In 1860, Baron Victor Frankenstein is sentenced to die by the guillotine for the crimes committed by his creature. Following the execution, two grave-robbers dig up the coffin, only to discover it contains the body of a beheaded priest rather than that of the baron himself. One of the robbers runs away in a panic, while the other one dies of a heart attack when Frankenstein suddenly appears to him, alive and well. Frankenstein and his companion, Karl, a man who is paralyzed on his right side and who helped the baron escape the guillotine, bury the robber in the open grave along with the reburied coffin. They relocate to the city of Carlsbruck where, for three years, Frankenstein sets up a very successful medical practice under the alias of Dr. Stein. His success and refusal to join the city's medical council seriously irks those on the council, to the point where they send a delegation of three men to persuade him to join them. Getting along perfectly well on his own, Frankenstein rebuffs their offer, aggravating them further. One of the members of the delegation, Dr. Hans Kleve, later appears to Frankenstein in his office at the poor hospital where he does volunteer work, and reveals that he knows who he is. Wanting to learn more than any university could possibly teach him, Kleve asks Frankenstein to make him his assistant and pupil, in exchange for his silence. Frankenstein agrees and shows Kleve his laboratory, which he's made out of a nearby wine cellar, and reveals to him his plan to, again, transplant a living brain into a body he's constructed from various body parts accrued from his volunteer work. The brain in question is to be that of Karl, who longs to be rid of his deformed body and trusts Frankenstein implicitly. Despite a couple of hiccups, the operation goes along fairly well and Karl appears to successfully adapt to his new body. However, an unexpected side-effect of of a brain not being given time to heal following a transplant, and the intervention of a couple of nosy people, threaten the accomplishment and may also lead to Frankenstein being exposed for who he really is.
Frankenstein's sociopathic tendencies are toned down here, as he doesn't actually murder anyone for the sake of his experiments, with Karl being a willing participant in having his brain placed in the body he's created, and there's something of a moral ambiguity to his actions, as he's hurting other people in order to do something good for another unlucky person. However, he's still merely using both Karl and Kleve, who becomes something of a friend to him, as a way to ensure his work will be successful, having no real regard for them. He's also convinced he was on the right track with his previous experiment, telling Kleve, "It should have been perfect. I made it to be perfect. If the brain hadn't been damaged, my work would have been hailed as the greatest scientific achievement of all time. Frankenstein would have been accepted as a genius of science." He adds, "I swore I would have my revenge. They will never be rid of me." At first, it seems as though he was successful this time around, but Frankenstein's overconfidence and misplaced faith in others proves to be his undoing. Even though Otto, a chimpanzee he experimented on by giving him the brain of an orangutan, suddenly turned cannibalistic due to some stress on the brain before it was given time to heal, Frankenstein is confident the same won't happen to Karl, as he knows the risks. Little did he account for the sympathetic meddling of Margaret Conrad, the daughter of the medical council president who started working at the hospital, or Kleve foolishly telling Karl of Frankenstein's plans for him, which result in Karl getting free and venturing out. Finding that he's missing, and coming across the aftermath of a brutal fight between Karl and a janitor at the lab, which led to the latter's death, Frankenstein decides to go along with his normal routine, figuring Karl will eventually have to come to him for help. He's doubly frustrated when he learns Karl turned up at the horse stables belonging to Margaret's aunt but that she told Kleve about it and persuaded him not to tell Frankenstein, per Karl's wishes, allowing time for Karl to escape again. That night, at a reception held by her aunt, Frankenstein confronts Margaret, asking her about Karl's condition when she found him and if she's sure he hasn't since returned. That's when Karl smashes his way into the reception and, approaching Frankenstein, calls him by his real name when he begs him for help, before collapsing and dying.
Despite knowing his cover may now be blown, especially since Dr. Molke of the medical council was at the reception, Frankenstein ignores Kleve's suggestion that they leave Carlsbruck and start up again elsewhere, saying he planned for such a thing in advance. He's bold enough to appear before the council themselves, assured that he has nothing to fear and that they can't prove anything, and gives them the same spiel about the mass number of Frankensteins he originally gave Kleve. He also says he merely changed his name to avoid the problems the name of Frankenstein would bring him, and also charges the council president with finding proof. This challenge leads to their opening the grave and finding the body of the priest. Not that it matters, as when Frankenstein heads to the ward at the poor hospital, he finds his patients have all learned who he is and he's attacked and brutally beaten. Kleve intervenes and takes Frankenstein to the lab to treat his injuries, but it becomes clear he's going to die and so, he has Kleve put his contingency plan into action: transplant his brain into another body he'd already prepared for himself. With that, the two of them relocate to London and Frankenstein continues his practice, this time under the alias of Dr. Franck. (Frankenstein doesn't have much imagination for his aliases, does he? You have to wonder what he planned on using had that cover been blown as well.)
When Margaret Conrad finds Karl hiding in her aunt's horse stable, she goes to Kleve for help and makes him agree not to tell Frankenstein, given how Karl was frantic about him finding out where he is. But, by the time they arrive back at the stable, Karl has left. Frankenstein and Kleve search the area, Kleve trying to explain his actions, only to be angrily admonished for not having told him about Karl earlier. They come across the site of a murder committed by Karl and then head to a reception held by Margaret's aunt, where Frankenstein confronts Margaret about Karl's condition and current whereabouts. After Karl breaks into the reception and says Frankenstein's name in front of everyone in attendance, Kleve tries to convince him they must leave Carlsbruck and set up elsewhere, but to no avail. He also tries to dissuade him from talking with the council himself but Frankenstein feels he has nothing to fear from and does so. As they're leaving for the meeting, he tells Kleve he has something to discuss with him, which later turns out to be the contingency plan involving the other body Frankenstein revealed he'd made in his laboratory. When Frankenstein's patients revolt and attack him, mortally wounding him, Kleve transplants his brain into the body. At that point, the medical council, having found evidence that proves Dr. Stein is Baron Frankenstein, show up with a police inspector to arrest him, but Kleve tells them about the attack and that he was unable to save the baron's life. The movie ends with Frankenstein, inhabiting his new body thanks to Kleve's successful operation, now working in London as Dr. Franck, with Kleve remaining as his faithful assistant and apprentice.
