Following a long period of cheap-looking productions designed to play as double-features on their home turf, Hammer returned to premium quality horror with FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, arguably the company’s finest hour, and certainly Peter Cushing’s definitive portrayal of the monstrous Baron. Here, he blackmails medical student Simon Ward (making his feature debut) and his lovely fiancée Veronica Carlson into helping him with a brain transplant which – naturally – goes horribly wrong. Instead of the misguided adventurer depicted in previous films, screenwriter Bert Batt emphasizes the Baron’s ruthless pursuit of knowledge and power, culminating in an unexpected sequence in which Cushing’s domination of Carlson segues from mere tyranny to rape, a scene which Cushing reportedly found distasteful. Overall, however, Batt’s script allows the characters to evolve via a skilfully constructed plot which employs levels of drama and emotion largely absent from much of Hammer’s output at the time, alongside the usual elements of horror and suspense.
Director Terence Fisher rises to the occasion with remarkable dexterity, orchestrating set-pieces which have been compared to Hitchcock in some quarters, especially the opening sequence in which a petty thief (Harold Goodwin) breaks into the wrong house and has a truly hair-raising confrontation with its volatile owner (leading to a memorable ‘reveal’); and the traumatic moment in the back garden of Carlson’s boarding house, when she’s forced to deal with a corpse (one of Frankenstein’s cast-offs) ejected from its makeshift grave by a burst water pipe. Freddie Jones adds pathos to the proceedings as the helpless victim of Frankenstein’s latest experiment, his brain transplanted into another man’s body against his will, traumatizing his incredulous wife (Maxine Audley) who refuses to accept his new identity (a scenario echoed by a similar plot line in John Woo’s FACE/OFF in 1997). The period décor may look a little cramped and cut-price in places, but this is Hammer/Fisher/Cushing at the very height of their creative powers, and the film is a small masterpiece of British Gothic.
