Frankenstein Lives!

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) directed by Terence Fisher

Turning to horror again for a bit here as we explore a series of films from Hammer Films. Hammer became synonymous with horror after they resurrected the classic Universal monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Werewolf, The Mummy) with the added bonus of color. A whole new generation of folks was introduced to the classic horror characters in their new interpretations and as the Hammer renaissance continued special effects reflected an increased tolerance for blood and gore as well as an arms race of racy activities and nudity that would take the inevitable coupling of sex and horror to ever more extreme areas. But all of that was in the future when Hammer got the ball rolling with The Curse of Frankenstein.

So, that’s the pre-history of these films. The question you may have is: why should I bother watching these films? Because if the original Universal films have Karloff, Chaney, Rains and Lugosi, then Hammer has…Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and that’s nothing to sneeze at. (Go ahead, just try and sneeze and I'll show you what's what.)

Peter Cushing as Baron Victor Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the monster. That should be enough for some of you. It's Grand Moff Tarkin and Saruman folks, this should be awesome, right? Well, it should be more awesome than it is, but that's the way these things go most of the time.

The key to any version of Frankenstein is handling the prehistory of the character of Dr. Frankenstein. The Baron is a man of science who is looking for the key to life, sure, but why? The wonderful thing about Frankenstein is that even a terrible adaptation of Mary Shelley’s work will have to (in some way) deal with the deeper philosophical, ethical and moral implications of the story.

The Curse of Frankenstein begins with a title placing the story “more than a hundred years ago” in a village in Switzerland. Baron Frankenstein is in a dungeon and is visited by a priest who is immediately told to “keep your spiritual comfort for those that think they need it. I sent for you because I could think of nobody else. People trust you. They listen to what you tell them.” (Geez, why so snippy?) Thus, the rest of the film is a flashback.

This takes us back to the young Frankenstein who is a wealthy orphan. The young Baron is an imperious Little Moff Tarkin who hires a tutor named Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart) to help him learn all about the ways of science. Fast forward to Peter Cushing now as the Baron, so that it seems like somehow he's gotten older than the tutor who has stayed the same age. (Could Paul be a vampire? No, maybe all this science just ages Victor unnaturally.)
And now, Victor Frankenstein is on the search for “the source of life,” which apparently his tutor neglected to tell him was in his pants the whole time.
But of course good old fashioned creation (which some of us think works just fine, thank you) isn’t good enough for Victor Frankenstein. Oh, no. He wants to cobble together the perfect person, “a man with perfect physique, the hands of an artist with the matured brain of a genius.” He wants an übermensch. (You can tell he's a man of science and not necessarily a man of good sense, who might at least put all that effort into cobbling together an überfrau.) His one good deed is he brings a dead dog back to life. Should have stuck to that, Baron.
But first, he must experiment, and this is always where the story gets caught up because where does our good doctor find a decent corpse to reanimate? At the gallows in Ingolstadt, of course. Where else? (Welcome to Ingolstadt! We hang 'em, you take 'em away!) Surely there will be no problems bringing a convict with a broken neck back to life? Perhaps in Ingolstadt they hang the occasional eccentric genius.
Now, the mechanics of Frankenstein’s work are always a little hazy, for instance here he discards the convict’s head and dumps it in acid, using only the body. (You can tell that this is early Hammer horror because the decapitation occurs out of frame.)

Meanwhile to emphasize Victor’s immorality (which stands in sharp contrast to his high-minded scientific search for immortality) we find out that he has been diddling his maid, Justine (Valerie Gaunt). (Yes, I just called it "diddling." The word seems appropriate for the period.)

Victor: What makes you so sure I’ll marry you?
Justine: Because you promised.
Oh, okay, if I promised…

Well, at least Victor isn't completely unaware of the other means of creating life.
This scene proves for us that Victor sees science as a means to an end, which is actually personal power. It’s not that he wants to discover the power to create life as a gift to mankind (which, as I mentioned earlier, we already sort of have in a quite enjoyable if haphazard and slow-paced fashion) but because he wants that power for himself.
Meanwhile, Victor’s friends and family think he’s just some sort of workaholic idealist.