While there was an undertone of sympathy to the otherwise totally homicidal creature Christopher Lee played, the creature Frankenstein creates in this film is pitiable in spades. Before he was to die by the guillotine, Frankenstein made a bargain with the deformed and half-paralyzed Karl (Oscar Quitak): in exchange for saving his life, he would put his brain in a strong, healthy body, created from the body parts of various other people. Three years later, as they work together in Carlsbruck, the time finally comes for the transplant and Karl is more than ready, especially after he meets the lovely Margaret Conrad and is smitten with her. Despite some complications that occur, such as Karl becoming agitated and struggling when Frankenstein and Kleve use their electrical apparatus to bring him to life, and the pain he's in after first awakening within his new body, the transplant proves a success and Karl adapt well to his new body (Michael Gwynn). But, he becomes despondent when Kleve tells him that Frankenstein intends to show him to doctors from all around the world as a medical and scientific triumph, saying he's always had people staring at him. Left alone in the hospital attic room, strapped to the bed, Karl is basically just as much of a prisoner in his new body as he was in his old. That's when Margaret, after hearing about him, comes to check on him, much to his delight. She promises to help him find employment and a happy life when he's fully healed, leaving her address. Before she leaves, Karl gets her to loosen the straps, saying they're tight and painful, and this allows him to get loose and escape the hospital. Before leaving, Karl looks at himself in the mirror and sees that his right side is completely healed and he no longer has the hunchback he did before. After escaping he heads to the laboratory and burns his old body in the furnace, both ridding himself of it forever and ensuring that Frankenstein won't be able to make a spectacle of him, as Kleve told him he planned to display him and his old body side by side. However, Karl is attacked by a drunken janitor, who believes him to be a burglar and also proves to be sadistic and cruel, smashing a chair over his back and punching him repeatedly, even as Karl begs him not to. After being knocked around, Karl, suffering from damage to the brain, fights back and attacks the janitor, strangling him to death. Once the man is dead, Karl's mouth waters at the sight of his body, and he realizes that, like Otto the chimpanzee, he's now developing cannibalistic tendencies and flees the scene.
The next day, Margaret finds Karl hiding in her aunt's stables, as it was the only place he felt was safe to go to, since she told him she'd help him. He becomes frantic when she talks about telling Dr. Stein, begging her to let him stay at the stable. Not knowing what to do, Margaret agrees not to tell Frankenstein and goes to fetch Kleve instead, asking him to stay there until he returns. But, while waiting for her, Karl is distraught when he realizes that, despite being in a new body, the paralysis on his right side is returning and he leaves before Margaret and Kleve arrive. That night, Karl, having now deteriorated both physically and mentally, attacks and kills a young woman, fleeing when her boyfriend spots him. He heads back to the home of Margaret's aunt, Countess Barscynska, who happens to be holding in the house. Though he appears to lament how ugly he's become and walks off into the darkness, he later crashes through the window, horrifying everyone at the sight of him, as his deformities have returned completely. He lunges at Margaret, when he spots Frankenstein and walks towards him, calling him by his real name and begging him for help, before collapsing to the floor dead
Another major difference between the creature in The Curse of Frankenstein and Karl is that, this time around, the makeup is very, very minimalistic, owing to how Frankenstein made sure the body he created this time around wasn't a horribly mangled mess. Save for some subtle staples around the edges of the face, Karl's new body is strong, healthy, and fairly good-looking, and even when Karl's mental state starts to decay after his fight with the janitor and his old deformities slowly but surely begin to reappear, there's very little makeup involved. Mainly, it's just Michael Gwynn twisting and contorting his right arm and leg in the same manner as Oscar Quitak, though Phil Leakey may have put an appliance on the hand in order to make it seem more deformed. Also, when Karl breaks in on the reception before collapsing and dying, the right side of his face looks uglier than it was before and there seems to be something wrong with his eye, although you never get a good look at it. Otherwise, Leakey didn't have to resort to the extensive kind of makeup work he did in The Curse of Frankenstein and the Quatermass films. This was the last Hammer film Leakey worked on, as he left the studio afterward, growing tired of their cost-cutting measures.
Aside from Dr. Hans Kleve, the two most notable members of Carlsbruck's medical council are Dr. Molke (Arnold Diamond) and the president (Charles Lloyd Pack). While just about everyone on the council dislikes "Dr. Stein" for having appeared out of nowhere and, in three years, stolen just about everyone's best patients, Molke especially hates him and suggests that he must be made to join the council or end his medical practice. When they wonder exactly how they could make someone end their practice in Carlsbruck, the president comes up with the excuse that Stein's refusal to join could be seen as an affront. Thing is, the man who sits at his left at the table during meetings proves to be a bit more qualified to be president than he himself, as he's the one who suggests they send a delegation of three to confront Stein with this proposition. Said three men, made up of the president, Molke, and Kleve, go to see Stein at the poor hospital but are forced to wait for him in the ward where the really sick patients are kept, much to their displeasure. Molke describes it as intolerable, while the president tries to retain an air of dignity, saying they must remember these are poor people, before quietly remarking, "The stench is enough to kill me." Naturally, when they finally do meet with Stein and he turns them down, as well as gives them his low opinion of the council in general, Molke and the president are irked at this, especially Molke, who declares that Stein hasn't heard the last of it. Though the president feels his hands are tied, he does come up with a compromise and has his daughter, Margaret, work at the hospital with Stein and Kleve. Much later in the movie, Molke is attending Countess Barscynska's reception, when Karl breaks in and calls Stein "Frankenstein" out loud. He immediately calls together a meeting of the council and tells them what happened, adding that he went through the records pertaining to Frankenstein and his description fits Dr. Stein's to a T. They then have Stein and Kleve appear before them but Stein denies the accusation completely, suggesting they'd best get proof before jumping to conclusions. They take him at his word and get proof: they open up Baron Frankenstein's grave and find his body is not in the coffin. With that, they arrive at the lab with Carlsbruck's police inspector, only for Kleve to tell them Frankenstein was beaten to death by his patients. Satisfied that he's now dead, they decide to bury him in unhallowed ground.
