Hammer Frankenstien 10

 Welcome to our Hammer Frankenstein Top Ten. A few years ago we released a two-part special charting the Hammer Frankenstein franchise and the history of the studio that made it, from inception ‘Where did it all begin?’ to demise... 'There's nothing more to see. It's all over now' This is a sort of companion piece looking at the best characters ‘Bit of a barney getting it out it was. Tricky thing a brain’ Moments... and scenes from across the series. And there’s only one place to start. ‘I am Baron Frankenstein’ Immediately distinguishing it from the Universal franchise, Hammer made their films all about the Baron himself rather than the creature. ‘You are a very clever man then Baron’ ‘Yes I am’ And their Baron Frankenstein was a very different character. 

'There is nothing - do you hear me - nothing more important to me than the success of this experiment' As written by Jimmy Sangster, directed by Terence Fisher, and performed by Peter Cushing, Hammer’s Victor Frankenstein is willing to kill to achieve his goals. 'Look out professor! look out!' #dull thud... another brain ruined# while those goals remained ultimately scientific, they had never before seemed so sadistic. ‘I’ll give you life again’ At some points in the franchise he seems merely cold and obsessive. ‘That boy is doomed, by this time tomorrow he'll be dead, guillotined and pieces buried.’ putting his experiments above the wellbeing of those around him, but by the 5th film, Frankenstein Must be Destroyed, he is outright cruel, blackmailing a young couple.

 ‘How much do you want’ ‘Oh I don’t want money. I want your help’ one of whom he will eventually kill. But if there is one scene in the whole franchise that crystallises Frankenstein the obsessive scientist with Frankenstein total bastard, then it’s in the first film when Valerie’s Gaunt’s maid, Justine, threatens the experiment. #Scream# ‘pass the marmalade’ the marmalade wonderfully illustrates Frankenstein’s complete lack of morality, and Cushing delivers the line to perfection, already comfortable in the skin of a character he would play five more times. 

‘They will never be rid of me’ It will come as no surprise to anyone to learn that he dominates this top ten. But you can’t have Frankenstein without a creature. Although Hammer do come oddly close sometimes. ‘I had to get away’ While Cushing’s Frankenstein is the constant of the franchise, the creature is ever-changing, reflecting a real desire to keep the series interesting rather than constantly re-treading the same ground. 

‘Frankenstein! Help me’ Hammer’s creatures can be as monstrous as Dave Prowse in Frankenstein and The Monster From Hell or the absolute polar opposite of Susan Denberg in Frankenstein Created Woman. Though it should be noted that Prowse’s monster is also sympathetic and Denberg’s... 'You have done what you had to do Christina, you may rest now.' They can be the unwitting tools of bad men, as is Kiwi Kingston in The Evil of Frankenstein, or the mindless killer of The Horror of Frankenstein, Dave Prowse again. 

Far and away the most sympathetic is Freddie Jones in Frankenstein Must be Destroyed. His brain in a new body, he tries to connect with the wife who no longer recognises him. ‘I am your husband Ellen’ But in any Hammer Top Ten it would be pretty churlish not to include Christopher Lee, and from his first appearance he earns his spot, particularly in this scene, in which the lobotomised creature is reduced to a trained animal doing tricks. 'Sit down,  I said sit down.' Frankenstein maybe a genius but even a genius needs help. ‘You need an assistant – would you like me to advertise one for you?’ Some of the Baron’s assistants are just there so he can explain stuff to them that the screenwriter needs the audience to know. 

‘What happened then?’ Others fill an important role in the plot, like Thorley Walters’ Dr Hertz in Frankenstein Created Woman. ‘But oughtn’t you to ask his permission’ 'Whatever for?' acting as the Baron’s conscience and sometimes his accomplice. ‘Did you tell your wife about her?’ ‘What are you mad?’ They can also have a character arc of their own; Karl in Frankenstein Must be Destroyed, starts out an innocent but through association with Frankenstein becomes a killer, then is intrigued by the Baron’s work. ‘Utterly fantastic’ a decision which will ultimately destroy him. ‘No…no…no…’ But the most interesting of Frankenstein’s helpers is the one who reveals most about the Baron himself. Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell opens with Dr. Simon Helder trying to replicate Frankenstein’s experiments, he even has the Baron’s disdainful attitude towards others ‘if you could only appreciate the difficulty in finding specimens like these’ When he meets the aging Baron in a mental institution we have the chance, not just to see Frankenstein come face to face with his past, ‘I’ve studied all of your published works.' 

But also to see Helder get a look at his own possible future... #Mad Laughter# A large part of the film’s plot is the question; which way will Simon go? ‘Dr Victor has a plan involving you and Sarah’ And so we wonder if Frankenstein himself might have chosen differently, if he had had that insight into what lay ahead. 'You wouldn't kill him?' 'Do you think I would do that?' If the Baron couldn’t do it alone then neither could Hammer. 

