31 Days of Halloween (Day 10) - Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)

I love some the movie categories that Netflix picks for me. Today’s movie, Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell is under “Violent Mad-Scientist Movies.” I wonder, is there another category for “Passive Sane Scientists Movies?” Hmmm...

Anyway, Monster from Hell was the last of the Hammer Frankenstein films. And, if you don't know what I mean by 'Hammer' check out Mondo Esoterica’s Hammer Studios page for a nice thumbnail history of the company. Even better, pick up The Hammer Story, a great, coffee table style book about the studio.

The short version: Hammer is best know for their series of Gothic Horror films made from the late-fifties through the early-70s (although Hammer made films in just about every genre from it’s founding in 1934 through the end of it’s film production in 1975). The sumptuous, colorful gothic horror films, starting with 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein and ending in 1974 with Monster From Hell, were the movies that made a mark on cinematic history.

Monster From Hell finds Peter Cushing’s Baron Victor Frankenstein in an insane asylum. While there, he is not ready to give up on quest to master death - and life. In the Hammer films, Frankenstein is both protagonist and antagonist. As portrayed by Cushing, he is brilliant, amoral, obsessed, cold and rational to an almost inhuman degree. He wants to expand knowledge for it’s own sake. However, he also is spreads death and misery, whether by killing people who learn too much (or are needed for spare parts) or by creating homicidal of mankind.

The film opens by introducing a new character, Dr. Simon Helder (Shane Briant) who is sent to the asylum for body snatching, using corpses in an attempt to replicate Frankenstein’s work. He finds the Baron at work as the asylum doctor. He has blackmailed the unstable asylum director into “killing off" Frankenstein and establishing a new identity. Although his hands are damaged from a fire, he is serving as the asylum doctor. He is assisted by the mute Sarah (the stunning Madeline Smith), rendered voiceless from shock after her father - the aforementioned director - tried to rape her. Frankenstein quickly recruits the talented Helder to help him out, first as an orderly, then as an assistant on his project to give life to a cobbled together body.

Madeline Smith...now, don't you feel stunned?

Of course, the experiment works...after a fashion. The body is reanimated, but the brain, that of an imprisoned professor, eventually goes mad from his horrifying condition. It is also implied that the body - that of a barely human murderer - retains some its homicidal impulses. Violence ensues and Frankenstein’s latest creation is torn apart by the inmates. But he and Helder survive and prepare to continue the work of instilling life in lifeless matter.

There are many nice touches. For example, we find out that Frankenstein is tone-deaf and unable to appreciate music. This is an elegant way of reinforcing Frankenstein’s detachment from anything that is not coldly logical, purely scientific. The claustrophobic asylum serves to reinforce the feeling of being inside Frankenstein's psyche, a place of solid walls of reason...but with the demons of madness lurking within. Although Frankenstein is sane in the conventional sense, he so obsessed with his work that nothing else - including human life - matters.

The Monster From Hell...in serious need of a body waxing

Cushing, of course, is a joy to watch in the role that, along with his portrayal of Van Helsing in a number of Hammer vampire films, made him internationally recognizable. A low-key actor, he conveys the required genius tinged with madness that the role demands. Briant is good playing the part of the young disciple of Frankenstein. As the film progresses, he starts to display more humanity than he appears to have in the beginning. While he wants to expand his knowledge and follow in Frankenstein's footsteps, he also balks at some of the more ruthless measures that the Baron takes (including manipulating one patient into committing suicide). And Madeline Smith is both attractive to watch and does a credible job of conveying her emotional state through her expressive eyes.

The makeup is well done, even if the “monster suit” worn by David Prowse (who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy) looks a little rubbery. Still it is imaginative and one of the most visually arresting Frankenstein monsters. There is some gruesome body par business with jars full of eye balls, lopped off hands, graphic brain surgery - including a hilarious scene where he steps in a pan containing a brain he’s going to dispose of. The sets are appropriate gloomy, looking more like a medieval dungeon than a place of solace and healing.

The Doctor is in...sane!!!!!!! Sorry, couldn't resist.

If there is a weak part, it is the performance of John Stratton, playing the asylum director. He overacts shamelessly, coming across as far more disturbed than most of the inmates. In part, that is purposeful; we are to understand that the ideas of “sanity” and “madness” have to do with who is in power. The director is a man of position and title, so his impulses towards sexual violence - he regularly assaults female inmates and, of course, tried to rape his daughter - is ignored. And, in his own little universe of the asylum, Frankenstein is a measure of sanity, even if his mind turns towards reanimating corpses, manipulating people into suicide and planning a horrific fate for Sarah.

The Baron’s true madness surfaces as his creation begins to revert to a more violent, primitive state. He decides the only way to salvage the experiment is to mate the creature with Sarah. Helder is appropriately horrified - he says that there have to be limits to science. There is a story problem with this development. How would impregnating Sarah prove anything? Frankenstein doesn't really say. It won't help arrest his creation’s deterioration. For a fairly tightly plotted film, it’s a weird moment; unfortunately, it also sets up the finale, so it’s pretty important. However, we’ve already seen that Frankenstein isn’t completely rational; for him, the thing is to keep the experiments going. You get the feeling that Frankenstein is constantly in search of new intellectual stimulation. Over the course of the film series, you have the feeling that part of his drive is to stave off boredom. He constantly experiments with the boundary of life and death because it keeps his own existence interesting. In this sense, mating his creation to Sarah can be seen as just another test of how well his creation mimic natural life. But, this is not explained; it is something I am inferring.

For modern audiences, the set-bound, fairly low-key proceedings might seem boring. however, it is well-acted, has a number of great images - the brain surgery, a nightmarish scene where the monster digs up the grave where his brain’s body is buried - and is taut little Gothic Horror story. Check it out.