The Revenge of Frankenstein
was the second of seven movies that Hammer Studios
produced featuring Baron Frankenstein and his many
creations. Six of them starred the remarkable Peter Cushing
as the baron. The baron turned out to be one of the most
memorable characters not only in Hammer history but in movie
history. Revenge shows you many of his
multiple facets, his contradictions as a human.
The Curse of Frankenstein, the first
of the series, was a major money-maker in Britain, the USA, and
in several other countries. The money it earned gave
Hammer a great deal of freedom to explore their vision.
This was especially true for one director, Terence Fisher,
previously unknown except in Britain.
In general, Curse got terrible
reviews from movie critics, who were horrified, scornful,
contemptuous. Looking back, this is no big surprise.
Horror movies, like rock and roll and comic books, were
treated like an embarrassment by the mainstream; as if they
deserved no place in culture. Probably the
most appropriate word for their status would be
“marginalized.”
Remember too, that in 1956 people were a lot more
frightened by other things. Atomic bombs had been
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki just 11 years before. Not
only the USA but the Soviet Union too, now had nuclear
capability. Movies like
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and
Them! had a strong emotional pull on
audiences frightened about bombs being tested, possibly used in
war. A wave of “giant” movies followed: giant wasps,
grasshoppers, a praying mantis, spiders, a scorpion, a Gila
monster, even crabs and lots lots more. Never had
Frankenstein or Dracula seemed so irrelevant.
But Hammer had the insight to realize that they had
something worth sticking with, in the character of Baron
Frankenstein. His contradictions kept you from judging him
guilty—just when you were sure he had committed the
unforgivable, he had the capability to make you change your
mind…or at least reserve your judgment. You never
doubted his superior intelligence or his skills as a doctor.
Often you admired his lack of pretense, his no-bullshit
attitude that few characters around him shared.
Yet none of that could blind you to his arrogance,
his self-centered motives. He was more than willing to
use people, then throw them away with no regret. He viewed
his personal success as more important than the lives of the
unenlightened. And for the baron, “the unenlightened “was
a group that included practically everyone.
The Curse of Frankenstein ends with
the baron checkmated, condemned to death for the killing
his monster did. Revenge picks up the
story soon afterward, with him awaiting execution. But you
notice a new character along with the priest and the
executioner. A man with a paralyzed, contorted arm
and leg but something in his expression revealing native
intelligence and calm under stress. This is Karl, a man
the Baron has gotten to know well in prison. Karl’s eyes
meet those of the executioner; you hear sounds of a
struggle. Soon afterward, you find the baron healthy and
free.
Months later, the baron, now calling himself Dr.
Stein has re-invented himself, far better than anyone could
have imagined. Not only has he become the most respected
(and best-paid) doctor in his town, he has established a
clinic for the poor which allows him to cover a multitude of
sins. The charity work makes him a teflon man; it is
impossible to criticize a humanitarian like Stein. Other
doctors in town are jealous of his money and reputation, but
have no way to bring him down.
The truth is far more ambiguous. Though Dr.
Stein is dedicated to his moneyless patients, these
same patients serve as organ banks for the new creation he
intends to show the world. He dreams of the glory that
awaits him for his achievement. But he is obsessed too, with
all who have condemned him in the past. Almost as
important as the admiration of fellow scientists is the fantasy of
shoving his creation in the faces of everyone who have ever
called him arrogant, crazy, or blasphemous. “I will
have my revenge,” he predicts.
Karl has dreams too. For long stretches of
Revenge, they overshadow Dr. Stein’s plans and
schemes. Karl is someone you relate to—you feel for him
a lot.
Not that the idea of putting someone’s
brain in a new body was anything original. This theme
was used several times in the Universal
Frankenstein series of the 30’s and 40’s.
But I cannot recall any scene from Universal with the power
of this one in Revenge: the contorted Karl looks
upward, longingly, at the body he dreams of inhabiting. It’s
not a long scene, but you find it sticks in your
consciousness.
The body Karl dreams of inhabiting
Anyone who has ever felt a dislike or hatred
about the way they look can understand what is in
Karl’s heart. You find this theme in
The Glass Menagerie, Cyrano de Bergerac, Mask, the Ray Bradbury short story The Dwarf, even the Springsteen song
Dancing in the Dark (“I wanna change my clothes,
my hair, my face.”) and countless others.
To Stein, his plan seems simple enough: remove Karl’s
brain, place it into the new body he has constructed, wait
for Karl to recover from surgery, and receive his due credit from
the world’s scientific community. But outside forces
will take this quest in a different, horrible direction. It
is as if the world means to stop him cold. As brilliant
as Stein is, he is helpless to control all the variables
in his complicated world.
Margaret, a beautiful woman of much wealth, insists
on volunteering at Stein’s clinic. Stein, afraid
of alienating her powerful father, allows her to do this,
within his limits.
But Margaret’s presence sets off a deadly
chain-reaction. A sneaky, manipulating servant at the
clinic (Richard Wordsworth, so powerful in
Curse of the Werewolf) tries to impress
her. He tells her Stein is doing surgery in secret on
clinic patients, and shows Karl to her, in his new body. To
complicate things more: Stein’s assistant, Dr. Kleve,
talks to Karl about how famous he (Karl) will be as a result of
Stein’s scientific triumph.
Karl had met Margaret once before, in the days when
he thought of himself a cripple and nothing more. Immediately
he felt a strong infatuation. Now, the chance he has for a
real relationship blinds him to every other
possibility. He is genuinely afraid that Stein will use him,
like a personal trophy, in the victory celebration for his
achievements. A basically shy man, Karl has no desire to
show off his new body (“I’ve been stared at all my
life.“)
Karl–His surgery goes according to plan–but complications he
never planned on
Without much advance warning, Stein finds
everything he worked for slipping away. You feel
his disappointment, then your own guilt for feeling that
disappointment. But the real loser is Karl, who
kept his end of the bargain (saving Frankenstein/Stein from
the executioner) and finds that his new body fails him
painfully.
The aristocrats’ world abruptly stunned; Karl’s plea for help
exposes Frankenstein
It’s not a surprise that the Baron’s failures
make him more bitter as he ages.
Frankenstein Must be Destroyed and
Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell show him
as meaner, less caring, even more of a user. But part of us
somehow continues to root for him. At least one critic has
written about the scene in Psycho where
Norman waits desperately for Marian’s car to sink into the
swamp. Suddenly there we are, like Norman hoping that
it sinks too. At its best, Hammer’s
Frankenstein series has a similar effect.