‘Let’s let our friend here rest in peace… while he can...’
Universal Studios pretty much invented the horror film with their monster movies of the ’30s and ’40s. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Mummy… these are integral horror texts that defined the genre for the next century. They’re also a little creaky now. Luckily, Hammer, a production company based in England, remade all of these films in their own inimitable English way in the ’40s and ’50s. This means lots of people talking in rooms in clipped, posh accents. Lots of misunderstandings. Lots of cups of tea. Wonderful…
We know the story, of course. Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), the archetypal ‘mad’ scientist, is obsessed with the idea of creating life from the body parts of the dead. He hides his mad experiments from his fiance, Elizabeth (Hazel Court). Meanwhile, Victor’s friend and former co-conspirator, Paul (Robert Urquhart) unsurprisingly disapproves of Victor’s insane whims, and there is something about an affair with one of the staff that also happens, but I never quite got to grips with what was happening there or why it was happening – an embarrassing state of affairs on my part. Needless, to say, the good doctor is a real shit in this iteration of the Frankenstein myth.
Now, to say that this film is only 82 minutes long, it spends an awful lot of time on exposition. Cinema is a visual medium, of course, but there isn’t much spectacle here. Luckily, Cushing is as compelling as ever, and Christopher Lee is game as the creature – appearing in heavy make up and for only a few minutes towards the end. As with all Hammer productions, in fact, all of the acting is great. The problem with this film is that there just isn’t enough action.
As a rule, I prefer the more staid, less hysterical Hammer iterations over their Universal counterparts, but I think Frankenstein needs a bit of hysteria. This is one example, however, where the studio that did it first undoubtedly did it better.
