Frankenstein must die

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Movie
German title Frankenstein has to die
Original title Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1969
length 98 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Terence Fisher
script Bert Batt
production Anthony Nelson Keys for Hammer Productions
music James Bernard
camera Arthur Grant
cut Gordon Hales
occupation

Frankenstein must die (Original title: Frankenstein Must be Destroyed ) is a horror film by the British Hammer Studios from 1969. It was directed by Terence Fisher and the title role of Baron Frankenstein was played by Peter Cushing . The film is the fifth Frankenstein film from Hammer Studios. The alternative title is Frankenstein is looking for a new victim .

action

The baron Frankenstein, believed dead, is working on a new experiment: a brain transplant.

In order to be able to put his project into practice, he forces the support of the young doctor Dr. Karl Holst, because he knows about his drug offenses. Holst works in an asylum where Dr. Frederick Brandt is in prison, a scientist of dubious reputation who worked on the same experiment as Frankenstein before he went insane. The young doctor is to help the baron, Dr. To free Brandt, because only he discovered a successful method, according to which one can freeze a human brain for a longer period of time without the tissue being destroyed. The rescue operation succeeds, they take him to the basement of Anna Spengler's pension, Holst's fiancé. But Brandt suffers a heart attack that he would not survive without medical treatment. However, Frankenstein already has the solution. Together with Holst, he kidnaps the director of the insane asylum, Professor Richter and transplanted Brandt's brain into his body.

When he wakes up, he is shocked to find that he is in a strange body. He tries to speak to Anna, but she shrinks back in horror from his hideous surgical scars and stabs him with a scalpel. Badly wounded, he fled. When Frankenstein finds out about it, he goes mad. He kills Anna and goes in pursuit, suspecting Brandt will try to get to his old home. Holst has since discovered the murder of his fiancée and pursues the baron with the intention of taking revenge.

Brandt has gone to his house, he soaks his carpets and curtains with kerosene and is waiting for Frankenstein. He appears shortly afterwards and demands the secret of the preservation process. Brandt actually hands him his documents, but then sets the house on fire to destroy himself and the baron. Frankenstein escapes through a window and runs into Holst, who immediately beats him up. However, Brandt intervenes and knocks the young doctor unconscious. Then he grabs the baron and throws himself into the flames with him.

Reviews

  • Cinema : "Comfortable horror from the British Hammer Studios with an extra cold-blooded Peter Cushing."
  • Protestant film observer : “More like a film about a misunderstood doctor who was ahead of his time with a few scary effects than a horror film. There are no hints about the problem of the topic. Otherwise done routinely. If necessary for tireless adult Frankenstein fans. "

Sequels

Frankenstein's horror (1970) is the only Frankenstein film by Hammer in which Peter Cushing does not appear and Ralph Bates plays Victor Frankensteininstead. The film is also seen less as a sequel, but more as a remake of Frankenstein's Curse (1957) and is therefore actually outside the Frankenstein series.

In the final sequel, Frankenstein's Infernal Monster (1974) was again directed by Terence Fisher and Peter Cushing took the lead role.

Premieres

  • UK 22nd May 1969
  • Germany 19th September 1969

DVD release

  • Frankenstein Must Die / September 24, 2004 / Warner Home Video
  • Hammer Films: Horror Collection (Contains: Frankenstein's Curse / Revenge of the Pharaohs / Frankenstein Must Die ) / October 26, 2007 / Warner Home Video

Others

  • In Frankenstein has to die , the character of Baron Frankenstein is probably portrayed as the cruelest of all the films in the Hammer Frankenstein series, as he does not shy away from murder, rape or blackmail.
  • The scene in which Anna is raped was not in the original script and was filmed despite objections from Peter Cushing and Veronica Carlson. The chairman of Hammer, James Carreras, was put under pressure by the American distributors and so the scene was subsequently filmed and inserted. That is why the rape is not mentioned by either Anna or Frankenstein in the further course of the film.
  • In one point, Frankenstein must die most closely follows the literary model of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , since "the creature" in this film is not a primitive monster that only makes growling and humming noises, but rather a pitiful, misunderstood being that is quite able to speak and which in the end turns against its Creator.

literature

  • Karin Kaltenbrunner: Mad Medicine. To represent the scientist in the Frankenstein cycle of Hammer Film Productions (1957–1974) . LIT Verlag, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-50562-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frankenstein must die. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 431/1969