Cheap Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (Video) (Peter Cushing, Veronica Carlson) (Terence Fisher) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

Baron Frakenstein tries a simple brain transplant...
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.

---

Who is the real monster
This is Hammer's fifth Frankenstein movie in the series and again Peter Cushing plays the Baron. He transplants the brain of a brilliant but insane Dr. Brandt into the body of Dr. Richter. The Baron appears to be the monster and the creature is just an unhappy victim, which is apparent in the opening scene where the Baron is wearing a hideous mask. At the end, the creature, whose mental agonies have turned into a hatred for the Baron, carries the Baron back into a blazing house.

The next in the series is The Horror Of Frankenstein (1970).

---

Hammer's finest hour?
FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (UK - 1969): Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) blackmails a young medical student (Simon Ward) and his fiancee (Veronica Carlson) into helping him with a brain transplant which goes horribly wrong.

Following a long period of cheap-looking productions designed to play as double-features on their home turf, Hammer returned to premium quality horror with FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, arguably the company's finest hour, and certainly Peter Cushing's definitive portrayal of the monstrous Baron. Instead of the misguided adventurer depicted in previous films, screenwriter Bert Batt emphasizes the Baron's ruthless pursuit of knowledge and power, culminating in an unexpected sequence in which Cushing's domination of Carlson segues from mere tyranny to rape, a scene which Cushing reportedly found distasteful. Overall, however, Batt's script allows the characters to evolve via a skilfully constructed plot which employs levels of drama and emotion largely absent from much of Hammer's output at the time, alongside the usual elements of horror and suspense. Director Terence Fisher rises to the occasion with remarkable dexterity, orchestrating set-pieces which have been compared to Hitchcock in some quarters, especially the opening sequence in which a petty thief (Harold Goodwin) breaks into the wrong house and has a truly hair-raising confrontation with its volatile owner (leading to a truly great 'reveal'); and the traumatic moment in the back garden of Carlson's boarding house, when she's forced to deal with a corpse (one of Frankenstein's cast-offs) ejected from its makeshift grave by a burst water pipe. Freddie Jones adds pathos to the proceedings as the helpless victim of Frankenstein's latest experiment, his brain transplanted into another man's body against his will, traumatizing his incredulous wife (Maxine Audley) who refuses to accept his new identity (a scenario echoed by a similar plotline in John Woo's FACE/OFF in 1997). The period decor may look a little cramped and cut-price in places, but this is Hammer/Fisher/Cushing at the very height of their creative powers, and the film is a small masterpiece of British Gothic.

Warner's DVD offers a sterling reproduction of the film, letterboxed to its original screen ratio, anamorphically enhanced, with a strong soundtrack marred only by background hiss (clearly audible during quieter sequences) and a brief muffled section toward the end of the movie, during a short sequence without music or dialogue. The only extra is a trailer which sells the film as an outright exploitation flick, though the production is slightly classier than this tell-all promotion suggests! The running time quoted below doesn't include the Time Warner logo at the end of the DVD print, which wasn't part of the original film.

100m 33s
1.75:1 / Anamorphically enhanced
DVD soundtrack: Mono 1.0
Theatrical soundtrack: Optical mono
Optional English subtitles and closed captions
Region 1