Director: Terence Fisher
Year: 1957
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
About to be executed, a condemned prisoner recounts the story of his incarceration, having brought a friend to help in the conception of a human sewn together from different body parts, and how its murderous rampage affected those around him.
Review:
Overall, this one was quite a bland and overrated effort without much to really like. The main thing here is that the film is just really boring for the main part of its running time and doesn't offer up much of anything throughout the entire first hour that gives this any kind of feeling about being a horror film. Though it nicely runs through the beginning phase of the novel, where he begins his research on human anatomy and the limits of science in that time period, these don't make the connection that his drive to complete these experiments so they make no sense, and instead render him into a state of madness, performing these actions without that base. He simply comes off as a raving lunatic doing horrible atrocities simply because he wanted to, making for quite the unappealing supposed hero.
This also manages another big flaw here in making the film feel so much like a period drama about a scientist keeping his friends and lover away from his work, and there's so many scenes here that feature this from their conversations about the abomination they've created, the growing threats to notify the authorities of his work or the need to procure the remaining parts here that there's barely any time with the actual creature on-screen who only has so little screen-time the pace is altered dramatically slower than what it should be and appears much longer than it really is. These facets here lower this one so significantly that even the few positives here aren't that appealing.
The film's biggest virtue here is that the creature's time here is fun makes it worthwhile, getting the initial early resurrection in the laboratory, a great stalking in the forest where it hunts the travelers lost in the area before the two tracking it catch up to it, and the centerpiece attack at the end which is a nice action scene here with the creature stalking their friend and forcing some decent action to rescue her that ends with some solid Gothic action quite nicely.
What really gives these a lot of their big impact is the grisly and genuinely haunting make-up work here, which is really shocking with how this one goes about portraying the creation, which here looks even more likely as a walking, stitched together corpse with all the sutures and cutting marks across the face that it creates a shocking look. The last positive here is the decision to streamline the first half, as while it makes the actions here way too problematic, being forced through all that would've been torture on the pace with how it is already in here. Still, the flaws here are way too detrimental to save this one.
Overview: **/5
A classic film but a little overrated, this is intriguing enough to be a worthwhile genre effort while being let down by some rather strong factors, which keep it from being the all-time classic most claim it to be. Those with an interest in this era of genre fare, who aren't bothered by the flaws, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have the most to like, while most others should heed caution.
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