Franchises: Hammer's Frankenstein Series. Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)

In his summation in The History of Sci-Fi and Horror, Butch Patrick said that Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed was a very apt title, as the Baron's experiments had reached such a horrific and dangerous level that they made his work back in The Curse of Frankenstein, "Look almost like child's play." That, coupled with a clip of Frankenstein operating on a man's cranium, did make it seem like this was, indeed, the "grim chapter" that Patrick said it was, as did learning of a rape scene that many, especially Peter Cushing himself, were absolutely appalled by (I first saw a little bit of that scene when James Rolfe briefly went over Hammer in his first CineMassacre Monster Madness series and it looked really disturbing). When I finally saw the movie after I ordered the DVD off of Amazon in the summer of 2009, I found myself agreeing with Patrick that this was indeed a very dark and nihilistic entry. The absolute grimmest one is undoubtedly the last, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, but this comes pretty close to matching it, as Baron Frankenstein is at his most evil and cruel ever, there are instances of crude science that very much rival those in Curse and The Revenge of Frankenstein in how skin-crawling they are, the story of the "monster" featured here is one of the most poignant ever, both in this series and in any Frankenstein film period, and there are no happy endings to be had whatsoever. All that said, despite some notable cons, most of which stem from studio interference that led to the inclusion of unnecessary scenes that make it a tad too long (at 100 minutes, it's one of the longest Hammer movies ever), it's a highlight of the series in terms of story complexity and filmmaking sophistication, and I feel is easily the best since the first two. In fact, I might say I like this a bit more than The Revenge of Frankenstein.

On the way to his office, Dr. Otto Heidecke is decapitated, the murderer taking his head with him in a metal container. Returning to his hideout, the murderer is surprised when he comes upon a would-be burglar attempting to break in, only to find a number of horrific sights in the cellar, among them a frozen body in a glass case. After a fight with the murderer that leaves the place in total shambles, the thief escapes and runs into a policeman who, seeing he has blood on him, takes him to be interviewed by Inspector Frisch. As he tells them of what he's seen, the murderer, Baron Frankenstein, covers up all traces of his experiments in the cellar and relocates to another city, Hollberg. He takes up residence at a boardinghouse run by Anna Spengler, whose fiance, Dr. Karl Holst, works at the local asylum. When Frankenstein learns that Karl has been secretly involved in drug trafficking in order to support Anna's old, ill mother, he uses this to blackmail the couple into helping him in his latest endeavor. First, he has Anna throw out all her other tenants, and then, turns the boardinghouse's cellar into a laboratory where he can work. He has Karl aid him in stealing medical supplies and instruments, and during one such raid, Karl ends up killing a night watchman, something else that Frankenstein holds over his head. Once he's set everything up, he reveals his plan to the couple: he intends to remove Dr. Frederick Brandt, an old colleague of his, from the asylum, cure his madness, and get from him the secret of freezing a human brain without damaging it in order to use it some time down the line. Despite some difficulty, Frankenstein and Karl manage to get Brandt out of the asylum and take him back to the boardinghouse, but then discover that he suffered a heart attack during the ordeal of the escape that will soon prove fatal. With no other recourse, Frankenstein decides to do an immediate brain transplant, using the body of the brilliant Prof. Richter to house Brandt's mind. The operation is a success and Frankenstein also succeeds in curing the damage to the brain that caused Brandt's madness, but when both the police and Brandt's wife begin closing in on him, his desperation to get what he wants from Brandt may prove fatal for all involved.

Although he was temporarily sidelined after the automobile accident that kept him from directing Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, when it came time to make Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Terence Fisher had recovered enough to get back into the director's chair, a likely incentive being how this was originally meant to be the final entry in the series. Fisher brought his usual measured direction to the film, managing to craft some genuinely suspenseful sequences, and would come to regard the film as one of his personal favorites. It's surprising he felt that way, though, considering how, for truly the first time during his long association with Hammer, he experienced a measure of studio interference when James Carreras demanded that more sex be added for the American distributors, leading to the abrupt and unsettling scene where Frankenstein rapes Anna Spengler. Like actors Peter Cushing and Veronica Carlson, Fisher was absolutely appalled at being forced to do this and made sure that they spent as little time on it as necessary and that it was as least explicit as he could possibly make it. According to Wheeler Winston Dixon in his book, The Films of Terence Fisher: Hammer Horror and Beyond, this was when Fisher felt the studio was beginning to go in directions that made him uncomfortable ,and is why he had no involvement in the much more sexually explicit films they would produce in the coming years. That, and the fact that, after filming was completed, he got caught up in another accident, one that made Hammer decide to put him out to pasture permanently. But, despite this second major setback and his advancing age (he was in his early 60's during this time), Fisher would prove to have one more movie left in him, and it would, significantly, serve as both the true end of this series and, more or less, the end of Hammer horror in general.

Remember how, when I reviewed The Evil of Frankenstein, I said that title would have been far more fitting for this film? Having re-watched it, I can now say I very much stand by that sentiment, as this is the most sociopathic, misanthropic, and downright evil portrayal of Peter Cushing's Baron Frankenstein, and one of Cushing's most diabolical performances period. Case in point, his first act in the movie is to slice a guy's head off with a sickle and then put it in a basket-like container to use in his experiments! But, when a would-be thief breaks into the abandoned house where he's set up his laboratory and the two of them end up trashing the place in their fight, Frankenstein, knowing the thief will probably bring the police on him after he gets away, relocates to another city and takes up residence in a boardinghouse. Initially, he acts as little more than a somewhat antisocial boarder, but when he discovers that Dr. Karl Holst is using drug trafficking to pay for the ongoing care of his fiance's, Anna Spengler, ailing mother, he blackmails the two of them into helping him continue on with his experiments, specifically by breaking his old colleague, Dr. Frederick Brandt, out of the asylum where Karl works. Though first, he forces Anna to ruin her business and reputation by throwing out the other boarders without any explanation, and then has Karl aid him in stealing supplies for his work. When Karl unintentionally kills a night watchman during their first such raid, Frankenstein uses that as even more leverage against him, forcing him to help break Brandt out of the asylum and aid him in transplanting his brain into another body when it becomes necessary.

The Baron's usual air of disdain for those around him and his feeling of superiority towards them are taken to new heights here. It's first seen when he overhears some men make disparaging comments about both his and Brandt's work while they're relaxing in the boardinghouse's sitting room, describing them both as "the devil's disciples." Unable to contain his venom for them, he comments, "I didn't know you were doctors," and when one of the men says they aren't, he responds, "I beg your pardon. I thought you knew what you were talking about." When he's called out on his rudeness, he responds, "I'm afraid that stupidity always brings out the worst in me... It is fools like you who have blocked progress throughout the ages. You make pronouncements on half-facts you don't understand anyway." Irked at his attitude, one of the men asks him to define his meaning of "progress" in this context and Frankenstein responds, "You wouldn't understand it, but I will give you a parallel that you may just appreciate. Had man not been given to invention and experiment, then tonight, sir, you would have eaten your dinner in a cave. You would've strewn the bones about the floor, then wiped your fingers on a coat of animal skin. In fact, your lapels do look somewhat greasy." Later, when he first blackmails Karl and Anna into helping him, he enters the drawing room where the two of them are speaking under the pretense of simply returning a small pack of cocaine Karl dropped on the doorstep. Ignoring their insistence that they have tickets for the theater and must get going, he inquires into Karl's working at the asylum, asking, "Doctor, is the Hippocratic Oath still taken in the profession?" When Karl says it is, he responds, "I see. Then I fancy you do not number yourself among the dedicated men?", before barring them from leaving and very confidently telling them that Narcotics Bureau could prove what Karl is up to, remarking, "It's uncanny how they eventually discover irregularities in their record books," as well as laying out the harsh penalties that would befall them. His cruelty towards them and everyone else only increases as the film goes on. When Karl demands he tell him who really is, as they're still calling him by his alias of "Fenner," Frankenstein smacks him right across the face, warns Anna to not interfere when she rises to protest, and tells them in no uncertain terms that they are going to do what he says. Laying out his plans for Brandt, when Karl mentions how Prof. Richter declared Brandt's madness to be incurable, Frankenstein remarks, "Richter, hmm. Yes, he's a clever man, up to a point, but he's not progressive." This clear disdain he has for Richter makes it not so surprising when he decides to use his body as the new housing for Brandt's brain (in a similar vein, the other tenants' comments about him and Brandt's work was likely a big reason why he had Anna throw them out of the place).

