Watched: March 15 2026
Director: Terence Fisher
Starring: Peter Cushing, Veronica Carlson, Simon Ward, Freddie Jones, Thorley Walters, Maxine Audley, George Pravda, Geoffrey Bayldon
Year: 1969
Runtime: 1h 41min
Can you ever get enough Frankenstein? The only acceptable answer is “Hell no!” So off we go again.
Baron Frankenstein (Cushing) is up to his usual hijinks, collecting human parts to reanimate the dead. However, one cannot live off of already deceased body parts alone – sometimes one requires fresher ingredients. So a-slaying one must go! Unfortunately, an ill-fated burglar has chosen the Baron’s hideout for his own latest exploits, and when the hapless thief stumbles across Frankenstein’s current project he panics and notifies the authorities. Thus, the Baron must abandon his work and find a new base of operations.
Frankenstein takes a room in a boarding house run by Anna Spengler (Carlson). It takes him about 5 minutes to alienate the other lodgers. Then another 5 minutes to find blackmail material on his landlady and her fiancé Dr. Holst (Ward), which he then uses to usurp control of her house as well as procure the services of Spengler and Ward. As is tradition, the Baron’s obsession is still the idea of cheating death, but his new version of this is to develop a method for brain transplantation, allowing brilliant men (let’s face it…) to continue their lives even after their bodies no longer function.
This is quite a dark version of the legendary character. In fairness, the original novel is also very dark, but one can argue that at least Frankenstein’s motives were fairly good, and he wasn’t overly cruel to anyone. Except his creation… Ok, so he’s always been a cunt. But this incarnation is cruel and sadistic, which isn’t always the case in portrayals of Frankie-boy.
Is that the justification for the rape-scene, we wonder? Because that felt very gratuitous and out of character. The only reason we could come up with (once our theory of possible impregnation and thus a continuation of the legacy or similar turned out to be wrong) was that the scene was included to really cement how horrible this man is. Let’s face it – Peter Cushing is going to have us rooting for him unless his character is quite literally the worst! We were happy to watch him murder, kidnap, and perform illegal medical experiments – a man has to have his hobbies, right? But we draw the line at rape, and that is where he lost us and our sympathies turned to his opponents instead. In that respect, we suppose the scene was not so much gratuitous as it was neccessary to snap us out of our adoration of the magical being that was Peter Cushing.
We absolutely loved this. The opening scene with the unfortunate Dr. Heidecke and the almost equally unfortunate burglar, the light and shadow-work, Cushing in all his glory (and his smoking jacket), the exposition dialogue, Frankenstein’s arrogance and demeanor, the costumes (the hat game was especially strong!), and the investigators led by Inspector Frisch (Walters) were all amazing, and we enjoyed every second of it. Except the rape scene. But we have landed on the side of it being necessary as nothing less could have turned us against this Baron.
What we learned: Don’t bury bodies by a water main.
MVP: Peter Cushing
Next time: Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
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