A huge extended family of technical and creative staff underpin their films and I really recommend Wayne Kinsey’s book Hammer Films The Unsung Heroes – on which we have drawn heavily – because we can’t even scratch the surface here, after all, have you ever wondered who drives the coach in Revenge of Frankenstein. You should, because here he is again in The Evil of Frankenstein and Horror of Frankenstein. 

This is George Mossman and you might also spot him in Dracula, The Hound of the Baskervilles , The Curse of the Werewolf , The Kiss of the Vampire, The Plague of the Zombies  and many more. In fact, virtually all horse and carriage work in Hammer films was handled by the Mossman family. We might also mention Jock Eastman, the stuntman who doubled for Lee on fire and falling into an acid bath in The Curse of Frankenstein. 

He probably could have used the Bowie flame harness, invented by special effects legend Les Bowie which allowed the stuntman himself to control the flames during a burn. Bowie worked on 5 Frankenstein films and would later receive a special Oscar for his work on Superman, though he sadly died on the same night the announcement was made, never knowing he had won the award. 'Sadly our other associate Les Bowie recently passed away, it is a great loss to us and the industry.' Any of these and others would be worthy of the number 7 slot but we picked art director Don Mingaye, largely because in previous videos we have paid tribute to the production design of Bernard Robinson, which contributed so much to the Hammer look, and the pair worked very much as a team.

 One of the things at which that team was adept was the redressing of sets, not just within films but between them, so Dracula’s library becomes the doctor’s conference room in Revenge of Frankenstein. While the crypt in which Jonathan Harker is killed becomes a graveyard, then Frankenstein’s office. It’s also worth noting that Frankenstein, the Holmwood family, I think and Sherlock Holmes all have the same wallpaper.

 As the series continued, Cushing’s first appearance as Frankenstein became increasingly important. In The Evil of Frankenstein he is a sinister shock to a little girl, #Scream# while in Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell he gets a bravura hero shot. ‘Doctor’ which is also somehow unsettling. Frankenstein Must be Destroyed give him his most unexpected entrance, especially as this character has been established as a killer. But you can’t ignore Frankenstein Created Woman, in which he enters in a coffin, frozen, and dead, before being resuscitated by Dr Hertz. 'He lives' That’s how you make an entrance. 

'Of course I'm alive, didn't I tell you I would be.' #knocking at the door# 'Who is it?' The role of women in the Frankenstein franchise is quite atypical for Hammer, surprisingly few could be called a love interest, most of them would be called sweet and innocent. Not all of them. Above all they are sympathetic, and often provide an emotional link to the creature, most touchingly in Evil of Frankenstein  one of two mute women in the series. Eunice Gayson’s Margaret in The Revenge of Frankenstein is pretty representative of the female lead at the start of the franchise. ‘I’m Margaret Conrad.

 I shall be working here’ society ladies who are elegant, competent and largely oblivious to what’s going on around them. ‘I just came to see if you were comfortable’ The most memorable female character is undoubtedly Christina in Frankenstein Created Woman. ‘See how gracefully she walks’ and she is certainly sympathetic, though she does also get her own back after Frankenstein gives her an overhaul. The most sympathetic heroine is, inevitably, the one who gets the worst deal of it. ‘It’s dreadful that you have to buy a life’ Anna in Frankenstein Must be Destroyed is trying to help her sick mother, ‘You haven’t finsihed’ she is treated as a servant by Frankenstein. 

'You don't need her.' 'I need her to make coffee’ and, in a scene forced onto all involved by the front office, he rapes her, before, as we saw earlier, killing her. But from a story point of view what makes Anna stand out is actually her relationship with Karl, the assistant who we’ve already touched on. 'A kiss and drink will help you forget all about it.' They start out so close, but as he works with Frankenstein... so they drift apart. 

For all their lowest common denominator reputation, Hammer films still featured interesting and well-rounded character arcs. 'For God's sake go away, leave me alone.' Watching the films back to back, one thing becomes painfully clear, Frankenstein is really good at this, but very unlucky. ‘This is your fault Paul’ But for a damaged brain here... and there. 'idiot' He’d have been successful. 

If only Michael Gwynn had stayed in his room, like he was told, or at least hadn’t got into a fight. If only the creature didn’t bear a violent grudge against him, or against someone else. And of course... ‘Stand up. Did you not hear me? Stand up’ ‘Do as he says’ If only he hadn’t hired a dodgy sideshow hypnotist to pull the creature’s mind back out of hibernation, who then uses it to get his own back on his enemies. ‘Go back and kill him’ That one may be a little Frankenstein’s fault but hindsight is 20-20.

