Hammered Stakes

Warner Brothers 4 Film Favorites: Draculas (2007)

This collection is a nice economical way of getting a dose of Hammer vampire action.   You miss out on the cover artwork (which should not be underestimated as part of the artistic package) but it is a nice sampler with a quadruple dose of Christopher Lee.

The collection includes these films: 
Horror of Dracula
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave
Taste the Blood of Dracula
Dracula A.D. 1972

All four films are presented in widescreen.  Theatrical trailers for Horror of Dracula and Dracula A.D. 1972 are included.  

My review of Dracula A.D. 1972 (longtime listener, first time caller) will follow shortly. 

Retaste The Blood Of Dracula

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Directed by Peter Sasdy
Screenplay by John Elder (Anthony Hinds)

Go on, try the powdered blood of Dracula.  Taste it.  Savor it.  Tastes like talc and licorice? 
Seeing this film again reminds me that some of it is really delightful and some of it is just tedious.
Taste the Blood of Dracula marks a shift in style in the Hammer vampire films and in Hammer films in general.    

This film is about the boredom of decadence.  The staid elders of the society Hargood, Paxton and Secker are secretly members of a thrill seeking club that is constantly escalating.  While some of them seem content to get together every so often and head over to the cathouse for some exotic dancing and hanky panky William Hargood is bored to tears by hookers, booze and a woman dancing with a python (or a boa).  The other two guys seriously seem to be okay with what they've got, but Hargood looks like he needs something more.  It doesn't help that the bad boy Lord Courtley shows up and steals his girl.  Courtley doesn't even have to pay.  All the girls want to give him freebies.  In a different film this would lead to Hargood sleeping with Courtley in order alleviate the boredom. 

While this film maintains a Victorian/Edwardian time period (still no motor cars or dirigibles) it finally moves us over to England where things can be quite decadent and richer than the Central European milieu of the earlier films.  Here the elders have failed the call of civilization.  They are decadent hypocrites, seething at the inequity of Courtley's aristocratic behaviour even as they employ similar attitudes toward those lower than them on the class/status/wealth totem pole.  If anything, the younger generation are more pure and idealistic even while living up to the general ideals of morality.  The young Hargoods, Paxtons and Seckers are not the ones running around snorting cocaine, swilling booze, watching dancing girls put pythons in their mouths, having sex with prostitutes or drinking bubbling vampire blood and kicking people to death.  It's the old folks who are doing this, which is a serious inversion of expectations.  The symbolism is completed when the young Paul restores the altar pieces in the chapel where Courtley held the "Black Mass" where the thrill seekers killed him and unwittingly resurrected Count Dracula.  Paul and Alice are left to reconstitute society with their restored moral universe which at that point has been cleansed of their immoral progenitors, albeit with some serious collateral damage.

Speaking of that collateral damage, one of the things that really gets short shrift even in slasher sequels is how the decimated survivors go on after all their friends have been eaten by vampires.
Certainly they'll have to make some new friends, but how does that conversation go?
"It's so nice to meet you.  I don't understand why you don't have any other friends."
"Oh, all of our friends were killed by a vampire last year."

The storytelling here is an interesting jumble.  It's the kind of thing that I suspect would make a screenwriting workshop go apoplectic and that alone is a reason to like this film a little more. 

Cast
Weller -- Roy Kinnear
Count Dracula -- Christopher Lee
William Hargood -- Geoffrey Keen
Martha Hargood -- Gwen Watford
Alice Hargood -- Linda Hayden
Samuel Paxton -- Peter Sallis
Paul Paxton -- Anthony Corlan (Anthony Higgins)
Lucy Paxton -- Isla Blair
Jonathan Secker -- John Carson
Jeremy Secker -- Martin Jarvis
Lord Courtley -- Ralph Bates
Inspector Cobb -- Michael Ripper
Betty, Hargood's maid -- Shirley Jaffe
Felix -- Russell Hunter
Dolly -- Maddy Smith (Madeline Smith)
Chinese Girl -- Lai Ling
Snake Girl -- Malaika Martin
Redheaded Prostitute -- June Palmer
Bordello Girls -- Amber Blare, Vicky Gillespie
Vicar -- Reginald Barratt

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Arthur Grant

Dracula Has Left the Toilet Seat Up

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Directed by Freddie Francis
Screenplay by John Elder (Anthony Hinds)

Dracula has risen from the grave and he is ready for a rumble.  I was excited to finally see this film since I'd already seen Taste the Blood of Dracula which starts off with Dracula's death scene from this film.  That seems to be the only thing these two films share other than Christopher Lee.  I'd like to believe that I can spot the difference between a Freddie Francis directed film and a Terence Fisher, but the differences are not so obvious in this case.  Maybe I need to see some more Freddie Francis films. 

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is a film about faith, and also vampires, but mostly faith...and also class.  There is no Van Helsing here, instead the vampire hunting is left to conservative religious authorities as represented by the Monsignor.  Our young heroes are the Monsignor's niece Maria and her student boyfriend Paul.  Paul is modern through and through.  He's working his way through school as a baker's assistant in return for room and board.  His boss Max is a genial and kind man who is like a father and friend to Paul.  Max is a solidly working class man who might own his own house and bakery but who is clearly at home with the folks who come to his tavern for a drink or ten.  Paul might be a student working his way up but he is also clearly comfortable with modern ideas of egalitarianism.  Paul is a perfect example of a young revolutionary.  Remembering that this story is set in Central Europe (in this case in the strikingly modern year of 1905) it is quite easy to think of Paul as a Marxist in everything but name.  (Sort of.)  It's a telling thing for a film made in the momentous year of 1968.

