Franchises: Hammer's Frankenstein Series. The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

Ironically, this film, the only other Hammer Frankenstein movie aside from The Curse of Frankenstein mentioned in the Monster Madness book, was the one The History of Sci-Fi and Horror didn't cover at all. And yet, like The Revenge of Frankenstein, I managed to catch a little bit of it on AMC; in this instance, it was one October morning before school some time during my middle or high school years. But, other than that small little glimpse, as well as seeing it discussed in Dark Corners Reviews' retrospective of the franchise on YouTube (great video series by the way; they did one on the Hammer Dracula series as well and I highly recommend both), I didn't see this at all until I decided I was going to do this marathon of Hammer reviews. I never bought the old DVD of it, and I also didn't get it even when Scream Factory released it on Blu-Ray, as they did with many Hammer horror films (even now, I don't own it), as I never heard anything good about it. It was always described as one of the studio's biggest misfires and it also sounded more like a bizarre offshoot of the series than an actual entry, as I heard it virtually retold the story of Curse, had an abundance of black comedy about it, and, above everything else, didn't feature Peter Cushing. But, when I decided to devote an entire October to Hammer and their most well-known movies, I couldn't avoid it any longer and streamed it in early 2020. Upon watching it a second time for this review, I wouldn't say it's as horrendous as many make it out to be, as the acting and directing is certainly competent, for the most part, as are the production values, but it's not great by any means. The scripting is kind of clumsy, with the black humor not working at all and ultimately coming off as unnecessary, the monster here has nothing to him whatsoever, and, above everything else, if you've seen Curse, you're not going to get much out of this movie, as it doesn't improve on anything that was done there.

In the early 1800's, young Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant but egotistical, womanizing, and, above all else, cold and sociopathic student who has a keen interest in science, particularly anatomy. When his father, the Baron, refuses to give him any money so he can buy more scientific equipment, and also forbids him from going to college in Vienna, he sabotages his father's hunting rifle, leading to his death when it explodes in his face. With him dead, Frankenstein inherits his fortune and estate and heads to Vienna. During his time at the university, he gets the dean's daughter pregnant, and when the dean opts for him to marry her, Frankenstein decides to escape back to Ingstadt before the term is over, inviting his friend and classmate, Wilhelm Kassner, to come with him. On the way, the two of them save a man and his daughter from a group of highwaymen, and Frankenstein finds that they happen to be Elizabeth Heiss, another friend from his days at school, and her father, a professor. Arriving back at the castle, which is now run solely by Alys, the family housekeeper, Frankenstein and Kassner unload many crates of scientific equipment in order to set up a laboratory in Frankenstein's old room. Once it's done, and they've tested it all, Frankenstein decides they need a small, dead animal to use in their experiments; to that end, he snatches Prof. Heiss' pet tortoise, Gustav, when he and Kassner have dinner with him and Elizabeth one evening. After giving Gustav a lethal injection, they succeed in bringing him back to life with their apparatus and, after that small success, Frankenstein decides they must next create and animate a person. Through the help of a grave robber, he starts amassing a number of body parts to use and builds a tank for dissolving unneeded parts with large quantities of acid. Kassner grows more and more disgusted with the gruesome direction Frankenstein's research has taken, until he decides to leave, threatening to tell the authorities of what he's up to unless he stops. Frankenstein feigns compliance but instead electrocutes Kassner to death, using some of his body parts in his work, which leads to the creation of a brutish, hulking creature that attacks anything he comes across and may be too much for even Frankenstein to control.

There's no film that better exemplifies the crossroads Hammer was at by this point than The Horror of Frankenstein. After Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed didn't do that well at the box-office, and caught amid the rapidly-changing state of the horror genre, which had begun in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary's Baby, the studio decided to start fresh by totally rebooting and overhauling both of their longest-running and most lucrative franchises, with younger leads and upped levels of sex and violence in order to appeal to the teenage crowd, a course they had already flirted with in the previous entries of both series. Unfortunately for them, following the release of Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, their lucrative co-production deal with Seven Arts came to an end after a change of management there, meaning they were no longer exempt from the financial hardships the rest of the British film industry had already been dealing with for some time, and they would now have to seek domestic funding. As a result, both this and the next Hammer Dracula film, Scars of Dracula, would be funded and distributed by EMI films, as well as released together as a double-bill in some markets in November of 1970.

The person chosen to direct the film was a longtime Hammer collaborator who, although I haven't mentioned him in a while, was still around by this point: screenwriter Jimmy Sangster. After The Brides of Dracula, Sangster had pretty much left Gothic horror behind (save for his writing of Dracula: Prince of Darkness, on which he'd used a pseudonym), instead focusing on writing the studio's series of psychological thrillers, indulging in his longtime admiration for the 1955 French film, Les Diaboliques. His involvement with this film began when he was brought in to do a rewrite on the initial script by Jeremy Burnham, only to find that it was little more than a retread of The Curse of Frankenstein, which, of course, he himself had written thirteen years earlier. Deciding to go in a different direction rather than simply repeat himself, he made the decision to add in the black humor and shameless sexual content. He also stipulated to Hammer that he would only work on the script if he could direct it, and with little other choice, the studio allowed him to do so. However, Sangster's film directing career didn't pan out, as he only directed two more movies afterward, the other two being 1971's Lust for a Vampire and 1972's Fear in the Night (both of which also featured Ralph Bates), and all three of them were critical and commercial failures. His screenwriting career, however, would continue, and he would also find a lot of success writing, and occasionally directing, for television. His last credit was as a co-writer on the 2000 German film, Flashback, and he died in 2011 of heart and kidney disease at the age of 83.

Seeing as how he'd missed out on the opportunity to become Hammer's new Count Dracula, the studio decided to make it up to Ralph Bates by allowing him to be their new, younger Victor Frankenstein. For the most part, Bates proves himself a worthy successor to Peter Cushing, managing to capture many of the elements that made his Frankenstein such a compelling character. He's handsome, brilliant, and charming, but he's also a cold, callous, and manipulative sociopath who uses his incredible intellect to get what he wants from others and bend them to his will, as seen in the opening when he advises his agitated teacher, who's a hypochondriac, to end class early so he can go home and rest, as he's got him thinking he's about to have a heart attack. We also learn right from the beginning that he's not above resorting to murder when all else fails, as seen when, after his father denies him to go to the university in Vienna, he sabotages his hunting rifle in order to obtain his fortune and pay his own way there. And, as seen when he decides to flee back home from college after he gets the dean's daughter pregnant, he'll run away from any situation that he deems to not be his problem. Talking about said situation with Wilhelm Kassner, he tells him, "Take my advice, Will, when responsibilities weigh too heavy, that's the best thing you can do with them," and when the two of them come across Elizabeth and her father being held up on the way to Frankenstein's castle, he has no intention in helping them, saying, "It's none of our business. Besides, a man could get hurt down there." Only when Kassner intervenes does Frankenstein lift a hand to save them, shooting one of the highwaymen unprovoked to make his point that the last ones alive had better get gone. It turns out that he shot the man in order to make use of some of his body parts, specifically that he took his head off. Everything is a means to an end for him. He allows Alys, the family housemaid, to stay on, despite her awful cooking, mainly so he can use her to satiate his sexual appetite when he's not working on his experiments; he allows Stephan, an old school chum of his, to work as a cook so he can have a decent meal, and also plans to use him for some other purpose (which he eventually does); and, following her father's death and the debts he left behind, Frankenstein allows Elizabeth to stay at the castle in order to eventually replace Alys with her when Alys becomes jealous and begins threatening blackmail.

As much as he is a completely unscrupulous womanizer, the only thing that can distract Frankenstein from sexual pleasure is his work, which he becomes more and more single-minded about as time goes on. His interest in it is so great that, when he and Kassner are unpacking the laboratory equipment upon arriving at the castle, it takes Kassner five times to get through to him that it's now 3:00 in the morning and they need to go to bed, and it only gets worse from there. The first major part of his experiment is when he decides to reanimate a dead small animal, and when he and Kassner have dinner with Elizabeth and her father, he decides to swipe Prof. Heiss' pet tortoise, Gustav, and give him a lethal injection before experimenting on him. The way he sees it, if the experiment works, he'll simply return Gustav to them, and if it doesn't, he'll buy a tortoise that looks exactly like him and pass him off as such. (He had a similar justification for taking the highwayman's head, telling Kassner it was to keep them from running into the problems they had at the university with there weren't enough body parts to go around.) After he succeeds in resurrecting Gustav, he decides to go to the next level and create a human being, paying a grave-robber to supply him with "raw materials" for his experiments. So obsessed and single-minded is he, that when Kassner objects to it, Frankenstein believes he's talking about how only sections of the body parts are useful, and when he calls the whole thing sickening, he says he's merely eaten something that disagreed with him. Unfazed by Kassner's growing disgust and worry about what he's doing, he continue on, marking the body parts he intends to use and rigging up a special apparatus for destroying unnecessary parts with powerful acids. Ultimately Kassner decides to leave and tries to talk Frankenstein into stopping his experiments, warning him that they're disgusting and dangerous, but Frankenstein writes off what he's saying as "sanctimonious claptrap" and tells him to just go if he's going to. But then, Kassner threatens to expose his experiments, and Frankenstein feigns compliance with his demands, only to electrocute him to death when he begins dismantling the apparatus. Like everything else, he uses parts of Kassner's body in his work before disposing of the rest of him.

