Director: Terence Fisher
Year: 1969
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Forced to flee town again, the Baron learns a colleague has perfected a process invaluable to his own research and brings along new helpers to do so, but a series of incidents results in the creation of a new monster that, upon realizing what he has done to him, sets out to avenge his death.
Review:
There were a couple of good points to this one at times, making it far more watchable than expected. The main factor with this one here is the fact that despite its extreme boredom his one manages to mostly stay interesting the whole way through its incredibly strong story. This is one of the strongest in the series, mainly due to how it manages to avoid many pitfalls and keep things moving along. Here, Frankenstein branches out into other fields of research, still homing in on the freakish advance of medicine but no longer so obsessed with creating life, a great way of bringing back an old character but giving him new things to do and not settling for a hackneyed retread of the monster. The experimentations offered up are also handled well, especially with the way that the original intent of the whole thing is pretty logical and not all that unrealistic, which serves to make the irrational actions later on seem all the more normal.
There's also some really good action scenes, starting with the opening where a thief breaks into an underground laboratory only to be confronted by a horrible monster carrying a severed head when the monster rips off his face, revealing the hideous skeletal visage of Victor in one of the most dramatic and engaging ones in the genre. The scenes of the monster-on-the-loose out in the countryside are always fun, and this one is no exception, taking on several fun encounters here. The best, though, is the film's explosive and undeniably fun encounter at the end. With the usual house-in-flames ending coming into play again, there's a difference with the cat-and-mouse games between the two taking place amongst the flames, which makes for some really exciting sequences and is enough to make it end on a high point. The last plus here is the fact that the film has one of the usually high-standard surgery scenes in place, and this is one of the best.
There isn't a whole lot here to really dislike, though there are a few flaws to it. One of the main issues to come up is the fact that the film is just way too long and drawn-out, with a tendency to drag on for way too long, getting in plenty of scenes that, while they do give the film the impression that it's actually doing something and going somewhere, ultimately suffer from a lack of energy during them. It seems to go about its own deliberate pace, never really doing anything that really offers up some excitement until the end. The fact that the monster doesn't really show up in the film at all is another problem, and the monster here is one of the weakest. There's nothing at all to fear from this creature, as it's entirely human-looking in behavior and appearance, while the scenes of it trying to persuade his wife to recognize him generate nothing but eye-rolling at the fact that this is supposed to be a monster and is acting nothing like what one should be like. The last flaw here is the rape scene, which really should've been eliminated as it stops the film dead and barely recovers. Overall, this is a fun if slightly flawed entry.
Overview: ****/5
Slightly overrated but still an entertaining entry in the series, there's a lot to like here and it holds up quite well, as the few minor drawbacks here do lower it slightly from the upper parts of the franchise. Those with an appreciation for this era of the genre, who enjoyed the other parts of the series, 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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