- Director: Freddie Francis
- Writer: Anthony Hinds (screenplay) (as John Elder)
- Stars: Peter Cushing, Peter Woodthorpe, Duncan Lamont
- Run time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes
- Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/39vd6OQ
Synopsis
We begin with a henchman stealing a nice, fresh corpse out of a shed. The boy’s parents return with a priest and find the body missing. The henchman takes the body to Frankenstein’s lab, where the good doctor has been busy. Frankenstein cuts out the man’s heart as the credits roll.
The priest confronts the henchman, but Frankenstein and Hans have already disposed of the body in acid. The priest breaks in and starts trashing the lab, but Frankenstein runs him off. Hans says he’ll get the carriage, and the two of them leave town right then. Frankenstein is broke, so he decides to go back to Karlstaad, where his original home was. He hopes the villagers have a short memory, since it’s only been ten years. The plan is to pick up some artwork and treasures from his castle, sell them, and use the money to restart his experiments somewhere far away.
There’s a carnival going on in town, and sure enough, they don’t notice the strangers driving through town. They arrive at Baron Frankenstein’s chateau, and it’s clearly been neglected and abandoned. The place has been ransacked, and any treasures that Frankenstein might have once owned are long gone.
We get a long flashback (with no dialogue) as the doctor tells Hans what happened that night long ago. It’s not exactly the same story from the 1957 movie, but it was close enough.
Afterwards, the doctor and Hans go to town for dinner, but he doesn’t seem concerned that he’ll be recognized, because it’s carnival and they can wear masks. He recognizes the burgomaster, who caused him all that trouble back in the day. The burgomaster recognizes him too, and before long, they’re back on the run. They end up hiding in Zoltan the hypnotist’s tent. Trapped and surrounded, they have to make their escape over the mountain pass where the monster was killed.
They follow a strange, mute woman into a cave system, and you’ll never guess what they find inside– the monster, frozen in ice! Frankenstein decides that he needs to restore life to the creature by taking him back to the chateau, the very place he said they could never go again after last night.
Somehow, the doctor and Hans get the creature’s body back to the castle and repair all the equipment in the lab. They turn on the equipment, and it doesn’t work. The creature’s brain just doesn’t work right any more.
They decide to contact Zoltan the hypnotist, to see if he can work on the creature’s mind by hypnosis. He’s convinced, or maybe intimidated, into trying to wake the creature. He places the monster in hypnotic sleep and when he wakes up, he’s very disoriented. Frankenstein thanks Zoltan and sends him on his way.
Zoltan, of course, has a better idea. Zoltan tells the doctor that the monster will never obey him. Zoltan demonstrates easily that he has control over the creature. When he’s alone, he orders the monster to go to town and steal him some gold. Zoltan orders the monster to go to town and kill the burgomaster and chief of police.
Frankenstein and Hans beat Zoltan up. Zoltan turns the monster against them. Frankenstein uses fire against the monster, and the monster kills Zoltan to escape. The police nab Frankenstein, but Hans and the mute girl follow the monster. The doctor manages to escape, stealing a wagon and driving out of town with the villagers in hot pursuit. They all convene back at the castle, where the monster gets good and drunk and collapses the ceiling, setting the place on fire and almost-certainly-for-real-this-time, burning himself and the doctor to death inside the lab.
Commentary
The monster looks really bad here. The makeup and prosthetics were just not very good. I mentioned at one point that it looked like he had a tragic childhood accident involving a Viewmaster.
Things were going well until Frankenstein decided to bring in the carnival hypnotist to save the day. I guess he was the nearest thing to a neurosurgeon they had in Karlstaad.
Overall, the flashback was too long, the makeup was too bad, the dialogue was too stupid, the concept of hypnosis was too ridiculous, and overall, the film was too awful to recommend.