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The Appropriate Tune: "Frankenstein", by New York Dolls
Universal Studios. Not only are they responsible for producing and distributing films which laid down the foundation for horror in cinema, but they also made sure it would always be seen as cheaply made pablum thrown out for a quick buck. Yes, decades before films like Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street would be mocked and parodied for the seemingly endless additions to its canon, it was actually Universal that wrote the book on horror ‘franchises’. Dracula suddenly had a daughter crawl out of the woodwork, and later a son. The Invisible Man gave way to The Invisible Woman, and later another man (although this one was an agent) before he got his revenge. The Mummy got into a whole mess of trouble, and even The Creature from the Black Lagoon had a few adventures before the curtains closed. No, not all of them followed established continuity or feature the same actors, but that wasn’t the point. You remembered Universal’s Dracula, so maybe if we put his name on this film it’d sell a couple more tickets, and so on and on. Didn’t matter if the movie was good, as long as it could make money. Which is why movie studios nowadays get straight to the point and just remake films and give them the exact same name, Halloween (1979), Halloween (2007) and Halloween (2018) for example, no matter how confusing that might be for the movie-going audience. Thanks Universal!
Of the Universal Monster line, Frankenstein had it a bit better than most. Four years after the whirlwind success of the original Frankenstein in 1931 we’d see a sequel in Bride of Frankenstein; James Whale would return to the director’s chair, Boris Karloff would return as The Monster, and aside from being a good film it’s introduction of The Bride into pop culture would go on to ensure its status as a classic and fixture of shitty film blogs on the internet. Four years after that Universal would close out the decade with Son of Frankenstein; James Whale was out in favor of Rowland Lee and Karloff would make his final appearance in his famous role, but the inclusion of Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi as a hunchback by the name of Ygor (bet that’ll never come up again) ends up pushing it into recommended viewing territory, at least it did when I reviewed it. After that...eh. There was The Ghost of Frankenstein, which saw Lugosi return but didn’t really drive me to do the same. After that would be Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, also known as one of the biggest cockblocks in horror cinema history, and then House of Frankenstein, which was actually a sequel to one of the biggest cockblocks in horror cinema history (also Son of Dracula). Finally in ‘48, and I do mean final because there were only 5 movies after this, we got Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, which was actually pretty good and a movie that I might return to in a review someday, but it does seem a rather ignominious end. Once a menace to movie-goers, now reduced to a walking parody used to spook comedians. Jeez, you’d think everyone had just come off of a worldwide war or something.
Anyway, forget about Universal. It’s Hammer time.
Released in 1957, The Curse of Frankenstein was the first of three movies directed by Terence Fisher upon which the name of Hammer Horror would be built, followed subsequently by The Horror of Dracula and The Mummy. Peter Cushing stars as the titular Baron Victor Frankenstein, a man possessed with an intelligence as great as his arrogance. Ever since he was a baby baron Victor had explored the mysteries of the life, spending his adolescence in research and study with his friend and tutor Paul Kemper (Robert Urquhart). Then one day, a breakthrough: they manage to take a dog that was dead and bring it back to life, in complete defiance of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The greatest medical discovery the world has ever known, if you let the world know that is, and yet Victor hesitates. Bringing life back to something that was previously dead is certainly an amazing feat, but wouldn’t it be even more amazing to bring life to something that had never lived at all? To create life, in a way humanity has never seen before? Then you’d not just be the most important scientist of your generation, you’d be the most important human being that’s ever lived. For a prize like that Victor’d be willing to do just about anything. Maybe even...murder?
Even though Universal’s Frankenstein and Hammer’s Frankenstein films were released 26 years apart, you get the sense that Fisher and Hammer wanted to be as different as possible from that earlier. The Monster (played by Christopher Lee) is not the sympathetic creature that Karloff’s Monster was nor is he given that much focus, he’s just a monster who doubles as a plot device. Similarly Victor Frankenstein is not the repentant figure driven to undo his own grisly work, as it was in the ‘31 film and the original novel, he is out and out the villain of the film. Curse of Frankenstein doesn’t even have a mob of angry villagers wielding pitchforks and torches, although it is teased at one point. ‘This wasn’t your daddy’s Frankenstein’, it all seems to say, and it was the same philosophy that seemed to carry over as Hammer went on. Dracula would turn up the sleaze as much as late 50’s British society could stand, The Mummy...well, he’s basically The Monster with a tragic backstory. Even Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde got its own little Hammer twist, although in that case I doubt the Paramount movie was much of a factor in the decision.
