Franken-fest (Part 3)

And now, the Hammer Frankensteins....

My thoughts on Hammer films in general, are more or less what I said at the start of the Hammer Draculas....

Anyway, as I said during the Universals, the name confusion between the doctor, and The Monster crept in there.  And, as I added here, in the end, it boils down to that Abbot & Costello fucked it up.
For all time.
Blame them.

But, Hammer actually antidote-ed it for awhile with their titles, in making it all about the doctor, going so far as to have him create a new monster with every entry.


The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957)

The film-

Came out a year before the Christopher Lee Dracula.
Lee plays the monster, and Peter Cushing plays Victor Frankenstein.

So, again, we have the chronology of Shelly coming before Stoker.

Anyway, this one actually has less to do with the novel than the first Universal one.

Again, the resemblance goes as far as a doctor named Frankenstein making a monster.

Here, Dr. Frankenstein isn't just arrogant, and misguided, but a complete moral scumbag.

The thing is told as a flashback by Victor Frankenstein.

His mentor, is a guy called Paul Krempe (again with the Pauls...) who helps him at first, but then refuses to help on moral grounds.

And, he's right, it's not just the usual "playing god!", bullshit, but he crosses the line between robbing graves, and murders an elderly professor friend for his brain.

Paul catches him stealing the brain, and wrestles with him, and the brain jar gets smashed, and the brain gets all cut up.
The monster ends up both stupid, and violent.
Frankenstein locks the monster up, but it escapes, and kills an old blind man (the one from the book, and "Bride of Frankenstein", to really show how much of an elseworld this is on Hammer's part.), and Frankenstein and Krempe hunt it down, and shoot it.

Krempe leaves for some reason, and Frankenstein patches the monster up, and revives it, and uses it to kill his maid who he's been fucking around with, and who's blackmailing him, so, he crosses into murdering for the hell of it now.

The monster then becomes a threat to Frankenstein's fiancee, Elizabeth, so he burns it with a lamp, and pushes it into an acid bath, where it completely dissolves, leaving no proof that it ever existed.

Then, we come out of flashback, and Victor Frankenstein is led to the guillotine, and we're left to wonder if the story is true, or a delusion.

Despite that it butchers the novel, it's an interesting and disturbing horror flick.
I dig it.

The history-

Basic cable.
TCM still likes to marathon these.


Revenge Of Frankenstein (1958)

The film-

So, Victor Frankenstein foiled death in the last film by having his helpers have a priest decapitated and buried instead.
Then, he disappears, under the alias "Dr. Stein", and becomes a physician to the rich.

Dr. Kleve figures out who he is, and blackmails him into letting him be his assistant.

Kleve and Victor build a body that is actually perfect, and not a disfigured monster, and give it the brain of Karl, the hunchback assistant who wants a new body..

Well, this is pretty much what the hunchback, Daniel, from "House of Frankenstein", wanted, and got screwed out of.

Anyway, a douchebag drunken janitor attacks Karl/creature, and hits him in the head, and damages his delicate brain transplant surgery, and makes him go bonkers.

Meanwhile, Kleve points out, that the orangutan/chimpanzee brain swap that Victor performed resulted in the chimp eating his mate.
Victor waves this off, but, the disturbing implications are planted in our head.

Karl/creature starts to re-develop his deformities, and also randomly kills a local girl.
Karl/creature eventually collapses, and presumably dies.
(So, the cannibalism thing went nowhere..aww).

The medical board, and soon the townsfolk, figure out that Victor is Frankenstein, and angry hospital patients beat him to death.

Kleve transplants Victor's brain into a Frankenstein-ed body made to look exactly like Victor Frankenstein.

So...from this point in the series onward (even though it would never be mentioned again), Frankenstein himself is his own Frankenstein-Monster.

Nice twist. :)

The history-

Ditto "Curse".
Also, notice these ones are a bit more sophisticated than the Universals.

That it was the times, or that it was Europe, I dunno.
Probably both.


The Evil Of Frankenstein (1964)

The film-

The one where Hammer cut a deal with Universal, and used both a Jack Pierce inspired monster makeup, and lab equipment from, the Universal series.

Also, similar to the Universals, in that The Monster gets frozen, and thawed out again.

In this one, Victor Frankenstein is a lovely misunderstood genius, ignoring his crimes in the first two.

The history-

Can't remember it for the life of me, but from the plot description, it looks pretty dull.
Rotten Tomatoes isn't a fan either.


Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)

The film-

In this one, Victor Frankenstein isolates the soul, and invents a soul trapping machine.

His assistant, Hans, is in love with a girl with a paralyzed left side who the town assholes pick on, until she drowns herself.

Meanwhile, Hans is wrongly fingered for the murder of an innkeeper, and executed.

Frankenstein revives her body with the soul of Hans, and she comes back without memories, and her paralysis gradually goes away.

But, memories from Hans drive her to kill the real killers of the innkeeper, and then, finally remembering who she is, and realizing she has no one left to live for, drowns herself again to be in the afterlife with Hans.

The history-

Man, I've never seen this one, the marathons must skip it for some reason.
The critics love the damned thing.


Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)

The film-

Re: the title, boy, must he ever.

Victor Frankenstein is a total piece of shit in this one, even going so far as to rape the girlfriend of his apprentice.

It's creepy too, the girl is traumatized, and keeps it to herself, and no one ever knows but us.

But, we're satisfied when the latest monster kills him.

The history-

TCM always plays this one.


Horror Of Frankenstein (1970)

The film-

A remake of "Curse", without Cushing, and with David Prowse (later Vader in Star Wars) as The Monster.

The history-

Don't quite recall it....


Frankenstein And 
The Monster From Hell (1974)

The film-

Cushing is back, as is Prowse, as the latest monster.
(Just 3 years away from his Vader role)
(Ditto Cushing, as Tarkin)

Here, it's a hairy apelike looking thing, built out of murdered asylum inmates.
The surgery scenes are the stomach-churning-ly goriest of the series, by far.

Anyway, the usual mayhem and death ensues.

The history-

TCM plays "Curse", "Revenge", "..Must Be Destroyed", and this one, and skips over the others for some reason....

In the earliest days of Nicely's, they accidentally gave me this one, instead of what I tried to rent...which completely escapes me.
We watched this one, and had a good time anyway.


And, once again, that's Hammer.

Up next, all the other Frankenstein re-interpretations.