“She may be right, Baron. One can spend too much of one’s life locked in stuffy rooms seeking out obscure truths, searching research until one is too old to enjoy life.”

Victor has a castle, he's got a good friend, a beautiful fiancee Elizabeth (Hazel Court) and he's got a little action on the side. What else could he really ask for? A brain.
So Victor holds auditions for a brain (it has to be genius level) that he can bring back to life. His method? He kills a living genius to take his brain and reanimate it in another body. It seems like such a logical paradox that it should be our biggest clue that despite all the talk about science this Victor Frankenstein is actually a madman.
He murders his guest Dr. Bernstein (immoral and inhospitable, to boot) and proceeds with his work.
Ironically enough, the spark that gets the body reanimated happens on its own. How do you like them apples, Victor?
And the first thing the risen creature does is to try to kill Victor.
The rest of the film happens almost too quickly compared to the leisurely pacing that led up to the creation of the monster.
Unlike James Whale’s monster from the Universal films (or the creature from Shelley’s book) Christopher Lee’s mute monster is a vicious killer with a nasty pasty face. (Universal had a trademark on the classic look of the original monster so Hammer had to get creative and they could never really get a monster that fit the bill.) The brain was apparently damaged in the process, thus explaining the killer instinct. No undamaged person would be a vicious killer...unless of course it's someone who is killing people to see if he can bring them back to life through the miracle of arcane pseudo-science.

The classic monster/blind man and monster/small child interactions get combined into one when the monster runs into a kid and his blind grandfather. The little boy picks mushrooms by a lake and the monster kills the blind man for no reason and then he kills the boy too. This is not Karloff’s gentle beast, this is Christopher Lee, mute killer.
In the ensuing chase scene Paul shoots the monster in the eye and they bury him, but Victor digs him up again in order to continue his experiments. Victor then uses the monster to dispatch his maid, Justine who happens to be pregnant, thus once again showing his disregard for good old-fashioned forms of creation as well as his particularly European classism.
(He really is a bastard.)
Victor: You stupid buffoon! Did you really think I’d marry you?
Well, you did promise.

There are some great visuals in the culminating sequence especially with shadows on the wall showing offscreen action. (Very stylish.) The monster goes after Elizabeth and is finally dispatched when a lamp is tossed at it and it catches on fire (Fire! Bad!) and falls into an acid bath, thus eliminating all evidence of the existence of the creature. And of course, this means that there are several dead people to account for and no monster to pin it on.

Then we go back to the prison and we get a Dr. Caligari moment when we begin to doubt whether any of the preceding story was true or if they were just the mad mutterings of a crazy man about to be guillotined for Justine's murder. Paul refuses to corroborate the story and Victor is marched off to his death. Was it all just a bad dream? Or is Paul letting Victor get his just desserts?

I’ll have to admit, that the monster here was disappointing, but Cushing’s petulant power-mad scientist is an appealing character and Paul is quite sympathetic as the moral center of the story. While the philosophical conflict feels occasionally forced, well, that’s the nature of the Frankenstein story itself. The color scenery is really attractive and has all the charm of an Alpine postcard from 1957.

In the end, this is a pretty decent Frankenstein story that engages the ethical and moral crux of the story and is also visually appealing with some good acting. It's not stunning, but it's worth watching and while it doesn't have quite the same repeat watching enjoyment of the 1931 Frankenstein, it is still a fun one to come back to every so often.

Special Features
Special features are sparse on most of these releases. Don't expect to get anything as cool as Christopher Lee reading all of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Peter Cushing doing an interpretive dance version of Lord Byron's "Childe Harold."

Cast & Crew
Brief cast & crew biographies.

Hammer Creates a Monster
A brief essay history of Hammer Films and the renaissance of horror films in the late 1950s the studio helped spawn. In the end there were a total of 7 Hammer Frankenstein films and this was the first of them.

Theatrical Trailer
An old school sensationalist trailer that emphasizes the excitement of living color.