Catching up with The Horror of Frankenstein

Now Playing: The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

Pros: A couple of the supporting characters are lively; the black humor works well for the most part
Cons: Slow and talky for much of the running time; the monster is a disappointment

A long, long time ago, when I was a snot-nosed kid growing up in America’s Heartland, I lived in monster kid paradise. The local TV stations broadcast not one but two (!!) creature features on successive nights. On Fridays, I’d get into my pajamas and plant myself in front of the TV to watch sci-fi epics from the ‘50s and ‘60s, and then on Saturday nights fire up the old boobtube again to watch Gravesend Manor’s Malcolm the Butler and his fellow cracked cast members introduce the Universal monsters in all their black and white glory.

That lasted only a few years, but as I transitioned into awkward adolescence, I discovered something new and exciting… Girls, yes, but as a clueless pencil-neck geek I was in no position to do anything about that at the time… Rather, it was Hammer Films’ bloody, technicolor re-imaginings of the Universal monsters (not to mention the exposed skin of Hammer's female protagonists) that occupied much of my still developing brain.

The Hammer horrors, which got more and more “adult” as time went on, were a sort of pop culture rite of passage for a secular nerd such as myself. I remember sitting in a darkened theater for a matinee of Dracula: Prince of Darkness, watching a victim being hung upside down like a side of beef and bled dry over the ashes of the sinister count. Who knew you could bring back a vampire that way?

Like any reasonably obsessed film nerd, once I’d gone through Hammer’s Horrors, Curses and Evils, I wanted to see what else they had to offer. I started exploring the studio's sci-fi (the Quatermass movies, X the Unknown, etc.), thrillers (Scream of Fear, Paranoiac, The Maniac, etc.) and even swashbucklers (see my review of Night Creatures elsewhere on this site).

This is your brain after bingeing on Hammer horror films.

While I was wandering down those genre byways, I was keeping an eye out for any of the horror films, especially the late Hammers of the early ‘70s, that I had somehow missed. Over the years I checked off such titles as Twins of Evil and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde that were rarely shown on TV or were slow to crack the U.S. home video market.

In spite of my nerdish zeal to see as much of Hammer’s catalog as possible, one film -- and one of their horror films at that -- remained unseen. And it wasn’t as if it was hard to find.

For years, Horror of Frankenstein sat there, fat and happy, mocking my pretensions of being a Hammer horror film completist. Sure, Hammer was in decline by the time the film was made. Sure, it committed the cardinal sin of casting Ralph Bates as Victor Frankenstein, instead of the beloved Peter Cushing. Sure, many reviewers have dismissed it as too glib and tongue-in-cheek.

But dammit, it’s a Hammer horror film, and as such I should have watched it years ago! For example, right now it’s streaming on such platforms as YouTube, Amazon, Apple TV and Vudu for anywhere from $1.99 to $3.99, less than the price of a small popcorn at the theater.

But I am a cheap SOB, and I just hate to shell out even a measly dollar beyond what I already plunk down for streaming privileges. So I will try to find a free copy on YouTube or at the library, or anywhere, before I dig into my metaphorical wallet for a couple of bucks (it’s a sickness, it really is).

Every time I thought about finally getting around to seeing The Horror of Frankenstein, it snickered at me behind some teensy-tiny paywall. But I had the last laugh. A few weeks ago, as I was browsing movies in the Hoopla app (subsidized by my local library), I stumbled upon The Horror sitting there on a virtual shelf, just waiting to be borrowed for free... nothing, nada, zero, zilch!

It's easy to lose your head when you're a film nerd.

So now I’ve seen just about everything in Hammer’s Gothic horror catalog, and my inner Scrooge is content. Was it worth the wait? Well….

The Horror of Frankenstein is a reboot of Hammer’s Frankenstein saga (almost a remake of the original Curse of Frankenstein), reprising the rise of Victor Frankenstein from a precocious and arrogant medical student to a sociopath willing to sacrifice anyone and anything in his quest to create artificial life. And in its bid to look cooler and more youth-oriented, Hammer inserted 30-year-old Ralph Bates into Peter Cushing's old role.