With that, Frankenstein starts virtually living in his laboratory, barely eating and sleeping, sewing the body parts together into a completely new creature, and paying no attention to Alys (there's a moment where she's trying to get sexy with him, only to then find that he's fallen asleep). Then, he invites Prof. Heiss and Elizabeth over for dinner so he can poison the former, later having the grave-robber remove his brain after the funeral and bring it to him. Unfortunately, when he does, the man sees the body in the lab and drops the bag containing the jarred brain, causing a piece of broken glass to cut into it. Since he's now seen his creation, Frankenstein murders the man, and recklessly puts the brain into the creature's head, despite knowing of the piece of glass in it. He then brings his creation to life, and, of course, he turns out to be a murderous brute who immediately knocks him unconscious and escapes into the countryside. Frankenstein searches for him, allows Stephan to take the wrap for a murder the monster committed, later convinces Elizabeth and everyone else that Stephan has become a mad killer, and when he finds the monster, he knocks him out and brings him back to the castle, chaining him up in the cellar. He attempts to train the monster, rewarding him with food when he does what he tells him, and uses him to dispense with those who threaten to expose his secret, like the body snatcher's wife and Alys when she attempts to blackmail him. But, the monster causes more problems for him when he escapes the castle again, breaks into a small cabin where a woodsman lives with his young daughter (though he doesn't kill either of them), and then returns and assaults Elizabeth. Frankenstein manages to make the monster relinquish her and, knowing that the police will be coming, sedates and hides him in the tank he uses to dissolve unwanted materials. Despite new, hard evidence that there is a monster about, Frankenstein continues to deny any knowledge of it, and tells Elizabeth, who fainted during the attack, that she merely dreamed it. Frankenstein ultimately gets away with it all, though a mishap ends up destroying the monster and significantly setting back his work.

As good as Bates is here, when you reach the final act, you start to realize that he's not displaying much emotion apart from the air of arrogance that's always about him, as well as a subdued smugness when dealing with other people and his single-mindedness towards his experiments. In fact, when the monster is brought to life after he initially believes he failed, Frankenstein has very little reaction, and actually walks up to him and offers to shake his hand, saying, "How do you do? I'm Victor Frankenstein." After the monster, predictably, knocks him unconscious and escapes the castle, Frankenstein is seen searching for him without the slightest hint of urgency, instead coming off as more annoyed that he's hit a setback. And when he begins attempting to train the monster and uses him to get rid of those who pose a threat to his experiments, there's none of the diabolical menace and the sense that he will never, ever stop that Peter Cushing projected while doing the same with Christopher Lee's monster in The Curse of Frankenstein. Instead, Bates' Frankenstein seems more like he's doing it simply because there's nothing else he can do with this creature, and while he tries to prevent his destruction, when it does happen, his reaction is one of, "Oh, well. Back to the drawing board."

That leads me to the big issue with the ending: Frankenstein gets away with it. Although Henry Becker of the Ingstadt police force has his suspicions and promises to continue his investigation, putting everyone at the castle under house arrest, the monster has just been destroyed, with no trace of him left, and all of the people who knew of his existence and/or Frankenstein's tie to him have been dealt with in various ways. So, there's nothing he can really be charged with, and it's likely he'll eventually be able to continue with his experiments. I don't know if the filmmakers felt the audience would like this Frankenstein so much that they would want him to get away scot free but, at least as far as I'm concerned, that's not the case. Like Cushing in Curse, this guy needs to face the music for what he's done, which makes the ending very frustrating. Moreover, the ending is not really an ending at all, in that there's no resolution. After the monster is dissolved in the acid, the movie just stops rather than reaches a conclusion, an obvious hint at a planned follow-up that never happened due to how badly it did at the box-office, and it's all the more aggravating to know you will definitely never get any closure on this story.

The best way to describe Alys (Kate O'Mara), the Frankenstein family maid, is if you took the character of Justine from The Curse of Frankenstein, really sexed her up, and gave her much more screentime. Alys is first seen attending to the old Baron's "needs" and, when Victor Frankenstein returns to the castle from the university, she's intent on doing the same for him. Although she apparently can't cook, prompting her to hire Frankenstein's old school chum, Stephan, for the job, she's more than capable of satisfying the young Baron's sexual desires. But, as he becomes more and more obsessed with his work, Alys finds herself neglected, and when she spies on him, she sees just how gruesome his work is. She's also not at all fond of Elizabeth Heiss, feeling that Frankenstein may eventually use her to replace her. After he has dinner with Elizabeth and her father, Alys confronts him about it, and though he says he has no intention of replacing her, she comments that his generosity has led to her developing "expensive tastes." That leads to this exchange: "Suppose I consider them too expensive?" "Suppose you tell me what happened to Herr Kassner?" Frankenstein insists that Kassner went back to Vienna and Alys tells him, "Don't worry. It's none of my business, any more than what you're doing upstairs is my business... yet. But if I do decide to take an interest in these things, then people may start making inquiries... I just wanted you to understand the position before you entered into any arrangements with Fraulein Heiss." Frankenstein tells her he's not going to, but after Prof. Heiss dies and Elizabeth is forced from her home due to his numerous debts, he allows her to stay at the castle. He tells Alys she will only be there until she finds somewhere else to live but she's convinced Elizabeth is there to stay. Once Stephan is charged with murder and sent to be hanged, Alys has to cook once more, prompting Frankenstein to, indeed, decide to replace her with Elizabeth. When she overhears Frankenstein speaking with Lieutenant Henry Becker about evidence suggesting that Stephan may not be a killer and that there could be something to his story of a monster, Alys goes into full-on blackmail, telling him that she knows of his dealings with the grave-robber, having overheard a conversation he had with the man's late wife the night before, and that he's been continually going to the cellar lately. But, Frankenstein suggests her info would mean more if she knew the reason behind such things and she stupidly allows him to take her down to the cellar to see why, which leads to her getting locked in the room with the monster, who kills her.

Sadly, much like her counterpart in The Curse of Frankenstein, Elizabeth Heiss (Veronica Carlson) doesn't have much to her, other than acting as a beautiful but far more innocent counterpoint to Alys. An old school friend of Frankenstein's, Elizabeth is clearly smitten with him when he returns to Ingstadt, something Wilhelm Kassner notices but which Frankenstein seems totally oblivious of, arrogantly elaborating, "I happen to be a particularly entertaining person... The fact that she hangs on to every word is a credit to her good taste. Hardly evidence of eternal devotion." When she and her father have dinner at the castle one night, she drops every hint she can possibly think of on the way out, telling him that she needs someone to run the place, to look after and care for him, even going as far as to say, "I'm considered quite a catch in some quarters." But then, her father dies, unknowingly from having been poisoned by Frankenstein, and when she's forced to leave the house due to his unpaid debts, Frankenstein allows her to stay at the castle for the time being. Eventually, he offers her to take Alys' place and she accepts when he tells her that Alys has "left," mainly since she has nowhere else to go, though she's disappointed that he's not interested in her doing more than being his housemaid. While living at the castle, Elizabeth gets caught up in the horror of Frankenstein's experiments, first unable to grasp the notion that their old friend Stephan could commit a murder, and then getting attacked by the monster when he manages to escape the cellar. She faints in the midst of the assault, but Frankenstein comes to her rescue before the monster can really do anything to her. When Becker and a couple of other people whom the monster attacked come to the castle to confront Frankenstein, Elizabeth talks about having been attacked but Frankenstein insists that she's been having nightmares. Fortunately, Elizabeth knows that's not the case, but comes to merely believe that her attacker has left, unaware of his destruction that just took place out of sight from everyone in the lab.

Wilhelm Kassner's (Graham James) closest parallel in Curse is Paul Krempe, as he's a colleague of Frankenstein who eventually sees how horrific and dangerous his work is becoming. Rather than a former tutor, Kassner is a classmate and friend of his at the university in Vienna, one whom he invites to come back with him to Ingstadt, saying they could spend the whole summer working in his castle laboratory. Proving himself to be much more scrupulous than Frankenstein early on, as he's the one who opts to save Elizabeth and Prof. Heiss from the highwaymen holding them up, Kassner is also not nearly obsessed with the work, having limits to how much he can take, and he's somewhat troubled by how easily his friend can swing between coming of as charming and kind-hearted to being rather cold and callous, most notably in his beheading of the one highwayman. (He himself is also clearly smitten with Elizabeth but nothing comes of it at all.) The first hint of conflict between them comes when, while they're having dinner with Elizabeth and Prof. Heiss, Frankenstein says he's decided they're not returning to the university, but Kassner basically tells him to speak for himself and that the matter isn't open to discussion. He's also not happy about Frankenstein taking Heiss' pet tortoise to use in the experiments, but it's when Frankenstein announces that the next step is to create a human being that problems truly start arising between them. As Frankenstein accrues a number of body parts and creates the tank to destroy any spare parts with acid, Kassner grows distant from him and stops participating in the experiment altogether. It comes to a head when Kassner decides to leave and tries to convince Frankenstein to stop his work, telling him that what he's doing is immoral and dangerous. When he refuses to listen, Kassner says he'll go to the authorities about what he's been doing and have his lab shut down, a threat that seals his fate, as Frankenstein electrocutes him to death after talking him into helping "dismantle the apparatus." He then uses some of his parts before dissolving the rest of him.

