Starring Peter Cushing, Peter Woodthorpe, Duncan Lamont, Sandor Eles, Katy Wild
Directed by Freddie Francis
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
Victor Frankenstein returns home to his ancestral castle, to find it looted and left in ruins, but when he discovers his creature has been preserved, he seeks to return it to conscious life.
Although this, the second sequel to Hammer's The Curse Of Frankenstein, has Cushing return in the lead role, as well as to the castle featured in Curse, Anthony Hinds' screenplay changes many story elements from the original film. Frankenstein was never sent to the gallows, but merely exiled, he had no partner in the creation of the creature, and the creature never killed a human being, but animals alone. In addition to these changes, the film's release by Universal Pictures allowed for the monster's makeup to be tailored more closely to Universal's classic design, and electricity from lightning plays a more prevalent role in the Creature's resurrection. Although some of the production design harkens back to the earlier Hammer film, there are no other holdovers from the original cast, or from the previous sequel, and Kiwi Kingston replaces Christopher Lee in the role of the monster. Among the film's assets are a driving title theme by composer Don Banks, although I didn't find his other cues as memorable, and fine photography by John Wilcox, who showcases Roy Ashton's creature makeup dynamically in a number of sequences. The story, which concerns Frankenstein turning to Woodthorpe's reprobate hypnotist in order to spark the creature's brain activity, I found less interesting than those of the other Frankenstein pictures, and hoped for more continuity with the earlier picture. However Cushing, Woodthorpe, and the supporting cast are all fine, with Hammer's craftsmen providing convincing settings for the Baron's castle and the Germanic village it shadows over.
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