The Curse of Frankenstein

Yeah, we're here today.

We're kicking off with another great Hammer Horror movie, The Curse of Frankenstein, or Frankenstein, however you want to say it, if you're a young

Frankenstein fan.

Only Mel Brooks didn't direct this, so we're not going to Frankenstein.

And there's a Dean rant coming, by the way.

So buckle up and get your popcorn, everybody, because there's going to be a 60-second rant.

But let's get into The Curse of Frankenstein.

I'm going to ask George an all-important question.

It's not something that, um, was, you know, done away with by the time this movie place, um, it's still pretty common occurrence, but it's, To modern sensibility, it's like, why would you do that? Yeah.

And part of it is the story kind of boxes you into a corner, like we saw with Curse of Frankenstein.

It was an arranged marriage, which is also not fucking cool.

Right.

But yeah, it makes it a lot weirder, I think, in this one than in Curse of Frankenstein, because of the fact that they were raised as siblings.

Yeah.

And this movie is so vulgar.

Yeah.

Chronological.

Okay, we're gonna go with Curse of Frankenstein 'cause it was the beginning of the-

Mm-hmm

...

Mm-hmm

...

The Devil Rides Out, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed.

I'd already left off Taste the Blood of Dracula.

Well, in some areas in 1970.

But in June of 1973, Franco was hired to shoot additional scenes for a Spanish theatrical release of The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, which was retitled as The Curse of Frankenstein.

Not to be confused with the Terrence Fisher film, and again, do you count that as one film or two? I count it as one.

We should mention this sequence, by the way.

First of all, it's the first Italian horror film to be made in color.

And it's an Eastman color so that it has that look, that sort of fairytale quality that hammers like Curse of Frankenstein, Bride of Dracula sort of have.

It looks incredible.

The credits say it is based on the story The Flemish Tales by Peter von Wieg.

Always a good time.

always a great time um with that being said again scott thank you for coming on once again for this uh next week everybody we officially kick off the 666 weeks of horror it is the seventh edition of that and we are starting it off with the curse of frankenstein or at least that's the plan It's still the plan.

It's streaming.

Good.

I'm a film critic and Hammer fangirl, and I'm joined by my co-host, human encyclopedia of film and TV, and Hammer super fan, Kevin Lyons.

Kev, can I still describe you as a super fan when we're talking about Horror of Frankenstein?

You can describe me as a super fang of everything else apart from-

[laughs]

...

Horror of Frankenstein maybe.

Um, that's a possible one, but yeah.

Yeah.

We were talking about you get the introduction of music in movies, and eventually color comes into film, or full color at least, at the end of the decade in '39 with The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind.

But you never see f- horror does not adapt full color into their movies up until '57, uh, with Curse of Frankenstein.

I think that might be a, a cost factor.

Yeah, I guess, right? I mean, I know in the early '30s with, you get that, what, two-strip Technicolor thing-

Because like I said earlier, with the, the screaming was, had such an effect.

Mm-hmm.

God, if you could see Frankenstein and the blood and the gooey body parts like you do in Curse of Frankenstein, people would've lo- would've lost their shit.

Part of me thinks that it's the same thing that we all know to be true now, which is horror is so reliable in turning out at least X amount of audience that you don't need anything special to bring out horror fans, you know what I mean? Like-

Hammer wasn't interested in their pitch, but decided to make a Frankenstein film of their own.

That became The Curse of Frankenstein, a blockbuster hit worldwide... that truly launched Hammer's gothic horrors.

Needless to say, Sabotsky and Rosenberg were a bit chuffed at this.

Just a smidge.

He conducted music for Tron.

Ha! So that's a switch.

We do have a Hammer connection right from the start as the role of the elder who condemns Elizabeth Selwyn is played by Fred Johnson, who played the grandfather murdered by Christopher Lee's creature in The Curse of Frankenstein.

This same year, he would appear with Peter Cushing as the priest in Brides of Dracula and would continue to show up in other Hammer films.