Frankenstein and the Monster from HellHammer's sixth Frankenstein movie, bringing back Peter Cushing as the doctor after the studio's efforts to rejuvenate the character (and the series) in The Horror of Frankenstein. The film wasn't successful, and therefore the reunion also became the mad doctor's swan song - at least as far as Hammer is concerned. Simon Helder, a young doctor studying the collected works of Baron Frankenstein, is arrested for bodysnatching and sent to an asylum. The director seems mentally unstable himself and the person really in charge, is Baron Frankenstein, who has arranged his own death to escape from the authorities. In a desperate attempt to revive the myth (of both the doctor and the studio) the movie took inspiration from some of the most illustrious names in the history of horror. The first half, without any diabolical experiments in the doctor's lab, is vaguely reminiscent of a story by Edgar Allan Poe, set in an asylum, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, while the second half - Frankenstein putting a human brain into the body of an ape-like creature - seems inspired by H.G. Wells' novel The Island of Dr. Moreau. Until recently few fans of the series had seen the full version since the BBFC cut several gory bits and this cleaner version was also used for VHS and DVD; on a recent Australian Blu-ray release, these gory bits have been re-inserted. Modern viewers seem more receptive to the movie; personally I don't know what to think of it. The first half, with a variety of patients having bizarre fantasies (one of them thinks he's God!) is rather funny than eerie; the second half, with this ape-like creature, is closer to what we expect from the studio but the Hammer still doesn't quite nail it; it's unsettling, but fails to deliver the scares. A nasty background story of a mute assistant (a girl who lost her speech while being raped by her father) doesn't really help. I found the whole affair a bit unpleasant.On the positive side Cushing does his very best to make his ambiguous character work; you almost feel sorry for the misunderstood doctor and tend to forget that he's a maniac and a murderer (I'm not so sure about his coiffure though). The movie also offers several nice cameo appearances, one of them by Bernard Lee - M from the Bond movies - as an institutionalized sculptor. The creature is played by David Prowse, who had also played the creature in The Horror of Frankenstein, but is probably best known to wide audiences as the muscle man from Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
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