Right before he became famous for playing Macbeth for Roman Polanski and starring in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, Jon Finch appears here in the small role of Henry Becker, another old school friend of Frankenstein's who, when he returns to the castle from Vienna, has now become a lieutenant in the Ingstadt police force. He first visits Frankenstein shortly after he arrives, talking with him about how the highwayman he shot and killed was found decapitated when he arrived on the scene, but Frankenstein tells him the man's companions probably did it to conceal his identity. Becker goes along with that theory, and doesn't enter the film again until the third act, when Stephan is accused of committing a murder that was the work of Frankenstein's monster. When Stephan insists the monster came from the direction of the castle, Becker is good enough to go up there to see for himself, but when neither Frankenstein nor Elizabeth say they've seen any monster, Becker has no choice but to arrest Stephan. However, not too long afterward, Frankenstein has the monster kill the grave-robber's wife, and when he and the police inspect the crime scene, Becker finds a massive footprint. Now believing that Stephan is innocent, he has his execution postponed, and he becomes suspicious of Frankenstein when he talks with him about it and his attitude is totally flippant. And when the monster gets loose again near the end and attacks a woodsman's young daughter, Becker is now convinced that Frankenstein is involved and goes to the castle, where he learns from Elizabeth that she was attacked up in the laboratory. (Incidentally, there's a little side-plot involving Becker himself having been infatuated with Elizabeth, to the point where she turned him down multiple times, but other than several moments where he shows genuine concern and love for her, despite now being engaged himself, it doesn't go anywhere.) He confronts Frankenstein, who, of course, denies any involvement, and he also refuses to allow Becker to search the castle without a warrant. Becker leaves to do exactly that, putting a man on guard and telling him not to let anyone leave the castle.

The grave-robber (Dennis Price) whom Frankenstein employs to get him body parts for his experiments is someone who very much enjoys his work, though when he's initially being interviewed by Frankenstein, he laments that he has a poor selection for him, commenting, "Times are hard. People just aren't dying off so quick. It's the welfare state, that's what it is." But, when Frankenstein gives him a small sack of money, he promises to do his best, and says he'll get fresh body parts for him, just as he asks. But, it's shown that his wife (Joan Rice), who's in on her husband's work, is the one who does the digging, while he does the cutting on the body parts, and it's also revealed that they have a baby at home. The man tells his wife that they could very well afford to have another one with what Frankenstein's paying him, provided it's always fresh, and his wife says, "In all the time we've been together, I've never known you to deliver shoddy goods." Upon delivering his first consignment to Frankenstein, he tells the Baron of an avalanche up at Carlstadt that's said to have killed fifteen people and decides to look in on it. But, it turned out to be a bust for him, and while he and his wife are digging up another body, he grumbles, "Makes you sick! It really does!... Fifteen dead in an avalanche, all laid out neatly at the town hall, and couldn't get near the place because all those people had come to stare... Downright morbid, I call it." Fortunately for him, his wife reads of a ferryboat accident that's left many people dead and he happily says, "The good lord's being kind to us, lovey." He brings Frankenstein so much material from the site that he's told it's enough for the time being, and he doesn't come back into the film until after Frankenstein murders Prof. Heiss and hires him to remove his brain following the funeral. Though he mentions it was somewhat difficult, the grave-robber succeeds and brings it to the castle, where he mentions that his wife is pregnant again, commenting, "Nothing like creating a new life, I always said." Things go awry when Frankenstein leads him up to his laboratory and, when he sees the creature Frankenstein has assembled from the body parts, he drops the bag containing the jarred brain, damaging it. He helps Frankenstein get it in a jar as quickly as possible, but since he's seen too much, Frankenstein kills him with the tank of acid. Later, his wife comes searching for him and, when Frankenstein denies knowing what became of him, she tells him she'll have to go to the police and explain what her husband did for him. Frankenstein feigns understanding, even sending her down a path through the woods that he says is a shortcut, and releases the monster, who murders her (as well as her unborn child, apparently).

Elizabeth's father, Prof. Heiss (Bernard Archard), becomes quite taken and impressed with both Frankenstein and Kassner when the two of them save him and his daughter from the highwaymen that hold up their carriage. When they have dinner with him and Elizabeth, he inquires about their work, though Frankenstein describes it as "some minor experimentation," and he also talks about how Elizabeth has turned down one suitor after another, including Henry Becker, whom he says was turned down seventeen times. Later, Frankenstein has them over at his own castle for dinner, intending on using Heiss' brain in his experiments by poisoning his drink. Unaware of what's about to happen to him, he goes on about how he used to be like Frankenstein, always preoccupied with his work and barely thinking about anything else, and when Elizabeth offers a toast for the success of Frankenstein's work, he, while watching Heiss drink the poisoned cognac, comments that, should his work be successful, they will have had no small part in it. On their way out, Heiss begins to feel the effects of the poison, though he believes it to be just indigestion. By the next day, he's dead, and after his funeral, a good number of debts he's left behind in his wake forces Elizabeth out of her home.

One character you really have to feel bad for is Stephan (Stephen Turner), another old friend of Frankenstein's who, when they were in school, protected him from bullies while he, in turn, did his homework for him. When he's introduced to Kassner, Stephan remarks that he'd still be in school if it weren't for Frankenstein, and between that, his comment that cooking is something he found he could do well, and what you see of him in the opening, it's obvious he's not all that smart. Sadly for him, his protecting him from school bullies and being a good cook is not enough to keep Frankenstein from framing him for a murder the monster commits when he first escapes the castle, one which he's soon due to be hanged for in Carlstadt. Although he's never seen again after Becker takes him away, you do hear that Becker managed to postpone the execution when he found evidence that Stephan's claim about a monster might be true. By contrast, Frankenstein's father, the old Baron (George Belbin), who only appears in a couple of scenes before meeting his demise, is totally unsympathetic. When you first see him, he's just finished having sex with Alys, and totally denies his son the money to buy scientific equipment, as he sees his interest in it to be unnatural. He becomes especially enraged when Frankenstein brings up his interest in Alys, who's only sixteen at the time, and threatens to take a whip to him, to which his son says, "That's your answer to everything, isn't it? If you can't bed 'em, beat 'em." On top of that, he also refuses to allow his son to go to university in Vienna, saying his place is at the castle, leading to Frankenstein sabotaging one of his hunting rifles to ensure his being able to do what he wants once his father is out of the way.

The most interesting thing about this particular Frankenstein monster is that he's played by future Darth Vader actor Dave Prowse, who had actually already played such a character when he appeared in the familiar Boris Karloff makeup and outfit in 1967's Casino Royale. As most Hammer fans know, he would also play the monster in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, but while that particular character would be fairly nuanced, the monster he plays here is nothing more than a brutish killing machine. The best way to describe him is that he's everything most people say about Christopher Lee's monster in The Curse of Frankenstein. As I said in my review of that movie, if you watch Lee's performance more carefully, you can see that there are some other facets to him; Prowse's monster here, on the other hand, does nothing but stomp around, smashes through doors and topples small trees with his great strength, attacks and kills anybody he sees (save for Elizabeth, whom he tries to make off with), munches on small animals he can get his hands on, and makes little sound aside from some occasional grunts. A piece of glass in the brain, which Frankenstein stupidly doesn't remove before putting it in his skull, despite knowing it's there, is what leads to the monster's violence, and though Frankenstein manages to get him to obey him by giving him food when he complies, the monster ultimately escapes the castle again and causes more trouble for his creator. After he manages to take Elizabeth away from him, Frankenstein, knowing the police will soon come calling, sedates him (the monster is actually shy about getting an injection) and hides him in the tank where he disposes of the spare body parts. But, when Henry Becker shows up with the woodsman and his daughter after their encounter with the monster, the little girl starts milling about the lab while Frankenstein is being interrogated and pulls the rope that dumps the acid into the tank, unknowingly destroying the monster and leaving no trace of him.

As for the makeup design for the monster, created by Tom Smith, it's... okay, if rather generic. Obviously, it looks like the traditional Frankenstein's monster makeup, much more so than even that of the Kiwi Kingston monster in The Evil of Frankenstein, particularly with the rather flattened head, clamps and stitching along the scalp (that includes right on the top of the head), and the pronounced brow, the right side of which seems to droop. But, it also manages to have its own feel to it, with the monster being completely bald, having a large collar around his neck, and due to Dave Prowse's massive size. When he's first brought to life, he wears only bandages around his waist and in various spots on his arms, allowing you to get a good look at Prowse's impressive physique, as well as see the stitching around where the monster's arms are attached to the torso. After Frankenstein captures him after his initial escape and brings him back to the castle to be chained up in the basement, the monster is given a by-the-numbers outfit consisting of a dark blue, short-sleeved shirt, brown pants, and dark boots.

For a guy who'd never directed a film before, Jimmy Sangster manages to handle himself fairly well on a technical level. For his cinematographer, he chose Moray Grant (no relation to Arthur Grant), who'd been a DP in the late 40's and early 50's and had worked on numerous Hammer films as a camera operator, though he'd just returned to working as a DP on The Vampire Lovers. Together, he and Sangster managed to make The Horror of Frankenstein look nice and up to the studio's standards, shooting both the location work and the material at Elstree Studios quite well, especially those scenes that take place at night with a lot of mist in the air, such as when the body snatcher and his wife are digging up body parts for Frankenstein. They manage to come up with some interesting images and camera angles, like the opening shot under the credits of someone, revealed to be Frankenstein, drawing dissection and stitching marks on a drawing of a naked woman, and also, when the monster is first brought to life, you see a tight close-up on his eye as it opens, before the camera pulls back to reveal his entire face. And the shots of the miniature meant to represent Frankenstein's castle look really good (although, the way the antenna that Frankenstein uses when he brings his monster to life looks up against the castle is somewhat wonky). So, whatever else may be said about the movie, there's no denying that there was some talent behind the camera.

