The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) Review



This is my first attempt at a blog here, so I'm just posting one from my other blog for now. It's still a great flick and if you didn't see it before, here it is again.

I love Hammer films. They introduced me to some of my favorite, and iconic, horror icons. The Evil of Frankenstein has one of them as it has the great Peter Cushing playing Baron Frankenstein, the most well known mad scientists who likes to re-animate corpse parts. This movie is more in line with the old Universal monster movie version of the creature and of Frankenstein's laboratory. I read it was an agreement between Hammer and Universal that let them recreate these. This is why the creature (played amazingly by Kiwi Kingston) has the flat head and why the lab looks like the old version. It's also why it doesn't follow the previous flick that Hammer produced, that being The Revenge of Frankenstein (I've got to find that and re-watch and review it).

This is another great performance by Cushing. He's really great in horror movies and perfect as Frankenstein. Hammer films nail the gothic horror perfectly. From the castles to the villages to the great characters, they had a niche for great movies during their run. They still make movies, but not like this. What other movie starts with someone stealing a fresh corpse? Right out from the home where he's resting too. A little girl runs after the corpse robber and runs right into Frankenstein himself. Out in the foggy forest. The robber brings the body to Frankenstein's castle and into his laboratory. There he and Hans (Sandor Eles) remove the heart from the corpse. He puts in in a tank and gets it beating again. This is short lived however as the priest enters and seeing what Frankenstein and Hans are doing, smashes some equipment in an attempt to stop them. After this, the town freaks out and runs them out. It's just some human experimentation and attempting to re-animate a corpse, why all the over-reaction? People, huh?

Dr Frankenstein and Hans then return to Karlstaad, the town Frankenstein first started his experiments and where he made his monster. He had been run out of that town as well. We can see a pattern here. The town is in the middle of a festival, so Frankenstein thinks no one will notice them. Just as an extra precaution, they don festival masks. the doctor's temper almost gets them caught as he sees the Burgomeister (David Hutchenson) wearing his ring. They hide out in a tent where Zoltan (Peter Woodthorpe) is hypnotizing people. They also meet Rena (Katy Wild) a mute and deaf beggar girl. She offers them shelter in a cave after they're made to escape Zoltan's show after the police and the cheif (Duncan Lamont) show up and shut it down. Once in the cave they discover the frozen body of the monster Frankenstein had created. (The ice is very horribly done as it clearly looks like plastic sheets, but that's the charm of the movie).

The Dr and Hans then take the creature, and Rena, back to his castle to once again revive him. However, there's a complication. He has no brain activity. The doctor can't seem to get a response out of it. He then implores the services of Zoltan and his hypnosis to jump start the monster. He succeeds but now the monster will only listen to him. Zoltan uses this to his advantage by sending the monster out to steal gold and exact revenge on his enemies. Even though he only means to frighten them for throwing him out of town, because he had no license to practice his art, the monster kills several people. One of those is the Burgomeister. The monster also attempts to kill the chief but mistakenly kills a police officer instead. This gets the town against the doctor as they're sure he's behind it.
Frankenstein has also discovered what Zoltan has been up to and throws him out. Zoltan then tries to get the monster to kill the doctor but gets killed himself when he gets in the way. The monster goes crazy and begins to smash and destroy the lab. Frankenstein has Hans take Rena and run as he tries to contain the creature. As the lab catches fire, both the creature and Frankenstein are trapped and the townspeople along with Hans and Rena can only watch as the lab explodes, sending part of the castle crashing off the cliff. We don't see the fate of the doctor but we're to assume he doesn't make it.
Overall, I really liked this movie. Like I said, Cushing is just great as always. Once again Hammer comes through. I look forward to watching more of their movies. I've only recently discovered they produced an anthology show. I've only watched the first episode, which I'll review soon. I'd give this movie 4.5 out of 5. Such a great classic horror flick. Did you enjoy it? Are you a Hammer fan? What's your favorite of theirs? Comment below or at my fb page Even My Nightmares Have Nightmares or below this post on the various fb groups. As usual, I'm always looking for more suggestions of things to watch.

Later, ghouls

Dr. Deimos Strigoi

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Zoltan scheming.
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Cushing as the great Frankenstein
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Rena taking care of the monster

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