For those hording toilet paper

Unlocking the doors to the house of Hammer this horror holiday season, a lot of us will pick and choose which films from the vast catalogue of the famous English film company make the watch list this year. My first of October (and not certainly to be the last, that’s for sure) from Hammer is perhaps my favorite Frankenstein film, Revenge of Frankenstein. When I mention that Revenge is probably my favorite Hammer Frankenstein, I have been met with, “Huh? Really?” I don’t see why it should be a surprise. I think it is really good. Cushing’s Frankenstein has always fascinated me in how he’s represented from film to film. It is as if he’s a different character depending upon where his adventures take him, and how he continues to prove that his experiments will someday exonerate him of the horrors that often derive from his work. He always suffers failure, sometimes because of events that happen outside his experimental surgeries and work to create and sustain life through his own intellect and brilliance. Revenge is a good example of this. George Woodbridge couldn’t be a worse hire for Frankenstein.

 The Baron has moved to Carlsbruk after escaping the guillotine thanks to a facially scarred, one-armed, blood-clot-affected victim of bad DNA, Karl (Oscar Quiltak). Replacing a priest (!) in Baron’s place, Karl (in concert with the executioner) allows the scientist to be free to continue his work under an alias (Dr. Stein) in a new place (Carlsbruk), gaining a new assistant (the enthusiastic, complimentary Dr. Hans Kleve, played by Francis Matthews, who truly wants to learn from experiences as an assistant to a brilliant mind), and attaining a far better lab experiment (the titanic Michael Gwynn). Woodbridge carries a broom around, pretending to sweep the floors of Dr. Stein’s poverty row “hospital”, but this just affords him to be nosy and sneak around to spy on the scientist and his assistant. Without Woodbridge, perhaps the business involving Dr. Stein and Kleve could have remained secret until their success could emerge as a medical breakthrough. Another hire that also dooms Dr. Stein is a minister’s daughter, Margaret (Eunice Gayson), working in the hospital, toting around a basket with tobacco, soap, and writing paper…her job is really inconsequential and being on the premises allows Woodbridge to fill her in on the “new Karl” being upstairs in an attic room of the poverty row hospital, his screams heard (while Woodbridge was snooping from behind a nearby wall), and hands strapped so he won’t move around too much during the healing process after the brain transplant from the crippled body of the former lab assistant Karl. Then the cannibalism that results when a brain cell is damaged because of the restlessness and mobile activity too soon after surgery (a chimp ate its mate, is always excited, and no longer eats bananas, loving meat instead; it has an orangutan brain), that causes a freed (thanks to Margaret’s loosening his straps when she sees to his welfare after Woodbridge informs her of his presence in the attic during recovery). Soon Karl, the giant, begins to resemble his former body, with crippled face and arm returning; this time, the hunger for human flesh is another horrible development that further encourages the downfall of Dr. Frankenstein. Again, all these factors ruined the Baron’s moment in the sun and derailed what was certain to be the Baron’s defining moment. So you have all of this drama soon to turn violent. Karl, the giant, is on the rampage and calls out the Baron in front of a party full of aristocrats. Not only that, but Woodridge also stirs up the poverty row patients the Baron surgically took body parts from (this alone proves that Baron is far from a nice guy; this is just devious and cold); staying in the hospital, filthy, stinking, and complaining (why not in public use societal rejects from off the street to help him in his experiments?), these bums revolt with an anger that leaves the Baron in physical shambles, his brain needing to be transferred to a prepared body just in case such an incident arose. This film told us at the end, unlike other Frankenstein entries past and future, that the Baron was alive and well, with plenty more experiments to conduct, bodies to surgically alter and cut, and trouble from his work awaiting villages unprepared. I think, unlike the previous film, the "monster" is far more sympathetic and pathetic and that is a plus because we see that despite all the Baron's efforts to "heal him", it is another failure once again heralding him a heretic and cretin to be beheaded or scourged from off the earth...but he continues to return.

Another subplot, among many in this particular film, has a league of doctors called The Medical Council, are at odds with the Baron, not happy that he would take patients from them and shun their desire for him to join them. This will also prove to be his undoing when they question if he is possibly the Baron Frankenstein, the notorious scientist whose infamy stretches across Europe. Doggedly egotistical, the Baron confronts them and further thumbs his nose at them. It's fun to watch, but it doesn't help his cause. Later, it is confirmed when the priest's body (and a gravedigger who had a coronary upon seeing the Baron alive and well) is found in the Baron's grave that the jig is up. So there are always factors surfacing to torment the legacy the Baron so desires to leave behind.