The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)

 "It should have been perfect!"

It's been a while since I've blogged a Hammer Horror film, not least because there are relatively few of them left. But, incredibly, I've yet to see or blog any of the sequels to The Curse of Frankenstein, so here goes. 

This is,let's face it, Hammer horror by numbers. It's ninety minutes of Peter Cushing dominating the screen as the deliciously obsessive and amoral Baron Frankenstein. The good Baron may speak of "revenge", but after cheating death in such a gloriously improbably way he wishes only to consider his experiments. I'm not sure how, even back in Bismarck's Prussia, one could practise medicine under a pseudonym as surely qualifications would have sort of mattered. I'm a little surprised, too, at how friendly the good Baron can be when blackmailed. but let us think not of such things, and just enjoy ourselves. 

This time Frankenstein has a willing volunteer, a disabled man who wants his brain to be transported into a new, perfect body. It's just that he didn't bother to clarigfy before the operation that Frankenstein intends him to be a public spectacle, which he's less than keen on. Oops. It's also made hilariously clear, with a bit of foreshadowing with a chimp given the brain of an orang-utan, that transplanting Karl's brain into the new body will probably turn him into a crazed, cannibalistic killer. How lovely. How very Hammer. The scenes where the inevitable happens and Karl goes made are a delight.

And if all that isn't fun enough, we get the perfect ending. And any film about brains in jars just has to be adored. So yes, Hammer by numbers... but Hammer by numbers isa very good thing indeed.

Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966)

"When I go to confession I don't offer God small sins, petty squabbles, jealousies... I offer him sins worth forgiving!"

This is the kind of film that you know is going to be enormous fun before you’ve even seen a frame; Christopher Lee as Rasputin is a prospect that is certain to get bums on seats. Some films are purely about seeing how a certain actor handles a certain part, and this is certainly one of them.

Lee does not disappoint; his Rasputin is raucous, charismatic, larger than life, magnetic. Just, apparently, like the man himself. Not that we should expect historical accuracy from Hammer, of course; they don’t stand for anything so po-faced and serious as that. But it’s fascinating to see a film from mid-period, peak Hammer which is in their usual horror style but not really a traditional horror; the only monster here is Lee himself, and the only supernatural elements are nicely ambiguous.

Barbara Shelley is equally gripping as the tragic Sonya, and there’s a classy performance from Renee Asherson as the czarina- quite rightly, Nicky is kept out of this.

The only disappointment, perhaps, is that the ending- Rasputin’s dramatic and much-mythologised death- is both a little rushed and not particularly well choreographed, but this doesn’t spoil what is a hundred minutes of seeing Christopher Lee doing his splendid stuff.  All this and a nice little role for the great Cyril Shaps. This may be no one’s favourite film, but if you don’t enjoy this then there’s no hope for you...