Set-wise, the ones that art director Scott MacGregor mainly had to deal with were those of the interiors of Frankenstein's castle. It's fine for what it is, coming off as an ages old, stone building, but the look of the sets are pretty average, as you have everything you'd expect: the big foyer just beyond the front door; the fairly-sized dining room with the long table, which also doubles as a large sitting room and study with a fireplace; a dungeon-like room in the cellar where Frankenstein keeps the monster; his bedroom, which was formerly his father's, with a large bed that's notable for its red drapery and red-and-white bedspread; Alys and Elizabeth's bedrooms; and, of course, his laboratory up in what used to be his old bedroom. The equipment in said laboratory looks very similar to the apparatuses seen in both The Curse of Frankenstein and The Revenge of Frankenstein, with the beakers of bubbling liquid, the hook up of electrodes through small containers of water, and, most notably, the wheel-like machine that Frankenstein hooks up to work the apparatus. At first, it's small, but when Frankenstein decides to turn his attention to creating a person, he accrues much bigger equipment, notably putting in a large table that can go vertical. Also, the film greatly expands on the vat of acid Cushing's Frankenstein had in the back of the lab in Curse by having Bates' Frankenstein erect a large, wooden tank, the top of which is lined with large jars of acid on both sides that can be emptied into the tank with the pull of a rope. Those are truly the only notable sets, as the others are merely the posh interiors of Heiss household, the small classroom where Frankenstein is being taught at the start of the film, the larger classroom at the university in Vienna, the dean's office, Frankenstein and Kassner's small dorm room there, and the very tiny interiors of the small hut where the woodsman lives with his young daughter.

There are some lovely shots of scenes set up on the backlot at Elstree, like the campus of the school Frankenstein attends at the beginning of the film, and some nice views of St. Mary's Church in Hertfordshire and wherever some of the outdoor scenes involving horses were shot (if not Black Park, likely Tykes Water Lake), but many of those scenes look studio-bound to me. I could be wrong but the death of the old Baron, the main action of Elizabeth and Prof. Heiss being held up by the highwaymen, the nighttime scenes of the monster roaming the countryside while Frankenstein searches for him, and the attack of the grave-robber's wife look as if they were shot on a soundstage or on the backlot. You can definitely tell that the grave-robbing scenes and the exterior shots of the small hut where the woodsman and his daughter live were done on sets, but if many of those other scenes I mentioned were shot in the same way, then it goes to show just how low budget this particular film was.

There's not as much gore in this film as you might expect, especially given that we're talking about an R-rated virtual remake of a movie that was quite gruesome in and of itself. You see plenty of severed body parts, mostly arms with bloody stumps, as well as a leg and a severed head in a jar of liquid (which looks quite fake, I might add), very clear shots of Prof. Heiss' brain upon its removal, and a fair amount of blood when Frankenstein is performing his experiments, with one memorable shot being a closeup of his face as he absentmindedly wipes it with his bloody hands while sewing the monster's limbs together, but that's about it. The monster's attacks aren't that bloody at all, even though he chops up a man with an axe upon first escaping the castle, and you don't see much of the aftermath of it, save for a very vague glimpse of the remains. And there's also little of the "ick" factor that was there in The Curse of Frankenstein, The Revenge of Frankenstein, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, save for the mere suggestion of it when you hear Frankenstein sawing limbs offscreen, as well as the very idea of the grave-robber doing the same, and when you see and hear him stitching together the various body parts.

Sadly, for all of its technical competence, the very ideas behind the movie are what sink it. Not only was it unnecessary to retell a story that the studio had already done very well over a decade earlier, but Jimmy Sangster's idea to go for black comedy adds nothing to it. This is not at all a bloodier prototype of Young Frankenstein made four years earlier but, rather, is yet another imagining of the story of Frankenstein, with humorous lines and visuals that are meant to be morbidly funny sprinkled throughout. In fact, when you watch it, the comedy and humor are, for the most part, so glossed over and feel like such afterthoughts in the grand scheme of things that you have to wonder why Sangster decided to take this approach in the first place. Much of the humor comes from how single-minded and unfazed Ralph Bates comes off in his performance, such as when he's manipulating people with his superior intelligence or when he's talking about rather morbid, disgusting things in the same manner you would talk about taking out the trash and is completely oblivious to how those around him react to it. A prime example is when, while talking with the college dean whose daughter he's impregnated, Frankenstein suggests he or, better yet, the dean himself, could perform a "quick operation," to which the dean responds, "We'll forget you made that remark, young man." Speaking of which, other bits of humor come from instances of hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness, like when Frankenstein criticizes the dean for only caring about the standing of the person his daughter marries rather than her chastity, to which Kassner says, "That makes two of you," or when the grave-robber is accusing onlookers of the casualties of an avalanche to be "morbid." And finally, there are the images and moments that are more blatantly funny, like when Frankenstein manages to make a severed arm rear up with two fingers extended, saying, "I think I'll send it to the dean as a going away present," his comments about Alys' awful cooking, him and Kassner getting drunk after managing to reanimate Gustav the tortoise (the very notion of them experimenting on a tortoise is quirky in its own way, with Frankenstein asking, "Where in the hell do you inject a tortoise?"), and, in a moment that wouldn't have seemed out of place in a Mel Brooks-style spoof, Frankenstein looking at Prof Heiss as he speaks while imagining his forehead is numbered in correspondence to the body part he needs from him, i.e. his brain. You might get a chuckle or two out of all these instances of humor but they ultimately don't affect the movie in any meaningful way and just make you wonder what the point of it is.

The same goes for the sexual content, which isn't even that overt or graphic, compared to the scenes in the brothel in Taste the Blood of Dracula or the Karnstein trilogy. Actually, aside from instances of naughty and suggestive dialogue, all it comes down to is the picture of the naked woman the opening credits play over, Frankenstein's constant wandering eye, shots of the well-endowed cleavage of both Elizabeth and Alys, and the many instances of Frankenstein and Alys in the very same bed where she once pleasured the old Baron (thankfully, we only see the aftermath of that). It's totally pointless and serves as a reminder of how desperate Hammer was to stay relevant during this period.

The biggest con against the movie, for me anyway, is that it does not need to exist at all. If Hammer thought a younger, sexier Victor Frankenstein was the way to go, fine, but it was not necessary to introduce him in a remake of The Curse of Frankenstein. It may not be shot-for-shot but it's the same basic story, telling how Baron Frankenstein was a brilliant but sociopathic and immoral scientist who became so obsessed with his ultimate goal of bringing to life a human being that he himself assembled together that he didn't care what he had to do or who he had to hurt in order to achieve it. There are also multiple plotpoints from Curse that are retained here: his friend and fellow scientist eventually becomes horrified by the experiment and tries to talk him out of it, there's a girl named Elizabeth who's infatuated with him but he completely ignores her, there's a slutty servant whom he's having intimate relations with and who he ultimately has the monster kill when she tries to blackmail him, he intends for his creation to have a professor's brain but it gets damaged and the resulting creature is akin to a dangerous, feral animal, and the monster is ultimately destroyed by a vat of acid in the lab, the equipment of which is similar to that seen in the first film. In fact, the only major differences are the inclusion of the grave-robber, Frankenstein murdering his friend, and his getting away with it in the end. All this does is remind you of what a great movie Curse is and makes you wish you were watching it instead, as I often found myself wishing while watching this for the second time.

Following the opening credits over someone adding stitching and surgery marks on a drawing of a nude woman, we're introduced to young Victor Frankenstein while he's in class, when his teacher calls on him. He quickly closes the top of his desk to hide what it was he was preoccupied with, as his teacher asks if he's finished the mathematics problem he was assigned. He says he has, and when the teacher looks at it, he says he went too fast and made a mistake in a specific spot, only for Frankenstein to show him up and prove he's not as smart as he thought he was. The whole class laughs at the teacher and, after he tells them to be quiet and get on with their work, he asks Frankenstein to show him what he found more interesting than his class. Frankenstein makes no attempt to hide it and gives it to him. The teacher is appalled by it, and while Frankenstein calls it "amateur anatomy," he dismisses it as "amateur smut." He makes Frankenstein walk up to the front of the class and, when he does, tells him to hold out his hand. To his shock, Frankenstein utterly refuses, saying, "If I allow you to beat me, it would be an admission on my part that you are superior to me. Since this is patently not the case, I cannot allow it." The teacher becomes more and more agitated, to the point where he starts to shake, and Frankenstein asks him if he's feeling alright, noting that his blood pressure has risen and asks if there's a feeling of tightness around his heart. He admits to a "certain constriction" and Frankenstein advises him to end the class, go home, and call a doctor. Now convinced he's in dire straits, the teacher does so and everyone promptly gets up and leaves. Walking home, Frankenstein explains to his friends that he merely exploited the teacher's weakness, hypochondria, and that you can do the same to anyone. He also explains that the drawing was part of his interest in anatomy and asks one of the girls, Maggie, to help in his "studies." She's more than happy to and the two of them walk off together, while Elizabeth, Stephan, and Henry Becker go off for some fishing. As Frankenstein and Maggie walk off, you hear this exchange between them: "We owe it to ourselves to know as much about each other as possible." "Shall I take my clothes off now, Victor?" "Later, Maggie. Later."

