Horror Of Frankenstein

By Mal Simons, Blockbuster.co.uk

Victor Frankenstein, an arrogant, cold, womanising, genius is so annoyed when his father orders him to stop his dastardly experiments on the human body that he sabotages his father’s shotgun so that it kills him. Inheriting the family estate, Victor then works on a project to create a human being out of body parts... if this wasn’t bad enough, he gets the parts through killing people.

This is the fifth film in the Hammer Frankenstein series and largely a remake of the 1957 Curse of Frankenstein; this film was intended to shake up the Frankenstein franchise by appealing to a younger audience. It doesn’t always succeed in doing so, well, not from today’s standards but its injection of humour into what is otherwise, quite a dark, depressing and tragic story, is quite refreshing.

The film opens with Victor Frankenstein talking his way out of getting a beating at school by playing on his teacher’s weaknesses. This establishes his ruthlessness, his arrogance and his willingness to prey on the week in order to get what he wants. He goes home to find his father in bed with the maid and when he asks for money for more scientific equipment and is turned down, he sabotages his father’s gun so that his Dad is killed. He then takes his father’s estate, his bank account… and yes, also the maid.

Travelling to university, Frankenstein is fascinated with biology, and with women – he beds the Dean’s daughter and gets her pregnant. Rather than take responsibility, he bolts back home and takes his friend along with him. He decides not to return to University. On the way home, he and his friend come across highway men, raiding a coach in the middle of the forest. Victor is initially reluctant to get involved but ends up killing the highwaymen in cold blood. After the coach has left, he chops off various body parts – the first towards his dream of making a monster.

In order to get enough parts to build his monster, Victor soon has to go out and start callously killing people in order to get what he wants. All the while, he hides this from the people around him, when any of them discover his secret, he does away with them. But as a former school friend, now a police officer closes in on Victor in his investigation of the murders, can Victor get away with this monstrosity of nature without being discovered? And what will his monster be like?

This is not the best Hammer Frankenstein film by any means but it is at least a solid horror film with good performances all round. Classic British horror.

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