The Horror of Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein is ferociously intelligent, privileged and bored, doodling in his class at school and taunting his master, manipulating those around him to get what he wants and with little loyalty to those who wrongly presume they are important to him, arranging for his father to have a fatal accident when his request for further funding is denied in order to prompt his inheritance of title, estate and fortune.
Leaving for university in Vienna then departing as swiftly when the dean’s daughter falls pregnant with his child, accompanied by lab assistant Wilhelm Kassner and returning home as Baron Frankenstein they encounter former schoolfriend Elizabeth Heiss, now a young woman enamoured of Victor, but his quest overrides all, his search for understanding of the flesh and how to reanimate the dead.
Released in 1970 as a double bill with Scars of Dracula, The Horror of Frankenstein was the sixth of seven films produced by Hammer in their Frankenstein sequence between 1958 and 1974 and the only one not to star Peter Cushing in the lead role of the Baron, what would now be termed a reboot of the series re-adapting Mary Shelley’s original text with a few tweaks with Ralph Bates intended as a more trendy lead to appeal to a younger audience.
The experiment not entirely successful, Bates swiftly moved on to co-lead Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde with Martine Beswick as his alternate while Cushing resumed his established role for Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, the brief re-interpretation swept aside and forgotten, something of a mongrel itself with Jeremy Burnham’s script rewritten substantially by Jimmy Sangster and bringing in a great deal of gallows humour, particularly in the dinner scene with Elizabeth (Veronica Carlson) and her father Professor Heiss (Bernard Archard), Victor more concerned with the folds of his cerebellum than the curves of her cleavage.
Victor cold, arrogant, devious, selfish and dismissive, Bates is not dynamic enough to justify the devotion shown to him by Elizabeth or Wilhelm (Graham James) with only his relationship with lusty servant Alys (Kate O’Mara) making sense, purely transactional as she secures her position in the household, the already lopsided-film not helped by the late arrival of the created creature (Dave Prowse) and the chaos which inevitably follows, the severed limbs of the salvaged corpses more realistic than those of the earlier films but in service of an uninspired retelling of an overly familiar tale.
Given a 4K restoration and lying somewhere between curiosity and aberration, the new edition of The Horror of Frankenstein is supported by an archive commentary with Jimmy Sangster and Marcus Hearn, an archive featurette and interviews with Veronica Carlson and Dave Prowse, Clarisse Loughrey and Isaura Barbé-Brown in conversation about the film, galleries and a trailer, new essays and a reproduction of the original press kit.