Countess Barcynska (Margery Gresley) and her daughter, Vera (Anna Walmsley), are among Frankenstein's more affluent patients and the countess clearly thinks her daughter's health, whose ailments she's really exaggerating, is more important than that of the other wealthy women he sees or the poor, for that matter. Though Frankenstein can come to no conclusion as to the true nature of Vera's "malady," the countess tells him he can do a great deal for her simply as a man, attempting to set him up with her by mentioning the vast wealth she'll receive when she marries, and invites the doctor to the reception she's having. Vera appears to be quite interested in Frankenstein as well, as when he listens to her heart for supposed palpitations, she and her mother insist he listen with his bare ear rather than his old-fashioned stethoscope. She appears disappointed when he opts to use it at first and then complains that it's so cold she can't breathe in, as he asks her to. The countess herself then insists he use his ear, which he ultimately does. When Frankenstein appears at the reception to confront Margaret, the countess' niece, she, again, tries to set him up with Vera, but Frankenstein, again, isn't having it.
Visually, The Revenge of Frankenstein is one of cinematographer Jack Asher's more underwhelming jobs, as it has a rather flat look to it, with the color palette again being fairly muted, and it has something of a dark, murky quality to it, which would be carried over into the next several color films he worked on, like The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Mummy (although, those feel more polished). That said, though, Asher does still make good use of deep shadows and low lighting in several scenes, such as the one with the grave-robbers and Baron Frankenstein's suddenly appearing to Fritz, the scene where Dr. Kleve waits in the shadows for Frankenstein in his office, the darkly-lit confrontation in the laboratory between Karl and the janitor, and the moment where the deformed Karl breaks in on the reception, as he's placed in very low lighting to look especially threatening. But, aside from those, the cinematography is rather ho-hum and not as memorable as it was in both The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula.
While its predecessor had several instances of memorable location work, The Revenge of Frankenstein was shot almost entirely at Bray Studios, giving production designer Bernard Robinson quite a lot to do. What's most noteworthy about the sets he came up with here is that, save for the lovely office where Frankenstein meets with Countess Barcynska and Vera, the sitting room he and Kleve are in during one brief scene (these rooms appear to be Frankenstein's actual home in Carlsbruck), and the interior of the mansion where the reception is held, they veer away from the feeling of wealth and affluence you got with the baron's home in The Curse of Frankenstein and Castle Dracula and the Holmwood house in Dracula. Most of the story takes place at the poor hospital where Frankenstein does volunteer work, revolving around his small, dimly-lit office, the confined attic room where Karl is kept after his brain is transferred into his new body, and the ward filled with the seriously ill patients he tends to. There's a genuine feeling of claustrophobia to this location, and even the exterior scenes, which are meant to be taking place on the streets of Carlsbruck, the grounds of the hospital, a small park near the city, and the small graveyard where Frankenstein is supposedly buried, feel very confined, as they were also shot on stages, and few of them take place in the daytime, making it feel as though there's no way to escape from it all. The only true exteriors are featured in the opening when Frankenstein is led to the guillotine, the shot of him and Kleve loading Karl's new body into a carriage to transport him to the hospital following the transplant, and the outside of Countess Barcynska's house and yet, you barely see the sky in those scenes, so they still feel closed in. Emphasizing this just a little bit more with a sense of artificiality, the establishing shots of Carlsbruck and London are both obvious matte paintings and the brief shot of the streets of London is likely a set itself.
As you would expect in a Frankenstein film, the largest and most memorable set is his laboratory, which, in this case, he built out of a wine cellar near the poor hospital. It's a larger and more spacious room than the laboratory in the upper floor of Frankenstein's house in the first film, filled with the usual beakers of liquid and old-fashioned equipment meant to generate electrical power, as well as a cage where Otto the chimpanzee is kept and large, glass cases full of animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs. A notable centerpiece is an apparatus where a man-made, remote brain is connected to a severed arm and a pair of disembodied eyeballs kept in separate tanks. Frankenstein activates the brain using the type of wheeled electrical device featured in the first film and is able to get the eyes and the brain to react at the sight of a flame. There's also a space hidden behind a large drape where Karl's new body is kept in a large tank prior to the transplant, and it's also where Frankenstein stores his own new body after he puts it together in the room's back area. A good deal of action takes place in this lab, as it serves as the scene of three significant moments in the story: Karl's rebirth in his new body, the beginning of his downfall after his brain is damaged in his fight with the janitor, and Frankenstein's own death and rebirth in a new body following his being beaten by his patients. But, while the art direction by Robinson is, as usual, superlative, this whole setting isn't as memorable to me as Frankenstein's home and the surrounding countryside in Curse, both of which had a much more classically Gothic feel. It think that could also have been a factor in creating the palpable, eerie atmosphere present in that film, which this movie doesn't really have.
