two names from the novel are used, Victor Frankenstein and Elizabeth; otherwise, it's an original story, even seeming to be set fifty years or more after the publication of Shelley's novel.
It opens with Victor (Cushing) in prison for murder. He anxiously explains his story to an appalled priest, hoping to convince people he's not guilty (but confesses to at least two murders anyway!), and we see his tale in flashback. As a boy, Victor, a Baron, hired Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart) as his tutor, and the two eventually began investigating the mysteries of life and death. When they successfully restore a puppy to life (the dog almost immediately disappears from the story), Victor has the idea of assembling a human being out of collected parts, and bringing it to life -- a new life, not merely restored life. Paul is aghast, though just why he considers Victor's ambitions an abomination at this point is not made clear in Sangster's script.
Elizabeth (Hazel Court), Victor's cousin, comes to the Frankenstein chalet (in Switzerland) to live, and eventually to marry Victor. Or such is the plan. Paul tries unsuccessfully to convince her to leave, and finally leaves himself, coming back frequently. Victor murders his wise old teacher, Bernstein, (Paul Hardtmuth) to get his brain for his Creature, but Paul accidentally damages the brain.
Victor finally assembles his Creature, but can't seem to bring it to life, leaving it behind in the laboratory. But lightning strikes his equipment and the Creature comes to ferocious life. The best scene in the film is the sudden self-unmasking of the Creature, revealing (in only mediocre makeup) a gray, scarred face, mismatched eyes, ruined teeth and a really bad attitude.
It wanders off into the forest, where it kills an old blind man and his grandson, and is shot to death by the pursuing Paul. But Victor revives the Creature a second time, using it as a means of eliminating Justine (Valerie Gaunt who, in Hammer style, is anything but gaunt), his pregnant maid. For the first time, a Frankenstein has an active sex life, but this feature of Victor's personality was dropped in the sequels.
There's a final confrontation involving the Creature, Victor, Paul and an unsuspecting Elizabeth. Frankenstein heads for the guillotine, but was back soon enough in "Revenge of Frankenstein."
Terence Fisher directs at a medium, mixed pace; the script seems hastily written, and features several pointless, talky digressions, as when Victor has a mild debate with Bernstein, and later Paul tries to convince Elizabeth to leave. These scenes, and similar ones, add little to the movie except to slow down its pace. Furthermore, the Monster doesn't even come to life until halfway through the film.
"The Curse of Frankenstein" isn't the best of the Hammer Frankenstein movies; the script is lumpy and badly formed, and the structure is awkward. But it was the first of the bunch, the first big hit for Hammer, and features a star-making performance by Peter Cushing. (Bill Warren, AVRev)
The story takes place immediately where "The Curse" ended, as Frankenstein is being ushered to the guillotine. However, as a couple of graverobbers discover not long thereafter, Frankenstein escaped execution. Three years later, in another city, he's passing himself off with a remarkable lack of creativity as Dr. Victor Stein. He's the resident physician at a clinic for the poor, whose patients often undergo what seem to be unnecessary amputations. He's also a society doctor, with eager mothers pushing their daughters at the coolly disinterested Dr. Stein. (His randy nature, so much a part of "Curse," has clearly cooled.) The only one who knows his secret is Karl (Oscar Quitak), who's described in the credits rather mysteriously as a "dwarf," when he's of normal size. But he does have a stiff leg and a paralyzed arm.
Beautiful Margaret (Eunice Gayson), who's already caught the besmitten eye of Karl, also begins working at the clinic. After the brain transfer, she tends Karl, who's supposed to stay immobile for some time following his surgery. But she loosens his bonds, and he goes to Frankenstein's secret lab to destroy his original body. This, however, leads to real problems, especially when a janitor, in a remarkably unmotivated fight, whacks Karl over his new head. This triggers all kinds of stuff: not only does Karl begin thinking along cannibalistic lines (a plot development that the movie tends to gingerly shy away from), but all too soon his deformities begin recurring, and he starts looking pretty damned ugly. (Though a long way from Christopher Lee in "The Curse.") The movie concludes with an amusing, imaginative twist that, alas, the later films in the series ignored.