At any rate, Paul is left in the uncomfortable position of meeting his girlfriend's family after being drenched with beer by his student friends.  So he meets Maria's mother and then her uncle the Monsignor while reeking of alcohol.  And then when pressed he admits he's an atheist.  And you know what that means in a vampire film...his beliefs will be tested by the appearance of a bloodsucking fiend and whatever issues Count Dracula has atheism isn't one of them.    The Monsignor is not happy at all.   And what does this have to do with Dracula?

Well, Dracula has been menacing the neighboring town (where his Castle looms on the heights above.)  The film opens with a young woman's body being found dripping blood and hanging in the church bell.  For some reason we are then fast-forwarded to a year later and supposedly Dracula is no longer around but his spirit has lingered and nobody is attending the cursed church and the Priest has turned to drink because he's lost his faith.  The Monsignor shows up and drags the priest along with him to post a giant gold cross to block the door to Dracula's castle thus barring its use as a vampire nest.  (Or something to that effect.)  The priest meanwhile refuses to go all the way to the crack of Mt. Doom because he's a coward.  While the Monsignor is doing his ritual blocking of the door a thunderstorm occurs which causes the priest to run away.  While doing so he trips cracks open his head and his blood goes trickling down to the frozen river below where it resuscitates Dracula (who was turned into a vampiric popsicle down there in the previous Hammer installment (Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)).

This thunderstorm is of course a serious question of theodicy.  Is the storm evil?  That seems to be the indication of the weather suddenly becoming foul when the Monsignor attempts to bottle up the evil of the castle.  But why should the weather be controlled by the forces of darkness?  The storms should be essentially a neutral phenomenon.  Surely omnipotent deity would not cede control over something like the weather to the whim of evil?  Let us think of this instead as being a storm created by the forces of storytelling instead of a question of theology.  The storytellers needed a storm to create an element of fate that puts into motion the resurrection of the frozen Dracula.

So Dracula has risen from his grave, his frozen wet grave and now he wants to go home, but he finds that Thomas Wolfe was right and now he's pissed.  Dracula decides to take his vengeance out on the Monsignor and luckily for the Count the Monsignor has a very pretty niece.   And because he really is evil Dracula turns the priest into his minion to help him enact his revenge.  Who would suspect that a priest is actually serving the cause of evil?  Ahem, who would have suspected that in 1968?  These days we'd suspect that the mute boy in the church was mute because of something the priest did.  At any rate, turning the (nominal) servant of all that is good into a servant of evil is a bit of a coup for Dracula. 

Next Dracula goes after Zena the barmaid, who has a bit of a thing for Paul but manages to keep it nobly unrequited.  Zena is bitten and turned into a minion of Dracula.  The lower class woman is expendable here (whereas the higher class Maria is a treasure to be guarded.) and likewise her virtue is suspect whereas even though Maria goes out of her way to sneak around town and see Paul she still maintains a front of purity, while Zena has no pretense at expressing her sexuality.  Once she's under Dracula's control she is eager to please him.  Unfortunately for Zena she gets the "You have failed me for the first time and thus you have failed me for the last time" treatment from Dracula.  Lucky for Dracula he still has the priest to clean up his mess.  

Maria is eventually bitten by Dracula, because that's what Dracula does.  He uses women and sometimes he intends for them to be special companions. If her daddy's rich, he might even take her out for a meal, but if the girl is poor then Dracula does as he feels. 

The Monsignor has to die.  You know that's coming because he's too much of an even match for Dracula.  He's the Van Helsing of the movie.  Also, the death of the Monsignor forces a crisis of faith onto Paul.  In this story Dracula can only be defeated by faith.  Paul is a committed atheist.  You know where this is going.  Paul fights the priest and manages to turn him back to the good guys side.  But the priest is pretty useless.  Even though he and Paul drive a stake into Dracula they don't complete the religious ritual required (only in this film) to finish the job.  Thus, Dracula waits until they're gone and pulls out the stake and goes about his business.  And his business is draining people of blood.  

The Count abducts Maria and heads to his castle. There's a chase scene, horse drawn carriage style.  Dracula takes Maria up to his castle and uses her to get rid of the giant gold cross/plot device blocking his door.  She chucks the cross down from the heights but it lands perfectly upright, just as you might expect from a giant gold plot device.

That's when the boys show up.   And this time they mean business.   Paul finds the strength to throw Dracula down into the valley where he lands right on the giant gold plot device/cross that had (by the divine hand of Providence) landed upright on that very spot.  But that just means they've got Dracula pinned on a stake.  He can't free himself the way he did when he pulled the stake out of his chest earlier.  This gives the priest a chance at redemption and he manages to recite the Lord's Prayer.  (Really, that's the ritual required?)  That's what turns Dracula into dust.  Paul (and the priest) save Maria and Paul as a last gesture crosses himself, presumably because after what he's seen he has been driven back into the arms of religion.  

So like I said, this film is overtly about faith in traditional religion.  The priest loses his congregation because in some way his faith was inadequate to the task of keeping Dracula away.   This compounds his own lack of faith and drives him to drink.  But he is redeemed.  As for the Monsignor, he has faith and traditional conservative religious values but he is a relic of a dying civilization who must give way to the younger generation (and some of their radical values.)  He is redeemed in some way by his recognition that Paul's feelings for his niece are genuine and that the young man has admirable qualities notwithstanding his atheism.  

One thing I've noticed is that whereas the Hammer Frankenstein films are only loosely connected and in many ways should be viewed as independent stories the Hammer Dracula Franchise (from Dracula Prince of Darkness on) were directly linked with the previous film and with the aforementioned film skipping all the way back to the first of the Hammer Draculas.  In some ways this creates some problems and conundrums but at least in this film it doesn't detract from the story. 