Truth be told, none of Hammer's other Frankenstein films managed to recapture that feeling of dread and creeping horror which permeated The Curse of Frankenstein, but Revenge does manage to create something of an uncomfortable atmosphere of its own, one of sickness, grime, and coldness that's then combined with that familiar feeling of very crude science. The main setting of Carlsbruck's hospital for the poor leads to a fair amount of scenes dealing with people who are horribly ill and filthy, particularly in the main ward, filled with bed-ridden men who are not only dirty but suffer from various maladies like infections, a horrible chest condition from smoking too much, a bad head injury, and are also missing certain limbs from Frankenstein's surgeries. Also, the hospital's custodian is, himself, a very dirty person who never bathes, saying he'd catch pneumonia from the cold, and whom Kleve insinuates may have fleas (while it's said as a joke, it wouldn't be farfetched to think that would be the case). Speaking of the custodian's comment about catching pneumonia, it's obvious that it is, indeed, very cold, as you can often see the actors' breath, even when they're indoors (I might have said this before but, regardless, Bray had virtually no heating system), and Frankenstein says at one point that the patients keep themselves dirty as a way to stay a little bit warm. Add into the mix the notion of Frankenstein amputating the body parts he needs from the patients in order to build new bodies for both Karl and himself (the idea of surgery being performed during such a medically primitive era makes my skin crawl, never mind in the cold, unsanitary conditions of this poor hospital), the constant instances of injections being administered, and the very concept of brain transplants, and you have a movie whose tone is unsettling in its own way.
And yet, despite that tone, the movie, which prompted the Daily Telegraph to suggest that the BBFC create the category, "For Sadists Only," doesn't feature nearly as much as true bloodshed as its predecessor. There are still shots of severed limbs, like the arm of the pickpocket that Frankenstein amputates and later uses for his own artificial body, as well as the arm that's part of his experimental apparatus, a disembodied pair of eyes that are also part of that setup, a couple of instances where freshly-removed brains are placed in containers of water, and a moment where he examines Karl's brain following his death, but it's not like the grisly close-up of a severed pair of hand, the hideously indicated removal of a half-eaten head (though both of the transplants in the film do each feature a brief but similar moment), the full on close-up of an eyeball, and shards of glass being removed from a brain that featured in The Curse of Frankenstein. There's also no extremely disgusting monster makeup this time around and the instances of onscreen violence, while certainly brutal, don't show a lot of blood and gore, save for Frankenstein's badly beaten body after he's attacked by the patients. Really, the film's most gruesome aspect, aside from its atmosphere, is the idea that, after he was given the brain of an orangutan, Otto the chimpanzee became a cannibal and ate his mate. That notion makes those moments where you see him munching on raw meat more stomach-churning, as it does when you see Karl first starting to develop those tendencies when his brain is damaged in the fight with the janitor. It makes you wonder what exactly he did to the young woman he killed in the park and also what he was going to do Margaret when he lunged at her at the reception.
As was the case with Universal's classic horror films, continuity from one film to another in an ongoing series was never one of Hammer's highest priorities and it was clear even at this early point. Even though this is a direct sequel that starts right where The Curse of Frankenstein ended, there are a number of discrepancies between that story and this one. Notably, the creature Frankenstein created in the first film is now widely known to have existed and is the reason for his infamy and condemnation, whereas Curse ended with Frankenstein himself being charged with murder, as no one believed his story about the creature since there was no trace of him after he'd been totally dissolved in the vat of acid in Frankenstein's lab. The introduction of Karl, the man who saves Frankenstein from the guillotine, is a blatant contrivance, as Karl was nowhere to be seen in Curse and was not among the people who led Frankenstein to the guillotine at the end of that film, which is where this one starts. If you watch in the background of the opening scene, Karl appears to relieve the guard who was taking Frankenstein to the guillotine, meaning he was likely a jailer himself, and you could say that Frankenstein made the bargain with him much earlier as a backup plan in case the priest didn't believe his story, but it's still a stretch that Karl would have so much trust in him given how, according to Curse's ending, there shouldn't be any proof that he was as great a scientist as he claimed to have been. Moreover, the executioner is revealed to be in on the plan as well, and I don't know when or how Frankenstein, Karl, or both of them would have had time to coerce him into the plot. And for a movie called The Revenge of Frankenstein, you would expect the plot to involve Frankenstein targeting Paul Krempe, the former friend who left him to his fate in the prison, but Krempe is never mentioned once.
You could chalk those discrepancies up to Jimmy Sangster being given less than two weeks to come up with a story for a movie that had already been pre-sold, as well as that he was charged with the task of continuing a story he'd ended pretty conclusively. That also may explain some notable plotholes in the actual story he came up with. First, what's the point of the early bit with the grave-robbers, except to reveal to the audience that Frankenstein has escaped the guillotine, which is a foregone conclusion? You could have easily shown that the priest was the one who was beheaded right in the opening scene, with Karl and the executioner then passing the body off as Frankenstein's in order for it to be buried in the grave meant for him. And speaking of which, Fritz's remains aren't found when the coffin is dug up again to see if Frankenstein really is dead. Second, and we're getting into contrived medical science you shouldn't think too hard about anyway, why do Karl's deformities return to him in his new body, even though Frankenstein says they were result of a blood-clot rather than any damage to the brain itself? Granted, I should also be asking why an injury to a transplanted brain before it's healed would suddenly result in cannibalism, but the resurgence of something that was specific to one body, and wasn't neurological, in another is what really confuses me. If Frankenstein were going to build an artificial body for himself in case his cover was blown, why would he design it to look the way he already does, especially given how recorded physical descriptions of him are very likely and, as it turns out, are part of what leads to him being found out? If you were going to do this, wouldn't you want to be in a completely different body? And finally, why use such lousy aliases as Dr. Stein and Dr. Franck? That's even worse than David Banner always coming up with an alias that's always "David B---." For God's sake, make some effort to hide your identity.
