I love Hammer films. However, I came to them late in life and quite by accident. By accident, I watched films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, or both, for two or three days in a row. So I decided to see how long I could carry on with this, and before I knew it, I was a Hammer fan.
Cushing and Lee are two names synonymous with the Hammer gothic horror phenomenon, but equally so is the name Terrence Fisher. Fisher directed many Hammer films, and while his style is economy over style, he nonetheless crafted a look that betrayed the studio’s frugal finances. The first among these was 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein, the first lead role in a film for a young Cushing who had recently become famous for starring in the BBC adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, adapted by Nigel Kneale.
Adapted for the screen by Jimmy Sangster, who would go on to adapt and pen many scripts for Hammer, such as their follow-up The Horror of Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein is remarkable for how much it plays with Mary Shelly’s original story. This is largely because after hearing that they were making a movie, Universal warned Hammer that they would sue them into oblivion if there were any similarities between the films.
Rather than look at this as a hindrance, Sangster and Hammer Studios viewed it as a chance to have some real fun with the story. Gone is the morose Victor, who lives to regret his creation. He’s replaced by a young spoiled child genius played by Melvyn Hayes to smarmy perfection, who grows into the spoiled and almost sociopathic Cushing.
Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein is a cad, a murderer, and a madman. Sangster threw away the metaphor of Victor being the monster and simply made Victor a monster and watching Cushing sink his teeth into the role is the height if cinematic delight. Cushing cuts a dashing figure even as he schemes, plots, and connives his way through his friends and loved ones.
The Curse of Frankenstein opens up with Victor in jail for the murder of three people. The tale is told in flashbacks as he tells his tale of woe to a priest, hoping someone will believe him. The genius of Sangster’s script is that even in Victor’s telling of events, he’s guilty of at least two murders and it never even occurs to him. Even in his attempts to cast himself as the hero, he’s so deluded he can’t see he’s the actual villain.
Cushing is one of the great actors of the time. An observant Letterboxd reviewer noted that Cushing plays the same role every time but changes how he does it by five degrees. An exaggeration that has the benefit of being true. Cushing played every role with the same vigor and commitment to the bit; it always feels like Cushing, but never the same Cushing.
Like many Hammer films, The Curse of Frankenstein was made on a shoestring budget. However, directors like Fisher, set designer Bernard Robinson, and cinematographer Jack Asher would work movie magic, turning their weaknesses into strengths. Fisher and Asher do such wonders with so little that watching old Hammer films is almost like taking a course in film school.
Robinson’s sets are so cramped with bric-a-brac and furniture that it cleverly stays true to how small the rooms of that era were. But take a closer look, and you’ll notice how the actors move rather than how they don’t move because the sets are so small. Robinso creates the illusion of largess with cleverly palace stairways and doorways that ultimately go nowhere or perhaps merely open to another set.
The crown jewel of The Curse of Frankenstein, besides Cushing’s energetic and delightful vile performance, is the laboratory of Victor and his childhood tutor cum friend Paul (Robert Urquhart). The laboratory setting is one of the all-time great labs put to film, with test tubes filled with multi-colored liquid, beakers brimming with strange smoke, and other strange electrical equipment that hums and sparks with danger as Victor and Paul work their horrible science.
Paul is the film’s moral center, known as the wet blanket. Urquhart is the killjoy, constantly trying to talk sense and pining for Victor’s fiance and cousin Elizabeth (Hazel Court). To Court’s credit, she plays Elizabeth as ambivalent at best with either man. Her affection for Victor is out of duty, and Paul seems to be one of proximity.
Like all great Gothic tales, there’s a queer element running through The Curse of Frankenstein, the friendship between Victor and Paul. Though Victor is engaged to Elizabeth (Hazel Court), he’s still having an affair with his maid, Justine (Valier Gaunt). Still, both women seem to exist as beards for Victor, as Paul is the only person he ever seeks out.
Paul is the only one whose opinions he cares to hear and the only approval he truly seeks. The women in Victor’s life are little more than tools, people to subjugate or use as symbols of his status. At times, Cushing even seems possessive of Paul, especially when Paul becomes horrified at Victor’s actions.
The two men often share glances of secretive understanding that are meant to be read as intellectual but impossible not to be read as homoerotic. Sangster’s script plays coy, with Paul uttering lines like, “We can’t continue with this experiment. Not here anyway. She might find out.”
At a scant eighty-three minutes, The Curse of Frankenstein is textbook sketchbook cinema: a kind of cinema with a simple story held up by pure craftsmanship. While Fisher is a director who is not often praised for his style, he and Asher’s work shows a keen economic eye. The camera work may not be fancy, but it is nevertheless effective and often evocative.
Fisher and Asher understand the value of watching the leaves swirl in the cold autumn wind, the effect of a perfectly placed broach between a pair of heaving bosoms, and knowing that Cushing staring wild-eyed at his creation is more compelling than any amount of special effect.
Speaking of the creature, he’s played by Christopher Lee. The following year, he would star in Hammer’s take on Dracula in The Horror of Dracula alongside Cushing as an acrobatic Van Helsing. Make-up artist Phillip Leakey was forced to improvise after attempts to cast a mold of Lee’s face failed. The result is a generic, gory look of melted and burned flesh. Yet, it works; Leakey’s work, like most things in Hammer films, may not be groundbreaking, but it is effective.
As the creature, Lee has little to do and the makeup hinders his ability to use his infamous face. Yet, through his body, he can convey a tragic figure, a wounded child-like creature confused and terrified of its new existence.
The Curse of Frankenstein ends with Victor being led to the gallows. Raving about his innocence and Fisher wallowing is what would be a recurring theme throughout Hammer films: that the rich and powerful are morally bankrupt. I wouldn’t call that as spoiled as Cushing appears in four more Frankenstein movies. Besides, you will be sorely disappointed if you’re watching Hammer films for the plot. For everyone else, though, The Curse of Frankenstein will bring new life to a classic tale.
Images courtesy of Warner Bros.
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