I think in many ways this is the last really solid Hammer Dracula and certainly the last one where Dracula is the real focus.  In that regard it is a film that has some nostalgia goggles attached if taken in context.  (Sort of like watching the last Buffy or Angel episode before a really major change occurs.)  If you go back to it you'll have a much different feeling about it than you do if you just see it in sequence or completely by itself.  One of the advantages of a loose sequel style is that neither the audience nor the storytellers are bound by characters and situations that come before or after the story.  This can be a liability when it comes to character investment, but it can be a strength in that it avoids adaptation decay.  The one character in this case who we have to worry about is Dracula, who by this time has been sort of killed too many times, each time in a way that should be a definitive end. 

Cast
Dracula -- Christopher Lee
Monsignor Ernest Mueller -- Rupert Davies
Anna Mueller -- Marion Mathie
Maria Mueller -- Veronica Carlson
Paul -- Barry Andrews
Zena -- Barbara Ewing
Max -- Michael Ripper
Priest -- Ewan Hooper
Mute Boy -- Norman Bacon
Student -- John D. Collins
Landlord -- George A. Cooper
Farmer -- Chris Cunningham

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Arthur Grant 

Hammer of Dracula

Horror of Dracula (1958)
Directed by Terence Fisher
Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster

Horror of Dracula, also known as just plain Dracula, is one of the original recipe Hammer Horror films from the late 1950s.  As such it is a landmark in cinematic history.  While we're still waiting for a US release of the new restored edition on Blu Ray we'll take another quick look at this classic.

Fan Points
Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.  Done.  That should be enough.  This is the first of the Hammer Draculas, the first Dracula in color.  The Hammer supporting cast features some gem performances.

In this film Count Dracula seems to start out content to remain in his own neighborhood until Jonathan Harker shows up to catalog his library.  Harker, of course, is not just there to catalog a library.  Harker is already a vampire hunter and is there to hunt Count Dracula.  We don't know if Harker's ruse was successful because ultimately his mission is a failure.  He does take out Dracula's unnamed vampire ladyfriend, which may explain Dracula's decision to go after the women in Harker's life.  Why would Harker go after Count Dracula by himself?  It seems like the kind of mission that requires an actual team (as is eventually the case in both the novel and this film at the end.)  Clearly Van Helsing and Harker are already in the business of vampire hunting.  Why does Harker take such a big chance against Dracula?  Well, maybe the thing we have to consider is that in the fictional world we're talking about Dracula is not quite Dracula.  And by that I mean to say that in the fiction the character of Dracula does not come with the same obvious baggage that the name carries for any of us.  Harker is thus on a reconnaissance mission to find out if this Dracula fellow is the cause of the vampire stories coming out of the frightened townsfolk of Klausenberg.

As for Dracula, he must have a regular series of household job listings he puts out on the 19th century Craig's List in order to lure people to his castle and drink their blood.  Clearly Dracula and his lady friend get their regular supply from the locals, but ordering in every so often provides an occasional opportunity to avoid the hunting and just stay home.   Harker just happened to be a hunter in the bargain.  And that's why Dracula has to make an example of him and follow him to where he came from.  Dracula has decided to take the fight to his enemy and fight them there before he has to fight them back home on the defensive.

Like any offensive expedition Dracula's invasion is a risky proposition since he has to take his resting place with him.  Dracula's logistics are his point of vulnerability.  It's all about strategy and tactics.
While retaining the original names the film maintains a general Central European German milieu for the action.  In the novel and even in Nosferatu, the vampire arrives by sea.  Dracula's return to Transylvania is serious ordeal of timetables in the novel.  Here he as an internal line of communication back to his home base.  It's just a matter of a simple carriage race back and forth.  And once Dracula's opponent is as cunning as Van Helsing then suddenly Dracula is on the defensive.

Cushing's first Van Helsing outing represents the character as ultra-competent.  The fight is difficult and nobody quite wants to believe him at first, but ultimately he is a quite competent occult scientist.

Occult scientist?  How can we even use those terms in conjunction?  This is the central conceit of Dracula and it is central in this film as well.  Van Helsing is not a believer in superstition.  But he is aware of the existence of things that are considered supernatural.  It is his power of scientific observation that prevents him from dismissing the vampire stories the way his post-Enlightenment scientific peers dismiss the local superstitions.  Van Helsing does not dismiss superstition out of hand, but instead pursues it to greater knowledge.  In this case the knowledge is a series of specific quantifiable rules of vampirism.  And although the rules of vampirism are suspiciously based on objects and articles of faith/religion it is ultimately a quite rational irrationalism we're talking about.
The truly supernatural would be something that has no rules.  But these vampires are quite rationally designed/created.  They have to follow certain rules, sleep in a coffin filled with their local soil (bound by the accident of geologic specificity) and they can be killed in a myriad of ways.   The centrality of Christianity to vampire stories is something that is only being slightly addressed even after more than a century of these stories.   And there's more to say about that later.

As for sexuality, there is more of it on the cover for this film than in the film itself.  That's not to say that there is none, but just that it is almost as sublimated as it is in the novel.   Jonathan Harker is somewhat lured by the attractiveness of Dracula's ladyfriend (not knowing she was his vampire ladyfriend) but it seems to be equally based on believing her to be Dracula's prisoner.  (Would he have helped her out if she was a wart-faced hag?  Or an obese hirsute dude?  Would any of us deal with people with equanimity in that regard?)  Dracula goes after Lucy and turns her (in some way as the ultimate revenge on Harker and also as a means of replacing his lost minion) and it is clear that his visitations to her bedchamber are moments of ecstatic rapture for her (even if they do leave her utterly and fatally drained).  Curiously, when Lucy is turned she attempts to feed on children (hunting the ultimate symbols of innocence.)

