Rating: 
Summary: The most awful movie in the series.
Review: Peter Cushing plays a very cold blooded Baron in this fifth entry in the Hammer Frankenstein films. Black mailing two lovers into helping him with his mad experiments, transplanting the brain from one man into another, who then goes insane and becomes a monster who kills the lovers and then goes after the Baron. But I guess he didn't succeed, because the Baron came back for another film.
Rating: 
Summary: Frankenstein gone wrong
Review: Sorry but I don't feel this is the best of the Hammer Frankenstein series. That honor belongs to REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN. I even found CURSE more satisfying. The film starts with the mad Baron, wearing an ugly mask, decapitating a critic of his work. Considering he had been sort of heroic in the previous film, where did this Baron suddenly come from? The writing in this series was very inconsistent. The Hammer DRACULA series is much better overall.
Anyway, the movie seems more interested in a look at society's evils and less on the Frankenstein legend. All the Baron does is transplant a brain from one man to another. The man who created life and transplanted souls is little more than a mad doctor in this film. And having Frankenstein rape the woman was totally out of character for the Baron, thrown in by the producer. None of the actors wanted it used.
True it has all the famous Hammer expertise. It looks very atmospheric and gothic, is well acted and directed. But it left me wanting to see a real FRANKENSTEIN movie.
Rating: 
Summary: The Baron is in the building...
Review: The character and quality of Frankenstein varied a bit from film to film in the series. Luckily, Peter Cushing always brought his usual vitality to the role. Here the Baron is up to his old habits. He creates life yet again using the brain of a well respected, brilliant scientist (played with power and pathos by Freddie Jones)to make his creature intelligent. The sequence where the scientist tries to make contact with his widow touches on the sadness and power that made James Whale's "Bride of Frankenstein" so great. "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed" stands as among the best of Hammer's series (along with my personal fav the more atmospheric "Revenge of Frankenstein").The extras amount to the original theatrical trailer. What makes this DVD worthwhile is the sharp, crystal clear and stunning transfer to DVD. The vivid, rich colors from the original film remain, for the most part, in tact. Although there's a bit of fading evident, the rich colors and nicely detailed sets look quite nice. There's few if any analog or digital artifacts in evidence. It's a pity that there's no commentary track from a Hammer film or horror historian. Although most of the cast is dead, Simon Ward (in his debut as a Dr. that Frankenstein blackmails in to helping him make his latest creature)could have provided much needed information about the shooting of the film. It's a pity as "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell" benefited from the commentary track featuring actor David Prowse. A good choice to add to your Hammer film collection.
Rating:
Summary: Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed!
Review: The first night I ever babysat, this movie came on TV. I will never forget how scared I was. The worst moment was when a water main broke under the back garden, where the body was buried, and the lifeless hand and arm came up through the dirt, flopping upwards thanks to the powerful spray of water. And then, of course, the sweet young lady has to go out and pull the body out of the mud and into a shed while the waterworks men are pounding on the gate, to get in. What a great movie!
Rating: 
Summary: Baron Frakenstein tries a simple brain transplant...
Review: The good doctor is back to transplanting brains in this fifth entry in the Hammer Frankenstein series. Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is on the run again and has moved into a boarding house run by lovely Anna Spengler (Veronica Carlson), whose boyfriend Karl (Simon Ward) is a doctor at the local asylum who has been selling drugs to help support Anna's sick mother. The Baron blackmails the couple into helping him with his latest plan. One of the inmates in the asylum is Dr. Brandt (George Pravda), and the Baron wants to use brain surgery to cure his insanity. Unfortunately, Brandt dies from a heart attack during the kidnapping, so the Baron kills the handy Dr. Richter (Freddie Jones) and ends up using that body for Brandt's brain. Frankenstein has never created a more sympathetic figure than we have hear, Richter with Brand's brain in a shaven head covered with stitches. The strength of this film is that it explores the "reality" of the situation, such as when this pitiful creature stands outside his home and tries to make his wife understand what has happened. Of course the title gives away the film's intended climax. Director Terence Fisher considers "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed" to be one of his two best efforts for Hammer films. Judging the film is an interesting balance between the compelling pathos of Brandt with his brain in another man's body and the abrupt changes in Baron Frankenstein from the rest of the series in this 1969 film, undoubtedly due to the appearance of two new screenwriters, Bert Batt and Anthony Nelson-Keys. Cushing's character is no longer a sympathetic figure as he was in most of the earlier films...In the end I judge Freddie Jones' performance as two steps forward to negate the nonsense with Cushing's one step back.
Rating:
Summary: The grim face of madness.
