Hell is bits and pieces of other people

The final Hammer Frankenstein with Peter Cushing was Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, directed by Terence Fisher from a script by Anthony Hinds.

Baron Frankenstein has faked his death and is quietly carrying on his strange experiments posing as a prison medic called Doctor Victor (that old trick again). Unfortunately his hands have been badly scarred by fire, possibly at the end of Frankenstein must be Destroyed, and his surgical results are crude. Luckily a brash young surgeon is imprisoned for trying to copy Frankenstein's methods and soon they have teamed up to work on a new creature, ably assisted by another mute female assistant in the form of the lovely Madeline Smith. To round out the quartet Dave Prowse wears a rather ludicrous looking rubber monster suit which appears to have been covered in matted fur rescued from a barber's floor.

As ever Frankenstein stops at nothing to get the necessary spare parts for his creature, driving one inmate to suicide when he realises he has a suitable brain to slot into the monstrous body. The Baron is of course the most horrifying creature in all of the Hammer films, and Cushing becomes more villainous in each one. This was filmed just one year after the sad death of Cushing's wife and the toll that grief had taken on the actor is obvious from his first moments on screen. He still turns in a fine performance although he is further hampered by the dodgiest wig Hammer ever made him wear.

Madeline Smith is lovely to look at and almost steals the show even without using her most famous assets. In terms of the creature it's strange that Frankenstein has lost the ability to produce beautiful specimens as he did in Revenge and Frankenstein created Woman, but presumably that is down to his crippled hands. Meanwhile Prowse lumbers and grunts and is finally dispatched rather easily by two bullets and a bit of zombie entrail ripping that Romero would have been proud of.

And then it all just peters out and Hammer's light fades through the seventies. Their Frankenstein series did many interesting things, notably making the Baron the true monster at the heart of the stories. Christopher Lee's performance as the creature in the first film is still the best of the various scarred horrors, while the famous creation sequence in Evil of Frankenstein beats all the rest. I watched this film on a slightly shonky DVD from a Dutch box set and the difference in quality between the picture and the pin sharp Bluray of Evil was startling and the biggest advert I've yet seen for the power of Bluray. Two stars for the Monster from Hell but overall four stars for Cushing and the Hammer Frankensteins. Now where's a good Vampire hunter when you need one?

The Evil that Men do

Frankenstein must be Destroyed from 1969, directed by Terence Fisher and written by Bert Batt. And yes I am out of order with these Hammer Frankensteins.

I'm a bit confused by the basic plot to this one. Baron Frankenstein wants to learn the secrets of brain transplantation from his colleague Doctor Brandt. However Brandt is an inmate in an asylum with his brain slowly being destroyed by some disease or tumour. So in order to get the secret the Baron has to blackmail Simon Ward and Veronica Carlson to help him abduct Brandt and transplant his brain into Freddie Jones' body. Which leaves me wondering what piece of knowledge Frankenstein lacked because he seemed to do a pretty good job of the transplant by himself. He certainly doesn't carry out the procedure in order to help an old friend because by this stage the Baron is a thoroughly nasty and completely self centred piece of work.

Which brings me to the troublesome scene in the middle of this movie where he rapes Carlson. A scene that was not in the script and was added by the producers against the objections of Cushing, Carlson and director Fisher. Clearly there was a shortage of the trademark Hammer heaving bosoms and the producers wanted some titillation for the the American distributors. It's a nasty scene that has no relevance or comeback on the rest of the plot. It's never referred to again and all the characters carry on as if it never happened, which of course from a script point of view it hadn't. Watching recent episodes of Game of Thrones reminds me that the depiction of rape within popular culture is just as prevalent and troubling now as it was in the sixties. I can only imagine how much trouble and embarrassment this caused the kind and gentlemanly Peter Cushing, and what a horror it must have been to film for Veronica Carlson.

Frankenstein doesn't make his creatures any more and seems to be set on brain transplant as his main area of research. Perhaps this reflected public concern about organ transplant in the 1960s, the first successful heart transplant took place in 1967. Freddie Jones does get to lumber around with a neat scar around his scalp but it's disappointing that Hammer have replaced gruesome creature makeup with unpleasant sex scenes. Just one our of five surgical stitches for this offering. Let's hope for better from The Evil of Frankenstein.

Frankenstein

To London yesterday with my family to see Danny Boyle's Frankenstein at the National Theatre. What a fantastic production! Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller have been alternating the roles of Frankenstein and his Creature. We saw Cumberbatch as the creature and he was outstanding. The play begins with him emerging newly born from a strange cell-like structure onto an empty stage and then we see his struggles to learn how to control his body and get to his feet and walk.

The set in the Olivier theatre is amazing, parts revolve, rise and fall. Gothic castles, ships and isolated Arctic wastes emerge from the stage, and at one point a train steams towards us. And Danny Boyle used several cinematic tricks in his staging, frequently hiding the Creature somewhere in a set to produce a dramatic reveal at a key moment.

The theatre itself seemed to be draped in blood, a huge Bell hung above us and rang at various points to have us jumping in our seats and a thudding heartbeat score by the band Underworld completed the experience.

Gripping stuff