Frankenstein Must be Destroyed was
the next-to-last appearance of Peter Cushing as
Baron Frankenstein. This movie does have its faults.
Probably the most serious; you have virtually no reason
to sympathize with the baron anymore. He is almost
overwhelmingly evil.
But after an undistinguished first half, things
change radically. The movie takes a devastating detour,
turning into a bizarre, tragic love story, as powerful as it is
unexpected. You suddenly find yourself in a different
tale. Not the baron’s anymore, but that of Dr. Brandt and
his wife Ella.
Imagine being light-years away from the person you
loved most. Then years later, you are back in the same
house, close enough to watch them sleep. Yet you know this
is as close to them as you can ever get.
Many reasons for this. But the strongest
one: you really aren’t you anymore. It is a
startling idea, especially in a movie made in the late
‘60’s.
Much of the story up till then has gone in a
different direction. You watch the baron, feeling regret,
but much more, feeling disgust. His positive feelings
have been bled out of him. He does violence without
regret.
As the movie opens, a well-dressed man walks
down a street. Suddenly another figure emerges from the
shadows, a scythe in his hand. In one stroke, he slices off
the first man’s head, and calmly places it into a box he
brought for this purpose. This is your re- introduction to
the new, savagely embittered Baron Frankenstein.
How has he become so cruel, so lacking in
feeling? Without excusing him, the movie gives you
an explanation.
The baron sees himself as a man of vision, someone able to
see past the limits of the scientific establishment.
For years, he has waited, relishing his opportunity to show them
his greatness and their small-mindedness.
But despite his brilliance and imagination, he
has seen frustration after frustration. Is it God, or
fate, or luck, or karma or Murphy’s Law? The baron, a
materialist through and through, is only sure it is
not God… because God does not exist. He is
only sure of his ever-growing fury and ruthlessness,
as though he is at war with the Universe.
Baron Frankenstein tries to start fresh in a
new town with a new identity, Mr. Fenner. (He
is careful not to call himself “Doctor.”) In no
time, his beautiful landlady, Anna, and her fiancé, Dr. Karl
Holst, have become his blackmail victims. (Anna’s mother
lives in an expensive hospice, and Karl has been stealing
cocaine from the medical facility and selling it, to pay for her
stay.)
The Baron does not need their help for
a new creation. He has something more urgent in mind.
It turns out that the Baron’s former research colleague, Dr.
Brandt is an inmate at the hospital for the insane where Karl
works.
It is Dr. Brandt’s help that the Baron needs.
Brandt has made progress where the Baron was unsuccessful.
Baron Frankenstein is obsessed with finding out Brandt’s
discoveries.
However the medical staff is sure that Brandt is
unreachable. His devoted wife Ella continues to
visit him, never giving up hope that he will recover.
He shows no response to her. To the doctors,
he alternates between long stretches of total apathy and
short bursts of violence.
Yet the baron believes he can cure Brandt’s
insanity. He can see only one way to solve this problem.
Brandt must literally be kidnapped out of the
hospital. With Karl’s help the baron is able
to do this. Amazingly, he is also able to cure Brandt’s
insanity through surgery. 
The surgery transferring Brandt’s brain turns out to be the
easy part
But fate continues to plague Baron
Frankenstein. In getting free, Brandt has suffered a heart
attack. The baron knows Brandt has only days to live.
Frankenstein’s solution is grim but simple; he kills
a respected surgeon, Dr. Richter, and places Brandt’s brain
in Richter’s body.
Again his gift for surgery serves the baron
well. And again fate betrays him; Brandt’s wife
sees Frankenstein on the street, and believing she recognizes
him, follows him home.
The baron greets her warmly, and deceives her with a
brilliant mix of truth, lies, and omissions. He admits
he is Frankenstein, and explains that kidnapping her husband was
necessary to restore his sanity. Then he tells her she
may see her husband, though she may have trouble
recognizing him, covered with bandages. Doing this
allows him not to tell her that her husband’s brain is
now in Richter’s body.
Unable to speak yet, Brandt is able to
communicate with hand movements. In addition,
he recognizes his wife’s voice and can tell her this.
The baron’s plan is working to perfection. He convinces
Mrs. Brandt that her husband needs rest. But she is welcome
anytime to see him. The minute she is gone, he turns to
Karl and says, “Pack. We’re leaving.”
Frankenstein, Karl, Anna and Dr. Brandt (in Dr.
Richter’s body) find refuge in a deserted estate. In
the next few minutes you start to realize: this is not
Frankenstein’s story anymore. It is Brandt’s story
now; his desperate try at returning home, in every sense of
the word.
Perhaps Brandt realizes right away that he and his
wife can never regain what they have lost.
He has access to all his former consciousness, but the wrong
body; the old one is dead. His wife will only see him
as another face, hear him as another voice.
And if she could ever accept him this way,
it is too late now. She has been shocked, traumatized
too many times. Already she has lived through his
plunge into insanity, followed by years in the
hospital. Years he was unable to even give her a smile of
recognition. The kidnapping. Her joy at the
baron telling her, her husband has returned and is sane
now. Then both her husband and the baron disappearing.
And the final stab, the police showing her,
her dead husband’s body.
A brilliant, resourceful man, Brandt must realize
too that Baron Frankenstein will never leave them in peace
again. The baron is a force of nature, dead set on finding
out Brandt’s conclusions. At the risk of stretching
things a little, Frankenstein reminds me of Hannibal Lecter—he
never stops coming at you.
Brandt escapes from the baron and heads straight
home. Already he can sense just how poor the odds are
that he and his wife can start a second life together. Life
has hurt her too much for her to accept him. Second,
Frankenstein will stop at nothing to get to his (Brandt’s)
research conclusions. The baron would even kill Ella; her
life means nothing to him.
Brandt gets home. He knows how much he needs to
do before Frankenstein gets there. Time is precious
beyond belief. He yearns to speak to Ella after so long.
Yet he realizes full well how difficult it will be; to
explain all that’s happened. The music is poignant as he
stands there a moment, watching her as she sleeps, but afraid
to wake her.
The best he can do is leave her a note, hope she
reads it next morning, and speak to her then.
Next day he is there when she wakes.
Ella reacts with even more pain than Brandt expected.
Perhaps he never realized that after his disappearance, his
wife was told he was dead.
He can only try to explain (in another man’s voice)
all that has taken place. He quickly realizes that she
cannot take all this in. Life has already dealt her one too
many grim surprises.
He speaks to her from behind a screen, afraid
of the added shock of her seeing him. When Ella finally
does, she faints. She regains consciousness but the
couple is past the point of ever communicating:
“Don’t touch me.”
“I wouldn’t harm you, Ella. I’m your husband.”
“You’re not anything….human.”
Veteran director, Terence Fisher described this
movie as the love story he had wanted to create.
He ultimately succeeded… although of course it is a tragic
one. Ella is faithful to her husband’s memory for
years, while his mind was imprisoned. And when he finally
can return, he can’t reach Ella.
Give credit too, to a powerful script from
Bert Batt, an assistant director who was never able to
sell another screenplay. And to Fisher, for a unique,
powerful love story, taking place under
bizarre circumstances.
Peter Cushing as always, is excellent as the
baron. Maxine Audley is effective too, in the difficult
role of Ella Brandt. And Freddie Jones, so powerful as
the cruel carnival owner in The Elephant Man,
has probably never been better as the tormented
Brandt/Richter.