Main Cast: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Hazel Court, Robert Urquhart, Valerie Gaunt
Release Year: 1957
Country: UK
Run Time: 83 minutes
Plot
Curse of Frankenstein was the "breakthrough" picture for the fabled Hammer Studios. Told in flashback, the story centers around Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), a dangerously arrogant scientist who takes it upon himself to play God. Using portions of dead bodies, Victor fashions a synthetic monster (Christopher Lee) with a bad attitude. In a radical departure from the Frankenstein canon, it is the imperious Victor who orchestrates the film's two murders by "borrowing" the brain of a learned professor, then leaving his next victim at the mercy of the monster. In 1958, the film spwaned the sequel Revenge of Frankenstein. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
This was the film that brought the horror genre out of its long slump and put Hammer Films on the map. The studio dominated horror films for most of the next two decades, producing dozens of stylish costume Gothics, most of which were explicit variants on the Universal classics of yesteryear. Jack Asher's gorgeous Eastmancolor cinematography and lush sets disguise the low budget, and although Baron Frankenstein's internal struggle is not as complexly delineated as it would become in subsequent entries, Peter Cushing's performance remains a fascinating one. As the monster, Christopher Lee is relegated to stumbling around in tatty-looking Phil Leakey makeup and choking people while Cushing carries the film, but his pantomime skills give the creature a bit of personality regardless. Lee would get his chance in the spotlight the following year in director Terence Fisher's masterful Horror of Dracula, and would go on to become the king of '60s horror. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
Melvyn Hayes - Young Victor; Noel Hood - Aunt Sophia; Marjorie Hume - Mother; Sally Walsh - Elizabeth (as child); Paul Hardtmuth - Prof. Bernstein; Fred Johnson - Grandfather; Claude Kingston - Little Boy; Henry Caine - Schoolmaster; Michael Mulcaster - Warder; Patrick Troughton - Kurt; Joseph Behrman - Fritz; Hugh Dempster - Burgomaster; Anne Blake - Burgomaster's Wife; Raymond Rollett - Father Felix; Alex Gallier - Priest; Ernest Jay - Undertaker; Bartlett Mullins - Tramp; Eugene Leahy - Second Priest; Middleton Woods - Lecturer; Andrew Leigh - Burgomaster (Hermann)
Credit
Ted Marshall - Art Director, Anthony Nelson Keys - Associate Producer, Molly Arbuthnot - Costume Designer, Terence Fisher - Director, James Needs - Editor, Michael Carreras - Executive Producer, James Bernard - Composer (Music Score), Leonard Salzedo - Composer (Music Score), John Hollingsworth - Musical Direction/Supervision, Jack Pierce - Makeup, Phil Leakey - Makeup, Len Harris - Camera Operator, Bernard Robinson - Production Designer, Jack Asher - Cinematographer, Don Weeks - Production Manager, Anthony Hinds - Producer, Max Rosenberg - Producer, Jimmy Sangster - Screenwriter, Mary Shelley - Book Author
The film starts with Baron Victor Frankenstein, in prison awaiting execution for murder, where he tells the story of his life to a priest. After succeeding to his father's estate at a young age, he is mentored by Paul Krempe. As Victor Frankenstein grows up, the two become great friends, and they eventually collaborate on the Baron's scientific experiments. One night, they successfully bring a dead dog back to life. Frankenstein suggests that now they must create life from scratch, but Krempe withdraws when Frankenstein suggests using human body-parts. Victor Frankenstein does eventually succeed in bringing a body he made to life utilising a corpse found swinging on a gallows, hands and eyes purchased from charnel house workers and the brain of a distinguished professor. Frankenstein invites the professor to visit in order to murder him by pushing him off the top of a straircase, making his death appear accidental, before having him buried in the Frankenstein family vault. Unfortunately, the creature Frankenstein creates does not have the professor's intelligence and is both violent and psychotic due to its brain having been damaged before being implanted. The creature is locked up but escapes, is shot by Krempe and buried in the woods. Frankenstein later revives the creature and uses it to murder his maid, Justine, who he refuses to marry even though he has made her pregnant, when she threatens to tell the authorities about his strange experiments. The creature escapes again and threatens Frankenstein's bride to be, Elizabeth. It is shot and falls into a bath of acid. Its body is completely dissolved, leaving no proof that it ever existed. Frankenstein is imprisoned for the death of Justine. He implores the returning Krempe to testify to the priest and his gaolers that it was the creature that killed Justine, but Krempe refuses and Victor Frankenstein is led away to be executed for his crime.
Peter Cushing, who was then best known as a ubiquitous television star in Britain, was actively sought out by Hammer for this film. Christopher Lee's casting, meanwhile, resulted largely from his height (6'4"). Hammer had earlier considered the even taller (6 '7") Bernard Bresslaw for the role. Universal fought hard to prevent Hammer from duplicating aspects of their 1931 film, and so it was down to make-up artist Phil Leakey to design a new-look creature bearing no resemblance to the Boris Karloff original created by Jack Pierce. Production of The Curse of Frankenstein began, with an investment of £65,000, on 19 November1956 at Bray Studios with a scene showing Baron Frankenstein cutting down a highwayman from a wayside gibbet.[2] The film opened at the London Pavilion on May 2 1957 with an X certificate from the censors.
Significance
The Curse of Frankstein is important for a number of reasons. The film began Hammer's tradition of horror film-making. It also marked the beginning of a Gothic horror revival in the cinema on both sides of the Atlantic, paralleling the rise to fame of Universal's Dracula and Frankenstein series in the 1930s. The level of gore and violence was pioneering, and much condemned at the time — although this film, and Fisher/Hammer's subsequent Gothic horrors, can be seen as the forebear of the modern horror film.
Hammer's version of Frankenstein differed from Universal's in several important ways:
the films were in colour, not black-and-white,
the focus was on the Baron rather than the creature,
Frankenstein was assisted by young men eager for greater knowledge rather than hunchbacks (like Fritz in the 1931 version of Frankenstein).
The film's structure also opens it up to an interesting interpretation, that being that the story of the creature is nothing more than an hallucination of Baron Frankenstein's. The majority of the film takes place as a flashback, with the Baron relating the story to the priest who visits him in his prison cell, which means that this version of the truth of the murders for which the Baron is condemned might be taking place only in his own mind. This is reinforced by Paul's comment to Elizabeth—who had been the Baron's fiancée—at the end of the film, that there is nothing more they can do for him. Taken one way, they can't help him avoid the guillotine. Taken another way, Paul is cynically sacrificing the Baron (and the truth about the creature's existence) so he can run off with Elizabeth. Taken a third way, Paul recognizes that the Baron is hopelessly insane, and is guilty of the murders, despite his desire to blame them on his imaginary creature. No subsequent Hammer horror film had this level of ambiguity.
Some watchers have identified gay themes in "The Curse of Frankenstein," with the Creature symbolizing a repressed homosexual relationship between the Baron and Paul.[3]
Critical reception
When it was first released The Curse of Frankenstein outraged many reviewers. Dilys Powell of the Sunday Times regretted that such productions left her unable to 'defend the cinema against the charge that it debases' whilst the Tribune opined that the film was 'Depressing and degrading for anyone who loves the cinema'. The film however was very popular with the public and today directors such as Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton have paid tribute to how the movie has influenced their work.[4]