It then cuts to Alys, the Frankenstein family housemaid, putting her own clothes back on after having attended to the Baron's needs. He tells her that will be all for now, and she walks out the door, only for Victor Frankenstein to come up behind her and put his hand on her rear end. He remarks, "Like father, like son, Alys," and she tells him he has a long way to go before he's like his father; he comments, "Not too long, my girl. Not too long." He then enters the bedroom and asks his father, as he finishes dressing, for some money, which he refuses, saying he's already two years ahead on his allowance. He's not impressed when he's told he intends to buy scientific equipment with it, as he feels his interest in it isn't normal. Things get tense when Frankenstein mentions what he knows about the Baron's interest in Alys, to the point where he ducks out of the room when his father threatens to smack him. As the Baron pours himself a drink, Frankenstein peeks his head back in the room and asks him to at least allow him to go to university, but his father denies him that as well, saying, "I've told you: your place is here at the castle. You'll see me in my grave before I let you galavant off to Vienna for the next few years." Frankenstein takes him at his word, as he's shown taking one of the Baron's hunting rifles downstairs and putting it with the others, having clearly sabotaged it. And, sure enough, in the next scene, the Baron is out hunting, and when he tries to shoot a pheasant, the rifle explodes in his face, killing him instantly. Frankenstein is shown standing at the graveside service for his father, as his friends watch from nearby. When the subject of whether he'll return to school now that he's the Baron comes up, Becker tells them that he's heard of his plan to go to the university in Vienna, adding that he'll be gone for at least five years.

The film transitions to Frankenstein during his tenure at the university, where his professor, again, finds him more interested in something other than the lesson, particularly the lovely girl sitting to his right, whose knee he touches. After his admonishment, the class is dismissed. As everyone files out of the room, Wilhelm Kassner asks Frankenstein what he's doing that evening and he motions towards the girl, who stands at the classroom door and smiles at him. Kassner warns Frankenstein that she's the dean's daughter, to which he says, "I'd hardly be interested if she were the dean's son." He's also confident that the dean won't catch him and that he wouldn't expel him anyway. Well, in the very next scene, the dean is angrily admonishing Frankenstein for getting his daughter pregnant. Upon calming down and bringing up the subject of his wealth and title as Baron, the dean suggests Frankenstein marry his daughter after the term ends in three weeks. In the next scene, Frankenstein reveals to Kassner that he plans to start his holiday early to get away from it all, and Kassner, in turn, accepts an invitation to go back to Ingstadt with him. Frankenstein mentions they'll spend the summer working in his laboratory with new equipment he's ordered to be shipped to the castle. He also shows Kassner something in a draped off section of the room: a severed arm he took from the anatomy class, which he's hooked up to an apparatus. Frankenstein cranks up the machine and then pulls a switch that sends a current through the arm, causing it to rear up and move its fingers; he jokes about sending it to the dean as a going away present.

While Frankenstein and Kassner ride to Ingstadt on horseback, Elizabeth and her father, Prof. Heiss, are seen riding the country roads in a carriage, when they're suddenly stopped by a group of bandits. One of them walks up to the carriage door and orders both Elizabeth and Heiss out, threatening to shoot if they don't comply. The two of them cautiously climb out of the carriage, while nearby, Frankenstein and Kassner ride up on a ridge overlooking the site and note what's going on. While the former isn't too eager to do anything, saying it's no concern of theirs, Kassner is unwilling to just stand by and heads down towards them. One of the bandits becomes aggravated when he finds that Heiss has little money on him and prepares to search Elizabeth's person, with one of the others grabbing and holding her from behind. Suddenly, he's shot from nearby by Kassner, who then quickly ducks behind a bush. The bandits are about to rush after him, but Frankenstein pops up from behind the rear of the carriage, ordering them to drop their guns and leave the scene. To ensure that they do get lost, he shoots one of them without provocation, sending the remaining two running. Joining him, Kassner tells Frankenstein that wasn't necessary but he retorts, "Actions speak louder than words, Wilhelm." He then realizes that one of the two people he saved was his old school friend Elizabeth, whom he initially didn't recognize since it had been six years, and she, in turn, introduces her father to both of them. As he prepares to send them off, Frankenstein is invited to have dinner with them one night soon and he agrees, though clearly reluctantly. The two of them climb into the carriage and, after they ride off, Frankenstein and Kassner prepare to leave themselves. Frankenstein tells Kassner there's something he needs to do first, and as Kassner goes to fetch the horses, he walks over to one of the two dead bandits. Kneeling down by the body, he murmurs, "I said a man could get hurt down here," and takes out a large knife.

Arriving at the castle, the two of them are greeted by Alys, who tells Frankenstein that she dismissed all the other servants and that the equipment he ordered has been put in his old room, while his personal things have been put in his father's room. With that, Frankenstein guides Kassner upstairs, telling him who exactly Alys is, commenting, "I hope she can cook." And in the next scene, you see Frankenstein grimacing over some food he clearly doesn't care for, grumbling, "Many more meals like that and we can forget work. We'll both be dead." Alys then comes in with a drink and he attempts to surreptitiously suggest she hire a cook to take the load off her, though she isn't fooled by what he means. He also insists that whoever she hires not live at the castle, before telling Kassner that they have to unpack the equipment that's upstairs. Alys asks him what time he plans on retiring for the night and says she'll prepare his bed, with Frankenstein commenting, "Like father, like son, Alys." She catches his drift and walks off. Kassner is sure he caught some undertones in that conversation but Frankenstein tells him to forget about it. The two of them head upstairs and, when they enter the room where the equipment is housed, they find piles and piles of large, wooden crates waiting for them. Kassner is aghast at having to unpack all that before they can go to bed, saying it would take a week, but Frankenstein says, "The sooner we start, the better." He tosses Kassner a crowbar, telling him to start at one end of the pile. Hours pass and they're nowhere near finished. Kassner tells Frankenstein that he's going to bed, having to tell him two times in a row that it's 3:00 in the morning. It takes a few seconds for it to register and, when it does, Frankenstein decides they'll finish up in the morning. He blows out the candle and they head downstairs to their individual bedrooms. When Frankenstein enters his bedroom, he finds Alys in bed, waiting for him, and wakes her up in order to indulge themselves in "bedtime."

The next morning, they continue to open up the crates, when Kassner finds an odd contraption in one. Frankenstein tells him it's a blood purifier, which he saw advertised in a medical journal, and says it could be useful in their work. Kassner asks what their work is exactly and Frankenstein vaguely answers that it's research into life. Before they can continue, there's a knock at the door and Alys walks in to tell Frankenstein that he has visitors, namely a couple of people who claim to be old friends of his. She says that one of them is Lieutenant Henry Becker, a name Frankenstein doesn't initially recognize because of the "lieutenant" title. When he does, he and Kassner go downstairs and meet with Becker, as well as Maggie, learning that the two of them are engaged, as well as that Becker is a lieutenant in the Ingstadt police force. Becker tells Frankenstein that his visit is semi-official and asks about his saving Elizabeth and her father from the highwaymen and if all he did was shoot them, as when he arrived on the scene, he found the head of one of the bodies had been severed. Frankenstein denies any knowledge of it, saying the man's companions probably did it in order to keep him from being identified. Alys then brings them some champagne and Frankenstein suggests they toast to the reunion of old friends. The very next scene shows that he's just revealed to Kassner that he did, indeed, remove the bandit's head and is keeping it preserved in a large jar of liquid. He's so preoccupied with what he's done and thinking about his work that he initially doesn't hear Kassner twice ask him why he cut the head off. When he finally does, he says he did it to keep them from having the trouble they had in anatomy classes concerning there not being enough body parts to go around, adding that they'll have the head all to themselves. He then pours some fluid into the jar and reminds Kassner that they have more unpacking to do. After that, they're shown just finishing off a much better dinner, which Alys said was done by someone she hired to cook for them. Said person turns out to be none other than another old school friend of Frankenstein's, Stephan, whom he introduces to Kassner. He also offers to give Stephan more work around the castle when they settle in, which Stephan is even happier to hear. After he walks out, Kassner notes how Frankenstein can easily from being "kind and charming" to, "As cold as the grave." He adds, "I sometimes wonder which is the real Victor Frankenstein," and Frankenstein himself says, "Let me know when you find out." They then get back to work.