Writer-producer-director Jimmy Sangster freely admitted that he created a subpar entry in Hammer’s line of Gothic horrors. In his memoir Do You Want it Good or Tuesday, Sangster recalled being contacted by Hammer about polishing a new Frankenstein script by Jeremy Burnham. He initially declined, but told them he’d do it if he could also produce and direct the film. They readily agreed, but his bubble was about to burst:

“Three days later the script arrived. I read it and my heart sank. It was virtually identical to the script I’d written for Hammer umpty years ago, the first Frankenstein movie they made [The Curse of Frankenstein]. As far as I could see they needn’t have bothered paying a writer to come up with something they as good as owned already. All of a sudden I didn’t want to do it any more.” [Jimmy Sangster, Do You Want it Good or Tuesday: From Hammer Films to Hollywood! A Life in the Movies. Midnight Marquee Press, 1997, p. 113]

Sangster also recalled that, in spite of his initial reservations, he and Bates had a great time during the filming:

“Indeed we had a good laugh, but we also took the shooting very seriously. At least, I did. I’m pretty sure Ralph did too. Because we enjoyed ourselves it didn’t mean we were turning out bad work. Some directors believe that unless the set is rife with fear and tension the end result won’t be any good. Reduce the cast to a state of helpless terror so the director can better force his own will on them. Personally, I think that’s a load of bullshit. … Nevertheless, happy set or not, I am forced to admit that I didn’t make a very good movie. I meant it to be lighthearted. It was so lighthearted its feet never touched the ground. … I think one of the reasons it wasn’t as good a movie as it should have been was that there was nobody to keep me in check. I was the writer/producer/director, the closest you can get to being God. Nobody was around to say ‘you can’t do this’ or ‘that doesn’t work.’ [Ibid., p. 115]

All the main elements of The Curse of Frankenstein, which launched Hammer’s Gothic horror craze, are in The Horror of Frankenstein: the depiction of the Baron’s early life, illuminating his single-mindedness; his obsession with his experiments to the exclusion of everyone and everything else; the lab assistant with a conscience that the Baron lacks; Frankenstein resorting to murder to get ahold of a decent brain for the creature; and even the brain being damaged by broken glass before being transplanted into the creature’s skull.

But where Curse had energy and daring (and Peter Cushing) going for it 13 years before, Horror is a comparatively by-the-numbers exercise trying to milk a fading genre one last time with the inclusion of some **wink wink, nudge nudge** sexual innuendo, bountiful cleavage and black humor.

If anything, Ralph Bates’ Frankenstein is even more of a sociopath than Cushing’s, not even pretending to be interested in anything but his experiments, and remorselessly eliminating anyone -- friend, foe, colleague, or servant -- who stands in his way. But his delivery is so flat that he sucks the energy out of scenes that should have been rousing or at least titillating. He may have had a great time on the set, but you couldn’t prove it from the film that made it into the can.

The first two thirds of Horror is very talky, amounting to a character study of a very unlikeable Victor Frankenstein. When he’s not making sly references to boffing his housekeeper Alys (Kate O’Mara), Frankenstein spends an inordinate amount of screen time making notes in his lab or preparing corpses for dissection.

The monster doesn’t make an appearance until well after an hour in, and is a big disappointment for all the build-up. 6’6” muscleman David Prowse (who would later play Darth Vader in the first round of Star Wars movies) sports a sloppy head prosthetic with a few scars and staples and body sutures that look like they were drawn on with a red marker.

"Welcome to the family!"

Still, a couple of Horror’s supporting characters keep things relatively interesting and lively. The housekeeper-with-benefits Alys is a dark, scheming beauty who gives as good as she gets and is not above using sex and blackmail to manipulate her amoral employer. (In contrast, the ethereally beautiful Veronica Carlson doesn’t have much to do playing a neighbor and childhood friend of Victor’s.)

