A few years ago, I took it upon myself to watch and review a whole slew of Hammer Films, the iconic British studio that revived the classic monsters like Dracula and the Mummy in the late 1950s. You can see my little writeup on the series here. To be honest, it was one of the more fun experiments I have done since I started writing reviews. But I was missing one of the most important pieces of the horror series: the Frankenstein franchise.
The Curse of Frankenstein is one of the most important films in Hammer history. It was their first real foray into true classic horror and the film was a massive hit worldwide. The film established the template for what made Hammer movies so appealing - lots of bright colors (especially red), gruesomeness, and sensuality (though very tame by today's standards). With the success of Frankenstein, Hammer launched Mummy and Dracula franchises, also to dizzying heights of box office gold. The Curse of Frankenstein is now considered a classic.
And so it is very odd to me how underwhelmed I was with this film, especially considering the film featured Hammer's "A" Team (director Terence Fisher, writer Jimmy Sangster and actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee), who also collaborated on The Mummy, The Horror of Dracula, and The Gorgon. The acting is fine, the atmosphere is gothic and chilling, and the dialogue is enjoyable (especially the winner of my best line award, below). They also made an interesting decision to refocus the film, and the franchise, not on the monster like in earlier adaptations, but on Frankenstein himself, who instead of the misguided and obsessed hero he is in the original novel and in other movies, is actually downright evil. The majority of the film involves his quest to create new life, no matter who stands in his way. The monster only shows up briefly in a handful of scenes. I actually think this is an interesting and bold choice to create a whole franchise based around an evil character, though I think it pays off more in the sequels.
Ultimately, I think getting the film to delve into this new direction is also what causes its biggest problem. The Curse of Frankenstein wants to show us the descent of Frankenstein from an overly obsessed lover of medicine to a murderous and evil mad scientist. But that descent makes no sense and comes out of nowhere. If your film is going to focus on a bad guy as its main subject, you either make him sympathetic or you make him deliciously evil so we can enjoy the ride. The Curse of Frankenstein sort of tries to do both, and that ends up hurting the movie because Frankenstein comes out as just a humorless and mean douchebag. They should have just embraced his villainy like they do in The Revenge of Frankenstein. That would have been much more fun.
I also don't like the way women are handled in the film. While I understand how they want to use Frankenstein's love affair with his maid (Valerie Gaunt) as a central skipping stone to his eventual embrace of evil, the whole subplot just seems out of character and random. And his wife Elizabeth (Hazel Court) is kind wasted and here for no reason.
Ah, well. Maybe my expectations were too high. The film was such a huge hit and is considered such a classic, that I just felt it should have been more on the ball. Overall I think it is only okay. Certainly worth watching, but definitely not the classic I expected.
BEST LINE:
Paul: I thought I'd find you here.
Frankenstein: That was very intelligent of you. Well, now that you have found me, what do you want?
Paul: You killed the old man, didn't you. And now you are mutilating his body.
Frankenstein: Mutilating? I removed his brain. Mutilating has nothing to do with it.
MVP:
Philip Leakey, the makeup artist who designed the creature makeup. As soon as the production was announced, Universal immediately threatened to sue if Hammer used anything even closely resembling their now iconic creature design, so Leakey had to start from scratch. After several failed attempts, Philip Leakey finally completed his terrific design literally the day before filming began. I personally love what he came up with: patchwork person, with irregular features and a blind eye. I wish the monster had been featured more, actually!
TRIVIA:
Though Cushing and Lee had been in two films together already (Moulin Rouge and Hamlet), they never really talked or knew each other. Inbetween takes on Frankenstein, the two passed the time and relieved the tension from all the gruesomeness around them by exchanging favorite Looney Tunes quotes back and forth. And that was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
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