Review: The mad scientist carries on his dark science. Peter Cushing typically appears in Hammer flicks as a benevolent professor type. Dr. Frankenstein is portrayed frequently as well intentioned, but misunderstood. This time, the doctor pursues his research with relentless malice. Brutal murder, blackmail, and even rape befall those in his way. Cushing's cold-blooded and vicious portrayal is really a change of pace. To those who picture the old Boris Karloff version of Frankenstein's monster, this version of the story goes off in yet another direction. Instead of a hulking creature with neck bolts terrorizing torch-bearing villagers, we have the hapless victim of a brain transplant. Dr. Brandt, an associate of Frankenstein's, is the unfortunate person whose brain is now in another body. Not happy with this development, he decides to foil Frankenstein. The large cranial scar is grotesque, but he is otherwise human. The script and director blend pathos with shock appeal. The subplot of the young couple who is forced to assist Frankenstein serves as an excuse for most of the subterfuge of the story. Expect a lot of running around and hiding from the police. Simon Ward and the delectable Veronica Carlson make it endurable. Carlson's appearance in a diaphanous nightgown drives Frankenstein from research to rape and beyond. Thorley Walters provides timely comic relief as a pompous police official. The usual Hammer production values of rich color photography and 19th century European settings are present. Genre fans and collectors should be pleased. It's a change of pace from the mad-slasher type horror flick. ;-)
Rating:
Summary: The fourth in Frankenstein series beginned by Terence Fisher
Review: The most complex and bizarre in the Frankenstein series directed masterfully by the finest speciallist in horror movies Terence Fisher.
Rating:
Summary: The fourth in Frankenstein series started by Terence Fisher
Review: The most complex and bizarre in the Frankenstein series masterfully directed by the finest specialist in horror movies Terence Fisher . The film contains one of the strangest shots of fantastic cinema : that one in which we see through the eyes of the sanatoryum's manager the body where his brain later will be emprisoned .
Rating:
Summary: The evil is within the monster maker!
Review: The UK studio Hammer films did the horror genre a big favor when they bought the rights to the old classic Universal Studio movies and then introduced us to the delights of such things as Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Dr. Victor Frankenstein. They went on to produce an entire series of Dracula and Frankenstein movies as well as the occasional mummy movie and others. The Dracula series peaked with the excellent Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and the Frankenstein series peaked at about the same time with this equally excellent movie Frankenstein Must be Destroyed. Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory is inadvertently discovered and he is forced to abandon everything and move to another location to start all over again. He moves to a new city where he takes up residence in a nice boarding house owned and managed by gorgeous blonde Hammer glamour girl Veronica Carlson whose fiance is a young doctor who works at an insane asylum. It happens that this is the same asylum where a former colleague of Frankenstein's is now committed following a mental breakdown caused by the strain of his work combined with the hostility of the medical establishment to their extremely advanced concepts of brain transplants, etc. When Frankenstein discovers that Veronica and the young doctor have been supplementing their income by selling narcotics stolen from the asylum he uses the information to blackmail them into becoming his accomplices. He plans to break his former colleague out of the asylum and then cure his insanity so that he can retrieve vital information which will save him years of experimentation. Mary Shelley created a Victor Frankenstein that is a tragic character, a modern prometheus, a young and naive scientist who lets yet another powerful and dangerous genie out of the bottle and then ends up trying to cope with the consequences. In stark contrast, Peter Cushing's character is a brilliant, mature, worldly, and cultured man who is proceeding entirely with his eyes wide open. At the same time, he is an utterly ruthless man, driven relentlessly by the ambition for more scientific knowledge and power, who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He commits numerous felonies including several murders without any hesitation or remorse whatsoever. The monster he creates this time has the mind of a fellow doctor and scientist. The monster has become the tragic character, an intelligent and gentle man who returns from the anguish of insanity only to be rejected as a hideous stranger by his beloved wife. Something has to give and it does.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping story, but poor treatment of Frankenstein character
Review: This could have been a five-star entry into Hammer's Frankenstein series--one which I consider superior to the one produced by Universal. But, unfortunately, the portrayal of the central character, Baron Frankenstein, is off when compared to other entries in the series, particularly high-points like "Curse of Frankenstein" and "Frankenstein Created Woman." In those films, there was something twistly heroic about Frankenstein... one almost finds oneself hoping he'll succeed. But here, he is just a vicious killer, a brutal rapist, a creature with no redeeming qualities safe for the inherent charm of Peter Cushing, the actor who portrays him. The tale has Frankenstein blackmail a crooked doctor at a local asylum into giving him access to a mad scientist so
Frankenstein can cure the madness through brain surgery. The corruption of Frankenstein and the crooked doctor spread to engulf the doctor's otherwise innocent fiance. On the very night of Frankenstein's seeming triumph, everyone ends up paying for their crimes, including Frankenstein himself. The "morality play" aspect of this film works extremely well. What doesn't work is Frankenstein's completely monstrous nature. And it's made worse by the brutal rape he visits upon Victoria Carlson (who gives what is probably her best performance in this film). It's a shame really that the central character should be so off in the way he was written.
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