Let’s get this out of the way: by 1964, Hammer Studios was cranking out Frankenstein flicks like the neighborhood bar cranks out watered-down gin—cheap, fast, and always a little dangerous to your sanity. Enter The Evil of Frankenstein, Freddie Francis’s entry into the saga, and the cinematic equivalent of someone saying, “Screw continuity. Let’s blow something up and see if Peter Cushing can still look like he’s one experiment away from hell.”
Spoiler: He can.
This is the third film in Hammer’s Frankenstein series, and rather than follow the elegant gothic nightmare that was The Curse of Frankenstein or the brutal moral descent of Revenge of Frankenstein, Francis grabs the franchise by the throat, throws it through a stained-glass window, and yells, “Let’s get theatrical!” This thing feels like the Hammer horror version of a greatest hits album—with none of the logic and all of the fire.
Victor Frankenstein: Still Mad, Still Broke
Peter Cushing returns as Baron Frankenstein, a man whose God complex is rivaled only by his refusal to leave Switzerland quietly. Seriously, this guy gets exiled more often than Dracula gets staked, but he keeps coming back like a cold sore made of hubris and formaldehyde.
Here, the Baron returns to his hometown of Karlstaad, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the townspeople have forgotten he used to dig up corpses like a morbid raccoon and stitch them together for science. Spoiler: they haven’t. This town holds a grudge longer than a Catholic grandmother.
But Victor’s not just back for sightseeing—he’s here to reclaim his family castle and resume his forbidden experiments. Unfortunately, the castle’s been looted, the townsfolk are still carrying pitchforks like it’s their national pastime, and the monster? Oh, the monster’s been chilling in a block of ice like some undead popsicle.
And Then Came Hypnosis
Now here’s where things get gloriously nuts.
Victor unearths his old creation—a creature that looks less like Karloff’s iconic monster and more like someone tried to reconstruct him from memory after a bad acid trip. He’s got a square head, linebacker shoulders, and the vacant stare of a guy who’s been stuck in customs since 1957.
But the creature isn’t the only new kid on the block. Enter Zoltan—the carnival hypnotist. Yes, really. A traveling showman with eyebrows sharp enough to kill a pigeon and a voice that suggests he’s been gargling gravel and regret.
Zoltan discovers the frozen monster, thaws him out, and uses his hypnotic powers to control the poor beast. Because if you’re going to have a giant reanimated corpse at your disposal, why not use it to rob banks and settle personal vendettas like a lunatic playing The Sims?
This entire subplot is so gloriously bonkers it deserves its own soundtrack—preferably performed by a theremin and a bottle of absinthe.
Cushing, Calm as the Grave
Let’s pause to appreciate Peter Cushing, who anchors the chaos with the calm assurance of a man who’s seen worse things in catering. His Frankenstein is colder, more driven, and somehow more sarcastic than ever. He delivers lines like they’re scalpel incisions, slicing through the madness with British precision and the occasional eye-roll.
When the town explodes into panic—again—he reacts like someone mildly annoyed that the soup’s gone cold. That’s Cushing. That’s class. That’s a man who’s done this enough to know the monster will eventually kill someone, the villagers will eventually riot, and he’ll probably end up fleeing through the woods in a frock coat.
The Monster: Now With Budget Eyebrows
The monster, redesigned here with makeup that borders on kabuki theater, is the weirdest part of the movie’s tonal balancing act. Gone is the nuance of Karloff’s tortured soul. This creature lumbers, crushes, and obeys Zoltan’s hypnotic orders like Frankenstein’s creature turned bouncer at an Eastern European discotheque.
Still, there’s something weirdly endearing about this block-headed brute. When he snaps out of Zoltan’s control, he starts wrecking everything in sight—including the castle, the laboratory, and your suspension of disbelief. It’s like someone let the Kool-Aid Man loose in Wuthering Heights.
The Set Design is the Real MVP
Let’s talk production design. Say what you will about plot holes, but Hammer never skimped on the aesthetics. The film’s art direction is pure gothic candy: crumbling castles, flickering gas lamps, secret laboratories with more levers than a Bond villain’s lair. There’s even a moment when Frankenstein’s lab is fully up and running—complete with lightning, bubbling chemicals, and machinery that hums like a haunted espresso machine.
The sets have so much personality they might as well be characters. And they act better than some of the villagers.
Francis Lets It Rip
Director Freddie Francis doesn’t care about continuity from the previous films. In fact, he takes a blowtorch to it. This isn’t a sequel. It’s a re-imagining, a soft reboot before that term existed—like someone threw all the best Frankenstein tropes into a cauldron and stirred until the bolts flew off.
Francis gives the film an operatic tone, more theatrical than terrifying, and more spectacle than subtlety. And that’s fine, because The Evil of Frankenstein doesn’t want to haunt your dreams. It wants to burn the damn castle down and laugh while it does.
Final Act? Explosions and Melodrama
In true Hammer fashion, the final act descends into chaos. There’s fire. There’s lightning. The creature smashes through walls like he’s auditioning for a Universal Studios stunt show. Everything goes boom. Morality implodes. And the Baron, as always, survives long enough to try again somewhere else.
It’s not deep. It’s not smart. But it is fun. And sometimes, that’s enough.
Final Verdict:
The Evil of Frankenstein is a beautiful mess—like eating blood pudding while watching a Shakespearean actor yell at a corpse. It’s not the best Frankenstein film, but it’s a damn entertaining one. It ignores canon, logic, and occasionally gravity, but it gives us Peter Cushing in a velvet coat, a monster who looks like he wandered in from a community theater production of Frankenstein on Ice, and a hypnotist named Zoltan who absolutely steals the show.
It’s gothic horror by way of circus sideshow. And you know what? That’s not a bad night at the movies.
