Director: Freddie Francis
Year: 1964
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Trying to get his experiments started again, Baron Frankenstein and his assistant find his earlier creature frozen in ice and still alive, where a local magician uses it to exact revenge on the townspeople who race to stop it before the creature starts another rampage.
Review:
This here wasn't that bad and actually had some good stuff going for it. The best parts of this one here were whenever it had the creature either as the main focus of the scene or featured it on-screen. The first scene with it, the flashback to the past, where it shows the creature's first rampage through the forest and its confrontations with the townsfolk, results in some fun as the chases are nice, the stunts aren't too bad, and it has a fun atmosphere that makes it really enjoyable. The fact that there are also some rather fun and enjoyable scenes later on inside the lab where the creature is being brought back to life through hypnosis makes it quite fun, and when the creature goes out and gets his rampage going, the murder scenes are all nicely done.
The final confrontation, where the monster gets out of control and starts a massive fire in the lab, which soon turns into an inferno and takes out pretty much everything it can, manages to have much more fun from it when the hero gets stuck down there for the explosive final confrontation. The discovery of the creature takes place in a novel setting with the gloomy atmosphere of the cave setting, and the actual excavation is handled realistically and manages to feel completely plausible the whole way through, which is unusual for these sorts of things.
These here are enough to hold this off against its' bad parts, though there isn't a whole lot of flaws to this one. One of the main issues with the film is that there's an incredibly lame monster design chosen that doesn't do much of anything to instill fear in the viewer, as the expressionless green face looks like a block of flesh put atop the body, it's general shape is baggy and inconsistent, and on the whole there's hardly a whole lot of inference given it's pedigree to the past. The other flaw to this one, and the one that does the most damage, is the film's utter dullness when it isn't focused on the monster.
The monster is brought out in full detail quite late in the film, making it a real stretch in the beginning to get some good parts out of it. It's slow, dull, and beyond the fun flashback has nothing all that exciting to make it interesting by focusing on such extreme lengths as it does on the carnival troupe and their reaction around town, who in turn are yet again up in arms over the activities being conducted at Frankenstein manor, which doesn't really allow much action, and it takes a while before something fun happens. These are the film's weak points.
Overview: ***/5
Decent enough if only for a few reasons, this is a solid if unspectacular entry in the franchise that is worthwhile enough for some factors, which are enough to hold it up over some pretty big flaws. Those with an appreciation for this era of genre fare, who appreciate the other entries in the franchise, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have a lot to like, while most others out there should heed caution.
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