Not content with Lucy, the Count goes after Mina as well.  Mina is married to Arthur and seems to be a quite respectable middle class housewife.  Thus, when Dracula goes after Mina it is a direct assault on the cornerstone of middle class morality.  Dracula is (metaphorically) sexually assaulting (but also even more dangerously, sexually awakening) the very heart of the family unit, and the bastion of contemporary (late 19th century) civilization.  Thus Arthur Holmwood is a metaphor for the cuckolded husband and the Count is the ultimate slick seducer.  (And it would take supernatural capabilities to make his wife cheat on him, right?)  And Dr. Van Helsing is that guy who'll help you kill the guy who slept with your wife.  Wait, what?

Yeah, the metaphor falls apart a little there because in that regard Van Helsing is a little bit of cheated upon partner wish fulfillment.

At any rate, Horror of Dracula delivers on the Gothic premise both visually and in terms of storytelling. The pace is slightly quicker and steadier than Curse of Frankenstein and like that film it is the closest that any of the Hammer films gets to the original version of the story and to the Universal films for that matter.

Cast
Jonathan Harker -- John Van Eyssen
Arthur Holmwood -- Michael Gough
Mina Holmwood -- Melissa Stribling
Lucy Holmwood -- Carol Marsh
Gerda -- Olga Dickie
Tania -- Janina Faye
Inga -- Barbara Archer
Dr. Seward -- Charles Lloyd Pack
Dr. Abraham Van Helsing -- Peter Cushing
Count Dracula -- Christopher Lee
Vampire Woman -- Valerie Gaunt
Landlord -- George Woodbridge
J. Marx, Undertaker -- Miles Malleson
Porter -- Geoffrey Bayldon
Policeman -- George Meritt
Frontier Official -- George Benson

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Jack Asher

Return to The Mummy

The Mummy (1959)
Directed by Terence Fisher
Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster

Revisiting the first Hammer foray into mummyland and I'm still a fan of this one.  Having delved even further into the depths of the Hammer catalogue I can now say with more confidence that the 1959 mummy stands out as a gem of the classic Hammer horror set.

Let's get the fan review out of the way.  If you want to explore Hammer films this is an essential.  Fan of mummy movies?  Essential.  Christopher Lee, with and without a massive amount of makeup.  Peter Cushing back when he was the young lead.   (He seems so much older as Van Helsing in the 1958 Hammer Dracula.)  The English country setting gives us some nice low comic stylings that reoccur in other Hammer films from this period and thus if you aren't a fan of Michael Ripper going in you will become one.  

The film itself is one part archaeological adventure, one part ancient Egyptian epic sampler and one part  drawing room murder mystery.

And of course there's the post-colonial discourse of the film.  Nowadays we might forget just how fresh the Anglo-French Suez crisis was in the minds of the British audience for this film.  It must have made for a very different attitude towards the Egyptian villain of the piece.   Mehemet Bey is indeed a curious character.  He is a closet worshipper of Karnak.  (Though the definition of closet is stretched by the large room he uses as a shrine in his rented house in England.)  The closet worshipper of an ancient religion is a familiar trope in adventure stories because it opens the door to exotic (inventive and invented) practices and rituals that make for more exciting stories than what you might get if Mehemet Bey was merely a moderately devout Muslim looking to recover antiquities with which he has no spiritual connection.   Instead he is a fanatic follower of Karnak and he has with him the living dead mummy of Kharis.  Putting off the backstory of Kharis for a second, Mehemet Bey uses Kharis like a golem.  It is ultimately his misuse of this instrument that causes his destruction.  Well, maybe not so much misuse as a misunderstanding of Kharis.  Sure, Kharis was the high priest of Karnak, but Mehemet Bey should have been more suspicious of Kharis's reliability as an instrument of service to Karnak.  After all, Kharis was entombed alive as a punishment for trying to resurrect the high priestess Ananka in order to engage in forbidden love with her.  So the whole reason that Kharis is there is because of his unreliability when it comes to obedience to the rules of Karnak.  Mehemet Bey should have known better.  Sure, what were the odds that he'd run into someone who is a dead ringer for the Princess Ananka?  But on the other hand, the only thing we know about Kharis is that he violated Karnak's sacred rules.  There's a logical fallacy at the heart of the punishment meted out to Kharis in the first place.  Kharis is obsessed with Ananka.  Ananka dies and he tries to bring her back to life in order to consummate his love for her.  (We are never informed about how Ananka felt about Kharis, mind you.)  Kharis is caught before he can resurrect Ananka.  His tongue is cut out and he is entombed alive, in the tomb of the woman he was obsessed with and so that he could be the guardian of her tomb.  Cutting out the tongue?  Yeah, that's a punishment.  But what part of putting him eternally close to the object of his obsession is supposed to be a punishment for Kharis?

At any rate, Mehemet Bey is determined to punish those who violated the tomb of Ananka and he does have the perfect instrument to enact vengeance since nobody cares more about Ananka than Kharis.  But Mehemet Bey's key flaw is that he believes Ananka is sacred because of her status as a priestess of Karnak, whereas Kharis was and is in love with Ananka.  Mehemet Bey underestimates the unpredictability of love.  Of course, what were the odds that one of the people he's hunting down would be married to someone who looks just like Ananka?  And how much of a facial match would someone have to be for Kharis's Ananka-radar to kick in?  Isobel Banning is an exact match.  What if someone was a 75% match?  Well, we do know that Kharis doesn't recognize Isobel as a match for Ananka if her hair is up, so even with a dead ringer Kharis isn't completely fooled.  And so, while Kharis is "fooled" by Isobel into believing she is Ananka and thus he unravels Mehemet Bey's revenge plan, on the other hand it is not pure Enlightenment rationality that wins the day because the mummy could only be fooled because of the miraculous coincidence (or should we call it fate?) of the resemblance of Isobel and Ananka.