Save for The Evil of Frankenstein, the Baron has always had a really apathetic attitude towards women, either being dismissive of them or truly loathing them and it's especially bad in this film. For one, he treats Anna like she's lower than dirt, often forcing her to act as a servant for him. Offhandedly, he tells her to go make him and Karl some coffee early on, and when Karl asks him to let her go, saying he doesn't need her for anything, Frankenstein retorts, "I need her to make coffee," before again ordering her to do so. Aside from that, he sees her as little more than an annoyance, becoming agitated when she comes across the body of Prof. Richter in the garden shed in the backyard, ordering her to go back inside and go to bed. And, near the end of the movie, when Brandt escapes in his new body and Frankenstein learns that Anna stabbed him out of fear, he angrily kills her with the very scalpel she used on Brandt. The way he deals with Brandt's wife, Ella, is also despicable. When she recognizes Frankenstein and learns that he's removed her husband from the asylum, he acts as if he did it to help the two of them, that he knew the doctors in the asylum didn't have the knowledge to cure his madness. He goes as far as to prove to Ella that he has cured him by having his nearly comatose new body react to and recognize her voice, which he had been unable to do in his maddened state. Ella, who'd been driven half mad herself over what had happened to Brandt, is initially elated to see that Frankenstein has apparently done the impossible, and he tells her not to tell the police and that, within a week, the two of them can start a new life together... and as soon as she's out the door, Frankenstein orders Karl and Anna to pack everything up and they flee to another location. Can you spell "scumbag?"

Frankenstein's general disinterest in women is why the scene where he rapes Anna comes so far out of left field. That, and the way it comes about in the story. Following the scene where Anna is horrified by the discovery of Richter's body, Frankenstein passes by and then enters her bedroom. He tells her that Karl has gone back to the asylum and, when she asks him to leave, he closes the door behind him and locks it. She asks him to give her the key but he merely holds his hand out with it, forcing her to walk towards him. When she reaches him, he closes his hand and tosses the key onto the bed. She goes for it, trying to keep her eyes on him, but when she turns her back, he lunges at her, grabs her, pins her to the bed, and starts ripping at her nightgown, looking completely crazed and lustful as he does, and the scene ends with him forcibly kissing her. And because this was virtually a last minute addition demanded by James Carreras, it's never mentioned afterward and the characters never acknowledge that it happened. While Frankenstein and Anna's interactions afterward are as antagonistic as ever, it still comes off as her just having a genuine disdain for what he's putting her and Karl through, and she never seems to be as scarred as she should be, something that Veronica Carlson herself later talked about. Besides its being so inexplicable, it's just plain disturbing to watch, as any rape scene is (or, rather, should be). Like I said earlier, both the actors and Terence Fisher despised being forced to do it (Peter Cushing called it the hardest thing he ever had to do in his whole career), and it was even originally supposed to be more graphic, but Fisher put a stop to it before it could reach that point, declaring that enough was enough. You also have to wonder just where Carreras' head was: the American distributors wanted more sex, so he felt a rape scene would be appropriate? Moreover, Carlson said in an interview that Carreras was usually a, "Lovely, all-fatherly figure," so must he must have really been under pressure to keep the distributors happy.

Though he promises Karl that he and Anna will soon be free after he successfully transplants Brandt's brain into Richter's body, when the police start searching the houses, he has them cover up all traces of his laboratory in the cellar, and after Ella Brandt finds about her husband, he has them flee with him back to the abandoned house he was hiding in before, where he intends to get from Brandt the information he seeks. Karl, suspecting that Frankenstein will ultimately leave them behind, attempts to escape with Anna, but it all proves to be a complete disaster, as Frankenstein brutally beats Karl, kills Anna, and pursues Brandt after he escapes. He tracks Brandt down to his home, where his former colleague, seeking revenge for what he's done to him, entices him with the formula but sets fire to the house, telling him to choose either the flames or the police. Frankenstein does finds the papers and is able to escape the burning building, but is attacked outside by Karl. This distraction gives Brandt time to recapture Frankenstein and walk back into the burning house with him, sealing his fate.

Though not quite as interesting as Paul and Maria in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Dr. Karl Holst (Simon Ward) and Anna Spengler (Veronica Carlson) are not only likable but sympathetic and pitiable due to the horrible position they find themselves in. They're already leading pretty strenuous lives before Frankenstein comes into the picture, as Karl works at the local asylum, a job that really gets to him, and Anna runs the boardinghouse that used to belong to her now old and ailing mother. Karl, in order to support Anna's mother and pay her hospital fees, has become involved in drug trafficking, which he's confident won't be uncovered, as he runs the asylum's drug department, saying, "I just add a figure here, and subtract one there." But, no sooner does he say that than Frankenstein, having overheard the conversation and found a small pack of cocaine he dropped, uses it to blackmail the two of them into helping him in his scheme to take Dr. Brandt out of the asylum and cure his insanity. As I've already gotten into, Karl and Anna are put through the wringer by Frankenstein, with Karl being forced to participate in his stealing surgical instruments and other medical supplies, the actual removal of Brandt, the murder of Prof. Richter, and the transplant of Brandt's brain into Richter's body, while Anna is forced to be a servant, providing Frankenstein with food and drink when he asks for it, as well as force all of her other tenants to leave, receiving their ire and disdain for it. While Karl can't help but be impressed with Frankenstein's knowledge and skill when the brain transplant proves successful, it still doesn't justify his being forced to take part in and cover up murders, as well as help deceive Ella Brandt; during the scene where she visits the boardinghouse and sees her husband, Karl is clearly anguished at how Frankenstein is misleading her. Anna, meanwhile, almost suffers a nervous breakdown when a burst water main forces Brandt's buried body to the surface and she has to hide it before the engineers come to fix the problem. 

After they're forced to relocate to avoid the police and Mrs. Brandt, Karl, figuring Frankenstein may be planning to sneak away without them once he's learned what he needs from Brandt, attempts to escape with Anna. But their plan falls apart when Anna encounters the revived Brandt creature and stabs him out of fear, while Frankenstein discovers Karl trying to prepare some horses for their escape and beats him in a fight. Upon recovering from this beatdown, Karl discovers that Frankenstein murdered Anna out of rage for injuring Brandt and pursues him to get revenge. He tracks him to Brandt's home just as the two of them confront each other, and is seriously injured when Brandt shoots him. Despite this, he manages to attack Frankenstein out on the lawn when he tries to flee the burning house, and while he's ultimately killed by Brandt, his detaining him helps seal Frankenstein's fate.

Speaking of Brandt, the creature that Frankenstein creates out of him and Prof. Richter is one of the most pitiable in the whole series, just as, if not even more so than, Karl in The Revenge of Frankenstein and Christina in Frankenstein Created Woman. At the start of the film, Dr. Frederick Brandt (George Pravda), an old colleague of Frankenstein's who managed to perfect a method of removing and then storing a human brain for further use, has been confined to a mental asylum after having lost his mind following his experiments. Learning of this, Frankenstein plots to get him out and cure his madness in order to derive the secret of his method. Despite the fact that, by this point, Brandt is so far gone that he doesn't even recognize or acknowledge the presence of his wife when she comes to visit him, and that the well-respected Prof. Richter (Freddie Jones) has deemed his condition incurable, Frankenstein is confident there is a way to do it. But, after he and Karl remove Brandt from the asylum (even in his mad state, Brandt appears to recognize Frankenstein and have some sense of his attentions, as he recoils in fear at the sight of him), a complication comes up when they discover he had a massive heart attack from the stress of it, which will lead to his death within a few days. Frankenstein decides to transplant his brain into another body, specifically Richter's, whom he murders offscreen, and then, he relieves the pressure on the brain that caused Brandt's madness and removes the damaged cells. This effectively cures him, as seen when, while he's still recovering afterward, he's conscious enough to understand, recognize, and respond to both Frankenstein and his wife's voices.

