The Revenge of Frankenstein
Encyclopedia
The Revenge of Frankenstein is a 1958 British horror film
made by Hammer Film Productions
. Directed by Terence Fisher
, the film stars Peter Cushing
, Francis Matthews
, Michael Gwynn
and Eunice Gayson
.
It was a sequel to The Curse of Frankenstein, the studio's 1957 adaptation of Mary Shelley
's novel Frankenstein
.
Together with Karl, the hunchback who facilitated Frankenstein's escape, Frankenstein and Kleve continue with the Baron's experiment: transplanting a living brain into a new body—one that isn't a crude, cobbled-together monster. The deformed Karl is more than willing to volunteer his brain, thereby gaining a new, healthy body—particularly after meeting the new assistant at the hospital, the lovely Margaret.
The transplant succeeds, but when the excited Dr. Kleve tells Karl that he will be a medical sensation, Karl panics and convinces Margaret to free him. Kleve notes that the chimpanzee
that Frankenstein transplanted with the brain of an orangutan
ate its mate and worries about Karl, but his concerns are brushed off by Frankenstein.
Karl flees from the hospital and hides in Dr. Stein's laboratory, where he burns his preserved hunchback body. He is attacked by the drunken janitor, who takes him for a burglar, but manages to strangle the man. Frankenstein and Kleve discover Karl is missing and begin searching for him.
The next morning, Margaret finds Karl in her aunt's stable. While she goes to fetch Dr. Kleve, Karl experiences difficulties with his arm and leg. When Kleve and Margaret arrive, he is gone. At night, he ambushes and strangles a local girl. The next night, he rushes into an evening reception. Having redeveloped his deformities, he pleads Frankenstein for help, using his real name, before collapsing.
Frankenstein, disregarding Kleve's pleas that he should leave, appears before the medical council, where he denies being the infamous Baron Frankenstein. The unsatisfied councillors exhume Frankenstein's grave only to discover the priest's body, concluding that the real Frankenstein is still alive.
At the same time, frightened and angry patients at the hospital attack Frankenstein. Kleve rescues his dying mentor and rushes him to the laboratory, where he extracts Frankenstein's brain from his body just before the police arrive. Kleve shows them Frankenstein's dead body, claiming that he tried in vain to save his life. Alone again and uneasy about his skills, Kleve begins transplanting the brain into another body—one that Frankenstein had been preparing and which was made to resemble him.
Some time later, in London, Kleve assists Frankenstein—now calling himself Dr. Franck—in welcoming some patients.
, back-to-back with Dracula
(1958), using the same sets. Thus, for example, Dracula's crypt
became Frankenstein's surgery, and the castle exterior became the outside of the Baron's laboratory
.
Conductor and composer Leonard Salzedo
was hired to write the score, and most of the regular Hammer crew returned in other roles, including Jack Asher
as cinematographer
, Bernard Robinson
on design and Phil Leakey
on make-up.
Two novelizations of the film were published: the first one by Jimmy Sangster in 1959, and the second by John Burke
as part of his 1966 book The Hammer Horror Film Omnibus.
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
made by Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
. Directed by Terence Fisher
Terence Fisher
Terence Fisher was a film director who worked for Hammer Films. He was born in Maida Vale, a district of London, England.Fisher was one of the most prominent horror directors of the second half of the 20th century...
, the film stars Peter Cushing
Peter Cushing
Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE was an English actor, known for his many appearances in Hammer Films, in which he played the handsome but sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, amongst many other roles, often appearing opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally...
, Francis Matthews
Francis Matthews (actor)
-Early life:Matthews attended St Michael's Jesuit College, Leeds and started his acting career with Leeds repertory theatre before service in the Royal Navy.-Career:...
, Michael Gwynn
Michael Gwynn
Michael Gwynn was an English actor. He attended Mayfield College near Mayfield, East Sussex. During the Second World War he served in East Africa as a major and was adjutant to the 2nd Battalion of the King's African Rifles.He is perhaps best remembered in contemporary culture as the shyster Lord...
and Eunice Gayson
Eunice Gayson
Eunice Gayson is a British actress best known for playing Sylvia Trench, James Bond's girlfriend in the first two Bond films...
