The fifth and, not surprising, the last in Terence Fisher's Frankestein series as far as becomes a successful tour de
force where Fisher carry to its extremes the dialectic ( already begun in the first part of the series ) between ethics and science and again gets another turn of screw to the character of the baron driving him to dementia ( the studio of the baron is surrounded of delirious surrealistic illustrations of anatomycal figures playing artistic performances ) in his anxiety of recognition for his medical researches. Fisher has described the character incarnated convincingly in all the series by Peter Cushing as a man condemned to failure due to Frankenstein has sold his soul to science, in the reactionary setting, moreover , of the superstitious and conservative Victorian society whom double morality the british director satiryzes through its "hygienic" institutions . Dr. Elder has been confined to an asylum during 5 years under observation for the same court that condemned his admirated mentor( and never met ) baron Victor Frankenstein some years ago accussed as him for practising sorcery. Soon discovers that the baron works there under the identity of Doctor Carl Victor as the staff doctor of the asylum, after planning his death with the complicity of the director, a weak and depraved man who has given free hand to the baron to continue his experiments about life after death between the walls of the mental institution in correspondence to Frankenstein's silence about his sexual deviations and underground "affaires" in the management of his public charge.

The plot reminds Edgar A. Poe grotesque short-story " The system of Dr.Tarr and Prof. Fether ", which is settled too almost enterely in an asylum . Fisher show us a world turned down, a quixotesc story where insane people rules a mental institution and sane people are treated as madmen: Frankenstein is a monomaniac obssessed in turning to live a gloomy humanoid created with the body parts of deceased inmates ( the ones the baron calls his "favourites"), the director is a sexual deranged who has raped his own daughter and likes to abuse of his female patients; for the other side, a gentle and brilliant mathematician who was interned for a simple nervous problem is imprisoned in a cell for dangerous patients and a young surgeon with medical progresist ideas has is under treatment accused of witchcraft.

The oppressive atmosphere ( as I have told upper the action takes place almost completely between the walls of the asylum ), the metallics colours and the expresionist use if light ( a chilly blue light involves the figure of the baron while is absorbed in his clandestine cold-blooded experiments )
contributes to the sensation of hallucination that surrounds the film conducting it efficiency to the nightmarish climatic ending . The result is an original film plenty of macabre poetry . Fisher reinvents with wisdom through the tradition joining the bizarre gothic imaginary of an Edgar A. Poe with the sarcastic visual imagination of G.K. Chesterton,without damage of the director's personality . Fisher observes the baron with sharp ironic distance, converting so the studious in object of study, but he analyses his "creature " in the exactly opposed position the insensible baron observes his human experiments: to show us the contradictions of science in his ambition of serve mankind and the risky vanity of the scientist . This ironic twist is beautifuly illustrated in the scene we see the baron observing without hidden joy the eye-ball of one of his victims with a high lens. Fisher inmediately puts the camera in the reverse angle showing us now the observative eye of the baron through the mentioned glass.

At the end of Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed Baron Frankenstein was Killed in a Fire and there was no way he could have survived it gave a good ending to Baron Frankenstein yet in this one he is not got one scar anywhere except his hands and that was suposed to be the cause of the event in Evil of Frankenstein - 1964 in this he looks to stranied and to old by this time Hammer was making it seem he was invincible he is only human

OK folks, you more or less know what you're getting into when you watch a movie called "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell". But what you do not expect is a good movie, which is what you will end up with. The plot is a young doctor (Shane Briant) is arrested for sorcery (he was caught grave robbing) and sentenced to an insane asylum. There he meets Dr. Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), who is now beleived dead and living under an assumed identity. Then the two soon continue Dr. Frankenstein's experiments, this time stitching body parts from recently decesed inmates. The result is a ugly, disgusting monster with the brain of a mathmatician. The body (of a murderer) takes over the brain, and so as you can expect mayham erupts in the asylum. Cushing is an old hand at playing Frankenstein by now, and so he is very cozy in the role. Madeline Smith plays a mute, so her acting was limited to body movements and eye expression. Shane Briant is alright as the assistant, a little wooden, but that is to be expected. You can tell that the budget was barely there, the outside of the asylum looked like a train set model, and the monster suit looked way too fake. The film is rated R, but I think that is because of the times. There is some graphicly bloodly kills, but I think today it would have gotten away with a PG-13. Not bad, and the last good Hammer film before the studio shut down.

