Director: Terence Fisher
Writers: Jimmy Sangster
Stars: Peter Cushing, Hazel Court, Robert Urquhart
1 Hour, 22 Minutes
A priest rides up to the castle on the hill. He goes inside, and a guard leads him to a cell. Inside the cell is Baron Frankenstein. He wants to tell his story, and he knows that people listen to the priest.
He had been a young medical student, and he suddenly inherited his mother’s fortune. He decided to use the family’s money to continue his work. He hires a tutor, Paul. He grew to manhood with Paul by his side, and the two started working together on experiments involving life. After many years, they have a breakthrough; they bring a dog back to life.
Paul wants to submit a paper at next month’s conference, but Victor wants to go further. He wants to build a complete creature from parts and create life. He wants to build the perfect human! Paul tells him that would be wrong, as it goes against nature.
They know of a man who was hanged for robbery last week, and the body is still hanging there. They liberate it that night. The birds have eaten half the head. They cut the head off, and Victor throws it into a huge tub of acid, so in a minute there’ll be no trace.
Victor goes out of town for a while, and while he’s gone, his cousin Elizabeth arrives to stay. She’s planning to live there. Victor arrives, and he’s got the hands of the world’s greatest sculptor in his bag.
Paul has decided that they shouldn’t continue with their experiments. He threatens to get Elizabeth to leave as well. Paul asks Elizabeth to leave for her own safety, but Elizabeth refuses to leave; she intends to marry Victor. Meanwhile, Victor’s getting busy with Justine, the maid, upstairs.
Victor goes to the morgue and buys a pair of eyes. He calls in Paul to judge how well he’s done. He admits that the creature he’s made is ugly, but he’s not harming anybody. He wants to find a benevolent brain to put inside the thing.
He invites professor Bernstein over for dinner. Elizabeth refers to him as the greatest brain in Europe. Paul arrives, meets the professor, and suspects the worst. Victor pushes the old man over the railing and he falls to his death. They bury him in the Frankenstein crypt, where Victor returns that evening to cut out the old man’s brain. Paul comes in and they fight; the brain is damaged in their struggle.
Victor implants the brain and gets everything set up. There’s lots of colorful boiling beakers and humming electrical equipment that throws off static sparks. Victor starts, but then stops and asks Paul to help him; it takes two to operate properly.
Meanwhile, the tank drains, and lightning strikes the machine, starting it all up again with no one else around. The creature starts breathing. Paul agrees to help, and they head back to the lab. The creature is not only alive, but it attacks Victor.
The creature escapes during the night. The creature comes upon a blind man in the woods, and things go badly for the blind man. Victor and Paul find the monster roaming in the woods. Paul shoots its eye out, and it dies. They bury it in the woods.
Paul says he’s leaving. Victor goes back to the lab, and he’s got the creature there; he’s already dug it back up. He promises to give it life again.
Justine the maid is jealous of Elizabeth; Justine says she is pregnant with Victor’s child. She threatens to tell the authorities about his work. That night, she goes snooping, looking for some kind of proof to get Victor locked up. As she searches the lab, she finds the monster. She tries to run, but Victor locks her in there with him, and she’s killed.
Elizabeth invites Paul to the wedding. Paul doesn’t show for the wedding, but he does come later that night after the celebrations are over. Paul, of course, thinks all the monster-business is done, but he’s in for a bit of a surprise.
Victor gives the creature orders, and it barely obeys him. Paul mocks its “superior intellect.” Victor says the creature’s stupidity is Paul’s fault. Victor vows to get another brain. Paul runs off and Victor goes in pursuit. Elizabeth goes upstairs to see what the commotion was about. The monster starts pulling at the chain, and frees itself far too easily… just as Elizabeth opens the door.
Paul and Victor see the monster on the roof. Paul runs to the village, while Victor goes up after the monster. Victor shoots the monster, and it comes after him. He throws the oil lamp on it, setting the monster on fire. It then falls through the window and into the acid pit, leaving no trace or evidence that it really existed.
We return to Doctor Frankenstein in prison talking to the priest. Paul and Elizabeth come to visit. Paul refuses to support Victor’s story. Paul acts like there was never a creature, and the priest leaves them. Victor is going to be put in the guillotine for murdering Justine.
Commentary
The version we watched was color, but very low-quality; better than a VHS tape, but not great. It was the perfect quality for a late night movie in the 1980s.
Lee looks nothing at all like Boris Karloff’s monster. He’s tall, gaunt, and much more like a man assembled from parts. He’s fast, dangerous, and only mildly pitiful.
Cushing gives off an evil air, even as he obsesses over his work. You can tell he’s willing to kill to advance his experiments, or even just to cover things up. In most of the Universal Frankenstein movies, the doctor is working on things that “man was not meant to know,” but they still usually had their hearts and motivations in the right places. This Doctor Frankenstein is arrogant, obsessive, and murderous.
You always have to wonder how these experiments would have turned out if the had used a healthy brain, both here and in the original. An why do these scientists always associate with goober-scientists who say, “There are some things that man was not meant to know!” Hello, science???