Much better-paced than "The Curse of Frankenstein," "The Revenge" moves along at a brisk pace, throwing in entertaining gore whenever necessary. Frankenstein demonstrates a set of disembodied eyeballs to Kleve: they move about their tank, tracking a Bunsen burner. This got laughs even in 1958. But the shots of brains being dropped into preservative fluid didn't.
menace. After the post-operation Karl begins acting like a real Monster, he threatens a couple of people (killing some of them), but Frankenstein himself is not, until the very end, in any danger. Nor, oddly enough, is Margaret, who has nothing but a nurse/doctor relationship with either Frankenstein or Kleve. The story isn't so much a plot as an incident in the life of Frankenstein; there's little sense of building logically to a climax. There's an amusingly disgusting patient (well played by Richard Wordsworth) who provides some color, and who unaccountably and unpredictably turns against Frankenstein toward the end. But he's not a threat until then.
It's a better-made film than "The Curse of Frankenstein," more adult and responsible with better production values. But there's evidence of rewriting and of scenes being dropped. At one point, Karl lunges after a beautiful girl to kill (and maybe devour) her -- but when the scene begins he already has blood on his mouth. Why?
But overall, it's a far better movie than the similarly-budgeted American films of the time, and much more obviously aimed at adults. And Hammer films were always much better acted than their American contemporaries, even if you count only as far as Peter Cushing. Frankenstein this time is less of a zealot than he was in the first movie, but he's still a dandy, and Cushing again has inventive fun with props, always to expand his character and add visual interest. (When he eats a roast chicken, he doesn't merely cut it up, he dissects it.) He's still got a bad temper, and is still inclined to hum little tunes as he works in his laboratory.
Michael Gwynn is very good as the post-operative Karl; his swift transformation from the shy, frightened man we first meet into a bloodthirsty (maybe literally) killer is convincing and even scary. Francis Matthews is mostly for asking Frankenstein important questions, and Eunice Gayson -- who was in the first two James Bond movies as Bond's frustrated girlfriend -- is there because Hammer always had a gorgeous woman in their horror films. She serves almost no plot function.
The film itself is interesting throughout; it's great fun to watch Cushing in this role, which he's clearly having a lot of fun playing. It's a neat, efficient film, one of the best in the Hammer Frankenstein series. (Bill Warren, AVRev)
Though The Evil of Frankenstein is not one of Hammer’s best Gothic horror efforts, it is loads of fun to watch and the film does an excellent job of maintaining Hammer’s uniquely Gothic atmosphere.
As a director, Freddie Frances, the great British cinematographer, did not have Terence Fisher’s feel for Gothic horror. Nor was he able to direct his actors without making them feel robotic. From what I understand, he also didn’t care much for most horror fans and always tried to distance himself from his Hammer oeuvre. I once met him when he was in Boston soon after finishing shooting David Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999). I was introduced to him by my film professor specifically as a fan of his Hammer Horror work. Freddie stood up, smiled at me warmly and said, shaking my hand, “Well, it’s nice to meet you anyway.” Priceless! (Dima Ballin, Diabolique)
Hammer fans who have a soft spot for Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) are in good company with no less a fan than Martin Scorsese, who has referred to this as his favorite Hammer film of all time. Those of us who first saw the film in adolescence, no doubt experienced a certain catharsis at the idea of Baron Frankenstein transforming a deformed young girl—cruelly teased by bullies—into a beautiful yet ultimately tragic assassin. How many of us as teenagers felt just a little deformed ourselves? And so Frankenstein becomes a heroic figure, for a change—still an arrogant iconoclast, still a man ahead of his time, but also a righter of wrongs.
Frankenstein Created Woman was also one of the last films Hammer shot at their beloved Bray Studios,
before moving on to Elstree. It was the end of an era, and the atmosphere of their later films, which were shot at Elstree and Pinewood, was never quite the same.