One of the strange things that comes from this story is that while Stephen Banning, the man of science (archaeology, Egyptology), comes through against the closet cult fanatic (and possibly some form of apostate or closeted nonbeliever) it is not the values of science and enlightenment that prevail, per se.  The Bannings prevail because they recognize the existence of the irrational and mysterious and engage it to their benefit.  It's not exactly a victory of modern science, it's a victory of ancient irrationality.  At the end of the film the rational world has to deal with the genuine existence of the living dead and magical scrolls that can bring people back to life.  That's hardly a victory for the rational world.
But of course, the most irrational thing in this movie is love and yet for all its irrationality and the inability to scientifically prove its existence (show me a molecule of love) it does seem to be quite real.
And so Kharis's ancient love for Ananka wins out in the end.  Sort of.  He's now dead in an English bog and she's probably going to be on display in a museum.   Not exactly a love story for the ages.

While most of the main story of the film takes place in England and plays out in and around the Banning drawing room the discovery of the tomb in Egypt and even more so the ancient flashback that are the most vivid parts of the film.  The mass human sacrifice at the burial of Ananka is so tastefully played out that you might be forgiven if you don't notice that a lot of people are killed to join Ananka in her tomb.

So, were the archaeologists wrong to explore the tomb?  Was their search for knowledge (in this case knowledge about the past through archaeological study) akin to Victor Frankenstein's pursuit of forbidden experimentation?  I suppose one of the problems with cinematic archaeology is that the complete backstory of the archaeological discovery seems to always be available.  The archaeologists in this case know everything about the story of Ananka and Kharis.  All they need to do now is find the tomb.  This is one of the most unrealistic tropes that you can imagine.  I know this is a mummy story and not an archaeology story, but it would be nice to see some cinematic archaeology that doesn't involve already knowing the complete story of an archaeological discovery before you find an artifact.

Notwithstanding that last bit of crankiness I have always enjoyed this film and having seen some of Hammer's later forays into Egypt I have to say this is one that stands the test of time both compared to later mummy films (and yes, that includes all those Brendan Fraser vehicles) and to the earlier Universal mummy franchise.  Note also the joy to be found in a simple story with lowered stakes (still life or death, mind you) as opposed to the world-killing dust storms of the contemporary CGI era.  It doesn't always have to be the end of the world.

Cast
Stephen Banning -- Felix Aylmer
Joseph Whemple -- Raymond Huntley
John Banning -- Peter Cushing
Isobel Banning/Princess Ananka -- Yvonne Furneaux
Kharis -- Christopher Lee
Inspector Mulrooney -- Eddie Byrne
P.C. Blake -- George Woodbridge
Dr. Reilly --Willoughby Gray
Pat -- Harold Goodwin
Mike -- Denis Shaw
Poacher -- Michael Ripper
Mehemet Bey -- George Pastell

Cinematography -- Jack Asher
Music by Franz Reizenstein

Special Features
1. Theatrical Trailer

Frankenstein in Gaol

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973)
Directed by Terence Fisher
Screenplay by Roy Skeggs

If Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed represented an Endarkenment version of the title character, then Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell is a return to a mostly Enlightenment gone wrong interpretation.   Whereas in the earlier film Victor Frankenstein really was a monster, in the latter film he is once again merely a brilliant man who likes to experiment in abominations.  In fact, in this film Victor  is more moral than the character portrayed by Peter Cushing back in 1957.

Let's start with the fan aspects.  This is Peter Cushing's last appearance as Victor Frankenstein in a Hammer film.   It is also the first film pairing for Grand Moff Tarkin (Cushing) and Darth Vader (David Prowse).  This is Terence Fisher's final film.  If you're a fan of Bond films you'll notice that Tarmut the sculptor is M (Bernard Lee).   And for the Whovians, the bodysnatcher is Patrick Troughton, the Second Doctor.   And since Peter Cushing played the Doctor in two films from the '60s that means that technically there are two doctors in this film.   And then there's Madeline Smith who was a Bond girl in Live and Let Die. In a remarkably refreshing decision the filmmakers don't give in to the worst excesses of the 70s and keep their female lead clothed and Ms. Smith manages to be quite expressive for the major portion of the film where her character is mute.

As with other Hammer films from this period there is an attempt to pair their older stars with younger counterparts in a sometimes muddled attempt to pass the torch.   And while there are some attempts at a continuity of Victor Frankenstein in the Hammer series it is a very loose continuity and in many ways it is best to pretend that the character who perished in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed actually did die and that this character is another version entirely, especially since this Frankenstein incarnation is mostly benign.  I mean, apart from the murders of course.  But I'll come back to that in a moment.

The film commences with the young Simon Helder exercising his fan appreciation of Dr. Frankenstein by reading his book and attempting to continue the experimental progress of the Baron.  Unfortunately the law is not particularly kind to Dr. Helder's science and he is arrested and put on trial.  The policeman and the judge are model representatives of an unimaginative society.  Simon seems almost delighted to be sentenced to the same mental institution that Baron Frankenstein was sent to, because of course Simon really wants to be just like his role model.  As for the crimes involved, it's interesting to note that while in Curse of Frankenstein the Baron's only known crime was murder, here he (and Simon) are being specifically condemned for their abominable scientific experiments.  (Or at least for the illegal trafficking in body parts and grave robbing that are required for their research.)

