Featuring excellent production values, top-notch
acting, and more blood and carnality than the public of the time was used to
seeing in their horror films, the movie was met by scathing critiques but
nonetheless quickly became the most profitable film made by an English studio,
a position it held for many years. (It also jump-started the mania for Gothic
horror films that Hammer was to excel in.) The movie's present position as a
horror classic has come to it like flavor does to vintage wine, slowly and only
over the passage of time. The first Frankenstein film to be made in color, it
was Hammer's first color production as well, which very much indicates that
despite all the admonishments to the contrary, both the film company and
director Fisher were out to create something extraordinary from the very
beginning. (Likewise, unlike with any of their earlier productions, Hammer cut
a deal with Warner's for the U.S. distribution of the movie in advance of the
actual filming.)
Not that all those involved necessarily believed
the film would amount to much. An oft-told tale about The Curse of Frankenstein that might or might not be true involves
an exchange between Cushing and Lee when the actual filming began: When Lee complained
that his character had no lines, Cushing supposedly retorted, "You are
lucky — I've read the script." Whatever his feelings may have originally
been about the project, Cushing nevertheless supplied one of the best acting
jobs of his long and illustrious career, presenting a truly definitive version
of the doctor as a cold-hearted, dedicated egoist, ruthlessly driven by a
desire to master science, forever blind to anything minutely resembling morals
or guilt. Charming he may be, but behind that mask of English refinement hides
an arrogant, psychotic soul.
If Cushing's acting turn is top notch, that of
the other stars of the film is variable. As Paul Krempe, Frankenstein's tutor
and later assistant, Robert Urquhart makes no special impression other than
that he is obviously younger than the adult Frankenstein despite supposedly
being many years older. The film's mouthpiece of morals, he tends to annoy and
seems highly ineffectual all the way up until the final scene in which he seals
the doctor's doom by denying that the creature ever existed, an act which
actually is contrary to the moralistic stance of his character up to that
point, for it can be seen as nothing less than an act of simple deviousness: by
insuring Frankenstein's execution, he finally gets the girl. The girl in this
case is Elizabeth, played by Hazel Court, one of the most beautiful scream
queens of the time. A capable actress, she does much with what is little less
than a peripheral, token role, making a much more indelible appearance than
Urquhart, despite his meatier part. (Her eventual retirement from horror movies
after her marriage to US television director Don Taylor came much too early,
depriving the genre of one of the best scream queens after Barbara Steele.)
As for Lee, despite having almost less screen
time than Court, he makes an excellent impression as the monster, presenting
him as an uncoordinated killing machine, a creature alien to both its
stitched-together shell and the world around it. That he kills has nothing to
do with him being "evil", but rather to the fact that he doesn't seem
to know that he can do anything else. As for the other tertiary characters,
only the maid Justine (Valerie Gaunt)
makes any true impression, due as much to her campy accent and her position as
the creature's only female victim (in her nightgown, no less) as to the fact
that she manages to exude enough earthy sexuality to make it easy to believe
that Frankenstein would be more than willing to bonk her. (Oddly enough, her
career seemingly never went any further than this film and a brief appearance
as one of the Count's vampire consorts in Horror
of Dracula.)
The Curse of Frankenstein opens with the young,
orphaned Baron (Melvyn Hayes) primly dong his prescribed duties in regard to
the burial of his deceased mother. That out of the way, he promptly hires Paul
Krempe (Urquhart) as his tutor. Jump start ahead, the Baron is not only (as
mentioned before) an adult suddenly much older than his tutor, but he is the
owner of a full-blown mad-scientists lab in which he and his tutor-turned-assistant
carry out all sorts of experiments in the name of science. Starting with the
revival of a dead dog, they quickly move on to stitching together a humanoid
creature from body parts collected and stolen (some, like the hands, under the
most questionable of circumstances). Elizabeth (Court) shows up to take her
promised matrimonial place at the side of the Baron just around the time when
the moralistic Krempe opts out of further assisting the Baron to instead hang
around making declarations of future doom. The Baron kills for a brain which in
turn Krempe damages, but there is no stopping the driven, ruthless mad
scientist. The Creature (Lee) is a pathetic mess, an out-of-whack piece of reanimated
body parts that does little more than kill and destroy; despite its obvious
faults, the Baron revives it a second time after its initial death. Finally,
after it is destroyed in that handy vat of acid every turn of the century
scientist seems to have had in his lab, the Baron is held responsible for the
creature's murders and must face the hangman alone, deserted by both Krempe and
Elizabeth… Of course, as everyone knows who has seen the less-visceral and
almost as equally entertaining sequel, the Baron does not lose his head as
planned.
It must be added that the film's greatness lies
more in the whole of the parts than in the direction itself. Despite his
lasting fame and the respected reputation, Terence Fisher was somewhat staid when it came to using the camera. His
compositions are definitely balanced, but his direction tends towards
immobility. Fisher's true talent seems to have been to get the best out of the
people he worked with, be it the actors or the set designer, and that is what
makes the movie here. Indeed, in The
Curse of Frankenstein, his camera work is so static that when he finally
uses his famous speeded-up zoom to the freshly revealed face of the monster,
the trick is so obvious that it almost fails: one is less shocked by the
monster's ravaged appearance than by the sudden, unexpected movement of the
camera. Luckily, however, all the other ingredients of the movie mix so well
that the finale result remains an undisputed, if minutely flawed, masterpiece of horror.
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