Movie Twitter Blog: Unshackle Hammer Film Productions ...

Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell

(1974)

Hammer Film Productions last foray into the deviancies of Doctor Frankenstein. Hiding away under the guise of Dr. Carl Victor (Peter Cushing) in a mental asylum, afforded the position of resident physician by the asylum director, due to having him compromised, Baron Frankenstein helps the inmates, but in turn helps himself at their ultimate expense !.

A young surgeon pursues the works of Dr. Frankenstein, inspired by his desire to bring about new life, Dr. Simon Helder (Shane Bryant) engages in similar nefarious ways to go about his active research. Employing a grave robber to exhume the recent dead, one such night of unholy act brings the police to Helder’s small abode. The discovery of body parts and the stolen body are more than enough for the local court to pronounce the young surgeon insane. He is carted off to the mental asylum and is soon taken under the protective wing of Dr. Carl Victor.

Dr. Victor is both a calming and feared figure by not only the asylum director and his staff, but also the inmates themselves. One special inmate is afforded preferential position alongside Dr. Victor. An attractive young mute girl named Sarah (Madeline Smith), given the duties of assisting in a nursing capacity. Sarah it is later unveiled is the link that affords Dr. Victor the privilege and position he has within the asylum, and the hold over the asylum director.

The new arrival, Dr. Simon Helder, immediately ingratiates himself with Dr. Victor and becomes very familiar with his surroundings, and the practices of his benefactor. He too is afforded the trust of Dr. Victor and assists him with his medical rounds within the asylum. Helder more than suspects that Dr. Victor is in fact none other than Baron Victor Frankenstein !.

Helder pushes Dr. Victor to divulge more information and enlighten him to his true purpose for continuing to remain at the asylum, when at any time he could just leave. The introduction to a sub section of dangerous asylum inmates opens up the truth, and when directly asked as to his true identity Dr. Victor does not hide the fact that he is indeed, Baron Frankenstein !.

With the gargantuan bulk of a near Neanderthal inmate, interred due to his pathological urge to kill people with broken glass, used as the main frame for his latest experiment, Dr. Victor Frankenstein is very much alive and well !. The hulking killer, along with a mathematical genius and an accomplished hand sculpture, form the basis of a superior being. All meet with suspiciously induced demises at their own implementation. Dr. Simon Helder knows only too well that Baron Frankenstein is responsible, yet the scientist within him craves the same desire to create life from death, and bring about a super being.

Suitably bloody transplants and bodily attachments are made, along with a brain removal and replacement, all undertaken by the bonded doctors in the dingy depths of the asylum. Dr. Frankenstein has a new laboratory but the same old stage to enact his grisly experimentations !.

Things inevitably don’t quite work out and the monstrous creature that is brought to life, looking like a deformed reject from The Planet Of The Apes (1968), with a bad face make over by Betty Davis, from Whatever Happened To Baby Jane (1962), soon reverts to type and the mind of the killer comes to the fore. The creature strikes out with shards of broken glass and when face to face with its own human body, laying dead in a shallow grave, out back of the asylum, it triggers a rage within.

The monster goes on a rampage through the asylum only to meet with his most unexpected, yet insanely apt, demise at the hands of those who understand his torment above all others. A gory rendering perhaps purposefully drawn upon by the shocking final resolution to the startling evocation of Tod Browning’s 1932 shocker, Freaks.
An above average late entry from the house of Hammer, and although certainly not the best of the Frankenstein movies, one that proves to be a memorable addition to the great name of Hammer Films during their heyday.