(re)search my Trash

<body> <div align="left"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="800" cellpadding="0" height="100%"> <tr> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/square.gif" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="592" height="1%" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/squareright.gif" valign="top">  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="99%">    <p>Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) has been decaptitated at the end of <b><a href="curseoffrankenstein(1957).shtml">Curse of Frankenstein</a></b> - but at the beginning of this film it is revealed that actually a priest has fallen prey to the guillotine in his stead, and he has since started a new practice in a village nearby, where he has not only stolen the rich patients from the medical council, but also established a hospital for the poor. One day though, he is found out by a young doctor, Hans Kleve (Francis Matthews), who is thank God so fascinated by his work that he blackmails him into making him his assistant - which Frankenstein totally welcomes since he's in dire need of one.<p>Frankenstein has a new project, to give his partially paralyzed helper Karl (Oscar Quitak) a new body (Michael Gwynn) made up from spareparts collected at graveyards around the countryside. And of course, Frankenstein could never have succeeded in such a complex operation without Kleve's support. Once Karl has his new, perfectly healthy body though and Kleve (rather carelessly) tells him that Frankenstein wants to make him an exhibit of his science show, he escapes, eventually gets into a fight in which his brain is damaged, and slowly becomes a murderous creature much like Frankenstein's original monster.<p>Eventually, he attacks a social function where Frankenstein is present and is killed, but not without spilling the beans on his master. Frankenstein is soon branded a criminal, also of course thanks to the meidcal council of the village, but to escape arrest he has chosen another way out: Let himself be killed by the beggars at his hospital for the poor who think him a monster, but not without giving Kleve instructions on how to transplant his brain into a new body ... and before the film is over, Frankenstein and Kleve have put up shop in London ...<p> <p>A very deserving sequel to the great (and groundbreaking) <b><a href="curseoffrankenstein(1957).shtml">Curse of Frankenstein</a></b>, like its predecessor full of (for its times) explicit special effects and morbid ideas, but also macabre details and quite a bit of black humour, while building on the moral ambivalence of the earlier film even more inasmuch as Frankenstein is almost the good guy here - if it wasn't for the fact that he was sacrificing everything, and especially human lives, for the sake of science. Pack all of this into a very solid direction by Terence Fisher and get Peter Cushing to repeat his role as Frankenstein and you have got (formulaic) genre cinema near perfection. <p>  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="1%">  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> currentyear = "2010"; </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT language="JavaScript" src="../scripts/endcredits.js"></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> dosworsdonn(); </SCRIPT> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body>