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Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Second Sight Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (29th August 2022). |
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The Film
 When young surgeon Simon Helder (Lady Chatterley's Lover's Shane Briant) is caught trying to follow in the footsteps of Baron von Frankenstein, he is tried for "sorcery" and sentenced to five years in the state asylum for the criminally insane. The impact of the sentence is lessened once Helder discovers the precedent behind it in the sentence handed down to the baron himself only to arrive and learn from the frazzled director (Strangler's Web's John Stratton) that the baron has long since died. This, however, turns out to be a lie when Helder is rescued from a brutal initiation by the guards (Lady Jane's Philip Voss and Lust for a Vampire's Chris Cunningham) by the resident doctor Carl Victor (Horror Express' Peter Cushing) who Helder recognizes immediately as Baron von Frankenstein in the flesh. The baron reveals that he has been able to fake his death and take over as doctor because of leverage he has in the knowledge of how the director and his staff really treat the patients. The baron offers to make Simon his assistant and eventually pass on more of his responsibilities to him in order to have more time for his private research. Assisted by mute Sarah (The Amazing Mr. Blunden's Madeleine Smith) - known to the patients and staff as "Angel" for her countenance and gentle nature the baron introduces Simon to his special patients, including Herr Tarmut (Moonraker's Bernard Lee) who had a remarkable talent for sculpture until his brain atrophied, talented mathemetician and musician Professor Durendel (The Third Secret's Charles Lloyd Pack), as well as the cell of Herr Schneider (Star Wars' David Prowse), a neolithic throwback with a fixation on broken glass who died recently after bending the bars of his cell and falling to his death. When Tarmut dies and his coffin is dropped revealing that his hands are missing, Simon realizes that the baron has continued in his experiments and discovers that his secret lab where Schneider is still alive, his eyes damaged by the fall onto the spiked fence below his cell and the pain center removed from his brain by the baron. Upon discovering that Simon is a surgeon, the baron allows him to assist since his own hands were burned in a fire and he has had to depend upon Angel to execute surgical operations with crude results. Simon suspects that the baron intends Durendel's brain for his creature. While the baron insists that he is "no murderer", Simon suspects that things are not as they seem when the professor conveniently hangs himself. Although the baron, Simon, and Angel successfully transplant the professor's brain into the creature and he can speak, he is also unpredictably violent and they are unsure whether Schneider's body is rejecting the professor's brain or if the professor is taking advantage of his body's greater strength to vent his resentment upon his creators. One of the final Hammer Frankenstein films and nearly one of the last Hammer films Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell feels as much a throwback as its creature, with returning director Terence Fisher as frail offscreen as Cushing onscreen, screenwriter "John Elder" AKA producer Anthony Hinds referencing not only all of the previous Hammer Frankenstein films but also the aborted direct follow-up to Curse of Frankenstein "Blood of Frankenstein" set in an asylum (and long believed to have been repurposed by screenwriter Jimmy Sangster into Blood of the Vampire for X-certificate Hammer competitors Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman). While Hammer's previous Horror of Frankenstein was an attempt to pass the torch from Cushing to Ralph Bates (Bates would actually replace Cushing in Lust for a Vampire), this film seems more ambivalent about passing the torch from Cushing to Briant with a cynical ending that not only suggests the monotony of continuing the baron's experiments (and thus the series of films) but also perhaps an awareness that there actually would be no more Frankenstein films in spite of a suggestion of continuation. Whereas other Hammer Films from the early seventies were attempting to move in new directions, like a swashbuckling Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, the Karnstein lesbian vampires, moving their psychothrillers from the South of France to the home counties with Fear in the Night and the London boroughs with Straight on Till Morning while the Gothic Demons of the Mind eschewed the supernatural for hereditary madness the latter two featuring Briant Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde's gender-bending spoke for itself, and even Dracula was dragged into the modern era with Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (following a stab at Victorian hypocrisy with Taste the Blood of Dracula and the "Carry on" equivalent of a Hammer horror with Scars of Dracula), Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell looks backwards with mixed results. The models and matte paintings of Les Bowie feel more artificial but that perhaps cements the idea of the film's setting apart from its contemporaries while the production design of Scott MacGregor frequently feels more authentic than the more elegant by design sound stage interiors of some of the other Hammers of the period while the photography of Brian Probyn frequently sports some quite handsome lighting with only a couple zoom shots betraying the identity of the man who also shot The Satanic Rites of Dracula and Straight on Till Morning. While Elder's screenplay feels like an outline, with various plot developments apparent to the audience before Simon, the performances do wonders in conveying the human element as the at-first dispassionate Briant's Simon discovers there are lines he does not want to