Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell is a 1974 British Hammer horror film
starring Peter Cushing, Shane Briant and David Prowse – the final chapter in
the Hammer Frankenstein saga of films as well as director
Fisher's last film.
Dr.Simon Helder, sentenced to an insane asylum for crimes against humanity,
recognises its director as the brilliant Baron Frankenstein, the man whose work
he had been trying to emulate before his imprisonment.
Frankenstein utilises Helder's medical knowledge for a project he has been
working on for some time. He is assembling a man from vital organs extracted
from various inmates in the asylum. And the Baron will resort to murder to
acquire the perfect specimens for his most ambitious project ever.
Blu-ray + DVD formats, 2 disc set.
Special Features
- The Making Of Featurette
- Terence Fisher Featurette
- Commentary Track
- Animated Picture Gallery
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell
Movie Review
"..Saddled with an absurdly low budget (about $230,000, not much more
than the first Hammer Frankenstein film) and varied scripting problems,
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell seemed destined to share the same fate as
Hammer's misguided efforts to keep the blood flowing in its Dracula films. But
where that series unwisely attempted to transport the Count to swinging London
(in Dracula A.D. 1972), the universe of James Bond (The Satanic Rites of
Dracula) and even 19th century Hong Kong (Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires),
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell is Hammer horror at its most pure.
It's a legitimate, nostalgic swan song with much to recommend it, and a much
better film than its reputation would suggest.
The film is almost a remake of The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), the
first of Hammer's six Frankenstein sequels. In that film, a wanted Victor
Frankenstein assumes the identity of one Dr. Stein**, hides out at a charity
hospital, and creates life from the amputated limbs of his patients. In this
film, he hides out at an asylum for the criminally insane, as resident physician
Dr. Victor and once again fashions a monster from the amputated limbs of his
patients. Yet despite this obvious similarity, Frankenstein and the Monster from
Hell paints a bleaker, more intimate portrait of the famous scientist – older
and failing more than he succeeds, resigned to the consequences of his
amorality. Denis Meikle, in his excellent book on the studio, A History of
Horrors suggests Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell was more for “the
collector,” as he puts it, than a mainstream audience. If that's so then
there's a lot to keep fans of such films interested, even if mainstream viewers
are put off by the talky script and threadbare production.
Most of that interest comes from Peter Cushing's ever mesmerizing
Frankenstein and the much-underrated screenplay by Anthony Hinds, writing under
the name of John Elder. Hammer's previous entry, The Horror of Frankenstein
(1970), tried to woo younger viewers by replacing Cushing with a much younger
Ralph Bates, and adopting an unfortunate semi-parody attitude. In Frankenstein
and the Monster from Hell, Hinds bring in a handsome new doctor, too, but the
results are far more interesting. In previous Frankenstein films, Cushing was
teamed with a fellow scientist/physician who either wants out when
Frankenstein's experiments get out of hand, or is forced to assist
Frankenstein against their will. This film is different. Here, Frankenstein is
joined by Simon Helder (Shane Briant), a twenty-something renegade physician
sent to the asylum after being caught red-handed, literally, experimenting on
stolen corpses. Frankenstein sees in Helder a younger, perhaps more ruthless
version of himself, and this he finds unsettling. It's almost like a Gothic
Patterns, with Helder and Frankenstein trying to outdo one another. In one scene
well-staged by director Terence Fisher, the two congratulate one another on
their success in transplanting the brain of the mathematician into the
monster's body while, in the background, the horror of their deed becomes
clear. Yet the two scientists really have no idea what they've wrought; so
amoral are they that they cannot see their own inhumanity. Frankenstein never
suffered fools gladly, but Helder seems to revel in his arrogance. The humanity
glimpsed in earlier films like Revenge and Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
vaporized with Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed! (1969), by far the best film of
the series. In Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, the bad doctor is
similarly vicious, but next to Helder, Frankenstein almost becomes
sympathetic.
The heavily symbolic but clever script also ties Frankenstein to his
patients. One patient (Sidney Bromley) believes himself to be God, while another
(Hammer regular Charles Lloyd Pack) is an insane but brilliant mathematician,
whose brain becomes the Monster's (Dave Prowse). One of the patients, whose
delicate hands are amputated for the Baron's creation, is played by none other
than a 15th-billed Bernard Lee. (How the actor who became famous as “M” in
the James Bond films was reduced to such a trivial role with no dialogue and
less than a two minutes of screen time is anyone's guess.)
As writer Bill Warren notes in his book Keep Watching the Skies!, the
look and tone of Hammer's Frankenstein – and of Dr. Frankenstein
himself – varied quite a bit over the years, but Cushing himself clearly is
playing the same character from film to film. (After the Big Operation is a
success, there is a terrifically evil look on Cushing's face recalling the
first Frankenstein.) Whether intentional or not, Cushing and Hinds fashioned a
weary, reflective Baron in this film that not only seemed to comment on the
sorry state of the Hammer and British film industry, but which also draws upon
Cushing's personal tragedy, the death of his beloved wife Helen. Wiry but
strong in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed!, Cushing here looks alarmingly gaunt
and even frail. The film seems to play on this, giving Cushing an ill-fitting
Jeffersonian wig and top hat, which only serves to accentuate his thin frame and
bony face.
Despite this, Cushing still brings flashes of the old doctor, especially
in the still-surprising scene where Frankenstein jumps on a table and leaps on
the monster's back, attempting to subdue it. What might have been comical in
other hands becomes almost a tribute Cushing's (and Frankenstein's)
dedication.
The rest of the cast is generally fine. Patrick Troughton appears briefly
as a grave-robber, Madeline Smith, the widest-eyed of Ingrid Pitt's lovers in
The Vampire Lovers (1970) is okay as Frankenstein's mute assistant and
Briant's love interest, but John Stratton is unbearably hammy as the
asylum's sex-crazed director. Prowse had played the singularly athletic
creature in Horror of Frankenstein, but this is a better, more complex role. In
Horror Prowse was just a dumb brute, but his character here is more akin to
Freddie Jones's tragic monster in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed!. Conversely,
the monster makeup this time is truly monstrous – a very hairy, simian thing
with no neck but overstuffed shoulders. The face, which vaguely resembles the
Monster on the Campus (1958) is a well-crafted but immobile mask, which betrays
its origins once the monster starts talking but the lips don't move.
Some have complained the film's graphic surgeries undermine its
otherwise classical approach, but in retrospect the now-tame brain-swapping and
jars o' eyes (which also recall Revenge) only seem to continue rather than
subvert Hammer's Grand Guignol tradition of flesh and blood. (There is a
wonderfully gruesome bit involving a brain plopped into a bowl only to be
knocked over by Cushing, who momentarily slips on the goo).
..Like Chaplin's tramp, Cushing's Frankenstein, in film after film,
seems to brush off his failures, pick himself up, and move on. There's a moment
in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell where Frankenstein, faced with yet
another set-back, says emphatically, “I haven't given up – and I never
will.” Though this proved to be Hammer's last Frankenstein film, Terence
Fisher's last, Hinds's last script for the company, and very nearly
Cushing's last, too, I'd like to think somewhere out there in the Bavaria, the
Baron is still tinkering, still trying to perfect his creation."
DVD Talk