As time passes, they continue to hook up and connect the apparatus, beakers, and tubes up in the lab, and Frankenstein also often goes back to his bedroom after a hard night's work to find Alys waiting for him. After a while, they've managed to recreate the sort of apparatus he'd built in his dorm room at the university, which is able to pass an electric current through the wires connecting the beakers and vials, creating a sparking at one point where two electrodes meet. Seeing that it works, Frankenstein decrees that the next stage of their work is an experiment with a recently dead animal, though he says they'll have to wait until the next day, as they're having dinner with Elizabeth and her father that night. There, they find that Prof. Heiss has a tortoise named Gustav as a pet. Following dinner, they chat a little bit in the sitting room, talking about the nature of Frankenstein and Kassner's work, the issue of Kassner planning to return to the university, and how Elizabeth has turned down a number of suitors, among them Henry Becker. Frankenstein then says they must go, and Elizabeth and Heiss go to see them out, with the professor leaving Gustav alone in the room. As they're grabbing their hats and coats, Frankenstein says he thinks he left his gloves in the sitting room and goes back to fetch them. Once he's returned with them, he and Kassner leave, both of them saying good night to Elizabeth by kissing her hand. Heiss goes back into the sitting room, only to find that Gustav seems to have disappeared. Of course, Frankenstein snatched him away and, up in the lab, Kassner admonishes him for it; Frankenstein, however, sees no problem with what they're doing, saying they'll sneak Gustav back if he survives the experiment or buy another tortoise just like him if he doesn't. As Frankenstein prepares a syringe, Kassner tells him that Elizabeth is clearly in love with him, but Frankenstein writes it off, saying it is Kassner himself who loves Elizabeth and that he wishes him luck. He then prepares to inject Gustav with something to kill him, wondering how you do so to a tortoise, and tells Kassner that he actually doesn't know what the outcome of the the next part of the experiment will be.

Later, with Gustav now dead, Kassner binds him to the table with some leather straps and, under Frankenstein's instructions, prepares to connect the electrodes through him. He finds that difficult, as Gustav died with his head inside his shell, and has to push the electrodes through either end and hope they make contact. Once he's done it, Frankenstein fires up his apparatus, sending an electric current into Gustav. Other than the shell getting really hot, nothing seems to happen, and since any more current would fry him, a disappointed Frankenstein shuts the apparatus down. He says they may as well have a drink, and while Kassner goes to get the drink, Frankenstein undoes the straps and tries to pull out the electrodes, saying they'll just have to start again. Suddenly, he recoils in pain, wringing his hand and putting his finger to his mouth. Kassner, thinking he burned himself, says he warned him about the shell being hot, but Frankenstein clarifies that Gustav actually bit him. At first, Kassner thinks he's joking, but Frankenstein whispers to Gustav and, sure enough, the tortoise's head emerges from his shell. In the next scene, he's having a drink with Frankenstein and Kassner, both of whom are quite drunk themselves. Kassner makes a toast to, "The successful culmination of our work," but Frankenstein tells him they've only just started, saying they're going to make a person next. Again, Kassner thinks he's joking, but he goes on about how they'll need a bigger generator, as well as "the raw material." To that end, he hires a grave-robber to get him some body parts, telling him to fetch him undamaged limbs, specifies they be male, and no more than three days old. The man tells him that people aren't dying off that much but, when Frankenstein tosses him a small bag of money, he promises to do his best, saying, "Anything I bring you will be so fresh it could get past the government meat inspector." He gets up to leave, noting that he heard church bells earlier, meaning that a grave has been freshly dug.

That night in the cemetery, while his wife is down in the grave, digging towards the coffin, the grave-robber is sitting by the side of it, singing to himself and preparing to have a meal. They talk a little bit about their having a baby at home that the wife needs to get back to, as well as how Frankenstein may prove to be a lucrative customer. Before he can begin eating, his wife hits the coffin and he climbs down into the grave, brandishing a hacksaw. After that, he delivers a consignment of wrapped body parts to Frankenstein, telling him of an avalanche up near Carlstadt that's left fifteen dead and that he'll see what he can get from it. Once he's gone, Frankenstein heads up to the lab and puts the "first consignment" on a table where Kassner is working. He unwraps them and Kassner is absolutely aghast when he sees what's inside the wrappings; Frankenstein, however, is more concerned with what sections of the parts he can make use of and believes that Kassner's nausea is simply because he ate something that didn't agree with him. He goes to make Kassner a drink, talking about how the grave-robber is going to bring them more than they need and that they must find a way to dispose of what's unnecessary... only to turn around and see that Kassner has left the lab. He just shrugs and drinks himself. Some time later, the grave-robber and his wife are digging up another body, as he complains about not being able to get near the avalanche victims because of a curious crowd of onlookers. Again, his wife hits the coffin and he prepares to do the dirty work, this time taking out a large saw. In the next scene, Frankenstein carries another large armful of wrapped body parts into the lab, which now has the tank equipped with the vats of acid for disposing of anything extra that's not needed, and asks Kassner to help him. Instead, he walks out of the lab without saying a word. Back to the man and his wife, who are driving along in his wagon. She reads about a ferry accident at a lake that has numerous bodies washing up on the shore and her husband believes it's a sign that God is smiling down on them.

Frankenstein is shown having sex with Alys, when they hear a knocking at the door. At first, Frankenstein is content to ignore it, but when Alys says it might be the grave-robber, whom she refers to as "that nasty man" who brings him "strange bundles," he immediately stops and gets out of bed. Once dressed, he opens the door, telling the man he better have a good reason for getting him out of bed so late at night. The grave-robber assures him it's worth it and says they'll have to make a number of trips in order to get it all upstairs. Once they're done some time later, Frankenstein sees him out, giving him some money and telling him he won't need anything else for the time being. After he's left, Frankenstein rushes up to the lab, where a line of bodies are laid out on the floor. He puts on a pair of sleeves and a surgeon's smock, removes a tarp from an anatomy drawing, and then, grabs some tools and gets to work, marking the sections of a man's arm and numbering it. He then marks said part off on the chart before taking a saw to the arm. Unbeknownst to him, Alys is watching from the doorway and is repulsed at what she sees him doing. The next day, Frankenstein dissolves some extra parts in the acid tank, when Kassner appears in the doorway. He tells Frankenstein that he's leaving, as he can't take being party to such disgusting experiments any longer. He also tries to warn him that such work is dangerous, as he's tampering with the unknown and has reached the limits of scientific exploration. Frankenstein, however, is unmoved, and tells Kassner to just leave if he's going to. But then, Kassner threatens to expose what he's doing, meaning the authorities will confiscate everything and completely halt his work. Seemingly hurt by this, Frankenstein, much to Kassner's surprise, complies, saying he's given him no choice. He suggests they dismantle the apparatus, asking Kassner to do the terminals. As he begins, Frankenstein says, "Tomorrow, we shall initiate a new series of experiments. Something harmless, like splitting the atom, perhaps." Grabbing the electrodes, Kassner turns around just in time to see Frankenstein throw the switch, sending a powerful current through the equipment, electrocuting him to death. After his smoking body has collapsed to the floor, Frankenstein walks over and marks his left arm for use in his work.

Thus begins a montage of Frankenstein at work. He puts a severed hand marked "1" in a tank of water, marks off more parts of the anatomy chart, measures the width of the chest to see if the table he's rigged up is large enough for it, and then removes the severed hand from the tank and sews it onto the body he's assembling beneath a drape on the table. After that, he's seen attaching and sewing a severed foot to the body, which is now almost totally complete underneath the drape, and absentmindedly wipes the blood on his face when he goes to wipe his brow. All the while, it's shown that his preoccupation is leaving Alys feeling neglected, as he falls asleep while she's trying to make love to him, and she and Stephan wait and wait for him to come down for dinner while he's up there, sewing on the foot, before they finally give up and clear the table. Soon, Frankenstein reaches the 25th and final part of the body needed: the brain. He announces to Alys that he's going to have guests for dinner that night, namely Elizabeth and Prof. Heiss (the former of whom came calling earlier but Alys turned her away from the door). The three of them are then seen sitting at the table, as Heiss talks about how he was like Frankenstein when he was younger, but Frankenstein himself is staring at him, totally zoned out, and imagining the number 25 written on his forehead (this whole scene plays like a humorous take on Frankenstein's murder of Prof. Bernstein in Curse). Heiss senses that Frankenstein's mind wandered off and he, again, says his used to do the same. Alys comes in to pour their drinks, when Elizabeth asks about Frankenstein's work and if they could see it. The realization of what she would see distracts Alys, causing her to overfill Frankenstein's glass and he offers to finish pouring himself. Heiss declines the drink, saying it makes his gout act up, and instead, Frankenstein fetches him a cognac, putting some poison in it behind his back. He adds even more to it when Heiss mentions that the two of them are both fit and healthy. He brings him the drink and Elizabeth proposes they drink to Frankenstein's work, saying, "May it bring you everything you deserve." Her father goes along with it and drinks the cognac, as Frankenstein says, "Thank you, both. And if my work is eventually crowned with success, you, my friends, will have had no little part in it." He then raises his own glass and drinks.

As he seems them out later, he can see that Heiss is starting to feel the poison, although he believes it to be mere indigestion. He walks out and Elizabeth makes a not so subtle hint that, should he ever get lonely, she's available. She kisses him on his cheek before walking out the door. Frankenstein closes the door and is about to head upstairs, when Alys, who overheard Elizabeth, confronts him, saying that she wonders if he may attempt to have Elizabeth replace her. She also alludes to potential blackmail, saying she may take an interest in finding out exactly what he's up to and that he may want to think about that before he makes any arrangements with Elizabeth. He comments that he won't make any such arrangements, as Elizabeth has her father to look after... and then, the film cuts to Heiss' funeral, which Frankenstein watches from afar. Following the service, Frankenstein joins Becker and Maggie in trying to console Elizabeth. She says she'll spend the next few weeks sorting out her father's financial affairs, though she doesn't know what she'll do afterward. She looks to Frankenstein after she says that but he remains silent, and Maggie offers for her and Becker to give her a lift home. As they walk through the gate and exit the churchyard, Frankenstein passes by and acknowledges the grave-robber, who stands right outside the gate, waiting for the opportunity to get to work. When Elizabeth returns home, she finds some men there, one of whom explains that they represent her father's creditors and tells her that, all told, her father left her with a debt of over 12,000 marks. Elizabeth is completely taken aback by this, and the man regretfully informs her, that because she can't pay it, she will have to leave the house by that evening.

That night, Elizabeth goes to the castle, arriving while Frankenstein is sitting at the dining table, reading a book. Alys opens the door for her and tries to tell her that Frankenstein is busy, but he gets up to see her anyway, inviting her in. Elizabeth breaks down, telling Frankenstein what's happened and embraces him, as he and Alys exchange glances. In the next scene, Alys questions Frankenstein about how long Elizabeth is going to stay with them, saying she knows she won't be leaving at all. She wraps her arms around his neck, trying to come off as sultry, asking why they need Elizabeth there. Frankenstein tells her, "For no other reason than common hospitality and good manners. Perhaps the latter are beyond your comprehension, Alys," before ordering her to go to bed, lest he becomes angry. She heads to her bedroom, ignoring another knock at the door, forcing him to answer it. It turns out to be the grave-robber, who has Heiss' brain inside a satchel. Frankenstein has him follow him upstairs to the lab, and when they walk through the door, he tells him to set it down on a bench. But, when he walks over to the bench, he passes by the table, which is now titled in an upright position. Looking at it, he yells, "Oh, my God!", and drops the satchel. The sound of breaking glass gets Frankenstein's attention, and he panics when he sees the man has dropped the brain. He rushes to the satchel, calling him an idiot, as the man tries to explain that the sight of whatever it is on the table startled him. Removing the brain from the satchel, he orders the man to fetch him a jar full of liquid across from them. He grabs it and brings it back to Frankenstein, who places the brain down into the liquid. The man notes that he's cut himself and he says it was the broken glass. The grave-robber points out that there's a piece of it sticking out of the front of the brain. Seeing it, Frankenstein says he'll have to remove it. The man asks for his payment so he can leave, but Frankenstein, putting the brain away, tells him there's something in the tank he might be interested in. Warily, he walks over to the front of the tank, and Frankenstein encourages him to climb up the stepladder and peer over the edge. He does so, only to say he doesn't see anything, which is when Frankenstein grabs him by his feet and flips him into the tank, before pulling the rope that pours the acid in. With that nuisance out of the way, Frankenstein walks over to the brain and, for a moment, prepares to remove the shard of glass, but then decides not to tamper with it any further, when he hears thunder outside.

As Elizabeth and Alys slumber in their rooms, Frankenstein puts Heiss' brain into the body he's cobbled together. Hearing that the storm is becoming more intense, he walks over to the window and looks out, as flashes of lightning illuminate him. He walks over to the wall and cranks a lever, which raises an antenna up on the rooftop above him. He quickly clears everything away from the head of the body on the table and attaches two wires to electrodes at the end of the table, before raising it into its upright position. Looking at the body, he removes the sheet covering it and walks over to the lever on the wall. The storm reaches its peak and he throws the switch. At that very moment, a bolt of lightning strikes the antenna on the roof, blowing out the circuits around the switch and knocking Frankenstein to the floor. Sparks fly around him and, once they dissipate, he gets to his feet and walks back to the switch to find that it's completely fried. He pulls the switch back down and, sighing in frustration, growls, "Hell and damnation!" He starts to unscrew and repair the switch and the paneling, unaware that his creation has been successfully brought to life. The monster slowly opens his eyes and, as he becomes aware, looks about his surroundings, hearing Frankenstein behind him, before using his strength to break the leather straps holding him to the table. Frankenstein hears this and, as he watches, the monster walks out from the other side of the table, with only bandages covering his waist and various parts of his arms. Rather than be shocked or amazed at this, Frankenstein walks up to the monster, introducing himself, and even goes to shake his hand. However he was expecting the monster to react, it doesn't happen, as he gets shoved to the side and knocked unconscious. The monster stomps over to the door and smashes his way completely through it, stomping through and heading down the hall. The sound of the clinking collar around his neck awakens Alys who, thinking it's Frankenstein, calls for him. She gets out of bed when she doesn't receive any answer, as the monster heads down the stairs to the front door. Alys opens Elizabeth's door and finds her sleeping, confirming that it wasn't her she heard, and she heads back to her room. Down in the foyer, the monster looks about his surroundings before tearing one of the handles off the door and stomping off into the night. Frankenstein regains consciousness and, seeing that the monster is gone, rushes out the lab and to the top of stairs in the foyer, where he sees the condition of the front door. He quickly runs down there and rushes outside.

Stomping through the woods, the monster comes along a path and sees a man walking, carrying an axe. He pushes over a small tree, which hits the ground right in front of the man, stopping him in his tracks. The monster confronts him and the man tries to defend himself, but the monster grabs the axe, taking it from him, while grabbing the man by the throat with his other hand. He shoves him to the ground and proceeds to hack him with the axe. At that moment, Stephan is walking along with a basket full of bread, when he sees the monster finish his grisly deed and then continue on his way. Once he's gone, Stephan warily approaches the spot and looks at the man's mutilated body. Frankenstein comes along in a horse-drawn cart, searching for the monster, when he sees Stephan. Pulling up beside him, he acts shocked when he sees him standing over the body. Stephan insists that a huge, beasty man, covered with scars and swathed in only bandages, was the murderer. Frankenstein tells Stephan to tell the police the exact same thing, as well as to stay there until he returns with them, which the dimwitted guy does. After leaving Stephan, Frankenstein finds his monster, munching into the body of a bird that he caught and killed. Silently getting off the cart, Frankenstein grabs a large section of tree branch lying on the path, sneaks up behind the monster, and knocks him out with a bash to the head. Later, Frankenstein has fetched the police and sits by in his cart as Becker questions Stephan, while two of his men examine the victim's remains. In a very ballsy move, Frankenstein actually has the monster lying in the bed of his cart, just out of sight from everybody. As Stephan tries to explain what he saw, Frankenstein asks Becker if he may leave and he allows him to. Before he does, Stephan asks him if it'll be alright and Frankenstein says, "Of course it will, Stephan. You just stick to what you saw and everything will be alright." Once he arrives back at the castle, he takes the unconscious monster down to the cellar and drags him into a room, where he chains him up via the collar on his neck. He then goes to fetch him some clothes. Meanwhile, Becker, upon being told by Stephan that the monster came from the direction of the castle, decides to go up there and see for himself.

The monster awakens in the castle cellar, now wearing the clothes Frankenstein fetched for him, and, realizing he's chained to the wall, starts pulling on it. Frankenstein, who's sitting just out of his reach, asks if he can talk, and when he doesn't, he realizes it's likely the result of the piece of glass in the brain. He also advises him to stop pulling the chain, as he goes to get him some food. Upstairs, Elizabeth comes downstairs to find both Becker and Stephan in the foyer. She explains to Becker about how she was forced to leave her father's home by the bailiffs and he asks, "But why here? Why Victor, of all people?" Frankenstein appears, asking, "Why not?", and then asks Becker what he wants now. Becker tells him that Stephan says the monster came from the direction of the castle, but Frankenstein dismisses the idea. He tells Elizabeth about how he found Stephan standing over the body of the murdered man, and she instantly says that he wouldn't kill anyone. Frankenstein comments, "That's what I thought until this morning," and he and Elizabeth say they haven't seen any monster roaming about. With no other choice, Becker is forced to leave and take Stephan with him, telling Frankenstein and Elizabeth that, if he can't find any evidence to support his claim, he's in serious trouble. When they've gone, Elizabeth tells Frankenstein they must do something, as she believes Stephan is incapable of killing anyone; Frankenstein, however, tells her that there's enough evidence to convict him many times over, and that the monster was either a hallucination or a blatant lie. He leaves to do some work, telling Elizabeth he'll see her at lunch. He goes back to the cellar, where the monster is still trying to free himself from his chain. Seeing Frankenstein with a basket full of food, he swipes at him, but Frankenstein tells him he must learn to obey what he says, that if sits down, he can have the food. It takes a few seconds of commands but, slowly but surely, the monster stops swiping at him, takes some steps back, and sits down on the floor. When he does, Frankenstein gives him a piece of meat, which he snatches and munches into. Saying, "Good boy," and patting his shoulder, he dumps the rest of the meat at his feet.

Some time later, Frankenstein and Elizabeth are sitting at the table, eating, but the former tells Alys how awful the food is. She reminds him that his cook is being hanged the next day, and Elizabeth mentions that she offered to help but Alys refuses to let her. He orders her to take the food away and when she does, he says he'll have to get rid of her, offering the position to Elizabeth. Though she needs the money, she's obviously disappointed when it's obvious he only means for her to be the new housekeeper. There's a knock at the door and Elizabeth goes to answer it. She opens the door to find the grave-robber's wife, whom she's never met and who asks to see Frankenstein. She allows her inside and leaves the two of them alone. Since Frankenstein has never met her, he initially doesn't know who she's talking about when she says her husband has gone missing, but when she clarifies it, he says he hasn't seen him since their business was concluded. She tells him she'll have to go to the police, adding that she'll have to tell them what her husband did and that, when she last saw him, he was on his way to the castle with a "delivery" for Frankenstein. He presses her to do it right away, telling her to take the shortcut through the woods to reach the village. She leaves and he heads down to the basement, unaware that Alys was eavesdropping on the whole thing. He opens the door to the monster's room, telling him he has a job for him. In the next scene, the grave-robber's wife is on her way to the village, when she hears the sound of rustling nearby. She tries to ignore it and goes on, but is then startled by the sound of a bird screeching nearby. She turns to look, and when she turns back, she gasps at the sight of the monster towering over her. He grabs her by the neck and squeezes, lifting her up off the ground as she chokes and gasps, and once her life gives out, he tosses her aside. Back at the castle, the monster is able to confirm to Frankenstein that he did as he said and that no one saw him through simple gestures.

