Year: 

1964

Directed by: 

Freddie Francis

Rated: 

Not Rated

Country: 

United Kingdom

Runtime: 

1 hr. 24 min.

Production Company: 

Hammer Film

Written by: 

John Elder (a.k.a. Anthony Hinds)

Starring: 

Peter Cushing

Peter Woodthorpe

Kiwi Kingston

Sandor Elès

Similar Films: 

The Curse of Frankenstein

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell

Frankenstein (1931)

Son of Frankenstein

The Evil of Frankenstein has one primary shortcoming that tends to be more distracting than it would be under other circumstances. In the studio’s first two Frankenstein movies, Hammer Film had done a great job of differentiating themselves from Universal’s iconic take on the Frankenstein mythology in the 1930s, particularly as far as the monster is concerned. Hammer started off strong and kept the momentum rolling through their first sequel as well. Next came The Evil of Frankenstein. This is a more than adequate movie, but it has one standout flaw in that it undoes its major differentiating point between its franchise and Universal Pictures' Frankenstein franchise: it now copies Universal’s monster. The fact that it has a good story to tell is overshadowed by the fact that it tries to imitate that which it originally did so well to distinguish itself from. However, this is a cosmetic problem only. The monster in Evil is not as important as its story, which illustrates society's tendency to banish those who are different, even if those banished have something to offer.

It is ten years after the events following Dr. Frankenstein’s first creation of life (covered in The Curse of Frankenstein). He is now living in a different town, outcast from the one in which his first experiments took place. Just when Frankenstein is on the cusp of creating life again, a meddling priest bursts in, destroys his laboratory, and alerts the town. So, the mad scientist flees home with his assistant, hoping he won’t be recognized by his old townsfolk. When they arrive, they find that Frankenstein’s château has been ransacked. When Frankenstein later sees an official wearing one of his rings, he has an outburst, is forced again to flee, and finds himself and his assistant as guests in the cave of an outcast mute girl. Then they see it: the original monster himself, frozen in an ice wall of the cave. It’s time for the doctor to get back to work.

The discovery of the monster kicks off the film’s theme of the outcast. It is the point at which the monster, the mute, and Dr. Frankenstein come together, and they generally stay together for the rest of the movie. They have all been kicked out of society, and they all have uncommon qualities. However, they all also have something to offer. The mute offers kindness, Frankenstein offers scientific prowess, and the monster, by merely existing, offers unprecedented scientific knowledge. This is the key point of the film, highlighting the value these characters could bring to society by watching them work uninhibited by arbitrary restrictions. Society has missed out on great assets by rejecting them because they don’t fit in.

An equally interesting theme is presented during the resurrection of the monster. When Frankenstein thaws him, gets him to the laboratory, and shocks him back to life, the monster regains consciousness but will do nothing at all. It lies on the table as if still dead. Despite the fact that it has the physical ability to get up and move around, it lacks any sort of impetus, even to respond to pain. While Frankenstein has sufficient knowledge of biology to infuse life into lifeless tissue, he lacks the psychological knowledge required to infuse motivation into an inactive mind. This is an original take on the concept of creating something from nothing: the idea that the source of psychological drive is as elusive and mysterious as the source of physical life.

In order to solve his problem of having a two hundred-pound breathing paperweight on his laboratory table, Frankenstein seeks out another sort of mad scientist: a hypnotist. The hypnotist is able to spark a drive in the creature’s psyche just as Frankenstein was able to spark life in its body. However, as you might guess, things do not work out smoothly. The hypnotist turns out to be greedy, vengeful, and cowardly. With the monster’s mind under his control, he orders it to go out at night to steal riches and maim those who disrupted his hypnotism business (due to his lack of a license). Naturally, this leads to some problems. The creature eventually has a bout with his two masters and later, apparently distraught (though no clear reason is given as to why), begins howling in either physical or emotional pain and begins drinking. The monster, who used to sit contently in his corner of the basement, has now become drunk and angry, and the results are catastrophic. It is all the fault of the hypnotist, who has allowed his career to be destroyed by a change as simple as the requirement of a license. Instead of adapting to his situation, he devotes himself to theft and revenge as though to repeal the unfortunate nature of his circumstances. His response is similar to society's response to Frankenstein, a violent retaliation against those who dare to change our ways of doing and understanding things.