.
It was a sequel to The Curse of Frankenstein, the studio's 1957 adaptation of Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
's novel Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
.
Plot
Baron Frankenstein, sentenced to death, evades the guillotine by having a priest beheaded and buried in his place. Years later, Frankenstein, now going by the alias of Dr. Stein, has become a successful physician in Carlsbruck, catering to the wealthy while also attending to the poor in a paupers' hospital. Dr. Hans Kleve, a junior member of the medical council, recognises him and blackmails him into allowing him to become his apprentice.Together with Karl, the hunchback who facilitated Frankenstein's escape, Frankenstein and Kleve continue with the Baron's experiment: transplanting a living brain into a new body—one that isn't a crude, cobbled-together monster. The deformed Karl is more than willing to volunteer his brain, thereby gaining a new, healthy body—particularly after meeting the new assistant at the hospital, the lovely Margaret.
The transplant succeeds, but when the excited Dr. Kleve tells Karl that he will be a medical sensation, Karl panics and convinces Margaret to free him. Kleve notes that the chimpanzee
Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
that Frankenstein transplanted with the brain of an orangutan
Orangutan
Orangutans are the only exclusively Asian genus of extant great ape. The largest living arboreal animals, they have proportionally longer arms than the other, more terrestrial, great apes. They are among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also making sleeping...
ate its mate and worries about Karl, but his concerns are brushed off by Frankenstein.
Karl flees from the hospital and hides in Dr. Stein's laboratory, where he burns his preserved hunchback body. He is attacked by the drunken janitor, who takes him for a burglar, but manages to strangle the man. Frankenstein and Kleve discover Karl is missing and begin searching for him.
The next morning, Margaret finds Karl in her aunt's stable. While she goes to fetch Dr. Kleve, Karl experiences difficulties with his arm and leg. When Kleve and Margaret arrive, he is gone. At night, he ambushes and strangles a local girl. The next night, he rushes into an evening reception. Having redeveloped his deformities, he pleads Frankenstein for help, using his real name, before collapsing.
Frankenstein, disregarding Kleve's pleas that he should leave, appears before the medical council, where he denies being the infamous Baron Frankenstein. The unsatisfied councillors exhume Frankenstein's grave only to discover the priest's body, concluding that the real Frankenstein is still alive.
At the same time, frightened and angry patients at the hospital attack Frankenstein. Kleve rescues his dying mentor and rushes him to the laboratory, where he extracts Frankenstein's brain from his body just before the police arrive. Kleve shows them Frankenstein's dead body, claiming that he tried in vain to save his life. Alone again and uneasy about his skills, Kleve begins transplanting the brain into another body—one that Frankenstein had been preparing and which was made to resemble him.
Some time later, in London, Kleve assists Frankenstein—now calling himself Dr. Franck—in welcoming some patients.
Cast
- Peter CushingPeter CushingPeter Wilton Cushing, OBE was an English actor, known for his many appearances in Hammer Films, in which he played the handsome but sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, amongst many other roles, often appearing opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally...
as Baron Victor Frankenstein/Dr. Victor Stein/Dr. Franck - Francis MatthewsFrancis Matthews (actor)-Early life:Matthews attended St Michael's Jesuit College, Leeds and started his acting career with Leeds repertory theatre before service in the Royal Navy.-Career:...
as Dr. Hans Kleve - Eunice GaysonEunice GaysonEunice Gayson is a British actress best known for playing Sylvia Trench, James Bond's girlfriend in the first two Bond films...
as Margaret - Oscar QuitakOscar QuitakOscar Quitak is a British film and television actor.His television credits include: Z-Cars, Man in a Suitcase, Doomwatch, Ace of Wands, Colditz, The Changes, The New Avengers, Open All Hours, Kessler as Josef Mengele, Chessgame, Howards' Way, A Very British Coup, Yes, Prime Minister and...
