By 1967, Hammer’s Frankenstein franchise had officially gone off the rails—in the best way possible. The days of stitched-up hulks and lightning-powered carnage were old hat. Instead, Terence Fisher and screenwriter Anthony Hinds sat down, looked at each other, and said, “What if Frankenstein made a hot woman… and gave her the soul of a dead man?” That’s not just science fiction—it’s pulp poetry, served with a side of resurrection, vengeance, and metaphysical confusion.
Frankenstein Created Woman is one of the weirdest, boldest, and most oddly tender entries in Hammer’s horror canon. It’s not just about body parts and reanimation anymore. It’s about souls, guilt, cosmic injustice—and yes, how far a dead guy will go to avenge his own execution, even if he has to do it wearing a blonde’s body.
🧠 The Premise: Body of a Bombshell, Mind of a Martyr
Let’s break this one down slowly, like Frankenstein does with his victims.
Peter Cushing returns as Baron Frankenstein, ever the surgical sadist in a velvet coat. This time, he’s less interested in sewing limbs and more obsessed with capturing the soul at the moment of death—like a Victorian ghostbuster with a PhD. He believes the soul lingers just long enough to be bottled and reinserted, like some kind of spiritual Tupperware experiment.
Enter Hans (Robert Morris), a decent lad with a tragic backstory—his father was executed, and society treats him like he inherited the crime. He’s in love with Christina (Susan Denberg), the pub owner’s daughter, who’s sweet, shy, and disfigured. Their love is pure in the kind of way that only works in movies made before cynicism was invented.
Of course, things go to hell. Hans is framed for murder by three upper-crust sadists who look like they stepped out of a Victorian boy band. He’s executed by guillotine. Christina, devastated, drowns herself in a nearby river, because in Hammerland, grief always ends in scenic suicide.
Frankenstein, bless his deranged heart, retrieves her body, fixes her face (science!), and inserts Hans’s soul into her corpse. Boom. Frankenstein created woman… with a vengeance.
💄 Susan Denberg: Beauty, Tragedy, and a Vengeful Spirit
Susan Denberg, a former Playboy centerfold, plays Christina before and after her transformation. Pre-resurrection Christina is a gentle, insecure woman with a facial disfigurement and the vocal cadence of someone recovering from shock therapy. Post-surgery, she’s a sultry, platinum-blonde angel of death, now hosting Hans’s soul and a to-do list of violent retribution.
Her performance is oddly affecting. She doesn’t have many lines post-reanimation—probably a good thing, since her heavy Austrian accent was dubbed over—but she sells the internal war. She’s Hans. She’s Christina. She’s confused, haunted, and increasingly homicidal.
Watching her seduce and slaughter the men responsible for Hans’s death is like watching a ghost take dance lessons. She moves like someone trying to remember how to be alive. It’s eerie. It’s sensual. It’s tragic. It’s also deeply satisfying when each pompous villain gets what’s coming to them via axe, knife, or general soul-based discontent.
🧛 Peter Cushing: The Mad Scientist You’d Invite to Dinner, Then Regret It
By this point in the franchise, Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein has fully evolved from curious tinkerer to borderline sociopath with a charming smile. He’s less manic than in previous entries but no less unsettling. He talks about dissection the way most people talk about baking. When Christina dies, his first thought isn’t sorrow—it’s, “Ah yes, fresh canvas.”
Cushing plays the role like a genteel serial killer, always one polite smile away from lopping off your leg in the name of progress. He’s refined. He’s clinical. And when he talks about trapping souls between dimensions, you believe him. Hell, you want to give him a grant.
Unlike Dr. Frankenstein in other versions, this one doesn’t want to conquer death. He wants to understand what’s on the other side. He’s not playing God—he’s trying to interview Him.
⚰️ The Villains: Entitled Twits With Death Wishes
The three upper-class sociopaths who torment Christina and frame Hans deserve a paragraph of their own. They drink. They harass. They insult disfigured women. They have names like Anton and Karl and probably all studied law before switching to a major in “Punchable Faces.”
Their comeuppance is the moral engine of the film. Watching them fall one by one is the Gothic equivalent of a slasher movie body count—but dressed in cravats and murder regret.
By the time Christina/Hans gets to them, they’re sweating through waistcoats and muttering lines like, “There’s something… not right about her.” No kidding, Karl. She’s got your friend’s soul and a personal vendetta. Also, that wig is NOT just a fashion choice.
🧪 Themes: Deep Cuts and Deep Thoughts
For a Hammer film—hell, for any horror film from the 1960s—this one asks some heavy questions. What happens to the soul after death? Can vengeance be righteous if it’s carried out by the wrong body? And most importantly: If you put a man’s soul in a woman’s body, will he immediately go on a murder spree or try on high heels first?
Frankenstein Created Woman walks the line between tragedy and camp, exploring identity, duality, and metaphysics, all while throwing blood on the drapes. It’s Frankenstein meets Vertigo meets The Count of Monte Cristo, by way of a Hammer soundstage with too much dry ice.
🎨 Direction & Aesthetic: The House That Gothic Built
Terence Fisher, ever the Gothic craftsman, bathes every frame in color, shadow, and existential dread. The village is grim. The lab is cluttered with scalpels and soul-juicing machines. The guillotine scene is brutal and elegant, like death performed by ballet.
The resurrection sequence is classic Hammer: equal parts mad science and melodrama. There’s thunder. There’s lightning. There’s a bubbling vat of something unholy. It’s horror as opera, and Fisher conducts it with a straight face and a bloody scalpel.
🪦 Final Thoughts
Frankenstein Created Woman is one of the oddest entries in the Hammer horror pantheon, and one of the best. It doesn’t always make sense, and it doesn’t care. It trades the monster movie clichés for something more ambitious—something that feels genuinely tragic under the corsets and candlelight.
Is it pulpy? Absolutely. Is it weird? Delightfully. But it’s also thoughtful, beautifully shot, and carried by a cast that gives just enough weight to a premise that could’ve collapsed under its own camp.
If you want screaming villagers, bouncing bosoms, and Peter Cushing whispering about the soul like it’s trapped in a test tube, Frankenstein Created Woman delivers—and then some.
Rating: 4 out of 5 supernatural soul swaps
A weird, wonderful blend of philosophy, revenge, and Victorian body horror. It’s Frankenstein with cleavage, a conscience, and just enough blood to keep your popcorn salty.