The real star of The Horror of Frankenstein is Dennis Price, who plays the graverobber that Victor employs to supply body parts for his experiments. Price is a stout, self-satisfied wheeler-dealer whose business happens to be digging up fresh cadavers from local graveyards. The jovial ghoul provides the film’s best moments of black humor.

In one scene, when Frankenstein asks what he can get his hands on, the man responds that the selection is poor, “...very poor. Times are hard. People just aren’t dying off so quick. It’s the welfare state, that’s what it is!”

Then, he tells Frankenstein that he needs to get going, since “I like to get to them [the recently buried bodies] before the soil settles. Digging is easier that way.” Cut to the graveyard, where Price is lounging next to the gravesite, drinking from a bottle, while his wife is furiously digging away.

Price plays his part to the hilt, and his character’s prominence in the film saves it from being just a garden-variety remake of The Curse of Frankenstein. At this relatively late point in his career, Price would go on to appear in such horror films as Twins of Evil, Tower of Evil, Theater of Blood, Horror Hospital, and a grab-bag of titles from schlock-auteur Jess Franco (Vampyros Lesbos, Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein and The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein). (See also my review of the underrated UK sci-fi B The Earth Dies Screaming, co-starring Price.)

"Anything I bring you will be so fresh, it will get past the government meat inspector!"

Jimmy Sangster and Ralph Bates may have had just a little too much fun to make a truly good movie, but a couple of supporting performances and some inspired black humor and sly social commentary make The Horror of Frankenstein worth a watch.

Where to find it: Streaming | Blu-ray

RIP Veronica Carlson

I was saddened to see the news that Veronica Carlson recently passed away at the age of 77. While she appeared in only a comparative handful of films and TV shows, her presence in three Hammer horror films -- Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Frankenstein Must be Destroyed, and The Horror of Frankenstein -- assured her a solid place in the pantheon of the studio’s stars.

According to her IMDb page, before being “discovered” by Hammer’s James Carreras, she had studied art and design. She willingly left show business to raise a family and pursue other interests. She lived in Florida and South Carolina, and became a very successful painter.

Years later, she would appear with three other Hammer veterans -- Caroline Munro, Martine Beswick and Christopher Neame -- in low-budget filmmaker Joshua Kennedy’s homage to Hammer, House of the Gorgon (2019).

I was lucky to be able to attend the world premiere of the film at the Monster Bash convention in Mars, PA in 2019. It was a special treat to see the film and hear first-hand the recollections of this gracious and talented actress and artist. See my review of the film and the convention here.

Veronica Carlson, 1944 - 2022

The Great Brain Robbery: The Brain from Planet Arous

Now Playing: The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)

Pros: Intriguing premise inspired by sci-fi pulp magazines; John Agar gets to laugh maniacally playing a scientist possessed by an evil alien brain
Cons: The production’s cheapness undercuts its lofty ambitions

This post is part of the fourth annual So Bad It’s Good blogathon hosted by brainy Rebecca at her Taking Up Room blog. Once you’ve checked out this entry, zip on over there for more takes on the art and entertainment of bad movies.

Ever since Fritz stole a diseased criminal’s brain to plop into the monster’s skull in the original Frankenstein, horror and sci-fi fans have had brains on the brain.

And who’s to blame them? Detached from its protective skull, the human brain is a disgusting, alien-looking thing, a rounded gelatinous mass of folds, fissures and crevices that looks like it's just waiting to launch itself at you and eat your face off.

Various versions of the Frankenstein story alone have put the brain front and center in pop horror culture. In Hammer’s Frankenstein series, after the Baron stitched together the horrific creature in Curse of Frankenstein, he learned his lesson in subsequent films and concentrated on transplanting brains between pre-owned bodies.

In retrospect, Frankenstein should have run this important errand himself.

And then there’s Donovan’s Brain (1953), which, while being kept alive in a laboratory, develops telepathic powers and possesses one of the lab scientists. The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) picked up on the Donovan theme, featuring a whole head (and brain of course), played by Virginia Leith, that establishes a telepathic link with a Frankenstein-like creature in the basement laboratory that they share.

