May 5, 2009

Twilight of the Goths:
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell


Released in May of 1974, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell reflected the end of an era. It was the last of the Hammer Films’ Frankensteins and the last screenplay for the studio by Anthony Hinds, writing as John Elder. It was Terence Fisher’s final directorial effort and, ultimately, it was one of a handful of films that effectively closed out the history of the studio and its gothic horror heritage.

In the early Seventies, the film industry in England entered a period of crisis. Despite the best efforts of Michael Carreras, back at Hammer after a stint as an independent producer, the partnerships and distribution deals that the studio had always relied upon were disappearing in a sea change of mergers and realignments. Financing was drying up, distribution became problematic. Hammer’s Dracula series, the studio’s most lucrative franchise, ground to a halt with The Satanic Rites of Dracula. Shot in late ’72, the film wasn’t released in England until January 1974 and it would be another four long years before it trickled onto North American screens.

Problems multiplied. The market for Hammer’s classy, low budget horrors was shrinking fast. Double bills were being phased out, the small neighborhood cinemas and the second run houses were vanishing from the landscape. Most damaging to Hammer’s fortunes, sensibilities were changing, too. The Gothics that had made Hammer the leading and most copied horror studio in the world were going out of style. In 1968, a wildly popular independent American film, Night of the Living Dead, made Hammer’s civilized chills feel suddenly very quaint. The major Hollywood studios entered the horror field with big-budget titles like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976). A new generation of horror film fans looked upon Hammer’s Victorian settings as old hat. The company tried desperately to hang on to its share of the market, but ambitious co-productions deals with Japan’s Toho, Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers and America’s AIP fell apart. Nudity was introduced and the Kensington Gore flowed more freely but, in the end, the studio could no longer compete.

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell wrapped in October 1972, yet it would take a year and a half before it came out in England, to poor box office. It would eventually make it to North America in the Fall of ’74, on a double bill with Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter — a bold but failed attempt at creating a new franchise — sneaking into second rate cinemas for a quick week’s run with no publicity save a newspaper ad. It was an ignominious end to the Hammer Frankenstein series, though the film itself, a true valedictory piece, is quite remarkable. Despite its shrunken budget, it has all the trappings of the classic Hammers, with detailed period sets beautifully lit and photographed, and a sterling cast, every player excellent, headed by the formidable Peter Cushing.

Older now, emaciated, his hands burned and useless, Cushing’s Baron is still at it, hiding under one of his barely disguised names. This time he’s “Dr. Victor”, the resident medical man in an asylum for the criminally insane. Harvesting parts from the inmate population, as he did with the patients of a charity hospital in The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), he is helped in his secret experiments by the mute Sarah (Madeline Smith), a willing but unskilled assistant, beloved by the inmates who see her as an angel come among them. Things go into high gear with the highly coincidental but very timely arrival of Simon Helder (Shane Briant), a young surgeon sentenced to the madhouse for his unholy experiments inspired, as it happens, by the writings of Baron Frankenstein.


Frankenstein’s living canvas is Herr Schneider (David Prowse), a colossal, shaggy brute incarcerated for violence, namely a propensity for attacking people with broken glass. The gorilla-like creature is given new eyes, the delicate hands of a sculptor (a brief appearance by Bernard Lee), and the brain of a genius, but the sum of the parts don’t add up and the violent nature of the beastly Schneider re-asserts itself.

In an unexpected and sobering twist, perhaps hinted at by the very surroundings of the tale, Baron Frankenstein’s solution to his miserably failed experiment is to propose the mating of the mountainous monstrosity to the helpless, innocent Sarah. The creature would be “Reborn… A new version of his true self,” says the Baron to his incredulous assistant. We’d always known the Baron to be a cold, cruel man, but this shocking development betrays a fleeting grasp of sanity. “I think you’re mad,” says Helder. “Possibly,” Frankenstein laughs, “I must admit I’ve never felt so elated in my life!

Helder squelches the Baron’s ludicrous plan. The Monster, on a rampage, is set upon and literally ripped apart by the assembled inmates. Censors having warned Hammer not to shoot the written scenes of the mad crowd eating chunks of Monster flesh, director Fisher shows one inmate “feeding” strips of flesh to a doll.

In the final scene, Cushing’s Baron shrugs off the loss of his tormented creation. “Best thing that could have happened to him,” he says, “He was of no use to us or himself.” With Helder and Sarah watching in sad silence, The Baron starts sweeping up the laboratory debris, babbling on, “We must get this place tidied up so we can start afresh… We will need new material, naturally. Herr Adler in 106, perhaps…”

The scene fades to an outside shot of the asylum, dark but for the light in the laboratory window, and the end titles crawl up the screen.

In a film curiously devoid of the patented Hammer Glamour gloss — no cleavage to speak of — the gore is ramped up, though it seems very tame by today’s standards. Eyeballs are frequently jiggled in front of the camera, collected in jars and spilled on the floor. There’s an extended scene, almost documentary in detail, where a brain is methodically removed from a freshly sawed skull. When it’s transplanted into the Monster’s head, Cushing dumps the old, useless brain to the floor and kicks it away. The Monster is last seen as a bloodied, disemboweled mess. Most memorably, there’s a brief moment, unfortunately cut from some copies, where Cushing’s Baron, unable to use his hands, helps his assistant re-attach a severed hand by biting down and holding a vein between his teeth.