 'They beat him after all’. Some moments we couldn’t bear to leave out even if they don’t quite fit into any of our categories, like the iconic magnifying glass in the first film back-referenced 17 years later in Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell and spoofed in the Zucker brothers’ 80s comedy Top Secret!. Then there’s this gruesome moment in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed devastating for Anna as she now has a race against time to hide a corpse. Or here in Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell where the Baron uses his teeth to hold a bloody suture. 

One of the most quiet yet brilliant moments of the series is in Frankenstein Created Woman as the Baron contemplates the soul he has trapped, his face telling the story of this incredible achievement. But we’ve gone with, not so much a moment, as a concept in Revenge of Frankenstein. Badly beaten, only surgery will save Victor Frankenstein, and his assistant, Hans, transplants the doctor’s brain into a new body. Why we love this is simple; it’s the only time in the whole franchise when the process is an unqualified success, but Frankenstein himself is the ‘creature’. 

'How nice to see you.' Such is the dominance of Cushing, notable supporting characters, outside of the creature, the assistant and the sympathetic female, are few and far between. ‘Thanks you, goodbye’ Even Hammer stalwarts like Michael Ripper, ‘He’s got no head, I'm off’ and Patrick Troughton, ‘You know, you’ll get caught one of these days and when you are, you'll be for it.’ 

'That smell, is it him or you?' get only brief appearances. Thorley Walters makes an impression as Inspector Frisch in Frankenstein Must be Destroyed, 'Whoever left this amount of evidence is a fool.' the second of his Frankenstein roles, and it would be wrong not to mention Peter Woodthorpe’s flamboyant Zoltan in The Evil of Frankenstein. ‘There isn’t a man born of woman that I can’t put under’ But the film that features the best side characters is perhaps the worst of the series. 'Father, this is victor Frankenstein, you may have heard me speak of him' One of the many errors made by Horror of Frankenstein – the series ill-advised reboot with Ralph Bates in the lead role - 'ugly brute isn't he' is that neither creator nor creature is sympathetic or even interesting, which is why more weight is given to characters like Kate O’Mara’s Alys ‘Exactly as your father always liked it sir’ a very different female character for a very different film. 

‘I think it’s time we had a little talk’ But our choice for the best character role is shared by a husband and wife double act. 'dead in an avalanche all laid out neatly in the town hall – couldn’t get near the place cos all those people had come to stare’ ‘How annoying’ They maybe be unnamed, but the grave robbers played by Dennis Price & Joan Rice steal every scene they’re in. ‘More and more coming to light with each passing hour’ ‘I love that phrase’ Making their deaths genuinely disappointing. #neck crack# Again, it does highlight the film’s faults that we care more about its comic relief than its leads, but at least they liven things up a bit. 

‘People just aren’t dying off so quick. It’s the welfare state’ Obviously we already covered the Baron at number 10 but we saved our number one slot for the actor himself. 'We've only just started. Just opened the door' It’s hard to see how Hammer films could have succeeded without Peter Cushing, he brought class, boundless acting talent and utter dedication. 

According to assistant director Derek Whitehurst, Cushing would wait around until the end of the day to record the sound effects for his own footsteps rather than just using a stand in. He also contributed to the atmosphere of the studio, Whitehurst recalling ‘In each picture you did with Peter, you always had a letter welcoming you back on the picture’. One such letter, to producer Roy Skeggs survives in the Hammer archives and shows both sides of what made Cushing so popular to work with, the letter requests a list of props and surgical items that the detail-oriented Cushing wanted for Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell, but there’s no hint of a star ‘making demands’ and it closes with the words... ‘May God’s blessing be with you always’. 

‘Don’t invoke the Almighty Dr Holst, I should think he’s very angry with you at the moment’ It underlines what a great actor Cushing was that such a nice man could be such a convincing bastard. 'You stupid little fool. Did you really think I'd marry you?' Right from the first scene Cushing never gives less than his best. ‘Keep your spiritual comfort for those who think they need it.' His Frankenstein is meticulous, surprisingly athletic, and in complete control. ‘I am a doctor.’ 'of medicine?' 'Of medicine, law and physics.' which makes the moments that he loses control all the more powerful. 'Paul, I'll make you!' But, for me at least, Cushing saved his best performance for last, The Baron has changed by the time of Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell but so had Cushing. 

The actor had recently lost his wife and, according to co-star Madeline Smith was ‘in dire straits’. ‘If I’ve succeeded this time then every sacrifice will have been worthwhile’ Somehow Cushing channels his grief into an extraordinary portrait of genius in decline, giving a moving requiem to the character he had played for seventeen years, ‘I must admit I never felt so elated in my life, not since I first... that was a long time ago’ and a fitting conclusion to the series that had rested on his shoulders. 'We shall need more material naturally...' 

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