Though Frankenstein had intended to give Brandt more time to recover before reviving and questioning him, when Ella Brandt discovers where her husband is, that, coupled with the ongoing police investigation, prompts him to move everything to his original hideout. There, he gives Brandt an injection to wake him up within an hour, but he awakens far earlier than expected. Now completely sane and having regained full consciousness for the first time since the brain transplant, he wakes up confused, disoriented, and horrified at the prospect of not knowing where he is and, moreover, being in a totally different body, the face of which he sees in a reflection on a tray. When Anna Spengler wanders down into the lab, Brandt pleads with her to help him, but she stabs him in the gut out of fear, forcing him to retreat. Despite his injury, he manages to make his way back to Hollville and his house, where his wife still lives. Not wanting her to see him, he lets her know of his presence by putting a note on her nightstand and speaking to her from behind a screen in the bedroom. He explains to her why he came, saying that he knows why Frankenstein did this and what he wants from him. He tells her he has to keep her there until he's ready, as he doesn't want her to go to the police before he can exact his revenge. Sadly, while he's preparing for said revenge, Ella comes downstairs and sees him, which horrifies and repulses her. Though she does know that he is her husband, despite his visage and voice being totally different, she flatly rejects him, even attempting to pull a gun on him, though he manages to take it from her. Once Frankenstein arrives, Brandt allows Ella to escape through the back entrance, and confronts his old colleague, telling him the formula he wants is in a desk in his study and he must find it. To make things more challenging and dangerous, Brandt sets fire to various parts of the house, which he's doused with gasoline, and keeps Frankenstein at bay with the gun, telling him to choose between the flames and the police. He continually blocks Frankenstein's path with fire, and also shoots Karl when he shows up to get his own revenge. While Frankenstein does manage to get the formula and escape the house, when Karl attacks and detains him outside, Brandt, after killing Karl himself, manages to pick up and carry Frankenstein back inside the burning house, sacrificing himself to ensure the Baron's death.

The makeup for this Frankenstein monster is very basic, not nearly as elaborate as those for the creations in the first three films but involving a little more than what Susan Denberg had to work with in the previous one, which was virtually nothing. It's basically just Freddie Jones with his head shaved and a makeup appliance meant to simulate stitches circling all the way around his head from where Frankenstein cut into his skull in order to lift the top off, take out one brain, and put in the other. Simple but effective, and it gives you that "ew" sort of feeling you get from looking at healing surgical scars.

Ella Brandt (Maxine Audley) is another character who goes through an amazing amount of grief, heartache, and emotional torment over the course of the story. First, she's told that her husband's madness is incurable, that it's gotten to the point where he doesn't know her, and that there's no point in her even stopping by the asylum to see him anymore. Second, she learns that someone has removed Brandt from the asylum but has no idea who did it or where they've taken him. Then, she spots Frankenstein while walking down the street one day and finds his face to be a familiar one. She starts to suspect who he is when she looks at an old drawing of him and Brandt in a newspaper article concerning their experiments. When she confronts him at the boardinghouse, he reveals that she's right about his identity but also tells her that he took Brandt out of the asylum in order to cure him. Initially, Ella doesn't believe Frankenstein, as she blames him and their work for driving Brandt out of his mind, and is horrified when she sees him lying on a table in the boardinghouse cellar, his face bandaged and his body hooked to an apparatus that's feeding him milk. But, when Frankenstein shows her that he's no longer mentally ill, as he recognizes and responds to what the two of them say to him, Ella, for a moment, is thankful to Frankenstein for what he's done. She also thanks Karl for his part in it, and leaves the boardinghouse, promising not to tell anyone of what she's seen. She soon feels like a fool when she returns to see Brandt again, only to find the place completely empty, and calls the police. Shortly after they arrive, they discover Brandt's body, which Ella has the misfortune of seeing, almost doing her in. And then, as if she weren't traumatized and emotionally destroyed enough, shortly after burying her husband, he returns to her in Prof. Richter's body, more or less holding her hostage as he prepares to get his revenge on Frankenstein. In a manner that calls back to the Bride's rejection of her intended mate in Bride of Frankenstein, Ella, even though he confirms that he is her husband, wants nothing to do with this creature, saying he's not even human and also attempts to shoot him at one point. In the end, before he confronts Frankenstein, he allows Ella to flee the house, though whether she actually went to get the police as Brandt tells Frankenstein is never made clear.

Like the rape scene, the characters of Inspector Frisch (Thorley Walters) and the police doctor (Geoffrey Bayldon) who assists him in his investigation were not originally in the script but were added in later. As they're comedic characters, with the doctor acting as a straight man to Frisch, who's portrayed as a stuffy, doddering, impatient, and insensitive man who's always snapping at and acting condescending to everyone around them, in what is an otherwise almost totally humorless film, many view them as intrusive and unnecessary, like the bumbling cops in The Last House on the Left. While I don't find them as annoying as those characters, I do agree that their scenes don't need to be here, as the subplot involving their trailing Frankenstein (whose identity they don't even learn until quite a while into the story) goes nowhere, stopping abruptly after Ella calls them after she finds the boardinghouse is now empty, and there's never a confrontation between them and the Baron. Their scenes are akin to the superfluous extra material shot by other studios for the American releases of some of Hammer's past films, except these were actually done by Hammer themselves.

While Frankenstein Created Woman had distanced itself from The Evil of Frankenstein the same way in which that film distanced itself from the first two of the series, whether or not Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is connected to its immediate predecessor is more ambiguous. While the events and characters of that film are never acknowledged, there's nothing that totally dismisses them either (other than Frankenstein's hands no longer being burned), and given how cold and unscrupulous Frankenstein was there, it fits in line with his ruthless and downright villainous portrayal here (in their audio commentary for Scream Factory's Blu-Ray release of Frankenstein Created Woman, Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr say that they believe Frankenstein's experiences there shaped him into the loathsome person he is here). Still, there is the notion of Frankenstein's history being altered again, as he's now said to have corresponded with Brandt five years before this story, that he was living in Bohemia at that time, and was run out of his own country. Whether they mean the Czech Republic itself was his home country or that it was Switzerland, said to be his place of birth in the opening of The Curse of Frankenstein, which here barred him from ever returning due to his experiments, is unclear, but you could say that that's why he was working in the small village in the previous film... except there, everyone knew he was Baron Frankenstein, and it's said in this film that his and Brandt's experiments became very well-known, right down to a caricatured drawing of the two of them appearing in newspapers. Plus, since he figured out how to extract a human soul previously, moving on to a brain transplant, however advanced it may be, feels like a step backwards. Like I've said before, it's best to take all these later Frankenstein films as standalone movies and not rack your brain attempting to connect them, as it really can't be done.

On a tonal level, this film is the darkest and grimmest of the series since the first two, easily outdoing The Revenge of Frankenstein in that regard and greatly expanding on the general bleakness of the previous film. Aside from the scenes with Inspector Frisch and the police doctor, there's little-to-no levity to be found (which is, again, why they feel out of place), as you're dealing with a diabolical and controlling Baron Frankenstein who has total sway over a helpless young couple; a woman who runs the gambit of being faced with the knowledge that her husband has an incurable mental illness, learns he has been taken out of the asylum by persons unknown, has then supposedly been cured by Frankenstein, only for his body to be found on the property of the boardinghouse, and finally, faces him in a body she doesn't recognize; and a man who awakens to find that his brain is another man's body, is being hunted by Frankenstein, and whose wife now totally rejects him. The settings of the old, abandoned house at both the beginning and near the end, as well as that of a mental asylum, one of the patients of which is a delusional woman who screams bloody murder because she believes there are spiders on her, add all the more to the atmosphere, as does the very look of the film. There's often a darkness to Arthur Grant's cinematography, as well as a muted color palette that gives the film an oppressive visual aesthetic that's almost ugly in a way, and the night exterior scenes often have a black, murky quality to them that gives off a sense of there being no hope, especially when there's a thick fog hanging in the air, as there often is. And speaking of which, there isn't any hope, as all of the main characters are dead by the end of the movie, including Karl and Anna, the type of characters who would normally survive.

Another aspect of the movie's bleak tone is how that original notion of skin-crawling crude science, which hasn't really been present since The Revenge of Frankenstein, is back in full force here. You get a taste of it at the very beginning, when Frankenstein decapitates Dr. Heidecke and takes his head back to the house where he's made his laboratory, only to then be forced to dispose of it and a frozen body he has in a glass case after the thief he fights with manages to escape. But, where it really comes into play is when Frankenstein has to put Brandt's brain into Richter's body, and while these procedures are depicted more graphically than what was seen before, their biggest impact still comes from just the idea, as well as from what's suggested rather than actually seen. When Frankenstein takes a scalpel and a bone saw to the bodies' skulls, the sound of the scraping bone as he cuts is more than enough to make you wince, as is the moment when he's removing the top of Richter's skull and you hear the bone cracking and some gooey sloshing. After all that, the shots of Brandt's brain floating in a container of liquid is just the gory icing on the cake. You also get a similar reaction when, following the transplant, Frankenstein relieves the pressure causing Brandt's madness by drilling into his skull and then putting a long, thin rod down into the skull, again accompanied by disgusting, bone-scraping sounds.