If I had seen this movie as a child, it would have scared the living daylights out of me. Seeing it as an adult, it still gave me bad dreams. I really didn't expect such a classic Hammer production from one of their later films. It suggests the style from about ten years earlier in the full bloom of Hammer Horror. True, the monster is definitely on the low-budget side, but when he shambles toward you JUST before the door gets shut there is a deep primordial shudder evoked.
The story revolves around the most appropriate question of "what would Frankenstein do if he lived in an lunatic asylum?" The answer, not surprisingly, is to find new ground to plow in the old cemetary. Rejecting Universal's formula of creating new mayhem for the old monster to stumble through, Hammer's Frankenstein creates new "monsters" with their own, original baggage and issues. Also, they continue to twist the theme of "who is the real monster?" with new horrors consistently pointing to the diabolical Baron himself. In this area, Peter Cushing is fabulous. One wonders if the studio would have existed at all without him and Christopher Lee.
Another theme is presented again: degrees of evil. Frankenstein is a maniacal sociopath surrounding himself and exploiting those who have sinned in some awful manner. This is the truly horrifying nature of Monster from Hell. The asylum could be a metaphor for Hell and the inmates, damned souls. The ending fulfills this allegory: no one is leaving, and the torture begins anew.

The first film I ever saw in Hammer Studio's Frankenstein series was also the very last, which I feel is a terrible shame, as this was a very good movie. While Hammer's Dracula films drastically revamped themselves twice over the course of their last three films, the Frankenstein series, which was running simultaneously, did it once and even then only partially (by doing no more than cast a younger actor as Dr. Frankenstein). So we have Peter Cushing returning for one final time, after a one-film break with the new guy, in the role of the good doctor, where we get to see him act with Darth Vader three years before the making of "Star Wars" (David Prowse, the man in the Darth Vader suit, is the monster in this one). And I'm glad that Cushing came back, because his performance is what makes this movie so great.

Rather than discuss plot points, as I'm sure you by now have a fairly vague idea of what to expect from this series (though I would like to mention that we get to see the second Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton, as a grave robber at the beginning of the movie), I would instead like to discuss Dr. F, because the character absolutely fascinates me ... especially in this particular film. Here we have a true monster, far worse than any undead beast he could ever bring back to life. Dr. F cares for absolutely nothing but his work ... not only does he have no second thoughts when it comes to disturbing graves, but he goes so far as to see the living as nothing more than potential materiel for his experiments. Witness the casual way he speaks of the patient he prompted to commit suicide (without ever explicitly stating his intention, but by leaving for the patient to read such depressing news that he knew exactly how the patient would react). When I first saw this scene, together with the final one, when Dr. F speaks optimistically about "the next time", I shared completely the shock, dismay, and revulsion felt by our young protagonist, Dr. Helder (Shane Bryant), as he realizes that the man whose work he'd dedicated his studies to and who(m) he'd idolized is so completely inhuman beneath his appearance and kindly manner, so totally obsessed with his life's work that nothing else matters at all, not even his own creations.

Dr. Frankenstein is amoral ... he does whatever he feels is necessary for his experiment to succeed, and hasn't a single care when those actions bring harm or death, let alone anxiety, to anyone else. And yet while certainly not a "good" man, the wicked acts which Dr. F commits are not motivated by malice or a desire to harm ... He's simply so completely blinded by the world of science that it's impossible for him to think in any other way. This makes him, for me at least, one of the most frightening characters in the whole realm of Horror ... a totally conciousless scientist, fanatically devoted to his work and more brilliant than we can even try to imagine. From the films I've seen, I don't believe that any of them give a better, more thought-provoking portrait of the character than this one, without having to rely on any of the films which came before.

"Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell", in spite of suffering from such an awful title, is a wonderfully intelligent and intriguing, visually striking (I love the dreary hallways of the mental institution, as well as the shots of the creature in the graveyard at night), and very well acted indeed. Peter Cushing is one of my favorite actors, and here he certainly doesn't disappoint. Do yourself a small act of kindness and pick up a copy of this DVD today, and then watch it tonight after the lights are out. I think you'll have a marvelous, though somewhat unsettling, time ...

This film will entertain you, but it will also make you think. Definitely five-star material.

Carry on Carry on

MN