Friday, July 19, 2013

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

Director: Terence Fisher                              Writer: Jimmy Sangster
Film Score: James Bernard                         Cinematography: Jack Asher
Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Robert Urquhart and Hazel Court

This was the opening salvo in what would become Hammer’s domination of screen horrors throughout the sixties. The Curse of Frankenstein and its attendant sequels made such an impact on audiences because they shifted the emphasis from the monsters to the man who created them: Dr. Frankenstein himself. Add to that the change of character from a man who was morally tortured by his own creations to one who was ruthless and assured of the rightness of his experiments, and the series became box-office gold. Equally important, however, is the man who played the character, Peter Cushing, whose incredibly riveting performances enlivened even the poorest of productions and the weakest of scripts. His presence alone made Hammer’s Frankenstein series the most artistically satisfying in the entire Hammer oeuvre.

Mary Shelley’s familiar story is told in flashback from Cushing as he sits in jail. Sangster begins by killing off all of the Frankenstein family, thereby relieving him of any threats against them by the monster, and allowing his free movement without familial ties. His arrogance is immediate from the start as he hires a tutor, Robert Urquhart, to educate him. In a few years the student surpasses the teacher, but keeps him on as they both work toward the reanimation of dead tissue. When the experiments turn toward human subjects, however, Urquhart balks. At the same time Cushing’s cousin, Hazel Court, comes to be his wife after the death of her mother. Cushing, however, is already having an affair with Valerie Gaunt. Meanwhile, he keeps assembling the perfect body in his laboratory, with the usual results.

The first thing one notes is the powerful, gothic score by the great James Bernard, percussive and dominating throughout the proceedings. That, along with the saturated Eastmancolor, are the distinctive traits that set Hammer apart from its mostly black and white competition in the United States. But Peter Cushing is the real draw. His anti-hero doesn’t have a second of remorse, or the slightest doubt in himself. He is the real monster and he’s a pleasure to watch. The blind hermit from Bride of Frankenstein is revived in the form of an old blind man walking through the woods, and combined with the child scene from Universal’s original Frankenstein. Ultimately Cushing, like all of his predecessors, fails to control the monster, played by Christopher Lee, and he is captured by the villagers and sentenced to death.

Hammer’s genius did to Mary Shelley’s story what the jolts of electricity did to the monster, and brought Baron Victor Frankenstein to life. The emphasis on Frankenstein turns it into a riveting story and that makes for an incredible film. The pacing, like all of Hammer’s productions, is swift but without the over-the-top frenetic energy of something like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which feels like it’s on speed. The sequel, Revenge of Frankenstein, picks up right where this one leaves off, with Frankenstein heading to the scaffold to be guillotined for his crimes. Hammer didn’t look back after this success, quickly putting Horror of Dracula into production as well as numerous other horror and thriller films. Of all their series, however, this one is easily the best, and The Curse of Frankenstein was the film that began it all.

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