cross and the seeming humanitarianism of Cushing's Frankenstein only seems to exist on a performative level as he decries the orderlies' treatment of the patients and castigates the director but shows no interest in "institutional" reform that might both expose his identity and loose his hold over the asylum. Simon's own flaws are apparent here if the series was to move forward. Just as Frankenstein seems to lose concern for Durendel's mental state once the creature is functional to celebrate his triumph, Simon in proclaiming Frankenstein the "creator of Man" eschews credit the baron tries to extend to himself and Angel by stating that "man in there didn't exist till you created him. One man's body, another man's mind," inadvertently denying Durendel his humanity as anything more than a piece of the creature even though his memories remain. The models and matte paintings of Les Bowie feel more artificial but that perhaps cements the idea of the film's setting apart from its contemporaries while the production design of Scott MacGregor frequently feels more authentic than the more elegant by design sound stage interiors of some of the other Hammers of the period while the photography of Brian Probyn frequently sports some quite handsome lighting with only a couple zoom shots betraying the identity of the man who also shot The Satanic Rites of Dracula and Straight on Till Morning. While Elder's screenplay feels like an outline, with various plot developments apparent to the audience before Simon, the performances do wonders in conveying the human element as the at-first dispassionate Briant's Simon discovers there are lines he does not want to cross and the seeming humanitarianism of Cushing's Frankenstein only seems to exist on a performative level as he decries the orderlies' treatment of the patients and castigates the director but shows no interest in "institutional" reform that might both expose his identity and loose his hold over the asylum. Simon's own flaws are apparent here if the series was to move forward. Just as Frankenstein seems to lose concern for Durendel's mental state once the creature is functional to celebrate his triumph, Simon in proclaiming Frankenstein the "creator of Man" eschews credit the baron tries to extend to himself and Angel by stating that "man in there didn't exist till you created him. One man's body, another man's mind," inadvertently denying Durendel his humanity as anything more than a piece of the creature even though his memories remain. The film amps up the gore into seventies X-certificate territory but the film no longer seems interested in actually shocking the viewer with anything beyond the display of viscera as anything but offal provided to the production by local butchers baking under studio lights to the nausea of the cast, and the film just moves chess pieces around to arrive at the climax with a blasι treatment of what should be the height of horror reflected in the bemused expressions of the two most likely potentials for victim fodder who are never even remotely threatened by the creature's rampage (indeed, even Patrick Troughton gets off lightly for saving his own neck by betraying Simon) followed by an ending that sees the baron starting over and his two assistants seemingly numbed by their own experience to do anything but either watch or help him. While the cast members on the commentary track have eschewed the idea of camp in this film, there is a comedy or at least comic satirical potential somewhere in the script sort of a Gothic Britannia Hospital and one cannot help but wonder if it more so than the other Hammer Frankenstein's might have had an unacknowledged (or even unconscious) influence on some of the campier treatments of the monster to come in the mid-seventies onwards. In the end, one can either view Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell as a catalogue of unrealized potentials or the "logical" end to the Hammer cycle with the baron beyond help and any disciples bound to make some of the same mistakes (particularly those of which the baron was either unaware or unwilling to acknowledge).
Video
Shot in1972 but unreleased until 1974 in the UK by Avco Embassy and in the US by Paramount Pictures Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell was unavailable officially in both territories until the 1990s with a Warner UK tape and an EP-mode "Master Sharp" Paramount US tape (the latter reflecting the PG cut missing the goriest highlights, and choppily so). The film came to DVD in both territories with both Paramount's US DVD and DD Video's UK DVD featuring the US PG transfer. While Paramount's disc was directly ported over for Warner Archive's 2013manufactured-on-demand DVD-R (and remains in print with a new 2020 issue from Paramount), Icon Entertainment's UK Blu-ray/DVD combo from 2014 restored the UK cut in both 1.66:1 widescreen and 1.37:1 open-matte versions. Region A-locked viewers who may have had high hopes for Scream Factory's 2020 Blu-ray were disappointed as the 1.85:1 transfer reflected the PG cut (with Paramount unwilling to allow them to use anything else as has been the case with other Paramount titles for which longer versions exist in other territories where they did not handle it). Second Sight's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC Blu-ray directly ports over the widescreen and fullscreen transfers via the multi-angle navigation feature with the Icon Entertainment logo at the head, and the uncut version's decade-old transfer still looks quite good as the optical titles and the early diffused exterior shots give way to crisp resolution and considered use of color in a mostly grotty setting of grays and browns. Colors are a nice bump up from the faded Paramount DVD master never really pops apart from a couple blood-gurgling close-ups. There is an enhanced sense of depth that finally does justice in motion to that famous publicity still of the creature brandishing a broken bottle at the camera.