Christopher Lee’s recurring complaint was that Hammer’s Dracula sequels marginalized the title character by inserting him—sometimes awkwardly—into other people’s stories. One can argue that Frankenstein Created Woman does the same to Frankenstein. The Baron here is not the main protagonist. In fact he doesn’t have much of a character arc. That belongs to the tragic young couple whose story this really is.
Christina and Hans are star-crossed lovers, doomed not only by tragic circumstances, but, in Hans’ case, a tragic past that haunts the present (a familiar Gothic storytelling device which screenwriter, Anthony Hinds, was good at using). Christina, a hapless young girl who has been deformed from birth, is loved by Hans, a local boy who had, in childhood, witnessed the execution of his murdering father. In a parallel story, Baron Frankenstein and his Watson-like assistant, Dr. Hertz, are busy developing an apparatus that would trap the human soul at the moment of death, until the damaged body can be repaired and the soul returned. Meanwhile, through the machinations of three wealthy young scoundrels, Hans is falsely accused of murder and is guillotined, just as his father was. Christina, after witnessing the execution, flings herself into a river and drowns.
If this description seem facetious to the serious-minded fan, let me sum my criticism up like this… Frankenstein Created Woman is a bold departure from the usual for Hammer and especially for screenwriter, Tony Hinds. It has interesting ideas, but is uneven and not always well thought through. And even though this is basically a “fairy tale for adults,” as Terence Fisher liked to call his Hammer films, it has moments that utterly strain credulity, and any honest criticism has to come to terms with that. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the film is somewhat held together by the magnetic presence of Peter Cushing in the title role. (Dima Ballin, Diabolique)
The monstrous Baron Victor Frankenstein (Played by Peter Cushing) has been prowling the streets in secret and gruesomely claiming victims for his terrifying experiments. After one of his victims survives and discovers the whereabouts of his secret lab, Frankenstein is forced to take shelter at a local boarding house that is run by young landlady named Anna (Played by Veronica Carlson). Under a new name, Frankenstein keeps largely to himself but after he discovers Anna’s fiancé, Karl (Played by Simon Ward), who happens to be a doctor at the local mental asylum, is stealing drugs and selling them, he blackmails the young couple into helping him with his macabre work. The couple soon learns that Frankenstein is attempting a brain transplant on a former colleague named Professor Richter (Played by Freddie Francis) who has been locked up in an insane asylum for many years. As the police close in on the trio, the experiment on Professor Richter doesn’t go according to Frankenstein’s plan and Richter sets out to make Frankenstein pay for his ungodly experiments.
Perhaps the strangest touch to Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is the fact that there isn’t the usual Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed certainly asks for plenty of empathy but this isn’t all a pity party. Fisher opens the film with plenty of bloody, gore, and severed limbs to make us all a little queasy. The opening finds a masked Frankenstein prowling the shadows and lobbing off heads as blood splatters every which way. If that scene doesn’t get your heart pounding, surely the sequence that finds a water main suddenly bursting and a rotten corpses bubbling up from its muddy grave as Anna tries desperately to hide the body from onlookers will have you covering your eyes. It’s smartly conceived horror sequences like this that prove to the viewer that Fisher and Hammer may have been making a spin-off franchise film but they were determined to do it with plenty of style and fury.
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed also gets a boost from the always-spectacular Cushing as the demented Frankenstein. If you think you’ve seen him at the height of his evil, wait until you see him here. He hilariously cuts down a group of over opinionated gentlemen who criticize his past experiments. As he overhears their conversation, the sullen Frankenstein turns to them and says, “I didn’t know you were all doctors!” They quickly explain that they are not doctors and Frankenstein hits them with, “Oh, I thought you knew what you were talking about.” When he is verbally ripping someone to shreds, Frankenstein commits other monstrous acts including a heartless murder and the stomach-churning assault of Anna. It is also terrifying the way he forces Karl into murder but what is even more chilling is that Karl doesn’t put up much of a fight, although he does squirm but mostly during the experiments. The climax of the film largely belongs to Francis, who really manages to get us on his side as Richter. Then we have Carlson and Ward as the young couple forced into terrible acts by their evil puppet master. It certainly isn’t easy to watch Karl get tangled in a web of death but there are points where he doesn’t seem to mind at all. Anna, meanwhile, is more of a prisoner than Karl, kept around only for Frankenstein to rape and make coffee.
