Frankenstein Created Woman
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: C
Terence
Fisher’s Frankenstein Created Woman
(1967) sounds like the Hammer Studio’s belated answer to James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but it
owes more to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis
(1926) in its Frankenstein-inspired idea of transferring a soul from one body
to another without the stitching.
Unfortunately,
John Elder’s screenplay is dull and this is maybe the least of the Hammer
Frankenstein films, even with Cushing there.
The revived Doctor’s experiments with force fields and indestructibility
seem like filler. Most of the rest of
the cast are not up to Cushing, but with a script like this, that is no
surprise. At this point, Cushing’s
diction in his “discovery” and “deduction” about what will lead him to the
ultimate fruit of his lifetime of experimentation is a spoof of itself. Talk about your false Marias!
The women
are trivialized to a point of being tired, even if they do sometimes look
good. The girl monster gets the soul of
the Doctor’s lost son, who was killed while he was in a hyper-sleep. The beheadings also become a laughable motif
when they are not boring. Too bad, for a
better script could have made something of this and director Fisher should have
asked for a rewrite.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.66 X 1 image is not bad, but what it should be
color-wise is a point of debate. Arthur
Grant, B.S.C, shot the film on the usual single-strip color stock films have
been shot in since the mid-1950s to date.
On all the trailers on the DVD and in the credits of this print, it is
all DeLuxe color. Though not spectacular
looking and sometime grainy or even harsh transfer-wise, that would otherwise
be the end of the analysis. Some
softness and a bit of the Video Black even being a little off as it is here is
still par for the course. However, the
inside of the DVD case has a card that offers the chapters on one side and
poster art for the film on the other.
This has been common practice for Anchor Bay’s Hammer releases.
The twist
is that the poster is from the original British Warner/Pathé release, which
lists the prints as from Technicolor.
That means this film looked better in England than the U.S. and it is too bad the print on
the DVD is not as good. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono is the typical above-average kind, from an optical mono
source. That combo is somewhat shaky,
but acceptable for being the U.S. print. The few extra include two TV ads (actually in
black and white), and two full color theatrical trailers, all from the U.S.
release, that also pushes The Mummy’s
Shroud the same year as a second feature.
The World of Hammer Curse of
Frankenstein installment shows the films made throughout based on the
monster, rounding out the few extras.
Those are at least as interesting as the feature, so only the very
curious or real die hard fans need apply.
- Nicholas Sheffo