Following the opening credits, Baron Frankenstein is shown being led to the waiting guillotine outside of the prison, with the priest who listened to his story leading the way in front, while Karl walks behind the prisoner. Once Frankenstein is in sight, the executioner lets the blade drop to give him a taste of the grisly fate that awaits him. The three men climb up the steps to the platform and the priest recites a final prayer for Frankenstein; as he does, the executioner and Karl exchange nods. The executioner raises the blade up once more and the camera follows it, as the priest finishes the prayer. A struggle is then heard and the blade drops, the film transitioning with a sudden shriek that turns out to be a woman squealing excitedly in a pub. There, Fritz, a grave-robber, tries to talk his friend and fellow body snatcher, Kurt, into joining him on another potential job. Kurt, who's quite drunk, isn't keen on it, bringing up their last job, where he got mauled by dogs and was sentenced to six months in prison. When his attempts to sway him don't work, Fritz appears to drop the subject, lamenting he'll have to do it by himself, as Kurt prepares to stumble off home. But then, Fritz mentions the pay is ten marks, rather than the six marks he mentioned before, which changes Kurt's mind. With that, the two of them are in the small graveyard, Kurt digging up the coffin, while Fritz sits at the graveside, munching on some food and running his mouth. Kurt uncovers the coffin's lid and, illuminating the name with a lantern, tells Fritz to come over and look at it. Seeing it reads BARON FRANKENSTEIN, Kurt wonders if the body isn't more valuable than ten marks. Fritz prods at him to just get on with it and they remove the coffin from the grave and use crowbars to pry the lid open. When they do, Kurt is horrified to see it's the headless body of a priest and runs off in a panic, Fritz unable to catch him. Alone, Fritz decides to remove the body and get the ten marks, when he's startled by a voice that intones, "Good evening." Looking up, he sees Baron Frankenstein, who introduces himself accordingly, standing across from him. Fritz's weak heart is unable to withstand the shock and he collapses into the open grave, dying instantly. After Frankenstein examines the body to make sure he's dead, he and Karl bury Fritz with the coffin containing the priest in the grave.
The film jumps ahead to three years later, in the city of Carlsbruck, where Frankenstein is practicing medicine under the alias of Dr. Stein. While stitching a wound in a woman's head in his office at the poor hospital, Stein is told by the custodian that a delegation of men from the medical council wish to see him but tells him they must wait until he's finished his work. He also tells the custodian to have them wait for him in the ward. The custodian heads up to the ward and leads the three befuddled council members in through another door. Being in the ward with so many filthy, coughing patients especially irritates the council president and Dr. Molke, the latter of whom is about to protest when Stein enters the room. He checks over a few patients, paying special attention to a man who has a memorable tattoo on his right arm, and tells the man, Harry, that the arm must be removed. He's irate at this, mainly because he needs the arm for his "work": pickpocketing; Stein advises him to either find another trade or use the other hand. Stein then notices that a man lying in a bed to Harry's right is smoking a pipe, which is forbidden, and takes it from him. He asks the man what his problem and he complains about his chest, to which Stein remarks, "I'm not surprised. You use it like a furnace." As he administers a shot to Harry's arm, he asks the delegation what they're there for, and when the president tells him it's decided he must join the council, he lets them know of his low opinion of them and that he's perfectly content to continue working by himself. While Dr. Hans Kleve seems content with his decision, the president and Molke are not, though Stein ignores the latter's threats about it as he leaves the room. Later that night, after having finished the amputation of Harry's arm, Stein goes back to his office to eat his dinner, only to find Kleve waiting for him in the dark. As Stein casually sits down and prepares his dinner, he listens as Kleve charges him with being the supposedly dead Baron Frankenstein, which he eventually admits to. Kleve then tells him that he wishes to work as his pupil and, if he agrees, he won't inform the council of his true identity. Frankenstein mulls it over, but when Kleve tells him his credentials, he decides to let him work with him, though he tells him to make sure to refer to him as Dr. Stein when they're in public.
After dinner, Frankenstein takes Kleve to his laboratory, which is near the hospital and down a small flight of stairs that lead to an old wine cellar. Inside, Frankenstein introduces Kleve to Karl, as well as Otto, the chimpanzee that's kept in a cage in the back. He then shows him a parcel on a nearby table, unwrapping it to reveal Harry's amputated arm. Frankenstein mentions he took it because of the sensitive fingers that were inherent in Harry's being a pickpocket. He next leads Kleve over to an apparatus where another severed arm and a disembodied pair of eyes are each kept in a small tank of water and connected to a remote brain he's created. In a demonstration, Frankenstein switches on a device that generates electrical energy and sends it through the apparatus, while also activating both the remote brain and a switch on the other end that causes the liquids in the beakers and test tubes there to bubble. He tells Kleve to watch as he uses a match to light a gas torch and places it near the pair of eyes. The eyes immediately become transfixed on the fire and follow its movement. He then puts the flame near the arm, which recoils and attempts to pull away, as the eyes also continue reacting to the flame. The closer the flame gets, the more violently and desperately the arm recoils, until Frankenstein switches the gas off and the flame disappears; as soon as he does, the arm and eyes stop reacting. Frankenstein turns the power off, and while Kleve is amazed at what he's seen, Frankenstein writes it off as nothing compared to the complexity of a real, human brain. He leads Kleve over to a spot where another part of the room is hidden behind a drape, and after swearing he will have revenge on being sentenced to death for his experiments, he removes the drape to reveal a man standing inside a vertical, glass tank. He tells Kleve it's a body he cobbled together from various parts he accrued from his work at the poor hospital and that all it needs is a brain, namely that of Karl, telling him of the bargain they made back in the prison. Karl replies that Frankenstein can do what he wants with his brain as long as he rids him of his paralyzed right side and hunchback.