Once Simon arrives at the institution he is initially mistaken for a visitor by the befuddled director Klauss who is furious at being deceived.  Klauss and his henchmen are not only incompetent but they are also quite corrupt.  If the law enforcement and judicial system on the outside are unimaginative and somewhat repressive they are not overtly corrupt or evil.  In the asylum, though, the system is brutal and corrupt.  It is no surprise that it turns out that Baron Frankenstein faked his death and has taken up the position of asylum doctor continuing his experiments with equipment provided by Klauss through threat of blackmail.  Klauss is so obviously incompetent that it's hard to believe he is afraid of being held to account for his job competence.  Instead, it turns out that Frankenstein rescued Klauss's daughter Sarah from an attempted rape (the shock of which left her mute) and has achieved his state within a state through the threat of blackmail.  This leaves Victor Frankenstein in a strange state of moral ambiguity.  On the one hand he is certainly a more benign and competent presence than Klauss.  (e.g. The brutal hazing Klauss's henchmen give to Simon, scarring his back with a forced shower with the high pressure water hose.)  But Victor's motivations aren't in any way altruistic (he wants the freedom to work on his experiments) unless you believe entirely in the notion that Frankenstein's experiments represent scientific progress in which case you might at least buy some portion of the argument that it is important to support his experiments.  Of course, Frankenstein's actual experiments undercut the notion that he is really achieving progress for humanity and the expansion of scientific knowledge.

But the bigger problem with Frankenstein's ethics is the fact that he does murder inmates in order to collect their most prized body parts.  Tarmut the sculptor, for instance, is killed for his hands.  In the case of Durendel, meanwhile, Victor drives the poor man to suicide in order to collect his brain.  Whatever kind of relative goodness we want to believe separates Frankenstein from Klauss, these acts of murder (there is no other word for it) undercut the sympathy we might have for Victor.  Sure, he's not a rapist in this film and he doesn't murder anyone for mere convenience as he did with Justine in Curse of Frankenstein, but nonetheless he is actually killing people in this film and in the case of Tarmut and Durendel they are seemingly very nice people.

As for Frankenstein's creature in this film it really is a creature.  It is not so much a monster from hell as a monster from a very large bath drain.  Herr Schneider is described as feral.  I think that's a real understatement.  Herr Schneider is as apelike as Mighty Joe Young.  (But the beast can be soothed with music--or rendered unconscious with a serious dose of chloroform.)
It's difficult to imagine what Frankenstein was thinking when he decided to use a hirsute beast as the base model for his cobbled together life form.  Even Frankenstein seems to acknowledge this when the beast is torn to pieces by a mob of inmates.  (The culmination of the film, mind you.)  The Baron shrugs it off says that it's "best thing that could have happened" and starts planning for a new experiment.  Simon and Sarah have the most priceless expressions as they realize that Frankenstein is simply shaking it off and moving on as if the entire "crisis" of the film was merely a bad inning and that there's still plenty of baseball to be played.   There is some ambiguity as to their enthusiasm for continuing to serve as Frankenstein's sidekicks as they seem to betray a sense of disbelief in Frankenstein's near delusional final monologue.  But on the other hand, with Klauss dead and Frankenstein now unrestricted in his control of the asylum that might be better than leaving things to the mob rule of the inmates or to whatever cruel and unusual new director the governing authorities might think to send in to replace Klauss.  There is every reason to believe that the outside world will not even notice Klauss's absence and will be content to not know anything about what goes on in the asylum.  (And once people go in they never come out.)

Klauss's death is the one act of justice in the film, but it is, like the tearing apart of the creature, an act of mob disorder.  Like other cases of "poetic justice" or "street justice" we have to have a certain civilized revulsion at it even when it is somehow satisfying because we "know" the "truth" about the character.  Certainly the mob of inmates at the asylum know plenty about Klauss's abuses.  They might have every moral right to take out vengeance for the wrongs done unto them.  It may be ethically compromised but at least the audience and characters are all aware that Klauss has it coming.  The creature is certainly violent, but does it really deserve to be torn into pieces?  Frankenstein is right in the sense that it is certainly a convenient way of ending the experiment and the creature will no longer threaten anyone.  But the creature, while achieving cleverness, does not really seem to have awareness of right and wrong, just feral rage.  Frankenstein, on the other hand, actually murders at least one person (and has probably done away with many more) driven some others to death and is even at the end of the film planning more murders.  He is delusional enough to think of the murders as involuntary organ and tissue donations.  To his credit, though, Frankenstein does his best to conceal the actual murders from Simon and Sarah (thus insulating them from complete complicity).  And his affection for Sarah and Simon seems to be genuine and paternal.

Simon and Sarah are complicit in the criminal aspect of Frankenstein activities now that they are fully aware of what he's up to.   We have no idea about their level of cooperation with the Baron in the future, but they really don't have any escape.  Of course, the trio will probably rule the asylum in a more benevolent fashion than Klauss, but Frankenstein is still planning to kill more people.  That's what leaves us with a sense of unease as the film closes.  As a valedictory film in the Hammer Frankenstein franchise Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell is a fine example of non-closure.  There is no burning castle, no execution, no disastrous plunge from a great height.  There's just the eternal tinkerer going back to the drawing board to keep working on his "science."