Peter Cushing turns in a commanding performance as the snappish Baron, in full possession of the character, ordering people around with élan and apparently delighted with having an assistant he can teach his dark arts to. Cast as the diligent Simon Helder, Shane Briant had appeared in three other Hammer Films as well as playing Dorian Gray in a television adaptation. He would go on to a busy career as an actor and an accomplished novelist. Sarah, the mute “angel” who wafts demurely through the picture is played by Madeline Smith, a former model used to far sexier roles that included a couple of Hammer vampire films, a Carry On part and being Roger Moore’s first Bond Girl. Of special note, veteran actor John Stratton puts in a rousing performance as the dastardly, corrupt and ever-harried asylum director.

The “Neolithic” Monster is played by David Prowse, unrecognizable in an ugly full-head mask and bulbous upper body suit covered with long matted hair. It was Prowse’s third appearance as Frankenstein’s Monster. He had a tiny walk-on part in his first film, Casino Royale, in 1967, as a Universal-style flathead Frankenstein. In 1970, he was the muscular Monster in Hammer’s Horror of Frankenstein, a smirking remake of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and an ill-fated attempt to relaunch the franchise with a younger cast headed by Ralph Bates in the Cushing part. Prowse would play another role in a concealing head to toe costume, opposite Cushing again, in 1977, as Darth Vader in Star Wars (1977).

Director Fisher, though in ill health and insecure, made Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell a sure-handed, sober film that projects a fin-de-siècle weariness. It’s as if Fisher and Cushing understood — with Hammer in slow motion collapse — that this was their last stab at Frankenstein and they conspired to give the Baron a proper sendoff.

In the climactic scene where The Monster lies eviscerated on the flagstone floor, surrounded by the blood-spattered inmates, Cushing’s Baron steps up and orders the inmates back to their rooms…

There’s nothing more to see,” he says. “It’s over now... All over.


Related:
The Posters of Frankenstein: Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell
Who Am I? Frankenstein Created Woman
Peter Cushing
The Director: Terence Fisher


7 comments:

Christopher said...

Its was the end of the traditional type monster period!..Creatures we'd been accustomed to for so long like Frankenstein's Monster,the Mummy,Werewolves,Vampires along with the "Westerns",just seem to up and disappear overnight in 73-74..I remember seeing The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and thinking how odd it looked after seeing stuff like The Exorcist and Deliverence.and even They Came from Within,even tho I'd been seeing fantasy and period films for nearly 16 years,I'd been a bit brainwashed by the new cynical tone that had taken over movies myself.I stopped going to alot first run films about 1974, as my appetite for classic and foriegn films was taking over..and there were several revival theatres popping up where the Freaks would gather..

The Flying Maciste Brothers said...

Glad to finally see that someone asides The Brothers sees great value in this film. Fisher manages some extraordinary moments and fine atmosphere. His style was as unpretentious, yet as singular as you could get. Now if we could only find an uncut copy -- the Japanese laserdisc is not the greatest looking item...

Kimberly Lindbergs said...

I love this film and enjoyed your review of it. I realize I'm in the minority, but it has so much going for it and the cast is really wonderful. I first saw it when I was a kid in the late '70s and the monster completely terrified me.

On a side, Shane Briant's first film for Hammer was actually Demons of the Mind. For one reason or another (IMDB maybe?) a lot of people assume it was Straight On Till Morning.

Pierre Fournier said...

Christopher: Indeed, as Hammer collapsed, the classic monsters fell out of grace in the Seventies. The Hammers and the AIP films used to play in good “second tier” theaters, but by the time Monster from Hell made it to town, it was banished to a fleapit (formerly the local Cinerama house but gone to seed) and it did very little business. I remember going with a bunch of friends on a Friday evening, and we had the place to ourselves.

Macistes and Kimberly: We’re outed. We stand together in defense and admiration of this excellent film! It was much maligned, I think, for its Monster. Horror fans did not take to it at all. Kimberly, I’m glad you said he scared you. My girlfriend was badly creeped out by Prowse’s Monster. I’ve come to think of him as a profoundly miserable and filthy mess of a creature, confused, uncoordinated, in constant pain. Truly from and in Hell.

Regarding Shane Briant’s films, I’ve made a modification to my post so as to avoid confusion. I was relying on the original release dates. Checking Hearn and Barnes’ THE HAMMER STORY, I see that DEMONS was shot in late summer of ’71, and STRAIGHT ON was shot in the fall, but the UK releases were inverted: STRAIGHT ON opened first, on 9 July ’72, and DEMONS opened on 5 November ’72. The films played in proper order in North America, coming out in May and August of 1974.

The Flying Maciste Brothers said...

It's funny...even tho you'll hear people rave about Terence Fisher, they never talk about why...

His control over structure, subtext, character, beat, performance and movement is extraordinary -- in FATMFH you've already illustrated one of the more astounding moments -- the assertion of the monster's individualism on Dr. Frankenstein -- we, too, were scared by this as a child -- but Fisher manages to root our fear subjectively with the doctor at that moment as well as simultaneously root our sympathies with the monster. In 93 minutes, Fisher has created a clear-cut, multi-faceted, emotional gothic that not only allows identification with all major characters (and a few nicely drawn minor ones as well) but is conscious of satisfying the complex character trajectory of Dr. Frankenstein over a five film arc. He also manages to inject some sly parallels to his own perceived value at Hammer at the time in the doc's character in this, his final film for the company.

Good show. Great write-up. Nice club to be part of.

About Us said...

I've always liked this movie ... I came in very late to Hammer in 1979, but was able to catch up quickly thanks to summer "double bills" that aired every weekend on British TV. Despite the tighter budget, I always thought "... Monster from Hell" was one of the best looking Hammer films.

- Simon

Joe Thompson said...

A sad story about the Fall of the House of Hammer, and the fade of the classic monsters.