Frankenstein Created Woman

A medical doctor (Thorley Walters), Dr. Hertz, skilled but feeble and easily persuaded (he just seems to need to be guided and doesn't hold much stock in his own intelligence or decision making; he's at Frankenstein's beck and call, believes all the scientist says, and seems to have no opinion or awareness of the complications that perpetrate from what the experiments produce) "reawakens" Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) seemingly from the dead (when Hertz says, "He's alive." it has a strange irony that I found amusing), frozen in a cryogenic state, with help from peasant Hans (Robert Morris).

Hans is in love with a pub owner's daughter, Christina (the delicious Susan Denberg). Christina has a large mark on one side of her face that renders her a figure of ridicule to three scumbags in nicely tailored suits, top hats, and canes who seem to visit the pub not only to down the booze and feast from the kitchen (without paying..) but to insult harmoniously her physical deformity. Hans is sent to the pub to get some champagne for Baron and Hertz after their achievement in resurrection of death and the new-found knowledge that the human soul can exist absent body, which leads to a major fight because of the mocking of Christina.

There are always side effects to Frankenstein's creations. Upon first glance, it appears that the transference of one person's soul (a wrongfully executed young man, at the guillotine, tried and convicted for the cruel beating of a pub owner at the canes of a trio of aristocratic hoods who were robbing him of his drink) is an absolute success. In proving that he can do it, it is a success. But the transference itself, and the body for which the soul is placed, not to mention, the hate and vengeance that still exists in the wrongfully accused "soul" now living within a beauty (once the lover of the executed!), all detonate the Baron's success.

Baron Frankenstein is only concerned with his experiments. He's focused, intensely so, with only the results of the transference and research afterward. Meanwhile his handiwork leaves three people viciously murdered, the use of a newly reconstructed (and far more alluring and seductive) Christina a tool to get revenge. Three people contributed not only to the demise of two innocent young lovers but allowed Frankenstein to successfully transfer the soul into an opposite body. The ending doesn't focus on how the Baron escapes (or doesn't) violence towards his person, but instead we see him walk away from tragedy in sorrow..I don't think it was necessarily for the life lost but for another failure in his long-obsessed struggle to defeat death and prolong life.

I think this is middle of the road Frankenstein but will perhaps be best remembered for its macabre elements (the severed head gag is particularly ghoulish) and unique change in the formula of the scientist's experiments. It has eye candy in Susan Denberg, but the film seems less about the scientist and more about her and the tragic circumstances surrounding her character and the doomed-from-birthrite Hans. Cushing portrays Frankenstein as goal-oriented, unaffected by matters that concern those in his orbit (he doesn't want to be bothered by the court while Hans' life is on trial, pefering to get his testimony over with so he can get back to the lab) unless they further his own success, and driven (always a personality trait associated to the scientist). Again, his drive leads to murder.

Every Frankenstein film deals with murder as a result of his experiments. Walters, to me, is an interesting character to watch because his Hertz is so dependent upon Frankenstein's genius, not leaning on his own strengths and skill (he has it, but doesn't consider himself special as much as insignificant and pathetic), always agreeable with Baron on all things. His willingness to put the soul of Hans in Christina is a testament to that fact.