Audio
The sole feature audio option for both fullscreen and widescreen presentations is a clean and crisp LPCM 1.0 mono track that features clear dialogue, effects with a few grisly surgery sounds and the scoring of Hammer stalwart James Bernard seeming less like muffled bombast during the more frenetic scenes. Optional English HoH subtitles are included for both versions.
Extras
While the Scream Factory Blu-ray is the PG cut, it does retain some value for the Paramount-exclusive commentary track with actors Smith and Prowse as well as an exclusive new track by film historian/author Steve Haberman and film historian/filmmaker Constantine Nasr and a piece on Hammer producer Roy Skeggs. Second Sight's Blu-ray ports over the Icon extras and adds some new ones of its own. As with their concurrent Blu-ray of The Mummy from the other side of Fisher's and Hammer's filmography, Second Sight's Blu-ray privileges on the menu the new audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger over the audio commentary by Hammer historian Marcus Hearn & stars Shane Briant and Madeline Smith, and it is advised to listen to the latter track first. Hearn discusses the film's function as a "greatest hits" catalogue of Fisher references, discusses the film's censorship, and the behind the scenes contributors, as well as Hammer's rep company of jobbing actors. Smith and Briant eschew the idea that the film is campy Smith states that The Vampire Lovers is camp while everyone plaid the Frankenstein film to the hilt and Smith recalls being a neighbor to also expresses distaste for her costume and hairstyle but not her lack of dialogue (which some fans have decried) while Briant discusses his close relationship with Cushing and his reaction to the remarks about his "androgynous" beauty by critics of the period (as well as noting that he really was hurt in the fire hose scene in which the HD presentation reveals the real welts he acquired being slammed into the set walls). Ellinger discusses the difference between the reaction of the second and third generations of Hammer fans to those who saw the film originally and the critics and fanzines of the period who turned on the film as a betrayal of Fisher while forgetting that he was a jobbing director rather than an auteur and that he felt the displays of gore in his films were justified. Ellinger also discusses the film in the context of Hammer glamour with Smith keeping her clothes on this time around while highlighting the sex appeal to female audiences then and now of the likes of Christopher Lee's sexualized Dracula (in spite of the actor's prudish reputation), Bates, and Briant. She also discusses the film's censorship the film being beholden even at the scripting and production stage to both the BBFC and the MPAA with Paramount distribution already secured as well as speculating on which elements from the shooting script (and producer Roy Skeggs notes) were either cut or left out due to production constraints. As with the aforementioned Second Sight release of The Mummy, this disc also sports a new appreciation by film historian David Huckvale (8:37) who cites the subsequent casting of both Cushing and Prowse in Star Wars as indicative of the end of the era for Hammer-type spectacle and the ways in which the film seems to stubbornly look back as if to place Fisher in his comfort zone after having to bow out of a couple studio assignments due to a pair of car accidents in which he broke one leg and then the other. Huckvale also appears in "The Music of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell" (11:49) in which he notes Bernard's predilection for constructing themes around the syllables of the film's title, demonstrates it on the piano, and also notes that the score actually only hints at the full theme which is not realized until the end credits (indeed, this is one of the few Hammer films like To the Devil a Daughter which only feature the principal cast, writer, and producer, and director credits up front and everything else at the end including above-the-line crew and featured players). Ported over from the Icon disc is "Taking Over the Asylum: The Making of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell" (25:56) in which Jonathan Rigby and Hearn discuss the film as a last effort for Fisher, Hinds, and others, its temporal assistance within the Frankenstein film cycle, and the recognition that more gore was not enough to make up for its "throwback" quality. Smith, Briant, Voss, and Prowse are on hand with anecdotes along with actress Jan Hargreaves who played the chattering inmate (a trait for which she was known and often cast for). "Charming Evil: Terence Fisher" (13:29) features the memories of Fisher's daughter Micky Harding about her father on the set and the effect of his accidents while convention organizer Sue Cowie recalls the attendance of Fisher and his wife and their interactions with the fans. Denis Meikle also provides a frank assessment of Fisher as a director, noting that he could not overcome the weaknesses of some scripts or express what was wrong with them, and charges Fisher with turning Phantom of the Opera into a "wartime weapy" while being more successful with films that had a tragic love story element. The disc also includes a photo gallery (7:21).
Packaging
Not provided for review were the rigid slipcase with new artwork by Graham Humphreys, the softcover book with new essays by Kevin Lyons, Kelly Robinson, and Emma Westwood, and five collectors' art cards.
Overall
In an era when fantastic film was giving way to the likes of The Exorcist and Star Wars and even Hammer was getting experimental Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell looks backwards and both suffers for and satisfies with its stubborn exercise in nostalgia.
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