It isn't long before the time comes for the operation. Frankenstein springs this on Kleve one night while the two of them discuss the arrival of Margaret Conrad at the hospital. They show up at the laboratory to find Karl waiting for them, anxious to get underway, though he gets a bit nervous as he watches the two of them prepare, looking at the surgical instruments Frankenstein removes from a box. Frankenstein, sensing his anxiety, tells him to keep looking at the body that is soon to be his. In a dissolve, the body is shown lying on a table next to where Karl is lying, as Kleve gives him some chloroform. Once he's out, Kleve gives Frankenstein a scalpel and he begins cutting into Karl's head. Another dissolve, and Karl's brain has been removed, placed in a large beaker of water, and sewn into the artificial body's cranium; Frankenstein injects Karl's old body with embalming fluid. Then, they start the process of bringing the body to life using the electrical equipment. Otto watches from his cage, swinging around excitedly, as Frankenstein and Kleve operate the device that sends electrical energy into the body. Frankenstein walks over to the wheel-like generator, while Kleve tries to keep the flow of energy from a device into the body steady. The body's left arm then starts to twitch and he breathes heavily. Kleve calls Frankenstein's attention to this, when the body suddenly contorts and struggles violently, causing the device's circuits and wires to blow out. Kleve recoils from the small explosion, as Frankenstein yells for him to administer anesthetic. Frankenstein rushes over to the body, getting kicked in the face by a writhing foot at one point, and yells for Kleve to switch the device off. Once he does, he administers the chloroform and he and Frankenstein hold the body down, Frankenstein listening to the heart, as the struggling stops and the breathing returns to normal. In the next scene, they look at the reborn Karl, who's still out from the chloroform, as Frankenstein decides they'll need to keep him strapped down for a few days to ensure his brain has time to heal. Frankenstein tells Kleve this is only the beginning of their work and then feeds Otto, telling Kleve he was part of his early brain transplant experiments, having been given the brain of an orangutan.
After that, they load Karl into the back of a horse-drawn carriage and transport him to the hospital, where Frankenstein has prepared an attic room for him. They carry him up to the room on a stretcher, unaware that they're being spied on by the hospital custodian. After they carry Karl into the room and close the door behind them, the custodian creeps over to the door and tries to find a spot to look through it, as Frankenstein and Kleve strap Karl to the bed inside. The custodian then decides to head home, when he suddenly hears a pained scream from inside the room. Kleve has to hold Karl down and keep him from struggling, telling him to relax. When he does, Frankenstein gives him an injection to calm him further, commenting that Karl is bound to be in pain when the anesthetic wears off. Outside, the custodian casually walks away, whistling to himself. A week later, Frankenstein removes the bandages from Karl's head and checks his pulse as he comes to. Initially, he's panicked, looking around the room frantically, but Frankenstein tries to calm him and get him to speak. He also tells him the straps on his limbs and torso are necessary for a little while. Kleve arrives and the two of them examine Karl's condition, first checking his eyes and then unstrapping his arms and having him lift them. Though he has some trouble lifting his right arm, his brain appears to be taking well to his new body. Frankenstein congratulates him before leaving to begin his shift at the hospital. He tells Kleve to keep Karl's mind active by talking to him and to give him a pill if he becomes fatigued. Frankenstein leaves and Kleve goes about re-strapping Karl's arms, when he speaks to him, asking him when he can see his new body. Kleve assures him it will be soon. Karl then asks what's to become of him and Kleve tells him that scientists will come from all corners of the world to see him, as well as that Frankenstein intends to make him the center of student lectures. Karl, however, isn't thrilled with this news, saying he's been stared at all his life, but Kleve assures him it'll be for a different reason this time. Seeing his distress and mistaking it for pain, Kleve gives him the pill and leaves. Alone, Karl looks solemnly at the straps and glances at the window, yearning to be outside.
At the hospital, Margaret Conrad is basically chased out of the ward by Frankenstein when he comes on duty, telling her to keep out while he's around. The custodian joins her outside in the hall and tells her that Frankenstein removes various limbs from his patients, as well as about Karl and his being tied down while screaming. Margaret doesn't believe what the man tells her at first but, when he mentions that Karl is kept up in a room in the attic, she decides to see if it is true. The custodian sneaks into Frankenstein's office and takes the master key from his desk, then leads Margaret up to the room and unlocks the door, before giving her the key and heading off. Margaret quietly walks inside and finds Karl asleep. She slips over towards him to get a closer look, when he senses her presence and awakens. She's surprised that he knows who she is and he merely explains they met once before. While the custodian goes back to Frankenstein's office and shares a hot toddy with Kleve there, Margaret, learning Karl has no employment, offers to help him when he's better. She writes her address down on a piece of paper, while Karl, again, glances at the window. She puts her address in the pocket of his coat, which is hanging by the door. He tells her he's uncomfortable due to the straps and she decides they're too tight and loosens them. Back in Frankenstein's office, the custodian tells Kleve his theory about animals being superior to humans. Kleve only half-listens, as he's doing other things at the moment, when the custodian mentions that monkeys and apes don't eat meat. Realizing that he saw Otto eating meat, he grabs his coat and hat and rushes out the door.
In the lab, Frankenstein tells Kleve that Otto turned cannibalistic following his own brain transplant but decided not to correct it. Kleve then asks Frankenstein if the same thing could happen to Karl but is told that, as long as his brain is given time to heal, there's no danger. He adds that, because Karl knows what happened to Otto, he won't take any unnecessary risks until. Finishing feeding the various other experimental animals kept in the lab, Frankenstein leads Kleve into the back to show him something he just finished. He pulls a sheet off a figure lying on a stretcher to reveal an artificial body with Frankenstein's own face. Once Kleve gets over the shock of it, Frankenstein asks him to help get the body in the tank that once contained Karl's new body. As they start to move him, the right arm tumbles out from under the sheet to reveal that it's Harry's tattooed one. Back at the hospital's attic room, Karl has managed to free himself from the straps and get dressed. Despite some initial difficulty when he first gets to his feet, when he walks over to grab his coat, he sees his reflection in the mirror across from him. As it's the first time he's managed to see himself in his new body, he examines himself carefully and finds that, for the first time in his life, he has full mobility and doesn't have a hunchback. Satisfied and happy, he puts on his vest and coat and climbs out the window.
