Baron Frankenstein, after being exposed for his illegal experiments, flees England with his assistant Hans and takes refuge under a false name in Karlstadt, in the same castle where he had stayed years before. Here he fortuitously finds his previous creature, frozen in a glacier, and decides to bring it back to life. The monster revives but its mental faculties are altered, so Frankenstein asks for help from the hypnotist Zoltan, who then decides to use his influence over the monster to commit crimes and take revenge on those who had ridiculed him.
The third film in the Hammer Frankenstein saga and the first to be directed by Freddie Francis after the diptych by Terence Fisher (who will later direct three of the four following films), but also one of the least successful.
After the great public success of the two Frankenstein films produced by the English Hammer, Universal Pictures decides to take an active part in the production of the third chapter. We remember that
Universal was the creator of the first great cinematic saga centered on the characters created by Mary Shelley with the masterpiece "Frankenstein" directed by James Whale in 1931 and its sequels. Universal held the rights to the appearance of Frankenstein's monster as tradition had come to identify it, namely with the face of Boris Karloff and his imposing cadaverous attire, and this was one of the reasons why the first Frankenstein film by Hammer, "The Mask of Frankenstein," differed so drastically from what was the collective imagination regarding the monster's look. Since this new film involved Universal, the idea was to make the monster resemble the one played by Karloff, with rather disappointing results. Indeed, if we want to find a negative aspect of macroscopic proportions
in "The Revenge of Frankenstein," it is precisely the look of the monster, which appears to be only a poor copy without imagination of the Karloffian one, moreover made up in a disturbingly approximate way. And the question worsens if we consider that the monster in this film should be the same as in the previous film!
Setting this aspect aside, "The Revenge of Frankenstein" still turns out to be narratively weak because it lacks original ideas; the screenplay by Anthony Hinds (who will return to the scene of the crime with the excellent "The Curse of the Frankensteins" and the successful "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell") tries to dredge up the usual clichés about the story of the famous scientist, introducing the only variation of hypnosis. A pleasant variation, as the resentful hypnotist played by Peter Woodthrope is well characterized, but in the end, the monster under hypnosis ends up behaving in the
same way as if it were not. In fact, in this film, the monster is far too docile and is not even perceived as a threat by the viewer. Therefore, to unleash his fury in the finale, a nearly parodistic device is used, which underscores the general lack of inspiration behind this film.
Of course, the atmospheres are those typical of the Hammer, always fascinating and suggestive, even if, compared to the two films that preceded it, the visual violence is lacking. Moreover, the professionalism of Peter Cushing, who once again plays Baron Frankenstein, makes the difference and gives the film that extra quality.
Pleasant like most Hammer productions, but definitely negligible.
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