Cast:
Ralph Bates (Baron Victor Frankenstein), Kate O'Mara (Alys), Veronica Carlson (Elizabeth Heiss), Dennis Price (the Graverobber), Jon Finch (Lieutenant Henry Becker), Bernard Archard (Professor Heiss), Graham James (Wilhelm Kassner), James Hayter (Bailiff), Joan Rice (the Graverobber's Wife), and David Prowse (The Monster) Produced and Directed by Jimmy Sangster.
Review:
...I'm sure you remember the Frankenstein series as set by Hammer. It had started with The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957 as directed by Terence Fisher with Jimmy Sangster (a production manager who did not particularly like working as one and had never thought about being a writer before, well, becoming one with his debut X the Unknown from the previous year) providing the script. A sequel followed one year later with Revenge (which featured Fisher as director and Sangster as writer) before the 1960s saw three further films in The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969). All of those films starred Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein with their own distinct levels of villainy to the character, whether that involved using hypnotists to bring back the monster, soul catching of recently deceased people, or trying to take advantage of the secrets of an insane man that sees the doctor being carried into a burning building (and, for some sick reason by a producer, a rape scene). I think you can see where the series felt the need to do something a bit familiar but with a "younger push" with Ralph Bates instead of Peter Cushing. This was the first film Sangster directed and one of just three in total, with the others being Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Fear in the Night (1972). Sangster was first approached to do rewrites on a script that had been done by Jeremy Burnham, an actor-turned-writer (in his first and only script for films). Apparently, Sangster was not particularly interested in what seemed like to just be a remake of his 1957 script until Hammer offered him a deal to do a re-write along with produce and direct the film, which opened the door for him to inject a good deal of dark comedy in it. Hammer would make one further film involving Frankenstein (with Cushing returning) in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974).
The film is okay in some respects, but you can really see the seams and limits of where the series could go in the eyes of Hammer. It is a bit of light fun, but one already had a pretty good Frankenstein film three years before that, one a couple years before that, and so on. It is the law of diminishing returns with this film, which isn't nearly as compelling with its lead actor despite the best efforts to do so to go with a middling climax that doesn't have the energy or the timing to make it matter for anything. Bates had his first prominent film role with Taste the Blood of Dracula, released just a few months earlier in 1970, and he would appear in various other Hammer productions the following year in Lust for a Vampire and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. He does make a curious Frankenstein here and there, but the script seemingly forgets whether to treat him as a heel that one awaits to see their comeuppance or a tragic figure, which makes for a curious observation that deserved better. He seems ripe for either a really deranged role or something with a semblance of interesting dignity, and it is a shame he never became the successor actor that Hammer would probably have preferred to see in the 1970s when the company was in need of something to counter the diminishing interest of American funding. His best sequence might be the one where he is confronted with someone who doesn't want to go through with retrieving body parts, and he pretends to go along with quitting only to almost immediately electrocute them without saying a word. Carlson was actually in the last Frankenstein film, but she isn't exactly given that much to do that proves interesting, which is amusing when the only other feminine contrast is O'Mara that plays it with the hinges of a cheesy soap opera. Price is at least semi-funny when it comes to graverobbing for those small moments. In general, though, the movie lacks a true center when it comes to a lack of things for the creature (as portrayed by Prowse, who returned for the aforementioned next Frankenstein film) to really do, which is quite unfortunate. Like the first film, the monster is dissolved in acid, albeit without the plot device of it being told as a long flashback but because a kid haphazardly presses something to have it happen (in theory it would set up a sequel, but, well, these films only loosely follow any sort of rules anyway). In the end, neither of Hammer's attempts at reinventing Dracula or Frankenstein for 1970 are particularly any good, but those familiar with the series (whether as an admirer or as a completionist) will surely stick through with it and let it pass at least once without rolling their eyes too many times.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
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