For those hording toilet paper

Like Dracula, my annual revisit to Hammer Studios' The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) is assured. I never tire of it. Good cast can do wonders with okay material. Cushing in the title role, as I have often mentioned whenever I write about Curse, is so *wrapped up in his work* as the scientist, he crumbles his entire world because of his obsession to create man from only the best body parts he can find. His tutor, Paul Krempe, built a type of brotherly relationship with Baron Victor Frankenstein as they worked on theories and experiments in the area of bringing life to the dead. But Victor just wasn't satisfied with that while Paul saw their work as a collaborative effort in the scientific breakthrough regarding resuscitating the dead, in the realm of surgery especially. The fracture that widens between them, and the friction that envelops them is the film's chief dramatic arc. Add to the equation of a cousin Victor is to marry as arranged (Hazel Court and her voluptuous figure, and her sophisticated manners) Paul feels the need to protect, Lee as the Monster made from the bits and pieces of those chosen by Frankenstein (the hands of a great sculptor, brain of a genius, body of a giant, the finest eyes, etc), and you have a decent plot that pits the title character against his own mad dream, leading (well, this film says so anyway) to his imprisonment while awaiting the guillotine (for the death of a maid in his manor he was having an affair with, leaving her in the lab with the Monster). The priest listens to Victor as he testifies to what he stresses is the complete, unaltered truth, but can he even get this Man of God to listen? Will Paul even corroborate such a fantastic testimony? The bright color of Hammer is so vivid, and the ugly brute creature posited by a mute Lee is a grotesque sight. The most memorable scene to me will always be Lee hanging there and eventually Victor showing Paul of what is left of it, a pathetic animal with a brain barely functioning (Victor blames Paul for destroying the brain when it was removed from the murdered body of a scientist he pushes off his stairwell in a mausoleum on the Frankenstein estate), chained to the wall and hardly able to walk or sit normally. Victor telling Paul that no matter what he does to try and stop him, he'll keep getting more bodies and parts. That drive to accomplish what none other has turns him into his own monster.

I plan to watch a few with Cushing in the role of Frankenstein tomorrow. The series gave him a chance to evolve the Baron in a variety of ways, but he is always trying to create life or bring life into the dead...even when he succeeds, the repercussions leave him either nearly dead or on the lam.