Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is a so-so entry in the Hammer Horror canon, starring Peter Cushing as a particularly loathsome incarnation of Herr Doctor, and Freddie "Mr. Bytes" Jones as some version of Frankenstein's creature, albeit not one stitched together out of the decaying parts of dead men. Simon Ward stars as Dr. Holst, a young drug-dealing (cocaine) psychiatric doctor who becomes the virtual slave of Cushing, who, masquerading as "Dr. Fenner," blackmails Holst to help him with his experiments to transplant brain El Numero Uno from the dead and insane (not in that order I guess) Dr. Brandt (George Pravda), into the body of Freddy Frankenstein. It is, as they say, a pip.

The action gets started off right, with Cushing taking a scythe to the throat of a fellow right before a big red wash of very phony blood splatters all over the wall. Then some Victorian burglar tries to bust into the good doctor's lab, at which time Cushing comes out looking like Dr. Phibes without his mask, except this is a mask, and it makes him look all pale and wrinkly and really grotesque. The both of them struggle, and a nifty glass booth with a body in it comes tumbling over and breaks.

Note: Cushing feels absolutely no compunction about killing people in this film. In other words, whatever moral ambiguities and ethical hang-ups add weight to the Frankenstein legend is totally absent here, and Frankenstein is played as a one-syllable "bad guy" with a one-track mind. His chief thought is how to transfer brains from one skull to the next. His old colleague Dr. Brandt, who went insane, is a necessary adjunct to this research, and so he goads the hapless Holst (Simon Ward, a handsome devil with a sort of proto-Emo haircut and a melancholy demeanor) into going with him to bust Brandt out of the looney bin.

They do so while a woman (Colette O'Neill) who thinks invisible bugs are crawling all over her (like the policeman whom Delirium cursed in Sandman "Brief Lives") screams, and they somehow manage to get Brandt out of there, but not before the big crazy lug dies of a heart attack and both mad doctor and virtual slave boy find themselves up the creek. No matter. As mentioned before, they plan on stealing Freddie Jones ("Dr. Richter") and do so, sawing off the top of his Victorian noggin and putting Brandt's brain in Richter's body. But, still, as far as being a bonafide Frankensteinian "Monster," it's no cigar.

Mrs. Dr. Holst (Anna Spengler), his old lady who runs a rooming house, almost gets raped by Cushing, in a scene that makes Dr. Frankenstein just seem gross. Later on, we get the old thrust-a-knife through the Victorian bust routine, and she folds like a cheap tent. Poor gal. She suffered so throughout this mediocre cine-play.

There's a cool, if comical scene where a hand thrusts itself up out of the ground, I guess in the garden, while a water main bursts and Freddy Jones has to be dug out of the ground or something if I remember correctly, but, beyond that, the action, suspense, drama, and (and most other conventional points of interest) are kept to a bare minimum.

Freddy Jones is a disappointing stand-in for a "monster," but he does carry Peter Cushing over the fiery threshold, in an attempt to get his Wagnerian "Gotterdamerung" at the end of the picture. Hammer movies (much like the films of Tim Burton) are films that, theoretically, based on the title and concept, I should find enjoyable. But, for the most part, I do not. But I find myself watching them again and again anyway, hoping each time that this time it will be different.

Maybe someone should transplant my brain.

In closing, on the advice of that redoubtable critic ChatGPT, I want to offer this: the cinematography is what you'd expect from a film such as this, from this era. The special effects are fairly minimal. The acting is stiff, and reserved--in other words, as stilted as any other Hammer picture. There's also a fat Victorian detective in a top hat I forgot to mention, a really rude and obnoxious fellow who looks as if his last assignment might have been hunting whoever it was that was ripping up bang-tails in Whitechapel. Now, noted as I am for an economy of language, I'll confess that seven HUNDRED words or better is too much to spend on a review of this picture.

"Excelsior!" as the man used to say. Ciao.

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed!