The Horror of Frankenstein, 1970.
Directed by Jimmy Sangster.
Starring Ralph Bates, Kate O’Mara, Veronica Carlson, David Prowse, Dennis Price, Jon Finch, Graham James.
SYNOPSIS:
Arrogant scientist Victor Frankenstein creates a man from spare body parts, with the creature causing havoc once alive.
Originally released on a double bill with Scars of Dracula in 1970, The Horror of Frankenstein sees Hammer in unfamiliar territory as the movie is essentially a remake of their own 1957 The Curse of Frankenstein – with both movies written by Jimmy Sangster – but it is also an attempted reboot of their Frankenstein series, albeit a reboot without their established star Peter Cushing in the title role.
The part of Victor Frankenstein here is played by Ralph Bates, whom Hammer had tried to replace Christopher Lee with in Taste the Blood of Dracula earlier the same year, until the American investors insisted on Lee reprising the role to guarantee bums on seats, as it were. Bates ended up playing a smaller role in that movie, which was probably for the best as, fine an actor as he was, he was no Christopher Lee when it came to being an imposing screen presence.
However, by the time Hammer came to make their next Frankenstein movie there were no American investors, which meant two things – a) Hammer could cast whomever they wished without ‘advice’ from outside parties, and b) there wasn’t as much money in the pot as there was before, so Bates was a cheaper option than Peter Cushing. Tellingly, in the accompanying audio commentary, writer/producer/director Jimmy Sangster claims Cushing was never approached to make this movie, although he would return for the following one, 1974s Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell, so make of that what you will.
So, in The Horror of Frankenstein Jimmy Sangster does away with the young life of Victor Frankenstein and we first meet him as a student. Frankenstein is a brilliant scientist but he is arrogant and a womaniser – which Cushing’s Victor was also – but here we discover a more psychotic side to the Baron, as he tampers with the shotgun that kills his father, meaning that he inherits the Frankenstein fortune, including his father’s housemaid/mistress Alys (Kate O’Mara).
Returning from medical school in Vienna, Victor sets about creating his ultimate experiment after killing and bringing a tortoise back to life. After unethically seizing several corpses to gather parts from, he starts to build a man but as his behaviour gets wilder his assistant Wilhelm (Graham James) has doubts and threatens to tell the authorities unless Victor stops what he is doing. In The Curse of Frankenstein, that threat held some weight until that movie’s assistant, Paul Krempe, washed his hands of the whole affair, but here things take a more shocking turn.
Frankenstein continues to build his creature (played by bodybuilder David Prowse), giving it life and then using it to do his bidding, which involves killing anyone who has prior knowledge of what he has been up to. Which is really what the final act of the movie is, and it takes just over an hour to get to the full reveal of the Monster (as it is credited), which basically gives us an hour of build-up watching Ralph Bates do his best to make Jimmy Sangsters’ gallows humour come to life, which he does admirably.
Probably best known as a comedy actor thanks to 1980s sitcom Dear John…, Ralph Bates plays Victor with a streak of dark menace, using very subtle facial expressions and gestures to get across the pantomime villain-esque tone that Sangster was going for. Whereas Peter Cushing was suave when he needed to be and his take on the character more driven, believing he was ultimately doing good and the ends justified the means, Bates’ Victor is less about the end goal and more about what chaos he can cause with his talents and feeding his God-like complex. Both actors played Victor as mostly calm and calculating, but Bates lacks the stoic authority of Cushing, giving his Victor a more loutish personality.
But as decent as Ralph Bates is, the script he is given to work with just doesn’t compare with any previous Frankenstein movie Hammer had made and the uneven tone – veering from black humour to almost slapstick comedy – is a bit much to take in. It probably doesn’t help much that the Monster is as uneven as the tone, with an elongated head stitched together in classic Frankenstein style that was probably as close as any studio had gotten to the iconic Boris Karloff make-up from the 1930s, but David Prowse’s wide-eyed bewilderment and his impressively chiselled torso don’t look very corpse-like. Indeed, it was Boris Karloff’s dead eyes and sunken cheeks that added character to Jack Pierce’s make-up, but here the Monster looks exactly like what it is – a healthy bodybuilder in a rubber head piece.
For this release StudioCanal have packaged the movie in a rigid slipcase with striking new artwork, two posters and a collector’s booklet containing essays about the movie. The disc features the same archival extras from StudioCanal’s previous Blu-ray release, plus a new featurette with film critic Clarisse Loughrey and actor Isaura Barbé-Brown in conversation about the movie. The 4K UHD upgrade is a noticeable improvement, especially in the exterior shots, but there isn’t really a lot of gory detail to focus on as there is with Hammer’s other Frankenstein movies, and the colour scheme is not particularly dynamic overall.
Nevertheless, as with Scars of Dracula, the changing times meant that Hammer’s classic monsters didn’t hold the same horrific aura as they did a few short years before, and The Horror of Frankenstein is best viewed as a failed experiment. Whereas Scars of Dracula still had Christopher Lee to anchor it, this movie lacks his and/or Peter Cushing’s heavyweight presence, and despite Ralph Bates bringing some youthful energy to Hammer, this was not the movie for him to shine in. He did go on to feature in several other Hammer movies, his most notable starring role being in 1971s Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, and being free of having to replace an established actor – and having a better script to work with – he secured his own place in Hammer’s cast of top British talent. As it is, The Horror of Frankenstein is perfectly serviceable, but pales in the shadow of all the other Frankenstein movies Hammer made, making it the weakest entry in the series.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
