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The Curse of Frankenstein (1957 England)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 4:09 pm    Post subject: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957 England) Reply with quote



Hammer Studios elected not to compete directly with the deluge of science fiction movies Hollywood was cranking out in such wonderful profusion the 1950s. Instead Hammer breathed new life into an old genre: the gothic horror story.





Peter Cushing plays Dr. Frankenstein in the first color version of the Mary Shelley classic, a version that displayed plenty of red blood, not to mention the rosy skin of co-stars Hazel Court (as Cushing's fiance) and Valerie Gaunt (as his sexy maid).





Robert Urquhart is Cushing's lab assistant. The story is told in flashback to a priest by Cushing while he sits in a jail cell, awaiting sentencing for several murders which his monster actually committed. No one believes his story about the monster, because it was destroyed in a vat of acid.





Lab assist Urquhart disapproves of the doctor's experiments and refuses to corroborate Cushing's story. The film concludes with Cushing sentenced to the guillotine, but he comes back in five sequels.

Christopher Lee's lean, angular face is virtually unrecognizable in the somewhat crude monster makeup.






Director Terence Fisher effectively cornered the market on horror films after this $250,000 sleeper grossed millions and established Cushing and Lee as the crown princes in the new age of horror films. Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Rick
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 10:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This was a biggie for me. It was the first horror film I ever saw in a theater. It was the first color horror film I'd ever seen. Matter of fact, it was only the third film of any kind I'd seen in a theater, and only the second color film of any kind I'd ever seen.

I was 9 years old, but only a few days shy of my tenth birthday. One of the best things about my dad leaving us (and, frankly, there were several) was that my mom loosened the restrictions and I was allowed to go to the local bijou, so long as a friend went with me.

So that Saturday in January of 1960, my friend Bill, a year older than me and well-experienced in moviegoing, accompanied me to the LeRose. We arrived a few minutes early, found our seats and waited.

Now...I had seen the poster. I think I had seen the trailer. I know I'd heard a lot from my friends about CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. And what I'd heard was that it was the bloodiest, scariest, most extreme, most out-of-control monster movie ever made. They told me that this movie showed EVERYTHING. No horror was too horrible, no scene too outrageous. They said it would all be on camera, nothing would be hidden or cut away from. It would ALL be shown. And in color.

So, with this in my not-quite-ten-year-old brain, I sat and waited. The LeRose always played mellow music over the speakers before movie time. There would be Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis and The Lettermen. I heard it, but it didn't register. Bill was talking at me nonstop, but not a word sank in.

I was petrified. The movie hadn't started and I was already shaking with fear. I was sure that I wasn't up to this. I was sure that a nine year old kid was not capable of surviving through this. My heart was pounding. I could feel it, too loud and too fast. I was worried that I'd die right there in my seat before the first frame of the movie was projected. And if I made it into the movie, well, the horrors contained therein would absolutely kill me.

I had a bizarre fantasy of my friend Bill knocking on the door of our family home and telling my mom, "Well, Mrs. Pruitt, Rickie...uhh...well, shoot, Rickie died. CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN killed him!"

I gave serious thought to just leaving. Hopping up, running up the aisle and going home. But...come on, that wasn't possible. I'd never live down an embarrassment like that. Better to be dead than to be eternally branded as a chicken.

So I sat and waited for my heart to burst. The movie started. Really colorful. Pretty gross. But not fatal.

I've always felt that CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN is a disappointment, but I've never been sure if that feeling didn't spring from the mere fact of my living through it. I mean, how much more can you expect of a film beyond it killing you? So, yes, my expectations were sky-high. But I lived. So, ehhh...

Nowadays, I like CURSE, but it's far from my Hammer favorite. Probably not in my top 10 Hammers. But I recognize its vital importance in horror film history and honor it for that.

It's a good movie, not a great one. And it's not, thankfully, a Killer movie.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 11:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Well, wow and ka-pow — this is rip-roarin' good yarn, Rick, and I love it! Very Happy

I can't imagine how long it took you to write this and get it just the way you wanted. Don't even tell me if it didn't take hours and hours, 'cause I take forever to finally do the job right, and I still make more typos than the fleas on a junkyard dog.