In a particularly gross-out variation, there’s the brains-as-delicacy theme exemplified by modern zombie movies. Contrary to popular belief, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the Romero-directed sequels did not establish zombies’ predilection for eating brains. While Romero’s zombies can’t get enough of human flesh in general, it was Dan O’Bannon’s wonderfully comedic Return of the Living Dead (1985) that cemented the idea of zombies voraciously going after human grey matter. Since then it’s become a trope, with legions of fans speculating on why brains are such a special treat.

In yet another variation, The Brain from Planet Arous is a 30’s-style sci-fi pulp story brought to life in glorious black and white, featuring an alien menace that is all-brain with evil, glowing eyes.

Brain begins with a mysterious light descending from the heavens and finally exploding near a remote mountain range in the desert southwest. Nearby at a lab at the White Sands Proving Grounds, nuclear scientists Steve Marsh (John Agar) and Dan Murphy (Robert Fuller) notice that their instruments are picking up intermittent pulses of intense radiation from the area of Mystery Mountain.

The two men decide to drive out to the mountain to investigate, but not before having lunch with Steve’s fiancée Sally (Joyce Meadows) and her father John Fallon (Thomas Browne Henry). John warns the two that the daytime heat can be intense in the mountains, but they’re undeterred.

When they arrive at Mystery Mountain, a rock fall has blocked the road leading up to the mountain’s base, so they have to go the rest of the way on foot. They discover a cave that looks to have been recently blasted out of the rock, but there are no footprints or other signs of human activity.

Inside the cave, they encounter mysterious lights and sudden jumps in their Geiger counter readings. Suddenly, they’re confronted by a gigantic floating brain that zaps them with an intense light as Steve shoots wildly at it. Dan manages to get a shot off before succumbing to the radiation. The brain becomes semi-transparent, shrinks in size and enters Steve’s body as he lies unconscious on the cave floor.

Q: Why did the brain go running?
A: It wanted to jog its memory.

A week later, just as Sally is getting really worried about her fiancé's absence (!!), Steve shows up at her house with a suspicious story about not finding anything at the mountain, and Dan going off to Las Vegas for some R&R.

Sally’s suspicions mount when Steve becomes uncharacteristically and aggressively romantic to the point of physically assaulting her, only relenting when Sally’s dog George comes to her defense. To top things off, Steve is suddenly having seizures, which he attributes to a tooth acting up (uh-huh).

Sally’s father initially dismisses her concerns with an offhand “boys will be boys” attitude, but then agrees to go with her to Mystery Mountain to see if they can find any reason for Steve’s abrupt personality change.

They’re shocked when they find Dan’s burnt body in the cave, and amazed when confronted with yet another floating brain. This new alien introduces himself as Vol, a policeman from the planet Arous who is chasing Gor, a criminal who has taken over Steve’s body in order to further his mad plans for world domination.

The two earth people and the space policeman plot to stick close to Gor/Steve to figure out what he’s up to and to strike when he’s most vulnerable. Instead of inhabiting Sally or her Dad, Vol chooses the body of the dog to hide out in, because, well, George is loyal and friendly and spends almost as much time with Steve as the other two (okaaaaay….).

George the dog is a brain's best friend

Brains from the planet Arous are apparently invulnerable when they’re in their semi-transparent transitory state or when they’re occupying a body, but every 24 hours they have to materialize and leave their hosts in order to recharge and suck in life-giving oxygen. That’s the only time Gor will be vulnerable, and Vol solemnly informs Sally that a blow to Gor’s fissure of Rolando is the only sure way to take him out. (Yes Virginia, the fissure of Rolando is a real thing.)

While Sally is waiting for a crack at Gor’s fissure (okay now, get your minds out of the gutter!), the alien occupier, unaware that anyone is on to him, is busy blowing planes out of the sky, frying inquisitive policemen, and demonstrating to incredulous government officials that his awesome telekinetic powers are more powerful than the atomic bomb. If the earthlings and Vol don’t stop him, Gor plans to subjugate the earth and use slave labor to build a space fleet to invade his home world!

