So... About Last Night: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

Monster movies, or what Karloff once called "monster clambakes," were officially on the decline in the wake of Universal's "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948), but almost a decade later in England, horror was only reawakening. When Eliot Hyman, head of Associated Artists Productions in America, was handed a newly adapted script of "Frankenstein" by two unknown writers he immediately handed it over to the British company. Contributor Michael Carreras had plenty to say about the original script that it was "badly presented" and "the number of setups scripted is quite out of proportion to the length of the screenplay." (Michael Carreras's letter to Max Rosenberg, May 10, 1956)

Revised by Jimmy Sangster and now titled "The Curse of Frankenstein," the film went into production without the BBFC's suggested revisions, exceeding the new X rating. Filming began November 19, 1956 at Bray Studios when Frankenstein would cut down his first body from an abandoned gallows. Christopher Lee was cast as the creature solely on his height (6'5") and TV star Peter Cushing was sought after as the mad Doctor. In this incarnation, a teenaged Baron von Frankenstein employs Paul Krempe as a tutor to teach him all of the ways of science and this friendship results in the creature as well as a rift leading the mad Doctor all the way to the guillotine. "Curse..." would also be the first horror film to have shown blood in an explicit way and with Eastman color,

Terrence Fisher's adaptation opened on May 2, 1957 at the London Pavillon and to mixed reviews. To Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, "...this routine horror picture, which makes no particular attempt to do anything more important than scare you with corpses and blood, the most famous monster of screen fiction comes to life and goes clomping round again..." "Peter Cushing gets every inch of drama from the leading role, making almost believable the ambitious urge and diabolical accomplishment," praised Variety, "The British version of  the [...] classic shocker emphasizes not so much the uncontrollable blood lust of the created monster as the clinical details whereby the crazy scientist accumulates the odd organs with which to assemble the creature."



Interesting Links

Sir Christopher Lee | Stuff You Missed in History Class