If you haven't read my opus on The Time Machine yet, take a look at it sometime. I tried to make it like your tale above in some ways — only it's long as hell, so tell the neighbors not to worry if they don't see you come out of the house for a few days . . . Shocked

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 24, 2017 11:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I found several interesting trivia items on IMDB.
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Although they had both previously appeared in Hamlet (1948) and Moulin Rouge (1952), Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing met on the set of this film for the first time. They would pass the time between shots by exchanging Looney Tunes phrases, and quickly developed a fast friendship, which lasted until Cushing's death in 1994.

Note from me: The mental image of these two distinguished actors joking around like that is pretty funny.

Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing's friendship was sparked when Lee stormed into Cushing's dressing room, complaining that "I've got no lines!" Cushing kindly responded, "You're lucky. I've read the script."

Note from me: Yep, these two were a couple of scamps! Laughing

The script called for a child actress to play Hazel Court's character, Elizabeth, as a little girl of three or four in flashback scenes. Court suggested to the producers that her daughter, Sally Walsh, who looked very much like her mother, play the part. As Court said in an interview, "She hated it - HATED being in it! I think it was all foreign to her, and she didn't understand it. She still remembers it to this day, and still doesn't like it!"

_

Note from me: Hazel was beautiful. Knowing the little girl is her daughter is an interesting thing to know.

Melvyn Hayes explains in the Blu-Ray "making of" feature how producer Peter Rogers told him about the casting process of the monster. According to Rogers, a memo went out indicating Hammer was looking for "someone big" to play the monster. In the end, it boiled down to Christopher Lee and Bernard Bresslaw. Both their agents were phoned, asking them how much money they wanted. Bresslaw's minimum fee was 10 pounds a day, whereas Lee's was 8. "And so, for the sake of two pounds, Christopher Lee became an international star", according to Hayes.

Note from me: I wonder if Mr. Bresslaw ever thinks about that little boo-boo his agent made.

_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I remember pouring over the theater ads in the Atlanta Journal in the 1950s, looking for movies at the Roosevelt Drive-in.

The idea of going to a drive-in or an indoor theater when I was a kid and seeing some of the co-billed movies I found double-feature newspaper ads for is fun to contemplate.

I never cared for horror, but I'll bet these two were fun! Very Happy




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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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MetroPolly
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 5:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Amazingly, I didn't see this one 'til after I'd seen other entries in the franchise. I LOVE the Hammer films.

BTW, the Baron was sentenced to death by Guillotine, IIRC, not hanging. I might be wrong, but the image of a blade sticks with me.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 8:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

MetroPolly wrote:
BTW, the Baron was sentenced to death by Guillotine, IIRC, not hanging. I might be wrong, but the image of a blade sticks with me.

Thanks, Polly. I fixed it in the initial post. I'm sure Dr. Frankenstein wouldn't want people to think he was hung if he actually wasn't.

I, on the other hand, have never minded rumors to that effect.
Rolling Eyes
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2018 1:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Curse isn't really sci-fi, more pure horror! It's the movie that started Hammer Films in 1957 and it's fantastic! The way Peter Cushing operates on his victims and plans his disgusting antics are well written and even here it's obvious that Frankenstein is the main focus of this film series rather than his monster which was the idea behind the old Universal pictures of the thirties and forties!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 3:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I understand what you're saying, JB, and I agree that this movie is primarily a horror film. But horror and science fiction are NOT mutually exclusive! Very Happy

The Thing from Another World (1951) is a perfect blend of horror and science fiction. But Dracula (1931) is a pure horror film with no trace of science fiction in the story's premise.

