The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

Plot Outline: Victor Frankenstein is angry when his father forbids him from going to study at college and continue his anatomical experiments. So he sabotages his father's shotgun which kills him, thus leaving Victor with the family fortune and title of Baron. He uses this wealth to finance his college studies but leaves when he gets the dean's daughter pregnant. Returning home, he sets up a laboratory and starts a series of experiments aimed at bringing the dead back to life with the intention of creating a human being from stolen body parts. Unfortunately his creature doesn't behave the way he intended it to.

The Review: Unfairly labelled as the worst of the Hammer Frankenstein series, The Horror of Frankenstein is a decent attempt at breathing new life into the series. Peter Cushing was given the boot to make room for Ralph Bates, whom Hammer were grooming as the next Cushing or Lee. Jimmy Sangster was brought back to rewrite his script from The Curse of Frankenstein and given the director's chair too. The series looked to be heading in a new direction. However it seems as though the film was designed to be a thin parody of the previous films. There is an underlying tone of comedy throughout and plenty of black humour and nods/digs at the previous films. It will be lost on non-Hammer fans but those who appreciate some excellent dry comic lines from Ralph Bates will be in store for a treat. And it's Bates who is the star of the show. He is good as Frankenstein. In fact he's better than good, he's excellent. He's arrogant, cold, ruthless and rude - just like Cushing was in many of the films. But gone is Cushing's charisma and his dry wit. Also Cushing's Frankenstein was a single-minded scientist who refused to let anyone get in the way of his work no matter what. Bates' Frankenstein seems to be a complete psycho and actually enjoys killing people. It seems as though the character of Frankenstein had been stripped down to the bare essentials for this film. It's a credit to Bates' performance that you actually forget Cushing had played the role five times beforehand. Other parts don't fair so well, in particular David Prowse' monster. The make-up is pretty lame and the monster looks just like a man with a fake cranium attached (no wait, he is a man with a fake cranium attached). It actually seems pretty rushed once the monster appears - he just breaks free, kills some random people and attacks little girls with no purpose or meaning, other than he is a monster.

Final Verdict: The Horror of Frankenstein is nowhere near the worst of the series (that honour going to The Evil of Frankenstein). Bates' excellent performance as well as plenty of black humour make this a unique, if somewhat flawed, addition to the Hammer Frankenstein series.

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