Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
I've wanted to see this one for years and years but the DVD is waaaay OOP. The fourth Hammer Frankenstein finds the Baron tucked away in a small village entrenched with a silly old doctor as he attempts to achieve his latest conundrum, a way of beating death and examining the body's relationship to the soul itself. After the abysmally disappointing Evil, Terrence Fisher returns to the series he began for a film that, despite production limitations, forgoes the typical "monster movie" pitfalls and like Revenge of Frankenstein gets at something else, but this time into the fragile world of the metaphysical and ethereal. The ideas presented alone are worth the watch, and some of them are truly mindblowing.
In short, through discovering a rudimentary cryogenic process and developing an impenetrable energy, Frankenstein isolates the human soul.
3.5 balls out of 4, and I just wish that the overall story and production was stronger to fully suit such a brilliant idea.
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
If Woman had a sense of kindliness to it, this one would have a sense of nihilism. This is a bold, dark, ballsy and truly nasty film! Cushing's Baron Frankenstein always hovered on the edge of evil and blind scientific ambition which always prevents the audience form disliking the character. Not anymore. This time around, the Baron is a truly 100% deplorable human monster, capable of anything remotely possible in the name of his own scientific pursuits be it murder, blackmail, torture, rape, violence, manipulation, theft, surgery and anything else conceivable. This is where it comes to a head, the darkest of all possible scenarios for the Baron's future.
To set this film up if you've never seen it, imagine a typical Hammer film. But in the opening here, a figure stands in a doorway only to behead a man walking down the street with a scythe. This is some type of disfigured monster, only to be revealed as a mask concealing the Baron himself. The whole idea behind this film series is that it is the Baron who is the Monster and not any of the Creatures he makes. Now this idea has come full circle and with the physical recognition of this overarching theme, the Baron is free to be a monstrous as he wishes.
The plot basically deals with the Baron's attempts to find and converse with a colleague who had discovered the secret of freezing and preserving the brain. Sadly the man went mad, and Frankenstein must blackmail an asylum doctor and his fiancee into helping him to steal the man back in order to get into his brain.
As most who have heard of the film know, there is a very controversial rape scene that after some digging around I found was actually inserted at the request of US distributors who wanted some sex/nudity content. (Not really a sex scene is it?) The scene was quickly inserted against everyone's wishes and sticks out like a sore thumb. (A very sore one.) Ironically this was removed form US prints and for some reason reinstated for the DVD.
As a whole, the film begs for more development, but aside from this the actors and Fisher's direction are absolutely top notch. The latter has some sequences in this film which are completely brilliant. This is a great film marred only by too tight of a production schedule and not enough story development. The ending is fantastic, but the film itself should have been longer.
Something like a 3.75 balls out of 4. This is brutally nasty, and Cushing is so dark that you realize Tarkin would have blown up anywhere on a whim.