Frankenstein (1931) is both horror and science fiction because it tells a frightening story about a scientist who creates a human being by assembling parts of dead bodies and reanimating it with an electrical charge. Defibrillators do the same thing every day! Shocked

No magic, no witchcraft, no satanic rituals. Frankenstein is just about a science experiment gone horribly wrong! Shocked

For that reason, I'm comfortable with including horror/sci-fi here on All Sci-Fi. And I know that I've cheated a little from time to time when a movie was a favorite of mine . . . but hey, when you have your own message board, you get to do that. Laughing

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 3:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes Bud.....all incarnations derived from the original FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelly are very definitely science fiction.....by Victorian standards of course.

This was an AWESOME movie that reintroduced real horror-sci-fi into it's time. For a ten year old it was sheer fodder to his (or her) sense of wonder!

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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 12:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hazel Court was a damn fine beautiful lady! Our loss in the UK was your gain in the US! Wink Sadly she only made two Hammer films, this and The Man Who could Cheat Death!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 2:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Yep, Hazel was a honey all right. Cool



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 3:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There was an actress over here called Bobbie Brown whom I thought was absolutely delicious but she sadly seems to have ditched acting in the late eighties! She was in Flash Gordon, Blakes 7 and a show where she was in her bra and panties a lot called Tropic which really needs to be released on DVD but unfortunately it wasn't science fiction!
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 5:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

_________________
________________ The Curse Of Frankenstein

__________




Hammer's version of the Mary Shelley novel turned out to be the first of a series of films after this one caught the attention of many in the public.

In this color version, we meet Baron Frankenstein when he's still a teen; his parents are dead, so he's inherited the estate. He hires Paul (Robert Urquhart) as a special tutor because he wants learned wisdom beyond that offered in conventional schools.

This teacher-tutor relationship continues after Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) reaches adulthood, when it is now a partnership of equals. Soon, however, Frankenstein's goals begin to differ from his partner's, as Paul notices some disturbingly unnatural obsessions in his former pupil's behavior, as well as a cold callousness.





All this leads to, of course, the compilation and creation of the first artificial man (Christopher Lee), a tall, unpleasant creature whol looks like it just stepped out of its grave. It never speaks and seems to have only animal-like intelligence.

Frankenstein is presented in this version as ruthless, not above murder to achieve his ends. His worst act is the killing of an elderly colleague whose brain he wants for the eventual creature; Frankenstein makes it look like an accident.

Paul has reached the end of his patience at this point and a scuffle damages, we presume, the brain.

The story, however, doesn't limit itself to just Frankenstein's questionable ethics in science; he also carries on an affair with a maid, even as his fiancee (Hazel Court) has arrived at the residence.

This update seemed to fervently attempt a more modern take on the Frankenstein legend, in comparison to the thirties version; it's quaint now.


___________________

This was a low budget film, but the sets, the color photography, the actors, and the suggestion of opulence lent it the illusion of something grand and impressive, setting the tone for most of Hammer's output from then on.

The intriguing aspect to this version, however, was the subtle suggestion by the end that Frankenstein's creation was only a delusion of his; also, two supposed victims of the creature — an old blind man and a boy — are never verified. Frankenstein appeared to meet his fate at the guillotine at the end, but we would see differently in the sequel, Revenge of Frankenstein (1958).

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10


____________ The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)


__________



BoG
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 10:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

The late and legendary Bogmeister has done it again! Very Happy

He wrote a review for a movie I saw at the East Point Theater with my buddy Jimmy Harmon when it came out . . . and yet, neither of us liked it one little bit. Sad

Gruesome horror movies just weren't what Jimmy and I were into. The one on the marquee below was the kind WE loved!

_______

But Bogmeister's review is well written and fascinating, a carefully crafted study of what made this movie good for the folks who do like this kind of film, along with an analysis of why it didn't appeal to me and Jimmy Harmon . . . and Andrew Bogdan.

I'm almost tempted to watch this gruesome movie again, now that I understand it better, just to see the film that inspired Andrew's insightful and well written essay. Cool

And, of course, the skillful inclusion of his images and his YouTube videos are a real plus for his post — a post which was part of his "lost message board" until young Eadie found it on the web, which gave me the ability to rescue Andrew's literary creations and bring them back to All Sci-Fi, the board which Andrew poured his heart and soul into for five years! Very Happy



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____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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