Working at Elstree Studios at Hertfordshire, Bernard Robinson, in what would, sadly, be his last film for Hammer, built sets that themselves complimented the dark tone of the film, the first of which is the interior of the abandoned house in which Frankenstein sets up his first laboratory at the beginning of the film (the exterior of this place is Stanmore Hall in Middlesex). Full of the usual beakers, test tubes, surgical instruments, fake skeletons, and a body being kept frozen inside a glass case, and with a trapdoor that leads down to an underground stream which Frankenstein uses to dispose and hide evidence of his work, it's a prelude to the slightly cruder lab he builds in the cellar of the Spengler boardinghouse. Said boardinghouse is one of the more pleasant sets in the film, being the usual posh, Victorian-era sort of set you'd come to expect in these films, with a cozy sitting room with a fireplace in the back and a small, charming garden in the backyard, but Frankenstein's presence instantly gives it a sinister air, as the sitting room is where he first confronts and blackmails Karl and Anna, while the garden is where he buries Brandt's body after having transplanted the brain. And you should already know which horrific scene Anna's bedroom is the site of. A setting that doesn't need Frankenstein's assistance in being oppressive and uncomfortable, however, is the mental asylum, as it's a very claustrophobic place, with narrow corridors, fairly low ceilings that are lined with piping and lights with wire-frames around them, and cells that are compact, to say the least, with stone walls, tiny cots, and barred windows on the doors. The city streets that were built on the studio lot do have a charm and, in the case of the city Frankenstein relocates to, a quaintness to them, but the nighttime streets of the opening, lit by the gaslights, give off a Jack the Ripper sort of vibe that's enhanced by the shots of Frankenstein lying in wait for his intended victim, carrying a sickle with him.

During the third act, the film kind of repeats itself in terms of its sets, as the first section of it is spent back at the abandoned house seen at the beginning of the movie, as it's where Frankenstein takes Brandt to avoid Mrs. Brandt and the police. After that, it moves to another location that looks nice enough but is given a more sinister and lethal sheen during the climax. In this case, it's the Brandt home, which is a very wealthy, upper-class house, with a large study and a lovely upstairs bedroom, but when Frankenstein trails Brandt there, he turns it into a deathtrap for the Baron when he sets fire to various parts of it. And according to the IMDB filming locations page, the scenes involving horse-drawn carriages riding through the countryside were done at Tykes Water Lake at Hertfordshire, but knowing Hammer, I can't help but wonder if the dark, foggy woods Frankenstein and Karl flee into with Brandt after getting him out of the asylum were done at good old Black Park.

The gory spectacle that opens the film, with blood getting splattered on the nameplate outside of Dr. Heidecke's office and the thief knocking his head out of its container during his struggle with Frankenstein, suggests that this is going to be one of the bloodiest of the series. However, Frankenstein Created Woman had far more actual gore effects, as this film gets its sense of horror and uneasiness across mainly through the grisly implications I mentioned earlier. There are some ghoulish shots of corpses, a good look at a bloody scalpel after Karl, in a panic, kills a night watchman while he and Frankenstein are stealing equipment, a grisly moment where you see Frankenstein working the top of Richter's head and skull loose, Brandt's brain floating in a container of liquid once it's been removed, some stabbings with a scalpel during the third act, the makeup depicting the operation of and the stitches around the Brandt creature's cranium, and a moment during the climax where Frankenstein burns him in the face, but it's not as much of an actual gorefest as you may be expecting.

The movie opens on a city street at night, focusing on a waist-down shot of a cloaked figure walking the sidewalk with a cane in one hand and a pot-like container in the other. He rounds a corner, walks up to the short steps leading to a doorway, and places the container down, waiting beside it. Up ahead, a carriage stops and Dr. Otto Heidecke disembarks. He pays the cabby and heads down the street towards his office, where the cloaked figure lies in wait, removing a sickle. When Heidecke gets close enough, the figure swings the sickle around the corner of the doorway and there's a quick cut to a shot of blood splattering on Heidecke's nameplate by the door. The film then transitions to an abandoned house nearby, which a thief has just entered and is planning to break into the heart of, expecting an easy job. Unbeknownst to him, the man who murdered Heidecke is making his way there, heading up the stairs on the outside. The thief slowly and meticulously unscrews the knob to the door that opens further into the place, when he hears the murderer's approaching footsteps. Panicking, he tries to break the door down but opts not to because of the noise and, grabbing his bag of tools, heads through an unlocked door just down the hall. On the other side of the door, he listens as the man enters the hallway and, realizing he's still approaching his position, quickly runs down the short flight of steps that lead down into the cellar, which is revealed to be housing a laboratory. Hearing the footsteps again, the thief panics and knocks into a table of instruments, causing a loud clatter that the man hears. The thief runs into the back of the room, looking for a place to hide, and gasps loudly when he comes across the frozen body of a man being kept in a glass case. He then ducks behind the wall next to it. Meanwhile, the murderer, now knowing there's an intruder, creeps down the stairs into the basement and sets his container on a table, as the thief listens while holding his breath. The murderer slowly moves about the laboratory equipment and rounds the corner by the thief, stepping in front of him to reveal that he's wearing a ghoulish mask, the sight of which terrifies the thief.

The murderer lunges for the thief, grabbing him by the neck and attempting to strangle him, while pulling him back and slamming him up against the wall. In their struggle, the thief gets slammed up against the glass case containing the body and it topples over. The thief manages to break free and tries to escape, but is chased down and grabbed again, slammed into the side of the table containing the beakers and test tubes. He shoves the murderer up against the wall and runs for it, but trips over the small table the metal container was sitting on. When it falls open on the floor, the thief is horrified to see Heidecke's decapitated head, letting out a frightened yell. The murder rushes at him but he kicks him back and, scrambling to his feet, he's able to run up the stairs and out the door. For a moment, the murderer considers giving chase, but when it becomes clear the thief is gone, he removes his mask, revealing himself to be Baron Frankenstein. Knowing what will likely come of this, he promptly gets to work covering his tracks, first by opening a trapdoor in the floor that leads down to an underground stream and throws the mask down there. As the terrified thief is found by a policeman making his rounds, who then notices the blood on him and asks him what happened, Frankenstein drops the body that was in the case down the trapdoor and kicks both the head and the container down there as well. The thief is later questioned by Inspector Frisch and mentions the "old Hertzig House," as well as mumbles about the cellar and a man in a glass case, but is too traumatized to say any more and breaks down crying. An officer then enters the room and tells Frisch that Heidecke's headless body has been found in the doorway of his office. In the next scene, the police investigate the house and find a lot of evidence, enough for the police doctor to conclude that the perpetrator himself was a doctor, given the pricey and sophisticated equipment. Frisch, however, tells him to keep his diagnoses to himself unless he asks for them, before ordering a sergeant to have their men check on all the purchases of surgical instruments, laboratory equipment, and drugs in the past year, as well as a list of all missing persons. The next day, Frisch talks with a mortuary attendant who reported a missing body, specifically one of a doctor. However, the rather flippant attendant tells Frisch that he last saw the body when he put it in there and is unable to think of anyone who made inquiries about who was in the mortuary. Frustrated with his attitude, Frisch orders him out, while the doctor suggests the missing body could have been the one the thief saw in the cellar, and says he's certain they are looking for a doctor; Frisch is still reluctant to agree. A cutaway shows Frankenstein fleeing the area in a small carriage.

