The ultimate monster making returns to use flesh as he desires and play God with people’s lives. In all a standard day in the life of Doctor Victor Frankenstein.
One of the coolest things about Hammer’s Frankenstein series was that they didn’t focus on the plight of the first monster that Dr. Frankenstein created, they focused on the good doctor.
Peter Cushing played Frankenstein as an arrogant, meticulous mad scientist. And the fun with each Hammer sequel was to see how much further Frankenstein was going to push the boundaries. In this the fifth in the series Frankenstein has perfected brain transfers. Frankenstein blackmails a young doctor into helping him with his experiments. A colleague of Frankenstein’s is locked up in a nearby insane asylum and is dying. Naturally all Frankenstein wants to save is the brain.
“I have become the victim of everything that Frankenstein and I ever advocated. My brain is in someone else’s body.”
It’s extremely entertaining to see how far detached from the world Frankenstein has become with each film. People’s lives have no meaning to him because he can simple resurrect them in some other form that suits him better. It was a tough call on which film is better, this one and the film that preceded it, Frankenstein Created Woman but I enjoy Cushing’s performance here more.