Directed by Terence Fisher
Written by Jimmy Sangster
Starring:
- Peter Cushing as Doctor Victor Stein
- Francis Matthews as Doctor Hans Kleve
- Eunice Gayson as Margaret Conrad
- Michael Gwynn/Oscar Quitak as Karl
- Lionel Jeffries as Fritz
- John Welsh as Bergman
Release Date: June 18, 1958
Rating: 
Dr. Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) cheats the guillotine and resurfaces in a quiet provincial enclave under the assumed identity of Dr. Stein, determined to pursue the unnatural investigations cut short in the previous chapter. Hammer enriches this sequel with newfound visual flair and a thread of morbid humor, suggesting a bolder evolution of the Frankenstein series. Yet the production still carries the unmistakable air of commercial obligation rather than inspired artistic impulse; gone is the earlier film’s experimental vitality and its stark, painterly discipline. While the sequel strives to surpass Hammer’s achievement from the previous year, its ambitions overreach the available resources and the filmmakers’ original conception. Jimmy Sangster, the studio’s trusted screenwriter, approaches this chapter of Mary Shelley’s mythos with a more allegorical sensibility than the direct, muscular adaptation he delivered in The Curse of Frankenstein.
The Frankenstein name, tainted by the carnage of prior experiments, has become synonymous with exile; Victor now toils in the shadows, determined once more to fashion a “perfect man” from an assortment of human remnants. Oscar Quitak’s Karl—a pitiable, humpbacked figure who rescues Stein and becomes his loyal servant—aches under the burden of his distorted body, making him the tragic subject of a brain transplant into a young, athletic vessel. Rendered in vivid, blood-bright Technicolor, the film is disarmingly explicit in its depiction of viscera and surgical cruelties, though its sensibility is softer and more emotionally muted than Hammer’s 1957 breakthrough. Yet Peter Cushing channels an inexhaustible vigor into the deranged brilliance of Frankenstein, and his delight is fully reflected in the lively, assured spectacle crafted by Terence Fisher’s enthralling mise-en-scène.
It’s a sturdy sequel, though its errors are pronounced enough to keep me from wholly admiring this second chapter in the Frankenstein cycle. The carefully arranged camera setups appear engineered to make Sangster’s allegory instantly graspable; the film shifts from a portrait of Frankenstein’s obsession with defying life’s natural order into a sardonic parable about mankind’s fixation on physical attractiveness. The Hunchback’s willingness to “sell his soul to the devil” for bodily perfection crystallizes this shift. The parallel between utopian beauty and Frankenstein’s scientific drive is clever—persuasive even—but unmistakably gimmicky. My issue isn’t with Sangster’s thematic acuity or Fisher’s formal precision; I simply wish these refinements belonged to a different picture. This is a Frankenstein film that hardly feels like one, an almost apocryphal detour in the canon. It’s enjoyable, but far from the revelation its admirers make it out to be.
