The Nineteenth Night of Halloween

ON THE NINETEENTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN … I finished watching the entire Hammer Film series of Frankenstein movies, made between 1957 and 1974, all directed by Terence Fisher and all starring Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein. (I'm excluding The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) and The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), as these are not directed by Terence Fisher and are out of continuity with his series; I did watch them and can confirm that they are not worthwhile.) (Also, to out-pedant the “Frankenstein is the name of the doctor, not his monster” pedants, in fact Victor Frankenstein is technically not a doctor, he hadn’t earned his doctorate by the time of his fateful experiment, after which he ceased studies due to “brain fever.” In this series, he does often pose as a doctor under an alias, but his actual title is Baron Frankenstein.) 

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) is Hammer’s version of the original novel. Like the Universal version, its monster is an unintelligent menace. This is of course an egregious departure from the novel, where the monster is as intellectually eloquent and profound as it is physically powerful. (Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein (1994) gets this right, however, which is one of many reasons it is my favorite adaptation.) Fortunately, the creature effects distinguish themselves from Karloff’s iconic blockhead in being much gorier and creepier. Cushing’s take on Frankenstein also differs from the novel in that he is not a romantic hero but is instead cold and fixated on his Promethean quest to the exclusion of any concern for human life. Though Cushing masterfully evolves the character over the course of the series, coldness and reckless fixation remain his defining traits.

The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) is the direct sequel to Curse, picking up where it ended, with Victor’s scheme to escape the guillotine. Revenge is the best in the series (though I personally enjoyed rewatching Monster from Hell more). Unlike every other Frankenstein sequel before it, Fisher has the novel idea to tell a NEW STORY with the character! Incredibly, we get to see that Victor really is a superhuman scientist when he comes up with a NEW EXPERIMENT that is the logical next step in his project, rather than just doing the same old stitch-up-and-shock routine (which is all that the Universal version ever did (though Bride is great), to the point of becoming a two dimensional caricature, as lampooned in Young Frankenstein). Here he is focused on growing brainless but otherwise normal human bodies that he can then transplant the existing brains of living human donors into. Nothing that Victor does in this film is overtly villainous. And the process he is working to perfect is an obviously beneficial and transformative breakthrough for humanity. He first transplants the brain of a man debilitated by a degenerative disease into a healthy body. Then, Victor’s own brain is transplanted into a fresh copy of his body when he is mortally wounded. So he really is just a straightforward epic hero of science in this film. The true villain that forces the narrative mode back to tragedy is society’s prejudice against scientific progress. And this becomes the thesis of Fisher’s whole series: if society would stop persecuting Frankenstein, and if the scientific community and other institutional authorities would support him in his endeavors, humanity would be saved. In other words, according to Fisher, Frankenstein does nothing wrong (in essence); superstitious conservativism is what causes him to do reckless things that lead to disaster. And actually, this was also the thesis of Mary Shelley’s original 1818 version of the novel (religious outrage led to the later edition being mangled). Contrary to common cliché, Shelley’s novel is not a warning about the overweening hubris of science. It is rather about how prejudice against pioneering ideas in science leads to hidden experiments in private where individual human, or individual institutional, failings (cowardice in Victor’s case, avarice in the case of corporate and military science) precipitate catastrophe—an outcome that in turn gets twisted back into confirmation of society’s bias against science. So in this way, spiritually, Revenge is more true to Shelley’s intent than most other adaptations. 

The following three sequels never surpass Revenge but rather serve as lesser variations on the same theme.     

Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) sees Frankenstein again changing things up with his experiment, this time on a more metaphysical tack. It seems that he has discovered a means to trap the human soul before it leaves a freshly dead body, inside of a kind of dome-shaped laser forcefield. This allows him to transfer the soul of his wrongly executed assistant into his girlfriend. Perhaps due to body dysmorphia (though I don’t know if Fisher was aware of this condition), the soul-fused creation visits a murder spree upon the people who got the assistant beheaded. This film again portrays Frankenstein as a sympathetic benefactor who is unfairly persecuted by a fiendish popular mob. 

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) is well-made but is largely a repeat of Revenge, with Victor again focused on brain transplantation. What sets this one apart is that Victor has become a much nastier character, coldly murdering for the pieces he requires and implicating a young couple so as to pressgang them into his service. It’s not clear to what end Fisher takes this darker turn, other than to say that years of being unfairly treated like the villain by society has caused Frankenstein to lean into this role out of spite.

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) is really fun, I love it. It is the most gothic and grotesque of the series, which it achieves by elevating atmosphere and style over realism and depth. An older Frankenstein has managed to take over a Bedlam-like asylum from the inside. And he uses the asylum's facilities to create the gratuitously hideous titular Monster. Seemingly at this point he does this out of simple love of his ghastly craft, having resigned himself to the fact that humanity at large will never accept his gifts. One of the best moments of the entire series comes at the very end: After his latest spawn has predictably wreaked gruesome havoc and been destroyed, he immediately starts sweeping up to prepare the lab for another go, leaving us with the parting words, “We must get this place tidied up so we can start afresh. Now we shall need new material, naturally ...” Thus he shows us that he will gladly keep repeating the same cycle forever. Truly the perfect ending for a character that only ever grows more relevant.