In the first scene, the film reveals its pulp sci-fi roots when it shows Steve scurrying around the lab trying to make sense of the radiation readings, while Dan is seen relaxing in a chair reading a science fiction magazine (shades of The Big Bang Theory, where scientists spend most of their time reading comic books and role-playing!).

Dan catches up on the er, um, scientific literature.

The sci-fi pulps of the early-to-mid 20th century were notorious for featuring lurid stories and cover art of bug-eyed monsters threatening curvaceous females. The Brain from Planet Arous is solidly in this camp, featuring a brain monster with glowing eyes and almost unlimited powers lusting after poor, confused Sally after he has infiltrated her fiancé’s body.

For an advanced brain creature that is supposedly all intellect, Gor is pretty inept at covering his tracks and posing as a human. When Gor/Steve suddenly shows up at Sally’s place, the best he can come up with is the dubious story of a futile search and Dan running off to Vegas. He doesn’t even bother to conceal Dan’s body, leaving it in the cave for Sally and her father to find.

Gor also seems unconcerned about blowing his cover by nearly ripping Sally’s clothes off in their first encounter. It’s understandable that a creature who has spent his whole life as nothing but pure intellect would be eager to try out his new body, but it seems a little strange for an evil mastermind to get distracted from his mission of world domination by falling for the charms of a fairly ordinary, albeit attractive, earth woman.

And charmed he most definitely is. Later, still pretending to be Steve, Gor drives Sally out to an overlook to take in the lights of the city sprawled out in the valley below. In an expansive mood, and bragging like a teenager trying to puff himself up in front of his best girl, he promises Sally the world… literally:

Gor: "That’s our world out there Sally, yours and mine."
Sally: "Really? All of it?"
Gor: "If you want it. … I can give it to you, believe me!"

It’s obvious that when occupying a body, Gor can access the memories and even some of the personality quirks of the host in order to pose as a human, but it’s not clear how much influence the suppressed host has on the occupier. Maybe a lot, given Gor’s infatuation.

Whatever the dynamic, the Gor/Steve hybrid is much more exciting than Steve alone. After experiencing her first kiss with the new, occupied Steve, Sally looks like she’s ready to pass out before exclaiming, “You never kissed me like that before!” Gor returns the favor later on when he muses that “She gives me a very strange, very new elation!” If only Gor wasn’t so dead set on conquering the world, they might have made a wonderful threesome.

Gor has a lot of catching up to do after a lifetime without a body.

The whole conquering the world thing also raises a question or two. It appears that Gor has deliberately chosen to land at Mystery Mountain because of its nearness to the White Sands nuclear testing grounds. Additionally, inhabiting the body of Steve, a nuclear scientist, will get him access to the inner sanctum of the country’s’ nuclear defense establishment.

But for some reason he just sits in the cave he’s blasted out of the mountain and waits for Steve to come to him (how he knows it will be a valuable nuclear scientist and not just some ordinary lunkhead is another mystery).

To add insult to ridiculousness, Gor doesn’t want access to the nuclear testing facility to appropriate the weapons, but rather to demonstrate to the gathered officials that his telekinetic powers are far more powerful than their measly atom bombs, and that they have 24 hours to assemble representatives from the world’s major powers to hear his ultimatum.

If I were Gor, I’d cut out the middleman (sorry Steve), fly directly to Washington D.C., obliterate something showy, like the Washington monument, and then issue my ultimatum on national TV. But I guess Gor didn’t want to be seen as some low-grade knock-off of the venerated Klaatu. And he wouldn’t have been able to partake of some of those, ahem, earthly pleasures that floating brains don’t get to experience very often.

But, let’s face it, all this nitpicking violates the first law of watching so-bad-they’re-good sci-fi movies: just turn off your brain and enjoy the show.

Steve tries to do the math in his head: Gor in a solid, vulnerable state +
the fissure of Rolando + a sharp axe = ?

The Brain from Planet Arous is cheap, even by ‘50s sci-fi standards, but you’ve got to admire the audacity of trying to make a movie about evil brains and world domination on a budget so tight that you can almost hear the screech of the producers being separated from their nickels and dimes as you watch it unfold.