Relocating to Hollville, Frankenstein finds a boardinghouse that's advertising some vacant rooms and is shown in by Anna Spengler. Not needing to see the available rooms, saying that any of them will suit him, Frankenstein signs the register using the alias of "Fenner," saying he will be staying indefinitely. Anna shows him upstairs to his room, saying he'll find his stay there very quiet, as she only has four other guests. As soon as she says that, the film cuts to a close-up of a woman screaming crazily in a mental asylum while being restrained by two guards. Dr. Karl Holst quickly makes his way to the woman's cell and prepares a sedative as the guards hold her down on her cot. He administers the injection into her leg and tells the guards that they can remove the straight-jacket she's in when she's fallen asleep. Karl leaves the cell and meets both the asylum director and Prof. Richter out in the hall. He tells the director that the woman is no better than she was before, and then asks Richter his opinion on Dr. Brandt's condition. Richter shakes his head and, looking back inside Brandt's cell, as he sits on his cot, fumbling with his fingers, comments that he believes attempting to treat mental illness is a waste of time. On the way out, he suggests they tell Brandt's wife that there's little reason for her to continue visiting him and laments that such a brilliant mind like his should succumb to madness. Back at the boardinghouse, the guests convene in the sitting room for the evening, mentioning how antisocial Frankenstein is, right before he joins them as well. As he sits down at a desk at the front of the room and writes, he overhears the men talking about the murder of Heidecke, as well as Dr. Brandt being in the asylum. This leads the men to discuss both Brandt and Frankenstein's work, which they write off as insane claptrap and the men themselves as "the devil's disciples." Frankenstein then makes his low opinion of them known before bidding them good night and going back up to his room.

Karl comes to the boardinghouse that night and, as he knocks lightly on the door, removes his coat. When he does, a small packet falls to his feet. Anna answers the door, the two of them kiss, and she sees him to the sitting room. There, the two of them talk about going to the theater, though Karl is more interested in spending the evening with her in other ways. She convinces him to go after all and brings him a drink. They talk for a few minutes about Anna's mother and the potentially risky way they're paying for her care through drug trafficking, though Karl assures Anna there's no way he'll get caught. He then goes to retrieve the packet of cocaine he had in his coat, when he finds it's not there. Remembering that he took his coat off at the doorstep, he figures it fell out there and opens the sitting room door, only to find Frankenstein standing there, examining the packet. He says he found it on the doorstep, mentions how it appears to have come from the Hollberg Mental Hospital, and Karl explains that it's his. Anna introduces Frankenstein to Karl as Mr. Fenner and he acts very friendly towards the young doctor, shaking his hand and letting himself into the sitting room. He does give Karl the packet but mentions how he knows it's cocaine. He completely ignores their dropping polite hints about how they have to be getting to the theater, learning that Karl works at the asylum, and when they try to excuse themselves one last time, he bars them from leaving the room. He reveals that he overheard their conversation about drug trafficking and that they would get at least thirty years in prison between them. Karl asks him how much he wants but Frankenstein says he merely wants their help, telling them to sit down and listen to what he has to say.

Anna is then forced to eject her other tenants into the street without explanation, much to their anger and disgust. Meanwhile, in the town from which Frankenstein fled, Inspector Frisch tells the police doctor that the two of them are heading up to a city where there have been thefts of surgical and laboratory equipment in the past couple of weeks (there's a hint here of how these scenes were late additions, as Frisch says they're going up to "Olsenberg," even though Frankenstein has just named the place as Hollberg). The film then cuts to Frankenstein and Karl in the middle of another such robbery one night, when a watchman walks into the storage room they're stealing from. They duck behind a couple of displays of shelves, but the watchman sees Karl's shoe sticking out behind one of them. Having a feeling he's been spotted, Karl slowly pull his foot back and readies a scalpel. The watchman runs for the door but Karl chases him down, grabs him from behind, and stabs him. He collapses to the floor and Karl quickly closes the door. Frankenstein examines the body, then looks up at Karl and, in an emotionless fashion, tells him, "You've killed him, doctor." Karl then looks at the blood-covered scalpel and, as Frankenstein smiles menacingly, it hits him all at once and he breaks down. In the next scene, while Frankenstein is sitting up his new laboratory in the boardinghouse cellar, Anna tries to get him to explain what happened, saying that Karl has barely said a word since they returned. Frankenstein simply tells her to ask Karl herself and goes on about his business. She does just that, confronting Karl in the sitting room, and he admits to what he did, saying that he panicked over being caught. He then says that he wants Anna to leave, explaining that Frankenstein doesn't need her, but she refuses to leave without him, saying that she's just as responsible since he stole the drugs because of her. Frankenstein appears in the doorway and comments, "Such loyalty is most touching," revealing that he heard some of or, probably, all of their conversation. Closing the door behind him, he asks Karl for a plan he asked him to get but Karl refuse to do anymore until he admits who he really is. After backhanding Karl over the couch, Frankenstein does reveal his true identity to them, adding, "I have work to do, and you will both give me every assistance." He, again, asks for the plan and Karl tells him where it is. Said plan turns out to be a layout of the asylum and Frankenstein asks where Dr. Brandt's cell is. When Karl points it out, he reveals his plan to take Brandt out and cure his insanity, ignoring Karl telling him what Prof. Richter said about Brandt's insanity being incurable. After sending Anna away to go make coffee for them, making it clear he has no intention of letting her leave either, he asks Karl to explain the asylum's general layout. Karl says he won't succeed but Frankenstein says, "Of course, I will. But, remember what happens to you, and Anna, if I don't."

Following a scene where Ella Brandt visits her husband in the asylum, only to be told by the director that there's no point in her visiting him anymore, as he doesn't even know at that she's in the room with him, Frankenstein and Karl are again shown going over the plan of the place. Karl tells him of the woman who screams hysterically because of her delusions involving spiders and Frankenstein tells him he'll have to see to it that she's sedated the night they take Brandt out, adding that he should alter the duty roster so it suits him. Frankenstein then explains why he wants Brandt, telling Karl of how Brandt learned the secret of removing a human brain and keeping it frozen and intact for future use. When asked what his motivation for such an experiment is, Frankenstein tells him, "We were seeking to preserve for all time the great talents and geniuses of the world. When they die, their brains are at the height of their creative power and we bury them under the ground to rot because the bodies that house them are worn out. We want to remove those brains at the instant of death, and freeze them, thus preserving, for posterity, all they contain." He then asks Karl to get Brandt's case history for him and leaves to go to bed. Karl asks Frankenstein to let Anna go and he answers, "Perhaps, when my work is finished." He thanks Anna for the coffee before heading out the door. Meanwhile, Frisch and the police doctor investigate the death of the watchman and learn of the surgical instruments that have been taken. The doctor also notes that the stabbing of the watchman was very precise and likely wasn't just luck. Frisch then suggests they start investigating all of the derelict properties in the area. At the asylum, Karl attempts to sedate the delusional woman in Cell 6, but is stopped by the director, who says he is not to give the patients extra sedatives without his consent and sternly demands he leave the cell.

That night, Karl meets Frankenstein outside the asylum walls. He tells him of how he was unable to sedate the woman and Frankenstein decides to simply hope that luck is on their side. They sneak inside and creep down a hallway, but have to quickly duck around the corner ahead of them when a guard comes by. Once he's passed, they head to a barred door that opens into the main section of the asylum. They find the guard on the other side of the door asleep at his desk and Karl quietly unlocks the door. Stepping onto the walkway that rises above the guard's desk, Frankenstein leans over the railing and gently takes the keys, which lie on the desk in front of his sleeping head. He also further ensures he won't give them any trouble by striking him in the back of the head with the keys, causing him to fall to the floor, totally unconscious. Karl rushes to the woman's cell and looks inside at her, as she softly paces back and forth; Frankenstein, meanwhile, walks to Brandt's cell and looks inside at him, as he sits lethargically on his cot. Karl joins him and warns Frankenstein that Brandt can turn violent in an instant, adding that he doesn't like injections. He unlocks the door and the two of them enter the cell. Brandt recoils into a corner at the sight of Frankenstein, who assures him they're not going to hurt him. He prepares the syringe and, when they approach Brandt, he becomes all the more tense, yanking his arm away when Karl first reaches for it. He then allows them to take his arm, but when Frankenstein attempts to make the injection, Brandt kicks Karl away, causing him to knock the door open. Brandt runs for the door but Frankenstein manages to grab him and he and Karl put him up against the wall. As they struggle to sedate him, the woman, hearing them, looks down at her arm and, clearly beginning to have her hallucinations of spiders, starts screaming at the top of her lungs. Hearing her, and realizing they only have so much time to get away, the two men forget the injection and decide to take Brandt while he's conscious. Frankenstein punches him in the gut to incapacitate him somewhat and they drag him out the door, as the woman's screams grow all the more piercing. They drag Brandt up the stairs and through the barred door, as an orderly comes by to sedate the woman. Just as he's about to enter the room, he finds the discarded syringe outside Brandt's door and looks inside the cell to find him missing. He then finds the unconscious guard lying on the floor, just as he's coming to, and blows his whistle. At the asylum entrance, Frankenstein and Karl hear the whistle, and Karl warns him that they'll sic the dogs on them, but Frankenstein is undeterred and they drag Brandt outside.

