1967: FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN

What’s it about?

Presumably tired of animating monsters, Dr Frankenstein (played by Peter Cushing) and his two assistants instead work on experiments intended to preserve life after death. Frankenstein’s plan to achieve this consists of trapping a departing soul as it takes flight after death, repairing or replacing any bodily damage, and returning the soul to bring the patient back to life. But while celebrating the partial success of one experiment in the local village, Frankenstein’s younger assistant gets into a brawl with three insolent dandies. Later, the dandies accidentally kill a man, and the assistant is convicted of the crime and sentenced to death.

Frankenstein sets his sights on using the boy for his first true attempt at bringing a corpse back to life. And when the boy’s sweetheart (a barmaid with some physical disabilities) drowns herself in grief after the execution, Frankenstein decides to transfer the boy’s soul to her body instead of repairing the mess the guillotine made. But the success of the experiment only results in complications as the revived girl seems to have two personalities -- and not necessarily nice ones.




Is it any good?

I haven’t seen as many Frankenstein movies as I probably should have, but the usual formula seems to consist of the doctor using spare body parts to construct a monster that then goes on to terrorize people and/or be terrorized by people until it is destroyed. Variations in the story are for the most part confined to adjustments in Frankenstein’s motivations (anywhere from “scientifically obsessed” to “demonically possessed”) and similar adjustments in the monster’s personality (“misunderstood and persecuted” to “homicidally evil”). But FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN throws out about 95% of this formula, and I think it’s all the better for it.

Not only is the story in FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN less familiar than that in the usual Frankenstein movie, but I think it may actually be a better one. The big elephant in the room with Frankenstein has always been why anybody should go to all that trouble just to make a human being. After all, there already exists a pretty reliable method for making new humans -- and it doesn’t require grave robbery, hacksaws, electric shocks, or hunchbacks. So at some level it’s usually necessary to take Frankenstein as an allegory or a psychological case study -- why he wants to build monsters is ultimately less important than what happens when he tries. But FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN doesn’t really need any of this hand-waving since the doctor’s goal -- restoring the recently deceased to life -- is one that has obvious medical benefits.




In fact, the Frankenstein that Peter Cushing plays here hardly even seems to be the same character who shows up in other movies. There is no mention of any monsters at all, neither in his past nor his future. Some of the villagers do suspect that the doctor may be a witch, but the law treats him as a perfectly law abiding citizen -- more eccentric than dangerous or frightening. Probably the best scene with Frankenstein is one where he appears as a character witness at his assistant’s trial. He seems genuinely concerned and gives a sympathetic testimony, but always remains intellectual and detached. When asked whether it would be “impossible” for the boy to have committed the crime, instead of insisting on his belief in the boy’s innocence, Frankenstein pauses and then says he can’t definitely rule out the possibility. There’s no suggestion that this piece of testimony is what sends the boy to the guillotine, but it’s certainly the kind of precise answer that scientific mind would give and that the villagers might misconstrue.

I wrote last week in my entry about THE FACE OF ANOTHER that I am starting to think it’s often better when movies simply hint at deeper themes instead of completely exploring them. It was while watching FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN that this idea hit me most clearly. There is, after all, a potentially rich and bizarre occurrence at the heart of this movie: a boy dies and is then brought back to life in the body of his girlfriend. Besides the gender switch, one would also expect a certain amount of distress to come from inhabiting the body of your old flame. Those questions are all natural enough, given the premise of the movie, but they remain for the most part completely unaddressed. Yet, I decided that I was okay with that. For once, I was watching an interesting Frankenstein movie with a fairly unique story, and mostly I just wanted to find out how it was going to end. It also didn’t seem likely that this particular movie could have really gone anywhere really satisfying with those deep, difficult questions. There’s something to be said for not biting off more than you can chew.




In any event, the way the story does end isn’t exactly a revelation. The revived girl doesn’t remember much of her past life, and mostly just wants to know who she is and where she came from. The boy’s soul seems to be mingled in with her own, and he only really asserts himself to exact murderous revenge on the dandies who got him killed. This is as close as the movie ever gets to a monster, and interestingly enough it means at the end that Frankenstein comes off looking pretty good. He never has to pay for his crimes against nature, and frankly it’s not clear that he actually committed any. In the usual Frankenstein story, it’s the doctor himself who gets blamed for the behavior of the monster since it is his creation. In this case, however, the murderous “monster” is really the soul of another human being which Frankenstein merely transferred to a new body, so there’s not much of a feeling that the doctor could be directly responsible for what follows. The ending is a bit run-of-the-mill, but all in all this is a refreshingly unusual take on a story that is often just way too familiar.



What else happened this year?

-- Professor Quatermass makes a horrific discovery in the London Underground that casts new light on the course of human evolution in the last of Hammer's original Quatermass trilogy, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT.
-- And the Czechs put together one of the best sci-fi movies from anywhere in the Soviet bloc with THE END OF AUGUST AT THE HOTEL OZONE. It follows a group of young, wild women wandering a post-apocalyptic world where there are practically no male survivors.
-- George Lucas filmed his student short ELECTRONIC LABYRINTH: THX-1138 4EB, which would be the basis for his first feature film in 1971.
-- Don Knotts and Leslie Nielsen starred in THE RELUCTANT ASTRONAUT, which I only just realized moments ago is available online or I would have definitely watched it already.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1967...

Go for QUATERMASS AND THE PIT if you can find it, or THE END OF AUGUST AT THE HOTEL OZONE if you can't.