- Director: Terence Fisher
- Writers: Jimmy Sangster, Hurford Janes
- Stars: Peter Cushing, Francis Matthews, Eunice Gayson
- Runtime: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
- Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2q6c21T(https://amzn.to/2q6c21T)
Synopsis
Takes up right after the first movie ends, with Baron Frankenstein being led to the guillotine. We see the blade fall, and then we cut to an inn, later that night, where two drunks discuss their criminal grave-robbing plan. They go to the crypt and dig up Frankenstein’s grave. They open the coffin and inside, they find the priest, not the evil doctor. One of the men runs off in fear. Frankentein shows up and gives the other man a heart attack. Frankenstein and his assistant, Karl, fill in the grave, and move to Carlsbruck, where nobody knows him.
Three years later, Dr. Stein has been luring away all the patients from the more established doctors in town. He’s really good, and the other doctors are jealous. They decide to send a small committeee to invite Dr. Stein to join them on the council. “Stein” doesn’t approve of the council, and he throws them out.
One of the rejected doctors, Dr. Kleve, recognizes him as Frankenstein. He doesn’t want to turn him in, he wants to learn from him. “Stein” agrees to teach him. He shows him to his lab, and he’s been busy. Karl is his assistant, and he’s the same man who helped Frankenstein escape from the executioner.
He’s got an elaborate setup that simulates a simple brain. He shows Kleve the new body that he’s constructed from parts. This one is perfect. He needs a living brain; that part can’t be substituted from the dead. Karl wants a new body, and he’s willing to volunteer for a brain transplant.
Margaret comes to work for the doctors, and Karl seems to take a liking to her. They perform the operation, removing Karl’s brain. They place the brain inside the new body, and everything seems to be going well. They take him to the back room of the hospital to recover, but they are seen by Dr. Stein’s cleaning man, who gets nosier than he should be.
The new Karl wakes up and is recovering slowly, but it looks like things are going well. Kleve explains to Karl that he’ll be the talk of the town, and every doctor on Earth will want to see him. Karl isn’t big on that idea, since people have been staring at him for his whole life.
The cleaning man goes into the hospital and takes Margaret to see the “special patient.” I’m not quite clear on why they do this other than to advance tthe plot. Karl recognizes her, but she doesn’t know him in his new body. She flirts with Karl, and he flirts right back. She loosens the straps holding him to the bed.
Kleve figures out that the experimental monkey in the lab is a carnivore, and normal monkeys only eat vegetables. What did Frankenstein do to him? It seems that carnivorous cannibalism is a side-effect of the operation. Could that happen to Karl?
Meanwhile, Karl gets up, gets dressed, admires himself in the mirror, and crawls out the window. Karl heads to Frankenstein’s lab and breaks in. He goes inside to find his old, dead body. He burns it in the furnace so that scientists won’t be able to examine him. The drunken landlord comes in and attacks Karl. Karl goes bersek and kills the man.
Karl notices the monkey eating some meat, and he thinks that looks tasty. He freaks out and runs off rather than eat the landlord, but you know he wants to. Frankenstein and Kleve figure out where Karl went and find the bodies. Frankenstein expects that Karl will come back to him sooner or later.
Vera finds Karl hiding in her barn. She brings Dr. Kleve to attend to Karl. Meanwhile, Karl goes to the park and kills a girl, because he’s insane now. He winds up literally crashing the party. He’s reverted to his deformed shape and calls Dr. Stein “Frankenstein” in front of the whole party before he keels over and dies.
Frankenstein isn’t worried; he’s made contingency plans. He goes before the doctor’s council and lies to them. They dig up the grave and find the dead priest. His patients turn against him and beat him up badly until Kleve intervenes. Kleve says Frankenstein’s body is unrepairable, but his brain looks OK. Fortunately, they’ve been building another…
The police come to arrest Dr. Stein, but Kleve shows them that he died on the operating table a few hours ago.
Later, in London, we see that “Dr. Francke” has been performing surgery. He looks like Peter Cushing, only with a mustache and monocle…
Commentary
There’s no Christopher Lee in this one, as it was filmed right after the Horror of Dracula. Still, the goings on and twists in this story are really very good. The evil doctor almost got away with it on his second try, and apparently, did get away with it on the third try.
There wasn’t really any hokey “there are some things man was not meant to know” crap in this one. Surprisingly, I don’t recollect ever having seen this one before, as it is maybe a little much for network TV. The cannibal monkey, Karl wanting the same thing, and of course, raising the dead, all combine to be a fairly effective movie for having been done in 1958.