The same year that Rankin-Bass put out its juvenile puppet show (Mad Monster Party), Hammer released its fourth Frankenstein picture. Once again Peter Cushing portrayed Dr. Frankenstein, and this time he creates a female creature. You can probably tell by the lobby card (above) that this theme had less to do with honoring Mary Shelley’s book, and more about pushing the envelope of titillation. But there’s also something else going on: Hammer moved its Frankenstein movies beyond the simple matter of animating dead bodies, and instead delved into the nature and meaning of souls. It’s a fascinating topic, and while this movie is hardly an authoritative theological treatise, it at least offers some thought-provoking ideas.
The Plot: Dr. Frankenstein (Cushing) has a young assistant named Hans, who has a crush on Christina, the innkeeper’s daughter. When three Victorian-era frat boys are taunting Christina, Hans fights them off and cuts one of them with a knife. But later, the frat boys kill the innkeeper and frame Hans for the murder. Hans is sent to the guillotine, and, in Shakespearean fashion, the distraught Christina kills herself. But wait! Frankenstein has been experimenting with a procedure for capturing the soul of a person who’s recently died. So he captures Hans’ soul and inserts it into Christina’s reanimated body. For good measure, he also corrects Christina’s physical deformities in the process. Seriously, this young lady could pass for a Playboy Playmate. (Actually, she is a Playmate–the actress [Susan Denberg] was Miss August a year earlier.)
Anyway, it turns out that as Christina harbors Hans’s soul, she shares in his quest for vengeance against the three frat boys. And so she methodically kills each of them. Then, with vengeance complete and yet with no actual Hans to love, Christina kills herself again. Dr. Frankenstein tries but fails to stop her, and in a final shot we sense that he may have come to realize the human cost of his experiments.
The Monster: Hammer claims that Frankenstein’s new creation is “the ultimate in evil: A beautiful woman with the soul of a devil!” To me, there’s nothing scary about this “monster.” Sure, she’s homicidal, but her rage is so pinpoint-focused against three completely repugnant men that you’re rooting for her.
It’s an interesting twist, though; I give them credit for that. However, the way it plays out this has more the flavor of Kill Bill than the Frankenstein story.
The Atmosphere: It’s what we’ve come to expect from Hammer’s Frankenstein movies: Gothic atmosphere, sumptuous costumes, some explicit gore, and plenteous cleavage. The requisite laboratory equipment is in operation, and the colors are garish.
General Comments: Compare the Hammer series to Universal’s Frankenstein movies. For Universal the creature was the constant. Even after Karloff stopped portraying the monster, the new actors adopted the same look. But in those Universal movies, Dr. Frankenstein was portrayed in many different ways, by very different actors. Hammer takes the opposite approach. The “monsters” are all different, and in this one it’s actually a beautiful woman. But Dr. Frankenstein is the same in these movies: It’s always Cushing, and we feel like we really get to know him across the course of the movies.
Tomorrow it’s on to Hammer’s fifth Frankenstein movie, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. It’s available on YouTube for two bucks.
Chasing Phantoms 