The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) - Final Remarks

For a while there as I was going through all the Hammer horror films, “Revenge of Frankenstein” (1958) was my favorite from the studio. I just loved it, especially the first few times I watched it. I just like the way the story unfolds and that you see Frankenstein successful and yet fail according to factors even beyond his own control or that of his more agreeable and willing assistant, Kleve (Francis Matthews). Mainly Frankenstein had a pesky, nosey, sneaky janitor (Woodbridge) under his employ, for some reason I never could understand since he rarely did anything but shoot the shit, spy on them, and try to get them in trouble. And Woodbridge didn’t even try to hide it really! And he is the one who stirs up the dirty poor “patients” of Cushing’s alter ego, “Dr. Stein”, watching as they revolt and beat him into a pile of beaten pulp.

I saw a correlation between "House of Frankenstein" (1944) and this film but I plan to focus on that when I get to the earlier Universal Monster sequel.

• Yes, Ripper is once again a drunk (I look forward to watching the duo of “Plague of the Zombies” and “The Reptile” to see him given more to do) and graverobber, fleeing when he and the bum that coerces him into helping dig up another burial plot, finding the headless body of a priest in place of the body of who was supposed to be executed: Dr. Frankenstein

• Matthews as Kleve is quite unique among those who either helped Frankenstein or were forced to assist him in that he voluntarily desires to learn from the infamous scientist, considering him the greatest mind in the world, especially in surgery.

• The set piece involving separate eyes and an arm with hand in different liquid jars as Frankenstein shows Kleve how nerves and the brain can work through the use of flame always wins me over. I just think this was so clever. Frankenstein proves here just how brilliant he is. While Frankenstein continues to act inappropriately in certain respects (body parts come from the poor who stay in the beds of his poverty clinic!), he is nowhere near as deplorable a human as in “Curse of Frankenstein” the year before, although he returns to that heinous, cruel, cold-hearted sonofabitch in “Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed”. Of course, Frankenstein did allow a priest to be beheaded in his stead, put in his grave, so he wasn’t exactly reformed. The film does hearken back to the first film briefly when Frankenstein mentions how the brain of the last “Monster” was damaged and his current work was his “revenge”. Like sequels often in the Universal films, Hammer briefly recalls something from the previous film before it while still feeling like it was standalone.

• Gwynn’s Karl, a disappointment that was sure to be a Frankenstein success story, is wonderfully tragic and much more reliable a character to feel sympathy for as opposed to the Lee killing machine from the previous film. He’s a victim of circumstance. His body reacts violently before even awakening, in an episode while still hooked to a machine, learns that Frankenstein wants to introduce him to the world as a breakthrough without his knowledge, is released before he should have been by a naïve new employee under Frankenstein (Eunice Gayson) who was told of his condition by damned Woodbridge, goes to burn his old wrecked body when a sadist caught him (presented as hearing a sound, finding him in the room, this grinning thug is chomping at the bit to pummel some innocent), and hits a table hard enough that his yet-fully-healed brain/head gradually worsens him into a deteriorating maniac with a body reverting back to the state of his former damaged shell. As much as he was meant to rehab Frankenstein’s name among his peers, Karl instead mauls and kills, eventually wrecking a piano recital where the wealthy hobnob in suits and dresses, calling out Dr. Stein as Frankenstein. Soon the Medical Counsel gets wind of this and sees to ruin their rival, a rival who refused to play by their rules and join them.

• Frankenstein actually technically dying and his brain moved to another body by Kleve in emergency surgery…also quite a clever bit of a twist at the end. It plays on Frankenstein actually dying and yet he still lives. And it is because of his own experiments. So the success story is Frankenstein himself…and he couldn’t tell anybody! Irony at its best.