Nobody can swap out brains like Dr. Frankenstein.
After having his latest laboratory discovered Dr. Frankenstein goes on the run. Hiding under the alias Fenner, Dr. Frankenstein finds out that a colleague of his, Dr. Brandt (George Pravda), who had invented a better transplant method that Frankenstein wants has been locked up as insane.
Frankenstein ends up blackmailing his landlord Anna ( Veronica Carlson) and her boyfriend Karl (Simon Ward) into helping him get his hands on Dr. Brandt. Karl works at the insane asylum and he’s been stealing drugs. Reluctantly Karl and Anna help Frankenstein.
Frankenstein discovers that Brandt has been slowly dying from a lack of oxygen to his brain. Frankenstein and Karl break Brandt out but Brandt has a heart attack. Frankenstein simple kills Professor Richter (Freddie Jones) and then transplants Brandt’s brain into his body. When Brandt wakes up, his not too happy with the body he’s now in and he has revenge planned for Frankenstein.
Only Peter Cushing could play a character with no moral compass, a mad twisted scientist who does unspeakable things to people, not realizing the extent of his evil and make him completely likable. You end up rooting for him, the man murders two people, causes the death of another and plays god with a third and you can’t help but hope he makes it alive out somehow.
There are some villains that become iconic, Dracula, Freddy, Jason but you expect them to die. Not out of a moral need to, evil must be destroyed or its just desserts but simple because that’s how the standard horror movie works. But with Hammer’s Frankenstein films you know on a moral level that Dr. Frankenstein deserves to die, that he must be destroyed but I sure don’t want him to be. With every film he creates something more twisted out of scientific curiosity and his own need to play God. Here he’s at his maddest and he has no idea how evil he truly is and it makes for a fun entertaining and disturbing horror movie.