In typical Frankenstein fashion, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed ends with a fiery confrontation between Richter and his creator. You will be cheering as Richter unleashes charred revenge on the sick and twisted Frankenstein. In a way, the film is disappointing because we are so naturally used to seeing a decaying corpse brought back to life through electricity that it does come as a bit of a shock when this “Monster” begins speaking in a polite manner. The positive is that it does add a fresh spin on the material and it doesn’t resort to rehashing what we have already seen in previous Frankenstein films. The other disappointment is that most of the scares are found at the beginning and then the film transitions into a more of a suspense thriller with lots of bright red blood. Overall, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is certainly a strong installment in Hammer’s Frankenstein series, one that isn’t afraid to embrace plenty of extremely unethical behavior and plenty of fiery doom and gloom when the curtains fall on the climax. This is a nasty movie with infinite amounts of madness burning in its blood red eyes. An essential film for Hammer fans. (Steve Habrat, Anti-Film School)
with the incredibly popular
After doing away with his father, a young Victor Frankenstein (Ralph Bates) travels to University in Vienna. After sucessfully impregnating the dean's daughter, and becoming tired of his teaching, he returns home to his castle and begins work on his own experiments. While ignoring the advances of local beauty Elizabeth (Veronica Carlson), he employs a grave robber (Dennis Price) to collect body parts, and eventually suceeds in creating a monster (David Prowse), but with a damaged brain, it soon goes on a murderous rampage...
Jimmy Sangster also directs, and aside from a few well timed comic edits, does nothing particularly exciting. The soundtrack is similarly a standard orchestral score. Hammer's new big name Ralph Bates takes the lead role here, and handles the dark, uncaring character well. Dennis Price gives the best performance in the piece, in the all too brief role as the grave robber. Dave Prowse has good presence as the monster but only gets a few scenes. The attractive Veronica Carlson is criminally underused.
While Hammer were pushing the boundries of blood-letting and nudity with their female vampire movies, Horror of Frankenstein seems bizarrely tame and a throw back to the early 1960s. While it is not boring (surely saved by Dennis Price's acting and character), Horror of Frankenstein is an unnecessary film with a lazy script, and a complete failure as far as 'restarting' the Frankenstein franchise goes. Not recommended. (Mondo-Esoterica)
Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell stands as an anomaly of sorts. On the one hand it’s a throwback to the old days of Hammer, when Terence Fisher’s stately, Gothic direction and James Bernard’s dissonant, melodramatic soundtracks ruled the day. On the other hand, this is one of the goriest films to ever come from the independent British film studio, which just 16 years earlier touched off what became known as the “Silver Age of Horror,” with their very first Gothic production, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957). With Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell, the Gothic Horror costume drama had effectively come full circle, to be replaced by gorier, more modern, more visceral horrors of the 70’s.
The sets by Scott MacGregor are appropriately dreary—the film being set in a mental asylum—but frankly, I always thought his art direction in general lacked imagination. Certainly, he couldn’t hold a candle to Bernard Robinson, Hammer’s long-time art director who passed away after completing work on Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969). That film also had many dreary-looking sets, but Robinson’s artistry was on an altogether different level, filling every shot with visual interest.
Shane Briant is perfect as Frankenstein’s young admirer, intent on following in the good doctor’s footsteps. His laid-back arrogance in the face of the law is a nice touch. Bond Girl and “Vampire Lover,” Madeline Smith, as Frankenstein’s mute assistant, gets to act for a change, instead of being used as window dressing, and she is really rather good. Her character’s hidden traumatic past is a nicely Gothic touch and she conveys it with admirable restraint. No doubt she would have been even better had the script allowed us to get to know her character beyond just what is said about her. David Prowse as Frankenstein’s monster is much more convincing here than he was in the same role in Horror of Frankenstein. (Dima Ballin, Diabolique)
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