Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) - film review

Dr Frankenstein’s experiments in brain transplant surgery are temporarily suspended when the scientist’s cellar laboratory is discovered by an enterprising burglar.  To evade capture by the police, Frankenstein relocates to a London boarding house run by Anna Spengler, whose fiancé, Dr Karl Holst, works at an asylum for the insane.  When he learns that Karl is stealing drugs from the asylum to pay for the medical treatment that Anna’s mother is receiving, Frankenstein blackmails the couple into aiding him in his dastardly schemes.  Frankenstein’s plan is to remove Dr Brandt, a once eminent neurosurgeon, from the asylum and transfer his brain into another body, so that he can cure Brandt of his insanity.  If the operation is a success, Frankenstein hopes that Brandt will provide him with valuable knowledge that will enable him to preserve human brains for posterity...

The fifth of Hammer’s Frankenstein films ups the ante in terms of its explicit horror content and psychological realism and, as a consequence, is arguably the darkest and most frightening in the series.   Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed was a personal favourite of director Terence Fisher who appears to be at his most inspired here, turning in one of his best films for Hammer.  Armed with a polished script and some fine acting talent, Fisher ekes ever last drop of suspense from the story and tacitly avoids the camp silliness and artistic excesses that beset many of Hammer’s other horror films of this period   With brain slicing operations and trepanning being a major feature of this film, it is probably best not to watch it on a full stomach.

Having played the part of Baron Frankenstein four times by this stage, Peter Cushing is well into his stride and takes the character into even darker territory.  The cold charm is still there but we also see the character’s true malevolence, a capacity for unbridled evil that is far more chilling than anything the other Gothic icons can evoke.  By this stage, Dr Frankenstein had become the monster, the man having lost the last vestiges of his humanity through his obsessive desire to rip back the frontiers of science.  Cushing’s portrayal of Frankenstein in this film is one that absolutely freezes the blood and makes you wish that he hadn’t handed over the part to Ralph Bates for the next film in the series, The Horror of Frankenstein.  Owing to public demand, the actor would be back to play the part one more time, in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974), one last Gothic flourish before Hammer began its ignominious descent down the proverbial plug hole.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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