They force him into the dark, foggy woods, towards the spot where Anna waits for them with a carriage. The sound of barking dogs immediately fills the air, as Brandt suddenly throws Karl and Frankenstein off him and tries to make a run for it, but gets caught up in the thick brush. As the dog-toting guards exit the asylum and follow their trail through the woods, Frankenstein and Karl, after easily recapturing Brandt, drag him to the carriage and shove him inside. Frankenstein climbs up into the driver's seat and takes the reins, while Karl has Anna climb inside the carriage with Brandt, saying he has to get back to the asylum. Once they get Brandt to the boardinghouse, Frankenstein has Anna clean the cuts on his face while he examines him, listening to his heart. Anna, at one point, tries to walk away but Frankenstein pulls her back, telling her she hasn't finished what she's doing, while he starts massaging Brandt's chest. After Brandt is found to be missing, his wife is interviewed by Frisch and the police doctor, who tell her he was taken out rather than escaped. Frisch also questions her about her husband's sordid history, mentioning Frankenstein and asks her if she knows where he is or if she ever met him. Ella merely says no to both questions and Frisch tells her he will keep her informed of the progress of the investigation before leaving with the doctor. Karl finally gets back to the boardinghouse and heads straight to the cellar, telling Frankenstein that the police have been there and suspect the abduction was aided by an insider. To that, Frankenstein remarks, "They're not utter fools." He then tells Karl that Brandt is in serious trouble and has him listen to his heart. When he does, he deduces that he's suffered a heart attack from the stress of the abduction, which Frankenstein says will kill him within two or three days, and that the operation to cure his insanity will now kill him instantly. Karl takes this as meaning that they've failed but Frankenstein doesn't feel that way, saying he must now transplant Brandt's brain into another body and then cure the madness. Incredulous at this, Karl also notes such a thing would mean committing murder, and Frankenstein remarks, "You're used to that by now, aren't you? Remember, Dr. Knox had Burke and Hare to assist him. Think what they did for surgery between them. Now, I have you." He then says that Prof. Richter's body would be an ideal new housing.

Late in the night, Anna, unable to sleep, gets out of bed, puts a thin gown on over her slip, and heads downstairs. She walks around the staircase, passing by the door leading down to the cellar, and walks out into the backyard. Noticing that a light is on in the garden shed to her left, she walks over to it and through the door. She sees a body lying on a table in the back, as well as the arm of someone sitting in a chair right in front of her. The person immediately jumps up and silences Anna before she can scream, but it turns out to be Karl. When she calms down, Anna asks him who the dead man is, but before Karl can answer, Frankenstein storms in, asking why Anna is there. She says she came out for some fresh air, but Frankenstein orders her to go back to bed. After she walks out, Frankenstein tells Karl he'd best get back to the asylum, but first has him help carry the body, that of Prof. Richter, down to the laboratory. Following this is the rape scene, which I think I've already said enough about (I talked about it in such detail earlier so I wouldn't have to talk about it here) and then, comes a scene where Frisch tells various newspaper journalists about Richter's abduction, as well as order them to keep it out of the press. 

With that, comes the brain transplant scene, which begins with Karl shaving off Brandt's hair, as Frankenstein prepares the surgical tools. Anna comes down with some towels and, clearly taken aback at the sight of the two bodies lying on the tables, puts the towels where Frankenstein tells her to and rushes back up. They begin the operation, with Karl holding Brandt's head as Frankenstein cuts into the skull with a scalpel. Karl, disgusted at this, at one point looks back up the stairs, thinking of Anna, but Frankenstein tells him to concentrate and to hold Brandt's head rigidly. Grabbing a bone-saw, he cuts even more into Brandt's skull, while upstairs, Anna is in the sitting room, thinking of the grisly act being performed downstairs. Soon, Brandt's brain is resting in a container of liquid, and Frankenstein prepares to remove Richter's brain. Again, Karl holds the head while Frankenstein saws into it, and there's another cutaway to Anna sitting upstairs, this time hearing some people laughing happily outside, completely unaware of what's going on in the building they're walking by. After sawing through the skull, Frankenstein gently inches the top of it off, along with the brain. Putting them aside, he has Karl work with him to quickly take Brandt's brain out of the container in order to complete the procedure. Later, it's finished, and Karl can't help but marvel at what he's seen, calling it "fantastic." Frankenstein corrects him, "Not 'fantastic,' Karl. Advanced. The transplanting of all human organs is a logical branch of surgery that you and your pigheaded contemporaries refuse to recognize." Saying they must now bury Brandt's body, they do so in the garden, much to Anna's continuing horror. Once they're done, Frankenstein casually tells Anna he will be down for breakfast at 6:30, asking for two softly-boiled eggs.

The next day, Anna is walking the streets, when she sees a police carriage up ahead, with officers hurriedly disembarking from it. She then hears a woman behind her mention that the police have searched all the houses on her street, and this prompts her to run back to the boardinghouse. She heads straight down the cellar and tells Frankenstein what's going on. But, by the time the police reach the boardinghouse, he's had it all arranged. The police knock on the door, and when Anna answers it, they tell her they've been ordered to search the property but they can't say what they're looking for. She lets them in, telling them that they're redecorating the hall, but the sergeant in charge ignores her, ordering the two officers with him to search the upstairs and the garden. Down in the cellar, the door of which is now hidden behind wallpaper, Frankenstein hears the men rummaging around upstairs and smiles confidently at his ploy. The sergeant asks how many tenants Anna has and she says only one, Mr. Fenner, who's out at the moment. He then looks around on the ground floor, while Anna walks out to the door that leads into the garden and watches the officer searching it. There's a tense moment when the officer glances at the fresh soil which Brandt's body is buried under, but he ignores it and goes on searching, heading into the shed. The sergeant recognizes Karl as he paints the side of the staircase and notes that he's doing something out of his line, which Karl explains away as something he's doing to spend a few days off from the asylum. The other officer comes out of the shed and heads back into the main building. He tells the sergeant he didn't find anything and is told to wait outside. The sergeant walks past Karl and opens a door around the corner, which is nothing but a small closet. He asks Anna if they have a cellar but she says she doesn't, that she puts all of the junk in the shed. The officer who went upstairs comes down to report that he found nothing up there and the sergeant decides they've seen enough and they head out the door. On the way, the sergeant remarks to his men about Karl, "He's a better doctor than he is a painter."

With that crisis averted, Frankenstein and Karl set about curing Brandt of his insanity. Sitting him up in a chair, they remove the gauze and cotton from around his head. Frankenstein explains that pressure on the motor area of his brain caused the insanity and that the pressure must be relieved and the damaged cells destroyed. He puts a small, hollow, dome-shaped object on Brandt's head and has Karl check his heart, while he takes a small, hand-operated drill from the table. He then tells Karl to hold Brandt's head still and then starts screwing into the top of his skull. Once he's gotten through the bone, he puts the drill away, places a small, black stint on Brandt's head, and tells Karl to hold it absolutely still. He then takes a long, thin rod and gently pushes it down into Brandt's head, before firmly pulling it back out. That done, he removes everything from the head and tells Karl to redress it with the bandages, saying he'll awaken Brandt in a couple of days to see if he can elicit a response, adding, "If I'm satisfied, then, for you, it is all over." He further says that he'll take Brandt away once he's rested enough to travel. Later, Ella is walking the streets with a friend of hers, Christina, who suggests she herself go away for a while, but she says she wouldn't be able to enjoy herself because of what's happened to her husband. She then stops, as she sees Frankenstein across the street, buying a flower for his buttonhole, and remarks that his face is familiar to her. She then watches him walk away. Back at the boardinghouse, Anna is in the garden, when a woman stops by, asking her if she needs anything from the market. Anna says she doesn't and sends the woman away, when a geyser of water bursts out of the soil-bed behind her, causing her to scream. The woman comes back and, when she sees it, says that her water main has burst and rushes to the water board for help. When she's gone, Anna is horrified when the geyser forces the arm of Brandt's corpse to the surface. She's then forced to haul the corpse out of the soil, drag it across the yard, and hide it in some bushes. The woman returns to tell her that the water board will be there soon, when she sees how Anna is now soaking wet. She asks her what happened, but Anna, physically and emotionally spent, screams at her to go away and leave her alone, before breaking down in tears. Insulted, the woman storms out of the yard.