That night, Karl waits until Frankenstein and Kleve leave the laboratory and, once they're out of sight, sneaks down there himself. Inside, he searches and finds his old body underneath a sheet on a stretcher. He grabs it and pulls it off the gurney, while upstairs, the janitor returns to his office with a couple of bottles of wine. Karl drags the body over to the furnace and opens the door, preparing to cremate it. Hearing the loud crackling of the now exposed flames, the janitor realizes someone's in the lab and stomps down to investigate, as Karl manages to toss the body into the flames, close the furnace, and hide. The janitor enters the lab, searching for an intruder, when he spies Otto, who's making a ruckus in his cage. The janitor fiddles with him, only to get bitten on the hand, prompting him to grab a stool and threaten to attack Otto with it. Karl, watching this, is startled at the sight of the body in the tank and is spotted by the janitor. He stomps at Karl, threatening him with the stool, as Karl backs away. He throws a jar at the janitor but misses and is unable to shield himself when the janitor breaks the stool over his back, before grabbing him and punching him in the jaw. The janitor looks at him with an expression of sadistic satisfaction, as Karl begs him not to hit him again. However, this only encourages his mean-spirited bullying, as he grabs Karl, pulls him up, turns him around, and uppercuts him, sending him crashing into a table of beakers and test tubes behind him. The janitor makes it clear he's not done with Karl, telling him to get up, when Karl gets on his knees and looks at him with an expression of hatred and rage. He gets smacked across the face but, this time, he gets to his feet and faces the janitor. The janitor punches him again, but Karl just swings around and grabs him by the throat. The two of them struggle, Karl tossing the janitor backwards, knocking him into a cabinet and then a table, before lunging at him and grabbing his throat again, this time managing to strangle him to death. Once he's dead, Karl drops the janitor's body to the floor. He slowly turns and looks at Otto, who's munching on some meat, and turns and looks at the dead janitor, his mouth beginning to drool. Wiping his mouth and glancing at Otto, he realizes what's happening and runs out of the lab.
Frankenstein and Kleve enter the attic room, to find that Karl is gone. Realizing he escaped through the open window, Kleve wonders how he could have gotten loose, while Frankenstein is more interested in why he would have run away to begin with. Kleve says he told Karl of Frankenstein's plans for him, enraging the baron. He smacks Kleve in the face, yelling, "You fool! You stupid fool! Do you know nothing of human reactions?!" Frankenstein tries to figure where Karl might have gone and runs out the door to the laboratory, with Kleve following him. When they reach the lab, they discover the dead janitor, and when they see that Karl's old body is gone, their attention is draw to the furnace. Looking inside, Frankenstein finds a smoldering shoe, which is all that's left of it. He tosses the shoe back in the furnace and figures what must have happened. Kleve worries that Karl's brain may have been damaged but Frankenstein is confident that Karl will have to return to him for help, sooner or later, and tells Kleve to resume business as usual at the hospital. Kleve suggests they search for Karl but Frankenstein orders him to do as he's told.
The next day, Margaret is at the home of her aunt, Countess Barcynska. Dismounting a horse, she heads into the stable to see the ponies, giving each of them a piece of sugar, when she hears the sound of hay rustling in the back. Investigating, she finds Karl hiding amid the hay. He panics when she mentions Dr. Stein, begging her not to tell him where he is and to let him stay in the stable. He comes close to being threatening when she says she must tell Stein but then, manages to arouse her sympathy. She asks him to stay there and wait for her if she promises not to tell Stein, which he agrees to. Leaving, she goes to Kleve instead. When he's told what's going on, he almost fetches Stein himself, but Margaret manages to talk him out of it, as he agrees to come in Stein's stead. Back at the stable, Karl is still waiting for Margaret to return. He tries to get to his feet, only to realize that his right side is becoming paralyzed again, right down to his foot twisting in the same way as it did in his old body, and he becomes distraught over it. By the time Margaret and Kleve arrive, they find that Karl has gone. She talks with Joseph, one of the horse groomers, and he tells her Karl disappeared while he was giving the horses some water. Kleve says he must tell Stein now and tells Margaret to stay at the house.
Night falls, and the film switches to a young couple who are supposed to be on a date at a park, though the girl, Gerda, is annoyed that her beau is more interested in studying the ants on the ground than seeing to her needs. When he completely misses the hint she drops, she gets up and leaves. She heads down some steps and rounds a corner, where she's attacked by Karl, now horribly deformed and almost completely insane. He grabs her by the throat, lifts her up, and carries her off behind a nearby bush. Her scream cuts through the night and her boyfriend comes running. Standing on a landing, he sees Karl looming over Gerda's body, when he drops her and runs off into the darl. Nearby, Frankenstein and Kleve are taking a coach back to Countess Barcynska's house, when they're stopped by the police inspector. The inspector tells him of the murder and Frankenstein offers to examine the body. The inspector leads him and Kleve to the spot where Gerda's body lays. Told the murder happened an hour before, Frankenstein looks at the body and asks the boyfriend, who's still present at the scene, if he saw the murderer. However, the boyfriend is too hysterical to answer, so the inspector tells Frankenstein the boy said he saw the man rush off after he heard Gerda scream. He then adds, "If it was a man," noting the boy said the killer had an animalistic shape to him. Kleve almost says something to this but Frankenstein silently shushes him, while the inspector says they've searched the park and found nothing. With that, Frankenstein and Kleve head back to the coach to continue on.
