BEFORE: I can't believe it, but after last night there are just 50 more movies to watch in 2017. But I feel good about the fact that I know exactly what those 50 films are going to be. All of those are in my possession on DVD except for 10 of them - of those 10, 4 will be released on the big screen this fall, another 4 I'll have to buy in a DVD set from Amazon, 1 is screening on Netflix, and the 10th I will be taping off cable very soon. So it's all kind of coming together as I'd hoped. (And I now have a ticket for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" on December 15, so I've got that going for me...)
Of the remaining 50, 12 of them are horror films - and once I'm done with Frankenstein films, I'm going to transition to a mix of aliens and creatures - you'll see what I mean in a few days, and how the linking has dictated what's in this year, and what's being put off until next year. And if nothing links together next year, which is possible, I'm prepared to accept that - at least I'll know I had the best possible Movie Year 9, and October of Movie Year 10 is for random follow-ups (ghosts, zombies, Dr. Jekyll and yeah, probably more vampires).
Peter Cushing carries over again from "The Revenge of Frankenstein". Since TCM ran these films last year, I've learned that "Revenge" was the 2nd film from Hammer Studios in their Frankenstein series, and tonight's film is not the third, but the fourth. So TCM kind of screwed me here, by not running ALL of the films in this series, just select ones. And I usually trust them to be completists, like me - what gives, TCM? Now I've got to watch an incomplete series, and even if I do catch up later, the other films will now be out of sequence.
Who knows, maybe the third film, "The Evil of Frankenstein" was really terrible, and they're doing me a favor. For now, I'll have to proceed with the plan, I'm locked in to it now.
THE PLOT: Baron Frankenstein captures the soul of a recently executed young man and installs it in the dead body of a young maiden, Christina. With the memories of the man still intact, she starts to kill the people whose false accusations led to the man's execution.
AFTER: The Baron is back, after some other adventures not disclosed here, and he's back to doing medical experiments - because those have worked out SO well in the past... And though this is still set back in the prehistoric age where science is concerned, this film was made in 1967, so what else can you expect from the swingin' sixties but a beautiful young Playboy model type playing the poor, crippled peasant barmaid? And the doctor can't wait to put a man's soul into that body, because that's just so kinky, right? But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First off, we're presented with Hans, a noble peasant man who's been known to help Dr. Frankenstein (who's back to using his full last name now, so I guess the heat's died down...) and his new medical partner, Dr. Hertz (is his first name Dick?) around the lab. When Hans was a boy, he watched his father get executed by guillotine (because Hammer Films paid good money for that guillotine, so they have to use it in EVERY film...) and that affected him deeply. Hans loves Christina, the daughter of the local innkeeper, and the innkeeper isn't crazy about Hans dating his daughter. But she's paralyzed on one side, so really, the innkeeper should just be happy that someone has taken an interest.
Then there are these three "dandies" - in modern times they'd be called "douchebags" - who frequent the inn and give Christina a hard time. Hans gets into a scuffle with them to defend her honor, but they return late at night to steal some wine and end up killing the innkeeper and framing Hans for the crime. As we've seen in previous Frankenstein films, there was no real forensic science back then, so all you had to do was leave someone else's article of clothing at the murder scene, and no worries. Hans refuses to give up an alibi, I guess because if he said he was sleeping with Christina, that would destroy what little reputation she has left in that small German town.
Dr. Frankenstein appears at Hans' trial as a character witness, but that feels rather half-hearted, since the Baron probably can't wait to get a fresh dead body to try out his new "soul machine", which can somehow remove the soul from a dead body - even one with the head chopped off. It's something of a leap in logic from one experiment - the Doctor has his own body frozen and revived, to prove that the soul does not leave the body after death - to the next, but it's really junk science that makes this whole franchise work, so you kind of just have to roll with it. At least this is more elegant than cutting the brain out of one body and putting it in another - cheaper in terms of special effects, too.
So Hans dies and the Doctor vacuums out his soul, and then Christina is so distraught that she drowns herself, giving the Doctor the perfect (?) place to put Hans' soul. But he kind of forgets to remove her own soul, so suddenly there are two souls fighting for control of that body. Hans' spirit ends up acting like a voice in Christina's head, telling her to seduce and kill the men who framed him. I can't quite tell if this is poetic justice or an evil spirit acting from beyond the grave, maybe somehow it's both.
Also starring Susan Denberg, Thorley Walters (last seen in "The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother"), Robert Morris, Duncan Lamont (last seen in "Mutiny on the Bounty"), Peter Blythe, Barry Warren, Derek Fowlds, Alan MacNaughtan (last seen in "Patton"), Peter Madden (last seen in "Doctor Zhivago"), Philip Ray, Ivan Beavis, Colin Jeavons (last seen in "The French Lieutenant's Woman"), Alec Mango (last seen in "Lust for Life").
RATING: 3 out of 10 spilled glasses of wine
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