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    Revenge of Frankenstein

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    I watched “The Revenge of Frankenstein” a second time not even realizing I’d seen it before. Either the first time I was a bit tired and missed some of the notable details or this franchise is an acquired taste but now, I really think it’s quite good.

    A follow-up to “The Curse of Frankenstein”, the movie begins with Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing, excellent and diabolical in the role) on his way to the guillotine for his part in the murders his creation committed in the first film. After escaping and faking his death, he and his assistant Karl (Oscar Quitak) relocate to Carlsbruck, where he doctor creates a new, but not very creative identity for himself: Dr. Stein. The doctor raises some controversy among his peers when he refuses to join their council, but they’d be outraged if they learned what he’s been doing on the side. Along with a young doctor who discovers Stein’s true identity but decides to study alongside him (Francis Matthews as Dr. Hans Kleve), they create a new body for Karl and transplant his brain inside it... the pieces of the body being taken from unsuspecting patients at the hospital where Dr. Stein is performing “charity work”!

    What you need to understand, and what I didn’t the first time I viewed this film is that this franchise isn’t about creating a new monster every time, it’s about following a great villain. Frankenstein is diabolical here. He feigns charity by taking in the poor into a hospital he’s set up on the side, but he takes care of them not because it’s the right thing to do. He’s using them as an organ and body part farm! It’s extraordinarily ghoulish. Can you imagine what it would be like to learn that the doctor who insisted that your injury required an amputation took away your arm for an illegal and morally questionable experiment? I don’t know if I’d be angry, or grateful that he didn’t steal any other pieces while he was at it! What I really enjoyed with the film is that at first, you are made to side with Frankenstein. You see the doctors in the town talk about how they disapprove of him and want to destroy his medical practice, for no legitimate reason. Then you realize what’s really going on and you get worried for everyone else.

    Unlike most horror films, this one is heavy on the character development and it’s more about the moral implications and the unnerving ideas than it is about people getting slaughtered left and right. Have you ever heard someone say that the best revenge you can inflict upon your enemy is to ignore them and live happily ever after? Well, that’s the kind of revenge that Frankenstein has in mind here. He’s much too cool and focussed on his research to be bothered with any frivolities. He doesn’t want to go after the people who sent him to death; he just wants to live in peace so he can continue his exploration of the human body. His goal is essentially to brand everyone who ever doubted him as history’s biggest fools by performing medical miracle after medical miracle.

    Having watched more of the Hammer horror films now, I get it. Frankenstein is awesome. He believes that the ends justify the means every time, he thinks relationships are a waste of energy and he is so sure of his talent and reasoning that he never even considers that things could go wrong or that he might be a villain. Pair him up with other, equally scummy people and you’ve got a very entertaining picture.

    When I had only seen a single film in the series before this one, I still recognized that it was good. Now, I think it’s great. It makes me wish I had gotten a box set of all the films from the get-go (or that they had a weekend marathon of them playing at the theatre) so that I could have embraced them fully and watched them in quick succession instead of just dabbling in the franchise with a few titles here and there. “Revenge of Frankenstein” is not your typical horror movie, but there is some very entertaining material here, if only because of the wickedly awesome villain portrayed by Peter Cushing. (On DVD August 15, 2015)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  8.12.2015 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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