Speaking of producers, Jacques Marquette, who was best known as a cinematographer, but who started out producing low-budget sci-fi movies like The Brain from Planet Arous and that most iconic example of ‘50s sci-fi cheese, Attack of the 50 foot Woman, was interviewed by B movie historian Tom Weaver about his early gigs. Marquette good naturedly addressed the inspiration for the story and the cost-cutting involved in the production:

Where did your idea for Brain come from?
It was a story which I had sort of halfway stolen from Amazing Stories, I used to read that, Astounding Science Fiction, all of those -- I loved science fiction. One of them ran a story about a guy on the beach in the summer, and this thing came out of the ocean, went up into his foot and took him over.
…
What was your budget on Arous?
The budget, as I recall, was about fifty-eight thousand dollars. I did all the optical effects in the camera; otherwise, it would have cost probably five hundred dollars for one effect.
…
What do you remember about the brain prop?
We told the people who were going to make it what we wanted, and that we wanted lights inside. It was made of plastic and held up with wires. Later on, after we finished the picture, my kids got a hold of it and put on a show. They’d get other kids together, charge ‘em five cents and put on a show with the brain in there. [laughs].
[Weaver, Tom. Attack of the Monster Movie Makers, McFarland, 1994; pp. 197-198]

In the interview Marquette also mentions the silver-coated contact lenses that star John Agar wore for the scenes in which Steve, under Gor’s control, demonstrates his awesome powers. In yet another Weaver interview, Agar acknowledged enjoying the opportunity to play a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde role, but the contact lenses were a big challenge:

“I’ll tell you one thing, that picture was a very painful experience for me. When that alien being took over my body, they inserted these full contact lenses in my eyes. They’d painted ‘em silver and they forgot that that doggone paint would chip off. Every time I blinked, some of that silver would come off the lens and it was like having sand in my eyes.”
[Weaver, Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers: Writers, Producers, Directors, Actors, Moguls and Makeup, McFarland, 1988; p. 10]

Yikes! Despite the pain of having flecks of silver paint in his eyes, Agar gives it his all, laughing maniacally in classic melodramatic fashion as he terrorizes the world.

Prerequisites for world domination:
Awesome telekinetic powers - check
Maniacal laugh - check
Rad silver-coated contact lenses - ouch!

In the early part of his career Agar snagged roles in several prestige A pictures -- John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Allan Dwan’s Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) prominent among them -- but he will forever be remembered for grade-B sci-fi cheese like The Brain from Planet Arous. At best a middling actor, his ultimate career path from A pictures to Bs and even Zs (e.g., Zontar: The Thing from Venus, 1967 and Curse of the Swamp Creature, 1968) was perhaps a foregone conclusion. Later on, he expressed no remorse about being associated with those pictures, and was just grateful for the opportunity to entertain people (see my write up of The Hand of Death elsewhere on the blog).

Gor’s and Steve’s main squeeze, Joyce Meadows, made just a handful of films, but like many actors of her generation, she kept busy making guest appearances in every nook and cranny of TV from the ‘50s through the ‘90s.

Director Nathan Juran is a sci-fi movie hall of famer, with a number of classics and near-classics on his resume: The Deadly Mantis (1957), Twenty Million Miles to Earth (1957), Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), and First Men in the Moon (1964). Toward the end of his career, he directed multiple episodes of such popular Irwin Allen TV shows as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Time Tunnel, Lost in Space and Land of the Giants.

As for the merits of The Brain from Planet Arous, I’ll let yet another venerable B movie historian, Bill Warren, have the final say:

“In doing research for this film, I was startled to find that several reviews called the plot ‘conventional.’ Though the film is conventionally made, the premise is truly bizarre, anything but ‘conventional.’ The idea is too grandiose for the budget level, and it’s silly throughout, but at least it’s imaginative and unusual.”
[Warren, Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties, Volume II, McFarland, 1986; p. 33.]

Where to find it: DVD | Streaming