as hunchback Karl, the "dwarf" (while credited as such, Quitak is clearly not a dwarf) - Michael GwynnMichael GwynnMichael Gwynn was an English actor. He attended Mayfield College near Mayfield, East Sussex. During the Second World War he served in East Africa as a major and was adjutant to the 2nd Battalion of the King's African Rifles.He is perhaps best remembered in contemporary culture as the shyster Lord...
as Karl in his new body - John WelshJohn Welsh (actor)John Welsh was an Irish actor.After an early stage career in Dublin, Welsh moved into British film and television in the 1950s. His roles included James Forsyte in the 1967 BBC dramatisation of John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga, as well as the butler Merriman in The Duchess of Duke Street, Sgt...
as Bergman - Lionel JeffriesLionel JeffriesLionel Charles Jeffries was an English actor, screenwriter and film director.-Early life and career:Jeffries attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wimborne Minster, Dorset. In 1945, he received a commission in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry...
as Fritz - Richard WordsworthRichard WordsworthThe English character actor Richard Wordsworth was born on 19 January 1915 and died on 21 November 1993. He was the great-great-grandson of the poet William Wordsworth....
as Up Patient - Charles Lloyd PackCharles Lloyd PackCharles Lloyd-Pack was a British film, television and stage actor.He was born in London, England. He was seen in several horror movies produced by the Hammer Studios including Dracula, The Man Who Could Cheat Death, The Revenge of Frankenstein and The Reptile and Quatermass 2, the film version of...
as President of the Medical Council - George WoodbridgeGeorge Woodbridge (actor)George Woodbridge was an English character actor in films and television from the 1930s to the 1970s...
as Janitor - Michael RipperMichael RipperMichael Ripper was an English character actor born in Portsmouth.He began his film career in quota quickies in the 1930s and until the late 1950s was virtually unknown; he was seldom credited. He played one of the two murderers in Richard III. Ripper became a mainstay in Hammer Film Productions...
as Kurt
Production
The film was shot at Bray StudiosBray Studios (UK)
Bray Studios is a film and television facility at Bray, near Windsor, Berkshire, England. The films Alien and The Rocky Horror Picture Show were shot there...
, back-to-back with Dracula
Dracula (1958 film)
Dracula, also known as Horror of Dracula in the United States, is a 1958 British horror film. It is the first in the series of Hammer Horror films inspired by the Bram Stoker novel Dracula. It was directed by Terence Fisher, and stars Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Carol Marsh, Melissa Stribling and...
(1958), using the same sets. Thus, for example, Dracula's crypt
Crypt
In architecture, a crypt is a stone chamber or vault beneath the floor of a burial vault possibly containing sarcophagi, coffins or relics....
became Frankenstein's surgery, and the castle exterior became the outside of the Baron's laboratory
Laboratory
A laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific laboratories...
.
Conductor and composer Leonard Salzedo
Leonard Salzedo
Leonard Salzedo was an English composer and conductor of Spanish descent....
was hired to write the score, and most of the regular Hammer crew returned in other roles, including Jack Asher
Jack Asher
For the shinty player and referee, see Jack Asher Jack Asher B.S.C. was an English cinematographer...
as cinematographer
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
, Bernard Robinson
Bernard Robinson (production designer)
Bernard Robinson was born in Liverpool, England in 1912 and died in 1970. He designed sets for several of Hammer's films in their heyday, including The Curse of Frankenstein , Dracula , Curse of the Werewolf , The Phantom of the Opera , The Gorgon and Quatermass and the Pit...
on design and Phil Leakey
Phil Leakey
Philip Leakey was a British make-up artist known chiefly for his work on Hammer films.He provided Christopher Lee's celebrated makeup for Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein , whose "monster" had to be memorable and terrifying without infringing the copyright on Universal's earlier makeup, created...
on make-up.
Two novelizations of the film were published: the first one by Jimmy Sangster in 1959, and the second by John Burke
John Burke (author)
John Burke was an English writer of novels and short stories.He had written under the names J. F...
as part of his 1966 book The Hammer Horror Film Omnibus.