Cast
Baron Victor Frankenstein -- Peter Cushing
Dr. Simon Helder -- Shane Briant
Adolff Klauss -- John Stratton
Sarah Klauss -- Madeline Smith
Herr Schneider, The Creature -- David Prowse
Durendel -- Charles Lloyd Pack
Tarmut -- Bernard Lee
Transient -- Michael Ward
Wild One -- Elsie Wagstaff
Ernst -- Philip Voss
Hans -- Chris Cunningham
Old Hag -- Lucy Griffiths
Muller -- Sydney Bromley
Brassy Girl -- Andrea Lawrence
Gerda -- Sheila D'Union
Smiler -- Norman Atkyns
Twitch -- Mischa De La Motte
Letch -- Victor Woolf
Mouse -- Winifred Sabine
Chatter -- Janet Hargreaves
Aggressive -- Gordon Richardson
Death Wish -- Nicholas Smith
Bodysnatcher -- Patrick Troughton
Police Sergeant -- Norman Mitchell
Judge -- Clifford Mollison
Landlord -- Jerold Wells
Coach Driver -- Peter Madden
Inmates -- Hugh Cecil, Ron Eagleton, Lianne Gilmore, Beatrice Greek, Toni Harris, Peter Macpherson

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Brian Probyn

Special Features
1. Commentary by Jonathan Sothcott, Madeline Smith & David Prowse
This is a gentle and genial commentary with authoritative moderation by Sothcott.   Prowse and Smith are quite affectionate and friendly and Sothcott keeps the commentary informative without being overly intrusive.  Everybody loved Peter Cushing.  Director Terence Fisher was a serious alcoholic and this was his final film.  (But he was also a very nice man.)

Frankenstein Must Still Be Destroyed

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
Directed by Terence Fisher
Screenplay by Bert Batt

A second look at this Hammer production makes me think I had underrated it before.  For one thing, this film actually revolves around the notion that the brains Frankenstein transplants retain their memories and personalities even after surgery.  Having retained that memory, the "creature" of this film also bears a distinct grudge against the Baron.  In this iteration Frankenstein is not so much creating life as prolonging it or resurrecting it in some ways.  Thus, the Baron is not responsible for the generation of a new soul but must instead contend with a pre-existing personality.

One thing that remains consistent is the Baron's megalomania and singleminded pursuit of his quest for the source of life.  As in Hammer's earliest adaptation The Curse of Frankenstein the Baron is not above pursuing desires of the flesh.  By contemporary standards the scene where Victor Frankenstein rapes Anna Spengler is not particularly graphic, but the intent is still brutal.  I can see how the directness of the violent action would be disconcerting to those having to perform the scene, especially if the backstory of its addition to the film is to be believed.  But like the earlier incarnation's treatment of the relationship of Frankenstein and his servant Justine, Victor's rape of Anna is perfectly in keeping with a character who has no regard for the lives of others.  And it is quite in keeping with a Victor Frankenstein who is already morally bankrupt at the beginning of the film. 

The film commences with Victor lopping off the heads of unsuspecting Germans.  Thus, Frankenstein is no longer content robbing graves but instead starts off as a serial murderer.  Any pretense of a scientific desire for knowledge is utterly lost.   This is not the story of a person who means well but gets caught using bad means for a good purpose.  Here, Victor is already just running around murdering people to collect body parts.   In this film he doesn't even get close to pursuing his original task of creating life.  He's just doing what he can to crack open the addled brain of Dr. Brandt in order to get a key piece of scientific information that he needs to continue in his experiments.  It's the ultimate red herring of a plot device because as far as anyone knows Brandt's information could be a dead end (though Brandt reveals it to be useful later) and even with Brandt's secret all Frankenstein gets is another piece of the puzzle that combined with his own knowledge might (might, mind you) lead to new discoveries.  

From a structural standpoint, there's a lot to be said for this lowering of stakes.  Instead of a ridiculous world killing death ray with a ticking clock what we have is a much more scientifically realistic scenario.  One person desires something that when combined with something else could lead to another thing.  The thing itself does not have to be earth-shattering.   It is the desire for the thing that leads people to kill for it.  The possibility that the thing itself isn't worth killing people for doesn't make the story stupid, it makes the murdering much more poignant if also absurd.  (e.g. The Maltese Falcon.)  In this film Frankenstein (and the writers) seem to have forgotten why Frankenstein was experimenting to begin with.  It hardly seems to matter anymore. 

What makes this film interesting is that the moral complexity is heightened by the fact that the most sympathetic characters (Anna and Karl) are themselves ethically compromised.  Karl is stealing drugs from his job to sell on the black market.  He is doing this to help his fiancee Anna pay for the expensive healthcare for Anna's mother.  It is an obvious parallel to Frankenstein's original premise of helping cure the world of death with his experiments.   Anna and Karl are a microcosmic version of the Baron.  They are trying to save one life.  For that they need money.  Anna's boarding house and Karl's job presumably provide barely enough income to keep Anna and Karl financially secure.  Anna's mother has no doubt exhausted any savings that might have existed and so there is an income gap when it comes to providing for her care.  She could be relegated to lesser forms of care, but we are assured that anything less than what she is currently getting will put her on the road to termination but that if Karl and Anna can keep the money flowing Anna's mother will not only survive but steadily improve.   It's a real ethical conundrum.   Anna and Karl are both essentially employed full time.  Anna has her hands full keeping the boarding house in good order.  Karl is working full time at the psychiatric institution.   There are few ways for them to make enough money to make up the difference.  There are certainly some legal options open to them for some added income (grow some potatoes in the garden?)  but we're not talking about significant supplementary income.   The only other obvious (and also illegal) way of supplementing their income is for Anna or Karl to sell their own bodies to willing customers.  And it's not like these folks are living in the early 19th century version of Las Vegas where they could sell themselves to real high rollers.  We're talking middle class Germany and Anna is a respectable woman.  Even if we were to believe she could take up something less than prostitution (some form of Lutheran exotic dancing?)  it would be something considered unsavory enough to potentially jeopardize her income from the boarding house.  Anna's rent from boarders is entirely dependent on the perceived respectability of her house.

