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Frankenstein
Created Woman
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U.K.
/ 1967
Directed by Terence Fisher
Starring
Peter Cushing
Susan Denberg
Thorley Walters
Color / 92 Minutes / Not Rated
Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC)
Anchor Bay Entertainment
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The
fourth film in Hammer's Frankenstein cycle takes
a very different slant than its predecessor, 1964's
Evil Of Frankenstein.
That movie, a valiant attempt to evoke visual
themes from the heyday of Universal's original
monster films — it even has an exploding castle!
— ultimately torpedoed itself with a cartoonish,
episodic script. In Terence Fisher's '67 follow-up
the nefarious Baron is again hard at work in the
lab, only this time he's delving into the metaphysical:
the transference of souls from body to body. This
results in a gender-bending plot that's surprisingly
amoral and comes to resemble a latter day slasher
film, rather than the traditional Frankenstein
story, in its denouement. In this case all the
better... for the most part.
Baron
Frankenstein (the always terrific Peter Cushing)
has set up shop on the outskirts of a rural Balkan
village, where he's assisted in his labors by
the alcoholic, addle-brained Dr. Hertz (Thorley
Walters) and Hans Werner (Robert Morris), a young
local man. With his customary fanaticism, the
Baron is pursuing research into the nature of
the human soul — how to
"trap" it after death and transfer it
from one body to another. We first encounter Frankenstein
when his cohorts pull him from a freezing chamber
in which he's lain clinically dead for one hour.
He deduces that the soul resides within the body
for at least 60 minutes after death; this time
frame provides the needed window of opportunity
to take his experiments to the next level.
With the Baron's successful revival, Hans
is dispatched to the village inn to pick up a
bottle of celebratory champagne. Something of
a local outcast — his father was the town's most
notorious blackguard, executed by guillotine when
Hans was a boy — the young man is treated disparagingly
by Herr Kleve, the innkeeper, who warns him to
stay away from his daughter Christina (Anita Denberg).
Hans has a crush on the shy, awkward girl, who
would be considered beautiful
if not for a gimpy leg and the terrible scars
that mar one side of her face. Hans doesn't care
about her physical imperfections, however. He
sees the beauty within. Naturally it doesn't sit
well with him when a trio of pompous young dandies,
all scions of rich, powerful families, arrive
at the inn and proceed to cruelly mock the woman
he loves. A fight ensues, and Hans is hauled off
by the pointy-helmeted police.
Later that night Herr Kleve is found murdered,
beaten to death. Hans is implicated, though of
course it is the three young punks who are responsible.
The unfortunate Hans, who has an alibi — he spent
the night in bed with Christina — refuses to disclose
his whereabouts to protect her reputation. His
gallantry assures him an appointment with the
guillotine. As the police chief ominously intones
in court: "Like father, like son!" Christina,
the one person who could save Hans, isn't even
aware that her father is dead. She's away visiting
another town, consulting a doctor about her face.
Meanwhile, Baron Frankenstein — never one to miss
an opportunity — makes arrangements to get hold
of Hans' corpse immediately after sentence is
carried out.
The coach returns Christina to her hometown
on the very day of Hans' execution, which she
witnesses and is powerless to stop. Devastated,
the misfortunate lass kills herself by jumping
off a bridge into the river. When villagers bring
her body to the house of Dr. Hertz for dispensation,
the Baron can't believe his luck. With Hans' soul
safely stored within a "frame of force" — an electrically-generated
shield of impenetrable matter — fate has delivered
to his doorstep another body with which to test
his theory...
Frankenstein Created
Woman is an offbeat entry in the Hammer
cycle, and not just for its substitution of a
lumbering male creature with a beautiful woman.
(Of course the Baron and Hertz perform the greatest
miracle of 19th Century plastic surgery on Christina
once they've transplanted Hans' spiritual essence
within her.) Cushing's mad scientist is actually
likable here; he gets all the best quips
and doesn't murder a single soul — pardon the
pun. Urbane, with a rapier-like mind, he's clearly
an intellectual giant among pygmies in this rural
Balkan burg, so his arrogance seems almost justified.
The true villains are the three young dandies,
snobs of the privileged
class who are insidiously cruel in their taunts
of the disfigured girl. You really, really
hate these guys and they fully deserve what's
coming to them.
Denberg, though inexperienced (and dubbed),
effectively conveys her dual role as the pre/post-experiment
Christina. Focusing as much on Hans and Christina's
doomed love as Frankenstein's activities, the
screenplay and director Fisher present what is
actually more of a tragic, gothic romance than
a horror story. This could have been more intriguing
had the film been made in Hammer's last few years,
spiced up with more blood and (particularly) nudity.
As it is, it's an acceptable time-waster with
the usual excellent performance by Cushing. Fans
of the late cult film legend should be entertained.
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Yet
another example of Anchor Bay's commendable treatment
of Hammer titles. The letterboxed video transfer
has never looked better. While flat, the Dolby mono
audio track is clear and resonant. A segment of
James Bernard's opening titles theme plays over
the main menu.
Like others in AB's first batch of Hammer
Collection DVDs, the disc comes with a few extras:
two trailers and two TV spots, plus a short World
of Hammer documentary (narrated by Oliver Reed)
featuring
clips from all the company's Frankenstein films,
most of which starred Cushing and spanned Hammer's
history from 1957's Curse
Of Frankenstein until the final chapter
in the cycle, Frankenstein
And The Monster From Hell (1974). 7/17/01 |
| UPDATE
This disc went OOP in 2003, then was reissued by
Anchor Bay as part of a 2-disc set (pairing it with
Legend Of The 7
Golden Vampires, also starring Cushing) during
the summer of 2004. As of April 2007 the set was
still available (new) at sites like Amazon. |
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