First released in 1957 and one of the films that put Britain’s Hammer Films on the map, The Curse of Frankenstein opens in Switzerland in the 19th century.  It’s a time of superstitious villagers, judgmental priests, aristocrats who dabble in science, and lots of cleavage.  It’s also a time when justice is harsh.  That’s something that Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) has discovered as he sits in a cell in prison, awaiting his execution date.

Baron Frankenstein has been convicted of the murder of a maid named Justine and the public is eager to see this haughty and eccentric aristocrat put to death.  Victor, however, claims that he is innocent of Justine’s murder.  As Victor explains to a visiting priest (Alex Gallier), he is guilty of many things but he didn’t kill Justine.

The story that Frankenstein tells the priest is a familiar one.  Victor inherited the Frankenstein estate when he was fifteen and, having always been interested in science, his hires a scientist named Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart) to mentor him and ultimately collaborate with him on his experiments.  Even as he falls in love with and become engaged to his cousin, Elizabeth (Hazel Court), Victor becomes obsessed with the idea of creating a human being from perfect parts collected from the dead.

Victor puts his creation together, piece by bloody piece.  He has no trouble using a the body of a robber and the hands and eyes that purchases from the workers at the local morgue.  But when it come time to pick a brain, he wants to use the mind of a distinguished scientist.  Unfortunately, the scientist is still alive so Victor pushes him over a bannister.  That kills the professor but the removal of the brain does not go quite as smoothly as Victor was hoping.  The brain gets damaged when it’s removed.  The Creature (an intimidating Christopher Lee) is eventually brought to life but, with that damaged brain, all it wants to do is destroy and kill.  Victor isn’t happy about that but soon, he discovers that having a killer Creature has its uses.

As opposed to the well-meaning but obsessed version of the character that Colin Clive played in the original Frankenstein, The Curse of Frankenstein presents us with a Baron who is rather unstable from the start.  It’s not just that the Baron is obsessed with bringing the dead back to life.  It’s that he is fully willing to kill people for his experiment.  Perhaps his only redeeming quality could have been his love for Elizabeth but he screws up even that by having an affair with the ill-fated Justine (Valerie Gaunt).  From the start, the Baron’s main obsession is with his own power.  Elizabeth is ultimately just another pawn for him to control.

Considering how evil this film’s version of Baron Frankenstein is, it’s a good thing that he’s played by Peter Cushing.  Cushing gives an intense but charismatic performance as the Baron, capturing not only the character’s ruthlessness but also his fierce intelligence.  The tragedy of the film’s version of the story is not that the Baron’s experiment goes wrong but that the Baron did actually have the potential to do a lot of good for the world.  He’s smart and he’s determined but he’s lacking a conscience.  If anything, the Creature he builds is a representation of his own dark thoughts and desires.  The Baron is an aristocrat and the Creature is built out of common thieves and people who died in debt but they’re both different sides of the same coin.

Gory and fast-paced, The Curse of Frankenstein was a huge hit and it made stars out of both Cushing and Lee.  I tend to prefer Hammer’s Dracula films to its Frankenstein film but The Curse of Frankenstein holds up well as a portrait of what happens when madness and science collide.