The next day, the body has been discovered and Becker and his men are inspecting the crime scene. A few feet away from the body, Becker finds an enormous footprint in the ground and tells one of his men to write to Carlstadt and tell the judge to postpone Stephan's execution. He then goes to the castle and, when he meets Frankenstein, tells him of the second body found on the road, that Stephan might have been telling the truth, and that he's managed to postpone the execution. He also tells him of the footprint he found and mentions how lightly he appears to be taking the whole thing, saying he would have thought so many deaths occurring near his castle would have given him cause for alarm. He says he doesn't care, as long as the monster doesn't wander onto the grounds, and Becker first makes his suspicions known by saying that he may do just that. He then leaves. Frankenstein is about to go back to his duties, when he realizes that Alys was, again, eavesdropping from the dining room. He tries to ignore her, but then, she suggests that he should consider paying her for not revealing that he employed someone to steal corpses for him and that he continually goes down to the cellar. Though she seems to have him, Frankenstein asks, "But, don't you think your information would carry a little more weight if you knew why I wanted those dead bodies, and why I keep visiting the cellars?" She realizes he has a point and he tells her that he'll satisfy her curiosity, prompting her to follow him down to the cellar, which she's visibly hesitant to do. When they reach the monster's room, he opens the door and the monster rises up in his corner. Frankenstein tries to get her to step inside and ultimately has to pull and then push her in. She stumbles right in front of the monster, who growls lowly. Gasping, Alys turns and rushes for the door, only for Frankenstein to slam it shut in her face. The monster stomps towards her and she pounds on the door, begging for Frankenstein to let her out, but there's no escape, and she screams as the monster corners her against the door. Upstairs, Elizabeth comes running down to the foyer, telling Frankenstein she heard a scream, but he denies having heard it himself. He, again, offers her Alys' position, telling her that she's left them. With no choice, Elizabeth takes the position and Frankenstein says they must celebrate with some champagne.

That night, Frankenstein sees Elizabeth up to her bedroom, complimenting her on the meal she made for them, and that he'll see her at breakfast. Elizabeth initially tries to say something but then decides not to and bids him good night. Down in the cellar, the restless monster, having had his way with Alys, walks over to the door (Frankenstein didn't think to chain him back up again) and smashes through it completely. Upstairs in his bedroom, Frankenstein, finding that he's out of the drink kept up there, heads downstairs to refill the glass, only to drop it out of shock when he sees the front door open, realizing the monster has escaped again. He quickly rushes down the stairs and out the door, while the monster finds and stomps towards a small cabin in the woods, where a little girl is sleeping inside. He wakes her up when he breaks the door down and she watches as he stomps toward her. Outside, her father, coming back from the woods, hears her screaming, and then sees the monster stomp out of the cabin and go off into the forest. Once he's out of sight, the woodsman rushes to the cabin and walks through the door to find his daughter up against the wall, her bed smashed. He wakes her up and she cries that the monster hurt her, embracing him. He scoops her up in his arms and carries her out through the woods, to the country road. They come upon Frankenstein on a horse and the woodsman tells him what happened, as well as that the monster went off back in the direction of the castle. He doesn't wait for the man to ask if he can take them into town and quickly rides off back there himself.

The monster walks back through the castle's door and heads upstairs. In her bedroom, Elizabeth, like Alys before her, hears the clinking of the collar on the monster's neck and the sound of his footsteps. She gets out of bed and, putting a robe on over her nightgown, peeks out the door in time to see the monster's shadow going up the stairs leading to the lab. Thinking it's Frankenstein, she calls for him but gets no response. She follows the figure up there and, entering the lab, looks around to try to find him. Still getting no response, she walks further in and around the back of the upright table, where the monster grabs her. Frankenstein, at that moment, walks in through the castle door and hears Elizabeth scream upstairs. As he rushes up there, Elizabeth, in her struggling, turns around in the monster's arms and sees his face, which causes her to faint, and he, in turn, picks her up bridal style. That's when Frankenstein enters the room and, seeing what's happening, demands the monster give Elizabeth over to him. He's reluctant to do so, pulling her up closer to his chest and grunting, but when Frankenstein insists, he puts her in his arms. He tells the monster to stay where he is, while down the road, the police rush to the castle, along with the woodsman and his daughter. Once Frankenstein has returned Elizabeth to her room, he confronts the monster, telling him he now has to make sure that the trouble he's caused doesn't become problematic for him, and prepares a syringe to that end. Elizabeth then awakens in her bedroom and, hearing the sound of hoofbeats outside, looks out the window to see the police arriving. Frankenstein also sees them and prepares to sedate the monster in order to hide him. The monster doesn't like the sight of the syringe and backs away, with Frankenstein telling him to stop being a big baby. Becker and his men enter the foyer downstairs and Elizabeth comes down there, telling him how she was attacked in the lab; she also tells him that she doesn't know where Frankenstein is at the moment. Becker, having heard enough, has everyone follow him up there.

There, they find Frankenstein casually sitting at his desk, as if he were working. He acts surprised to see them there, and also says that he thought Elizabeth was in bed. As the woodsman and his daughter enter the room, Becker demands Frankenstein tell him where the monster is but he, of course, denies any knowledge of what he's talking about, and also says he didn't hear anything when Elizabeth says she was attacked. He dismisses Becker's charge that he's harboring a criminal lunatic, and tells the woodsman to keep his daughter under control, as she's roaming about the lab, fiddling with everything she can touch. After he denies Becker the permission to search the castle without a warrant, he tries to stop the girl from pulling the rope that pours the acid into the tank but he's too late. As the acid floods the inside of the tank and sizzles, he can do nothing but allow his disappointment and consternation to overtake him, as he slumps in his chair. Becker tells him he's going to leave a guard there and will return within an hour. On his way out, he tells one of his men to not let anyone leave the castle, while calling the woodsman to come to the station with him. Elizabeth then insists to Frankenstein that she was attacked and suggests that maybe the monster is gone now, to which the defeated Baron can only nod. She leaves the room, followed by the woodsman and his daughter, the latter of whom says, "He was quite a nice monster, really." Once he's alone, Frankenstein walks over to the tank, climbs up the stepladder, and looks at the acid that has filled it up, sealing his creation's fate. The monster's boots are the only thing left of him, as they bob up to the surface, and Frankenstein turns around, the movie ending on his expression that basically says, "Oh, well."

Malcolm Williamson, the Australian composer who scored The Brides of Dracula, was the one chosen to do the music for The Horror of Frankenstein, having just worked on the Hammer psychological thriller, Crescendo, earlier in the year. It would prove to be his third and last composition for the studio and one of the last movies he would ever work on. While I thought his music for Brides was fairly good, I'm not a big fan of the work he did here, as I don't find it to be that memorable. The main title theme is, for the most part, a whimsical-sounding flute piece accompanied by a harp, though when the actual title comes up, you get these harsh, nasty strings, and there are hints of that menace here and there as the piece goes on. During the montage where Frankenstein is shown hard at work, assembling his creation, you get this unusual theme consisting of a plucking string, often lower, more menacing strings, and a really harsh, building noise on top of everything else that becomes almost piercing when it starts reaching its crescendo. (That music makes me think of the work composer Riichiro Manabe did for Godzilla vs. Hedorah and Godzilla vs. Megalon, both of which are know for having scores that have a harsh and almost obnoxious sound to some of their pieces.) The motif that Williamson comes up with for the monster is a typical low horn bit that, while not that original, kind of works with how much of a mindless brute he is. Most of the other pieces of music are very soft string bits that are meant to be menacing and atmospheric but, for me, are nothing memorable, and the score ends on another string theme that builds until it crescendos horrifically, probably meant to allude to how Frankenstein has gotten away with it and his deadly experiments will continue. As you probably noticed, the music is done absolutely straight, never reacting to or accentuating the instances of black comedy, but, either way, it's far from one of the best scores to be found in a Hammer movie.

While not unwatchable, The Horror of Frankenstein is deserving of its reputation as the black sheep of the Hammer Frankenstein series in that it's a movie that didn't need to be made. It does have good acting, capable direction and cinematography, and sets that are good enough, albeit nothing amazing, but so much of it feels half-baked. The inclusion of black comedy and more sexual material does little for the movie, the makeup effects and gore aren't that impressive, there's little of that uncomfortable notion of crude science that was there in past films, David Prowse's monster is just a big brute with no character to him, the music score is not very effective, the ending is not satisfying for a couple of reasons, and, above all else, the movie is nothing more than a retelling of a story that Hammer had already done very effectively thirteen years earlier, made in a feeble attempt by the studio to stay relevant and appeal to a younger crowd. It's a film that leaves you with a very empty feeling when all is said and done, and makes you wish you were watching The Curse of Frankenstein, or any of the other entries in the series, instead. Save for diehard fans and completionists, I would advise you to skip this one.