Frankenstein returns to the boardinghouse, unaware that Ella followed him, but when he enters the foyer, he hears the sound of stone clinking out in the back. He rushes out there and is shocked to find engineers digging into the ground. Seeing Anna standing nearby, he looks at her and she very subtly motions towards the bushes behind her. Relieved, he walks out and casually asked what happened. Told that the water main burst, which has been happening all the time due to the age of the pipes, Frankenstein comments, "Ruined my plants," and shoos away some onlookers at the gate in the back. That night, Ella and Christina comb through some old records and Ella finds a newspaper with a caricatured drawing of both Brandt and Frankenstein, their heads placed upon the bodies of vultures. Looking at it, Christina tells Ella that the man they saw could indeed be Frankenstein. Meanwhile, in the lab, Frankenstein gives Brandt an injection to restore him to minimum consciousness. He then asks if he can hear him and says to raise his hand if he can. Brandt does raise his hand in response, much to Frankenstein's elation. He then asks Brandt to answer him with his hand each time, following that up by asking if he is Dr. Frederick Brandt, and he, again, raises his hand. He also responds in the affirmative when he asks if he remembers who he, Frankenstein, is. But, before they can continue, they hear someone knock on the front door upstairs. Anna answers it to find it's Ella, who inquires if Frankenstein is staying there. She instantly denies it and tries to close the door on Ella, who stops her and suggests he may be using a different name, as well as tells her who she herself is. Frankenstein, who'd been listening from the cellar doorway, rushes in, acting very ingratiating towards Ella, saying he'd planned on calling on her. He leads her into the sitting room, tells her that her husband is there and that he had to take matters into his own hands in order to help him, saying that he knew he could. Distraught, Ella, who's always blamed Frankenstein for Brandt's madness, demands to know where he is and Frankenstein says he's down in the cellar and that he's totally sane. Surprised by that, Frankenstein offers to show her.

He leads her out of the sitting room and over to the now hidden door to the basement. As they walk down the stairs, he tells her that the apparatus she's about to see if merely keeping Brandt nourished with milk while he's in his comatose state. He then leads her to the bottom and around the corner of a display of shelves, where she's shocked to see Brandt lying on a table, his face completely bandaged and his hooked up to the apparatus Frankenstein mentioned. Though he tells her that her husband is completely cured of his insanity and is merely sleeping at the moment, Ella can't take it and rushes back to the stairs. Frankenstein runs and grabs her, and her cries for help bring Karl running to the top of the stairs, as Frankenstein tells her, "There is no one in the world who can help you except me, and that I have done." He leads her to a chair and sits her down, asking her what they told her at the asylum. When she mentions how they said Brandt's condition was hopeless, Frankenstein elaborates, "And they are the very same people who said that your husband and I were evil men because they did not understand what we were trying to do. They did not wish to understand, and so they condemned us both. For years, they pilloried your husband, and declared to the world that he was mad. And, at last, they drove him mad." Having her confirm that Brandt remembered nothing about his past life when he was ill, Frankenstein takes Ella over to where he lies and tells him to watch Brandt's left hand. He, again, asks Brandt to confirm his identity and Ella gasps when he moves his hand to answer his question. After telling her that his face is bandaged from the operation, he then asks Brandt if his wife name is Lily, and he raises and shakes his left hand to respond in the negative. When he asks if it's Ella, Brandt raises it to respond affirmatively. Frankenstein explains to Ella that Brandt is right on the edge of consciousness and unable to speak. He allows her to ask him any question he wishes and she asks if he recognizes her voice; he responds affirmatively. She asks him if her hair is black; he shakes his hand. She then asks if it's auburn, and he responds "yes." Frankenstein says they'd best not exhaust him and walks her back to the stairs.

She asks him how he did it and Frankenstein merely asks her that she not tell anyone what she's seen, saying, "I have seriously broken the law." He goes on to tell her that Brandt must have complete rest for a week, adding that she can visit him at any moment during that time and, when the week is up, they can start a new life together. As he speaks, Karl, who is standing at the foot of the stairs, grimaces, knowing that Frankenstein is lying through his teeth, and it's made worse when Ella thanks him for assisting Frankenstein in the operation. Frankenstein leads her up the stairs and guides her to the front door, again telling her not to speak of any of this. He bids her good night, and closes the door. He then swings around and tells Karl, "Pack! We're leaving." In the next shot, they're taking a carriage through the countryside, with Karl in the driver's seat, while Frankenstein and Anna sit in the carriage with Brandt, Frankenstein seeing to his continued nourishment. He leans out the window and tells Karl to turn right at the next crossroads. Some time later, Ella comes back to the boardinghouse, only to receive no answer at the front door, prompting her to go around the back and enter the gate leading into the garden. She walks into the building through the back door and finds that there doesn't appear to be anyone there. On a hunch, she heads down into the cellar and finds that her husband is gone. Distraught, she calls the police and when they arrive, Frisch admonishes her for not calling them immediately. The police doctor is amazed when Ella tells them that Brandt seemed to recognize her, when an officer calls Frisch upstairs. The inspector is led out to the shed and pointed towards an opening to a crawlspace in the floor. He sees something that causes him and everyone else to grimace, and when Ella comes in behind them, she looks and screams in anguish at what she sees: her husband's body.

Having relocated to Frankenstein's old hiding place from before, Karl and Anna are in the main sitting room, worrying about the police tracking them down, when Karl, hearing something outside, walks to the window and looks out to see Frankenstein walk to another building on the grounds, the stables, carrying his satchel. He then joins Anna on the sofa and shushes her as she's about to speak, as Frankenstein's enter the building and creeps through the hallway outside the sitting room. He gets up and goes out to follow Frankenstein, who's now down in the basement with Brandt. As Karl creeps down the small staircase, Frankenstein removes the feeding tube from Brandt's nostril and prepares a syringe. He tells Brandt they must have their important talk sooner than he expected and injects him in the arm. Karl heads back upstairs, while Frankenstein glances at his watch and says, "One hour, and we shall talk of things long overdue." Karl returns to the sitting room and tells Anna to go to the stables, harness the horses, and wait for him. Much to his chagrin, Anna tells him she doesn't know how to do that, and so Karl tells her what Frankenstein is up to, adding that he thinks he'll leave them behind once he's learned what he wants to know. He then tells Anna of a file and a syringe that's by Brandt's right hand and that, when he signals her by telling her to go get some rest, she's to go retrieve them, explaining that he'll know when Brandt will awaken from the amount of the drug used and that they'll take the carriage when Frankenstein goes downstairs to speak with him. Frankenstein then walks into the room, asking Anna to make him some coffee. As she does, Karl asks how much longer they should stay and Frankenstein says for another few days, at least. Down in the cellar, Brandt slowly begins to awaken much sooner than expected, and at that moment, Karl gives Anna the signal to go retrieve what he needs.

Brandt begins to remove the bandages from his face, slowly becoming aware, and as he does, he becomes frightened and frantic, ripping the rest of the bandages and the cotton off. He looks at his hands, which are totally alien to him, and then reaches up and touches the top of his head. Feeling it panics him all the more, and he gets off the table and staggers over to a shelf, using it to balance himself. Again feeling his head, he turns around, rushes to the tray beside the table, and grabs a dish from it. He looks at his reflection in it and recoils at the sight of the face that isn't his. He tosses the dish to the floor, which clatters loudly, and bends over the table. Up in the sitting room, Frankenstein hears something, and looks out the window to see Karl walking towards the stables. Meanwhile, Anna walks down to the basement and stops dead when she sees that Brandt isn't on the table. He staggers from behind some wooden boxes behind her and leans up against them, whimpering in pain and confusion. Looking at her, he wheezes out, "Please," but Anna backs away in fear, grabbing a scalpel from a tray behind her. She threatens him with it and he assures her that he means her no harm, asking where Frankenstein is. In a panic, Anna runs for the stairs and tries to escape, but staggers and falls on the steps. Brandt runs towards her desperately but Anna stabs him in the gut with the scalpel. He recoils away, and then staggers up the stairs past her. At the stables, Frankenstein catches Karl harnessing one of the horses and the two them get into a brutal fight, grappling, punching, and throwing each other to the ground. Though Karl does manage to get a few hits in, he's ultimately kicked back and falls to the ground unconscious. During this time, the injured Brandt manages to stagger out of the house. When Frankenstein returns, he finds a drop of blood in the doorway and rushes down to the basement. There, he finds Anna still sitting on the steps and sees that Brandt has gone. Turning to Anna, he demands to know what happened and Anna tells him that Brandt awakened and that she stabbed him. Enraged at this, Frankenstein grabs her hand, which is still holding the scalpel, and jams it into her midsection. He rushes upstairs and out of the house, trying to find Brandt's trail. Karl, meanwhile, makes his way back to the house and heads down into the cellar, where he finds Anna's body on the stairs. Devastated, he leans down and moves her head, but it's obvious that she's dead.

