THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958)
Tagline: Please don't scream too loudly - you may scare those waiting to get into the theatre!!!
(Horror, Sci-Fi, If You Don’t Eat Your Meat, You Can’t Have Any Pudding) [PG]
Note: This movie was not given an MPAA rating. By today’s standards, it would likely land a [PG] rating. In the United States when it came out theatrically, this movie was part of a double feature with CURSE OF THE DEMON.
Frankenstein help me, those were his very words…
In this one, we get the continuation of THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN story in a new tale where Victor Frankenstein has escaped execution, assumed an alias, and moved to a new town where he is stealing all the patients from the local doctors because he is so good at what he does medically. He takes on a protégé and begins conducting a brain transplant experiment on the deformed but brilliant man who helped him escape death. It doesn’t take long before things start to go in an even darker direction as Frankenstein’s secret identity is uncovered.
Acting wise I think Peter Cushing was better in this because he was able to stand out. His performance as Victor Frankenstein is better than anyone else on the screen. We get a small dose of Eunice Gayson as Margaret Conrad, but she’s perfect for the role. She is probably most famous for a few 007 movies, DR. NO and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. Francis Matthews is also pretty good as Doctor Hans Kleve but doesn’t get as much screen time as some of the other cast members. Michael Gwynn also stands apart as very good at playing Karl. One of Gwynn’s other big movies was JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.
When we start getting into this thing it’s rather disappointing that it ends how it ends and it feels completely unresolved because it is. It feels like this should have been tacked onto a longer more “finished” film. Instead, it feels like an episode of a TV show that needs to be binge-watched. If I had gone to see this thing in the theaters, I would have left disappointed.
The other thing I didn’t like about this one is the score. It’s pretty distracting at times and other times it’s almost too gleeful for a film like this. Almost like something you would expect to be playing in the background of a “Power Puff” girls' cartoon.
The sets however are outstanding and it feels like this movie had a better scale overall than THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. The way this thing was shot does invoke a sense of the macabre, so I can say they at least accomplished those two things.
Overall as much as I beat up on THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN for the makeup job on Frankenstein’s monster, this movie is actually far duller and uninteresting even with the eyes and brain floating in stuff scenes that were supposed to resemble horror.
For me, this is a 2 out of 7 waste of 90 minutes barely even worth its title. That's right, I typed that out loud.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF HAMMER FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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