Karl makes his way back to Countess Barcynska's home, lurking about the grounds and peering up to the second story. Margaret walks out onto the terrace, apparently to see if he's returned, and heads back in upon not seeing him. Lamenting his inability to be with her, Karl, his right hand now as twisted as it was before, stumbles off into the bushes. Later, the countess' musical reception is underway, with one of her guests being Dr. Molke. Frankenstein and Kleve arrive after one performance is finished, the former quickly greeting the countess and asking to speak with Margaret. The countess, again, tries to set Frankenstein up with Vera, but he spots Margaret and heads towards her. Sending away a couple of guests standing near her, Frankenstein grabs Margaret's arm and forces her into an isolated corner, where he sternly asks her if Karl looked the same in the stable as he did at the hospital and if she's certain he hasn't been back since. She answers yes to both questions and Frankenstein storms off, followed by Kleve. The two of them are about to leave, when everyone in the house is startled by the sound of a window smashing. Karl stands there, looking worse than ever, and while Margaret initially moves to comfort him, she recoils upon seeing how horrible he now appears. His eyes fixate on her and he lunges for her, but is distracted when Frankenstein calls his name. He lurches towards the doctor and yells his real name aloud, catching everyone off-guard. He then reaches the baron, moaning, "Frankenstein, help me," when he collapses to the floor, though Frankenstein and Kleve manage to break his fall.
Molke calls an emergency meeting of the medical council and tells them what happened, specifically Karl's referring to Dr. Stein as "Frankenstein." He also adds that he looked up the records pertaining to Baron Frankenstein and feels the physical description given of him fits Dr. Stein. Meanwhile, Kleve tries to get Frankenstein to leave Carlsbruck but the doctor refuses, saying he's made advance plans on the chance his real identity was ever uncovered. However, he loses all of his regular wealthy patients and Kleve is forced to appear before the council. Frankenstein boldly decides to go with him, and denies the accusation that he is Baron Frankenstein, despite admitting that his surname is actually "Frankenstein" and that he changed it to avoid the trouble it would cause him. He also charges the president with finding proof before making accusations and excuses himself. However, the council makes Kleve stay behind for further questioning. Taking Frankenstein's suggestion to heart, a delegation of the council has Baron Frankenstein's grave unearthed. When the coffin is opened, they find the remains of the priest inside, all but confirming their suspicions about Stein. As they prepare to travel back to Carlsbruck to confront Frankenstein with this bit of proof, the good doctor returns to his duties at the poor hospital, only to find that all conversation in the ward stops as soon as he walks through the door and every patient stares at him. He attempts to go about his business, but when he tries to examine one patients, the man refuses to let him touch him, revealing that he and the others know who he really is. For further emphasis, another patient from across the room throws a wine bottle and it smashes against the wall behind Frankenstein. Another bottle is tossed from a corner of the room, confirming that they've all turned on him. Frankenstein tries to escape but he finds every exit blocked by patients brandishing makeshift weapons. He's smashed on the back of the head by a crutch when he tries to go out through the door he came in and collapses to the floor. As the custodian flees the room, the patients riot and converge on Frankenstein, beating him relentlessly. The custodian meets Kleve in the hallway and tells him what's happening. Kleve rushes into the ward and manages to stop the attack, only to find that Frankenstein is completely brutalized and barely alive. He and another assistant lift him up onto a bed, as Kleve examines his injuries.
Kleve takes Frankenstein's battered body to the laboratory and attempts to treat him, but Frankenstein tells him there's no saving him, adding, "You know what to do." Kleve gets to work, putting on his lab coat and opening up a case full of surgical instruments. He removes Frankenstein's brain, places it in a jar of water, and carries it to the closed off section of the room where the artificial body is housed. The council delegation arrive, along with the police inspector, to arrest Frankenstein, but Kleve shows them the body, explaining that Frankenstein was beaten to death by his patients and that he couldn't save him. The inspector orders the body to be taken away and buried in unhallowed ground. Once they've left, Kleve closes and locks the door behind them, before preparing to perform the transplant and electrical revival, saying, "Pray heaven I've got the skill to do this." The film then switches to London, specifically to fog-enshrouded Harley Street, where a bobby passes by an establishment with a nameplate that reads DR. FRANCK. Inside, Frankenstein, in his new body and practicing under his new alias, washes his hands in a sink (incidentally, sinks with drains didn't exist in the 1860's; of course, neither did the kind of electrical apparatuses with lights he used in this and many of the films), before looking at himself in the mirror. He commends Kleve on his skill, telling him the scar on his face will hardly show, and prepares to see his next patient. He walks through the double-doors, puts on a monocle, and heads to greet his offscreen patients, as Kleve closes the doors, ending the film.
Like I said, I don't find this ending to be a very satisfying one, mainly because the movie feels like it should have been over sooner. Normally, once the monster is dead, the movie's either over or close to being over, but here, it goes on for about another ten minutes before finally wrapping up. That may not be a long time but in this case, it feels like, when he wrote the screenplay, Jimmy Sangster paid a lot of attention to Karl's demise and then realized, "Oh, yeah, I still have to deal with the subplot of Frankenstein working under an alias." I reiterate that Sangster was given very little to come up with a story, and the "monster" in this film is not your typical Frankenstein creation running amok, so you have to give him some leeway, but the final part of the third act feels padded out. It's also anticlimactic in that the next film, The Evil of Frankenstein, which wasn't made until six years later, creates its own continuity and ignores that of this film and Curse, so this ending of Frankenstein himself now having a new body, as well as an alias, and continuing his work in London, has no payoff.
In place of composer James Bernard is Leonard Salzedo, an English-born composer of Spanish descent who didn't compose many film scores in his lifetime; in fact, after The Revenge of Frankenstein, he didn't compose another score until he worked on an episode of Hammer: House of Horror in 1980, which ended up being his last composition anyway (some music he composed for a previous movie was later reused in The Curse of the Werewolf). Even without seeing his credit, you can tell that this is someone other than Bernard, as it's infinitely more understated and subtle than he ever thought about being, but, unfortunately, it's also not that memorable. It's not bad music but it has none of the staying power of Bernard's scores for The Quatermass Xperiment, The Curse of Frankenstein, and Dracula, and you're likely to forget it as soon as the movie's over, as I have. Other than a nice, pleasant-sounding bit for when Karl first sees himself in his new body and some more solemn music for when he becomes deformed again, I can't recall any of the pieces Salzedo came up with.
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