Brandt manages to get to the nearby town and slips into a building through a window. The next day, he manages to board a carriage, passing himself off as somewhat normal by wearing a coat and a hat, though the other two people sitting in the carriage with him still find him to be rather uncomfortable to be near. That night, he arrives back at his old home, and, unable to get through the front door, and finding the windows locked as well, is forced to break one of them and climb inside. While Ella is upstairs, asleep, he sits down in a chair in his study, removes his coat, and then slowly walks out into the foyer and up the stairs. He quietly enters Ella's bedroom and, when he sees her there, sleeping, tears begin to form in his eyes and he walks back out of the room. The next morning, while Frankenstein follows Brandt's trail using his own carriage, Ella awakens to find a letter addressed to her on the nightstand. Grabbing it and taking it out of the envelope, she's shocked when she reads it, and is even more taken aback when she hears Brandt speak to her, telling her he had nowhere else to go. She realizes the voice is coming from behind the screen near her bed, as he says the letter was the best way in which he could introduce himself to her. Believing it's someone playing a cruel joke, as she doesn't recognize the voice, she demands he explain who he is, and he says he is her husband, reminding her of how he answered her questions with his hand gestures. He adds, "I have become the victim of everything that Frankenstein and I ever advocated. My brain... is in someone else's body. I cannot leave here, Ella. There is nowhere else for me to go. Frankenstein will know I could only come here and soon, he will come for me. I know why he did this. There must have been some point where I was very close to death. He had to keep my brain alive. He wants the formula that I was going to give him." Telling her that he can't risk her going to the police before Frankenstein arrives, and that he'll let her go when he can, he heads out the door, the screen still keeping her from seeing him.

Down in his study, Brandt, after amassing a number of oil lanterns, walks over to a cabinet of books, removes a number of them, and pulls out several files hidden behind them. He finds the one that he knows Frankenstein wants and removes the papers from within in it. Upstairs, Ella slips out a door in the rear of her bedroom which leads into a sort of storeroom. She takes a small ladder and uses it to climb up through a hatch in the ceiling that leads to the attic, while downstairs, Brandt places the oil lanterns in various spots in the house. The attic allows Ella to get around her bedroom and onto the landing at the top of the stairs. She slowly sneaks down them and heads to the door, when Brandt emerges from the study, a lantern in each hand. Ella gasps and shouts at the sight of him and promptly faints. When she awakens, Brandt has moved her into the study and attempts to calm her. But then, he finds that she's repulsed by him, recoiling when he reaches for her, and refuses to even acknowledge that he's human, let alone her husband. She reaches for a gun in the drawer next to the chair but he grabs her hand and takes it from her, shocked that she was actually planning on shooting him. She asks him why he came and, looking at the gun, he answers, "For revenge. Do I not deserve revenge?"

Come nightfall, Brandt is dousing sections of the house with fuel, when he hears the sound of hoofbeats outside. He looks out the window and sees Frankenstein running up the driveway to the house. He then loads his pistol and heads upstairs, while further down the road, Karl approaches in his own carriage. Brandt allows Ella to leave, telling her to go out by the back staircase. As she goes, Frankenstein enters the front door, into the foyer, and quietly creeps around, looking for Brandt. He hears something upstairs and runs to the staircase, when Brandt says to him, "I fancy that I am the spider and you are the fly, Frankenstein. I know why you did this, and what you've come for." Frankenstein tries to convince Brandt that they must continue their research together, when he hears the sound of a carriage driving away outside. Brandt tells him it's Ella going for the police, adding, "What you want is on a desk in my study. The game is for you to try and get it." Trying to figure out which door leads to his study, Frankenstein first goes for the one right across from the staircase. Brandt then walks onto the landing and throws a lantern at the door, which immediately bursts into flames that engulf the wall around it. He tells Frankenstein, "Wrong door," as he recoils from the flames, and when he acts like he's going to rush up the stairs, Brandt pulls his pistol on him. He tells him, "You must choose between the flames and the police, Frankenstein. You haven't got long to get those papers." Frankenstein then goes for the doors to the left of the staircase, only to find them locked, and then, Brandt walks down to the foyer and tosses another lantern. Frankenstein recoils from those flames as well, and Brandt, pointing to the correct door with his gun, tells him, "Only one door left, Frankenstein." Karl, having arrived, walks through the door behind Brandt, who swings around and shoots him, sending stumbling outside. As Brandt closes the door, Frankenstein rushes into the study and finds the papers. But, Brandt quickly grabs another lantern and tosses it at the windows on the opposite side of the study from Frankenstein. While Brandt sets more fires to the foyer, Frankenstein grabs another set of papers and lights the end of them. He rushes out into the foyer and puts them in Brandt's face, before rushing to the door, which he manages to get through.

Frankenstein rushes out onto the lawn, only for Karl to grab his legs and cause him to fall. The two of them roll about on the ground, trying to overpower each other, and despite having been shot, Karl manages to pin Frankenstein down and smashes his head against the gravel driveway. But then, Brandt approaches Karl from behind and kicks him off Frankenstein, finishing him off. Brandt picks up the unconscious Baron, slings him over his shoulders, and carries him back towards the burning house. Frankenstein regains consciousness just as Brandt, grimacing from the heat emitting from the inside, starts to walk through the doorway. Realizing what's about to happen, Frankenstein screams at Brandt not to do it, and starts kicking and struggling to get free, but Brandt manages to hold onto him, as a burning beam from the ceiling falls to the floor, trapping them both inside. The ending credits play over various angles on the house as it burns.

In comparison to his work on Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, James Bernard's Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed score is, in my opinion, one of his more unmemorable. It's not bad music at all, but the motifs that he comes up with here aren't as likely to stick in your head as some of his past work. The main title theme, which you hear most prominently during the opening and ending credits, goes through an interesting change between them, as it sounds big, menacing, and bombastic when you first hear it, but during the ending credits, it's played in a much more somber-sounding, horn variation. And as usual, it's heard in various variations throughout the score, often more subtle and quiet. In fact, the music in this film is often more low-key than what you normally get with Bernard, like in the more suspenseful sequences, particularly when the boardinghouse is being searched, and during the operations on Brandt, though Bernard can't resist pushing the music to a sort of climax during the latter part of the brain transplant scene. And I also didn't find the music that played during the action scenes to be that memorable or even really effective. The pieces of music that sticks in my mind the most are this saccharine, music store-sounding theme that you hear at the beginning, which transitions into sheer horror when Dr. Heidecke is decapitated and, sadly, for the rape scene, which is this horrific, frantic string version of the main motif, fittingly disturbing for the scene it plays to.

If you can look past its more glaring flaws and cope with its dark tone and sense of hopelessness, I think you'll find a nice little gem in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. The acting is good all around, with Peter Cushing giving an effectively ruthless and full-on evil portrayal of Baron Frankenstein, and Freddie Jones coming off as very poignant and pitiable as the Brandt creature; Terence Fisher's direction is, as usual, solid and on point, particularly in the suspenseful scenes; and the film's oppressive sets, murky visual aesthetic, and grisly surgical scenes exponentially add to its nihilistic feeling. There are some major drawbacks, such as some needless scenes, especially the rape, that pad the movie out to a longer running time than is necessary, and the music score, while well done, isn't that memorable, but there's far more good here than bad and, like Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, I find this to be both one of the best of its respective series and among the best of Hammer's output during this period.