This is the part where some sort of health care reform would have been very useful.  If Anna's mother had access to some sort of national health care program her daughter would not have to become an accessory to illegal narcotic trafficking.  Insofar as we might imagine a rich tradition of charitable institutions and programs in Western Europe they seem to be of no use to Anna's mother who needs full time specialized medical care.  The private sphere has no desire to reduce the financial burden on Anna's mother and thus on Anna.  It's the triumph of the free market.  The free market has created an incentive for people to provide the specialized medical care that Anna's mother needs but don't they deserve to profit from their own investment and labor?   Of course, if Anna and Karl don't sell stolen drugs then they can't afford the expensive medical care and Anna's mother will deteriorate and die and thus provide no financial benefit to the providers of that health care.  Their customer will die. 
The free market doesn't care. 

So what's the point of this digression.  Only to point out that there is a structural villain in this story that is worse than Victor Frankenstein.  The free market system which provides no relief to people in life or death situations such as medical care (and the state which has absented itself from the issue entirely) are the villains that force Anna and Karl into the abject choice of crime in order to get money, sell off what little capital they own thus destroying their own future to save Anna's mother, or to do nothing and let Anna's mother die.  It is an impossible moral and ethical choice for them.  They make the choice that turns them into criminals (thus the least ethical choice) but it is also the most morally acceptable choice since it is the only choice that doesn't condemn someone to either death or grinding poverty.  Of course, its still not a good choice because the black market narcotics are no doubt also going to ruin some lives.   But this wouldn't have to be the case if there was a means of subsidizing those who need life-saving medical care.   It would seem to be the most moral choice.  
But in the world of this story nobody wants to provide that assistance.

Anna and Karl's ethical impurity makes them vulnerable to Victor Frankenstein's blackmail.  Victor then forces Anna to evict the other tenants of the boarding house thus making her completely dependent on, and at the mercy of, Frankenstein.  Karl is blackmailed into assisting Frankenstein in larceny and in the course of acquiring medical supplies Karl murders a security guard.   Karl is now completely compromised ethically.  His motivations no longer matter.  He is now complicit in Frankenstein's crimes.  Victor and Karl collaborate to medically murder Professor Richter, whose body is used as a vessel for Dr. Brandt's brain.   Professor Richter's brain is considered of insufficient value for Frankenstein to attempt to keep alive.

Brandt in the form of the Creature (with Richter's body) seems to be less morally or ethically compromised than any of the other characters.  Of course, Brandt was involved in the same sort of forbidden experimentation as Baron Frankenstein, but Brandt had the good grace to go completely mad upon gazing upon discovering forbidden knowledge.  Restored to his senses, Brandt makes no compromise with Frankenstein and sees the swapping of brain and body as nothing more than abomination.  (And useless abomination since Brandt's wife rejects him in the new body so he has no personal happiness to gain from Frankenstein's act.)  In fact the only use that Brandt has in Richter's body is to provide Frankenstein with the information he desires.  (It is probable that Frankenstein would dispose of Brandt once he was no longer of scientific use.)

Ella Brandt is certainly sympathetic even as the situation forces her to become something of a structural antagonist for the audience.   Since we spend most of our time with Karl and Anna they are our protagonists structurally.  We are sympathetic with Anna when she is trying to conceal Dr. Brandt's discarded body and before that when she is trying to keep Frau Brandt from discovering Frankenstein's presence.  Ella is not at fault for her disbelief when her husband comes to their house in another man's body.  It is hardly credible.  Similarly, we cannot fault her for imagining that her husband is dead when she identifies his body buried in Anna's garden.  It is what makes Brandt's attempt to communicate with her that much more poignant.

Does Anna have to die?  It depends on the reason for it in the story.  It would seem that Anna's death serves to provide Karl with a burning desire for vengeance that matches Brandt's fury thus pitting Victor against two mortal enemies and with the police closing in to boot.  Anna is inherently sympathetic.  Her motives have been pure though her actions have led her to ruin.   She has at best been an accessory to the crimes and she does not take an active hand in the worst of them.  And having already destroyed her life Frankenstein also physically violates her.  She serves as a symbol of the reason why "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed."  But why should Karl live when Anna dies?  Is this some sort of sinister gender politics?  Karl has actually murdered at least one person and has effectively allowed another to die through the removal and discarding of his brain.  Also he has stolen drugs and sold them to traffickers.  It's certainly not a case of those who have been ethically compromised not being allowed to survive.  Karl survives...alone.  It's hard to imagine what his future will be.  Jail?  Execution? Any life Karl has from here on out is going to be with some tremendous emotional baggage, that's for sure.  The same baggage (and then some) would have been there for Anna if she could have survived the stabbing.  Anna never tells Karl about the rape.  Would she have told him?  If she had, what would his reaction have been in the short term and in the long term?  If she would not have told him what would that secret have done to her in the long run?  I don't know what the motive of the writer or director was in killing off Anna, but I hope it wasn't a retrograde trope of killing off the woman who has been somehow sullied. 

I would like to note again the sheer joy to be had in the comic bungling of Police Inspector Frisch in this film and the counterpoint of the clearly long-suffering sidekick Police Doctor.  The scene with the undertaker alone is worth paying the Hammer tax and watching this film more than once. 

Cast
Baron Victor Frankenstein -- Peter Cushing
Anna Spengler -- Veronica Carlson
Dr. Karl Holst -- Simon Ward
Dr. Frederick Brandt -- George Pravda
Ella Brandt -- Maxine Audley
Professor Richter -- Freddie Jones
Inspector Frisch -- Thorley Walters
Police Doctor -- Geoffrey Bayldon
Madwoman -- Colette O'Neil
Guest (Plumber) -- Frank Middlemass
Guest (Chess Player) -- George Belbin
Guest (Pipe Smoker) -- Norman Shelley
Guest (Newspaper Reader) -- Michael Gover
Dr. Heidecke -- Jim Collier

Cinematography by Arthur Grant
Music by James Bernard