https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4ta8odWatch THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN in the link above. Also currently available to rent on Amazon Prime for $2.99.
My first Hammer film review! THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN is a legitimate and worthy sequel to THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, showing us how the old Baron survives the original after all! The way this film ends, they could have carried the story on further quite easily but alas, they don’t, even though there would be several Frankenstein films forthcoming from Hammer.
For a basic Hammer background, Hammer studios was around for years making several different movies when in the mid fifties, they got the rights to the BBC property THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT. A black and white horror/sci-fi film film that was a big success, they made a few more similar features before making the color gothic horror THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1957. The color gothics are what Hammer became most famous for. After making DRACULA in 1958, we get this sequel to THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and the Hammer horror cycle is off the the races. For a bit of trivia, in the U.S., THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN played double bills with CURSE OF THE DEMON, surely one of the better double features of the drive in era.
The main difference between the Frankenstein series of Universal and Hammer is that the former, for the most part, is focused on The Monster while the latter focused on Dr. Frankenstein, played by Peter Cushing. This would serve the Hammer franchise well as the series went on because Cushing always played the Dr. Frankenstein part brilliantly, THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN being no exception. Cold, calculating and always in control of his emotions, Cushing adds subtle little touches, like the way he smells or doesn’t smell the flower at various points in his story. Another example is when he’s talking to his assistant, played by the Cary Grant like Francis Matthews, he tells him how he doesn’t want him to leave (dramatic pause), “so soon.” The cat and mouse game Cushing and Matthews have in their dialogue scene when Frankenstein realizes his identity is discovered is brilliant. A pleasure watching the two actors exchange their dialogue.
The Monster himself is played by Michael Gwynn and compared to the Universal series and Christopher Lee in THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, is quite human. Like I said with the Hammer series, though, a lot of these films, it’s more about Cushing than selling action figures of The Monster, but Gwynn does a fine job. Wanting a new body by having his brain removed from his deformed old body into a newer, better body, similar to Ygor in the Universal franchise. He starts out human and sympathetic but as it becomes obvious the experiment goes astray, the character becomes more hunched over as in his previous form and the facial decay really sets in. When he kills the janitor in the lab, they show close ups of the drool hanging out of his mouth, which he proceeds to wipe off. The gradual physical decay of the character is well done.
Directed by Terence Fisher, Hammer’s top director and one of the great gothic horror directors in the late 50’s and 60’s horror revival along with Italian maestro Mario Bava. It’s funny, I’ve been in a big Bava and Italian horror kick as of late and watching a British film again, I notice someone like Fisher actual does use color in a very artistic way. The difference is Fisher and Hammer are grounded in realism while Bava’s work focuses on nightmares and surrealism. Both effective, yet contrasting methods. Being a Hammer film, filmed at Bray studios, we get all the familiar sets Hammer fans are accustomed to and one of the fun things about these old Hammer films is trying to see the sets and figure out what other films and scenes they were used for.
THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN is definitely worth seeking out, especially if you’ve already seen THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Even if you haven’t, the movie can be enjoyed without seeing the prequel.