Not only did this film kickstart Hammer as the gold standard in horror cinema for a while, it also established Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as staples of genre cinema for the rest of the careers. Not quite as much for Lee, who as I said is far less of a character than Karloff’s Monster was, but Cushing is far and away the highlight of the film. His portrayal of Frankenstein is fantastic, the very model of a gentleman on the surface but willing and able to throw away ethics and human decency when it benefits him or his work. The living embodiment of that ‘you thought so much about whether or not you could you didn’t think about whether or not you should’ line from Jurassic Park (a version of which even makes it way here). He reminds me a bit of ol’ Herbert West from one of my favorite horror movies actually, Re-Animator, except even worse if you can believe it. Herbert was a contemptible person, true, but he really presents himself as anything else. Victor on the other hand, while it seems like he’s capable of empathy at certain points, you’re never sure whether he’s being sincere or whether he’s being plainly manipulative. Occasionally it feels like they are trying a bit too hard to make him the bad, like stealing human body parts so he can stitch them together into some hideous flesh ogre wasn’t bad enough, but Cushing is so damn good at being a sociopath it’s not hard to see why Hammer revisited the character several more times over the years.
I also really like the art direction in Curse of Frankenstein. While the Universal monster films had that mix of Expressionism, the then-modern era and the era of the source material (at least the early ones), CoF is much more grounded and period-appropriate. Which might seem contradictory, given how often I’ve praised weird aesthetics in film, but there’s something about this slightly grimy, yet almost color saturated Georgian design that I find appealing. Especially when it comes to Frankenstein’s laboratory, as I’ve loved the concept of steampunk and otherwise ‘old’ technology ever since I first read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Time Machine. Again it doesn’t match the iconic look of Universal’s spark-spitting dynamos and what have you, but I think Curse of Frankenstein’s collection of bubbling beakers and tubs of strange liquids lends itself more to the idea of Frankenstein being this medical genius who has bridged the worlds of science and alchemy rather than just some guy who stuck some body parts together and shocked it a couple times. Curse of Frankenstein feels ‘real’, I guess, and the easier it is to suspend your disbelief when you’re watching genre films, the better off you are.
Unfortunately Curse of Frankenstein does suffer from a bit of ‘Escape from the Planet of the Apes’ syndrome, by which I mean it was a small production (270,000 dollar budget) and it feels like it. As nice as Castle Frankenstein looks on the inside, the fact that we spend so much time there makes things feel claustrophobic, especially when it’s the same four people talking to each other as well. You do get the occasional scene outside, but the way they’re shot is usually locked in on the characters so you don’t get much of a sense of space. It would make sense in context, since this is Frankenstein telling his story, but since there are moments that happen that he couldn’t possibly have known about, there’s not an excuse beyond ‘we’ve got no money’.
We’ve also got a small cast, and like I said, Peter Cushing is the reason you watch this movie. Robert Urquhart is okay as Paul Kremper, but like 80 percent of this movie is entering a room and complaining about something, and it feels like they subtly try to push a romance between him and Elizabeth despite him looking like he was in his early 30s when she was like 6, which is just fucking creepy. Hazel Court as Elizabeth Frankenstein, is...there. That’s not meant as a slight against the actress, she’s literally a Chekov’s Gun to build tension for the climax, otherwise it makes no sense that if Paul was so disturbed by Victor’s experiments that he was worried for her life that he wouldn’t have told her in the scene when he tried to get her to leave. Or later on, when they basically redo the scene and Paul has even more reason to want her to leave. Maybe if they actually pushed that romance angle, despite my reservations about it, there could have been some drama there, but they don’t, so she’s just...there. Waiting.
While she’s waiting, I’m going to go ahead and give The Curse of Frankenstein the recommendation. Putting aside all the smoke I’ve blown up Hammer’s ass, it really is an intriguing adaptation of Mary Shelley’s work, not all that accurate to the novel but it approaches the concept from a perspective that I haven’t seen a Frankenstein adaptation really do since then, which is a shame. If I were looking to be controversial I’d say Horror of Dracula and The Mummy suck so just watch this, but I do think if you’re a rookie looking into Hammer Horror or older horror movies, this is a good place to start. A bit like a mild cheddar cheese: It’s got a little bit of a bite, but it goes down smooth.
Don’t ask me what Frankenstein has to do with cheese. It should be obvious.
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