BT1886

The Revenge of Frankenstein

If Baron Victor Frankenstein really wanted to hide his identity, maybe he shouldn’t have gone with Dr. Victor Stein… I feel it’s worth noting that my Hammer Horror collection spans two separate box sets, so I keep watching these out of order. I hadn’t seen Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein before its follow-up (this one), so I may be missing some context, but The Revenge of Frankenstein holds up remarkably well on its own. Critics at the time felt the Baron had softened between the two films, which is curious given that he exploits the destitute poor to facilitate his experiments. That criticism either amounts to a willful misreading, or Fisher really did start him somewhere considerably darker. I’ll just have to see. Anywho—much like the rest of Hammer’s output, The Revenge of Frankenstein is another stylized, colorful entry in the studio’s boundary-pushing catalogue. It’s worth remembering that by the mid-1950s, the horror genre had essentially cannibalized itself, Universal’s classic monster cycle having been reduced to self-parody, with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as the final nail in the coffin. Hammer stepped into that vacuum at a moment when almost no horror films were being made and seized it. The BFI argues that while The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula launched Hammer’s horror brand, it was The Revenge of Frankenstein that served as the studio’s true trendsetter—the moment it became confident in its own identity. Peter Cushing reprises his role as the Baron, bringing an aloof, callous, sociopathic energy to the character that stands in stark contrast to Universal’s more sympathetic reading of Shelley’s creation. Frankly (heh), I enjoy Hammer’s take far more, and Cushing gives such a controlled, strongly apathetic performance that the supporting cast can barely get a foothold. They’re decent enough, some even great, but this is his film through and through. One detail I found interesting was how Karl (Oscar Quitak), Frankenstein’s malformed assistant, undergoes a transformation that closely mirrors Victor Carroon’s arc in The Quatermass Xperiment. Whether that’s intentional or purely coincidental, I can’t say, but it’s a connection worth sitting with. It’s great. My dive into Hammer Horror has been so much fun, and Fisher’s work with the studio has been a consistent pleasure to watch. The Revenge of Frankenstein is yet another lurid, transhuman, gothic, grotesque invention from a group of people that simply get it. ᐅ Watched in 2026 — Ranked (https://boxd.it/RjcIq)