The Curse of Frankenstein

A horror film set in the nineteenth century. Victor Frankenstein is in prison awaiting execution. He tells his story to a priest and the narrative turns back. The young Victor inherits a large fortune and hires a tutor: Paul. The two work together and succeed in bringing dead tissue to life. Paul stops there. Victor does not. He decides to work on a man. He starts gathering the parts: the body of a hanged man, the brain of an acquaintance and what can be taken from a graveyard. The brain is the turning point; Victor commits a murder to get it. The creature wakes. The brain has been damaged and what appears is not what he expected. The character at the centre is not the creature but Victor. The narrative shows him as arrogant, cold and using everyone around him; the horror comes largely from him. Peter Cushing plays Victor, Christopher Lee the creature and Robert Urquhart plays Paul. Terence Fisher directed. It was the first in the Hammer studio's run of gothic horror in colour and a large box office success; a long series followed. One of the starting points of its kind for anyone who likes classic horror and the Hammer style. For a viewer expecting the measures of horror today, the film is slow and builds its tension from sets and performance.