Horrorfest 2020: Hammerfest - Frankenstein Created Woman

Starring Peter Cushing, Susan Denberg and Thorley Walters

Written by John Elder and directed by Terence Fisher

Provocative title, huh? And all the posters, video box art, and probably stills that come up when you Google the movie are provocative, too -- even the photo here! They all feature Peter Cushing as Dr. Frankenstein with his latest creation -- a scantily clad Susan Denberg in all her glory. But guess what? That stuff's not even in the movie. Sure, Frankenstein creates a woman, but none of the popular images associated with this movie are actually in the movie. At first I thought maybe I fell asleep when I was watching it and missed them. But nope.

This movie's weird. I mean all these Hammer movies are weird, but this one's needlessly weird. The basic gist of it is simple enough -- Frankenstein is now interested in trying to transfer a soul from one body to another, and does so -- transferring the soul of a wrongfully accused man who has recently been executed into the body of the woman who loved him, who is recently dead by her own hand. Once the soul transfer is complete, the woman with the soul of the man goes on a quest for revenge against the people responsible for his death.

Simple enough, right? Well, that premise isn't reached until well into the running time of the film. First you see the wrongfully accused guy's whole life. Which is actually pretty entertaining, but narratively unsatisfying when you find out it's all needless backstory. He sees his father executed as a child, he's wrongfully accused of killing an innkeeper and then he's executed himself. Meanwhile the disfigured woman he loves (but can't have because of her father) witnesses his execution and kills herself. I'm breezing through this pretty quickly but it takes up like half the movie, just to get us to the body swapping. Or soul swapping. Whatever.

So, points for being different, I guess, but the movie's greatest sin is that Peter Cushing as Frankenstein is sidelined much of the time. Also, he's not quite as maniacally evil this time out. Sure he doesn't take into account the consequences of his actions, but that's day one Frankenstein stuff ! We're several sequels deep, here.

So the first half is pretty good, but it belongs in a another movie, and the second half isn't Frankenstein-y enough for my liking. All in all, one of the lesser of the Hammer Frankensteins.