But FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN began to bother me from the
first viewing. Why was the Baron suddenly trying to mess around with ‘souls’?
What is this crap!? The Baron I knew would have laughed at the very idea of
such a thing. He was a man of reason and science, dammit! Souls were silly
fictions made up to scare the ignorant masses into being nice, obedient slaves.
Frankenstein dealt in reality! He dealt in the grimy, bloody viscera of the
human animal and knew what made it function. This is the man who constructed a
body from corpses and zapped life into it! Souls? Show me one! Where is it? The
fact that this story posits that he would care about a soul much less attempt
to construct a way of capturing one just struck me as ridiculous.
Then I rewatched the movie last week. The fine podcast 1951 Down Place wasthe push I needed. When the show’s hosts decided to cover FCW for its October
show I cringed. I like to be able to add comments for them when I can and since
I hadn’t seen the film for years I felt it was time to revisit the Baron’s soul
experiments. I did not look forward to it.
Imagine my surprise when, this time, the film worked for me.
The process by which the Baron might come to shift his experimental focus from
only surgery to this line of inquiry became clear. After multiple failures,
that he often could not account for, his ever quick mind seems to have moved to
new areas. Since he had clearly perfected the physical aspect of the process
(after a fashion) it would be only natural to look into a better way of moving
the human mind from one person’s corpse to a fresh creation. The question of
how to insure a stable ‘creature’ is then solved- fix the damaged body then
insert the consciousness of another person into the repaired body. No more screwing
around with brains and transplants – he can just swap the mental essence of a
person from one place to another. Genius! Of course, the bizarre machinery
he builds that can capture the ‘soul’ is completely crazy in both concept and
in the way it’s depicted. With its floating ball of energy held in a colorfully
lit room it comes off as absurd even in context of a Frankenstein film but
that’s a secondary concern here that the film wisely moves past as soon as
possible.
So then once my dislike of this core element of the story
dropped away I was able see how good FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN really is
overall. It has the same wonderful Gothic production values I love in Hammer
movies, great performances (Thorley Walters is fantastic), extremely nasty villains,
a sympathetic pair of leads/lovers and a great logical progression for the
story as it winds to its tragic conclusion. I have to say I now consider this
to be my third favorite Hammer Frankenstein movie behind REVENGE OF
FRANKENSTEIN and FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED. That is quite a leap. I can
hardly believe how radically my view of FCW has shifted- it’s a full 180 degree
switch. This surprising reevaluation makes me excited to revisit other movies
from the studio to see what happens. Maybe SCARS OF DRACULA will turn out to be
a work of brilliance that I’ve been snubbing? No- I doubt that!
2 comments:
I'm glad you turned around on this one, Rod! It's one of my Hammer favorites. I think you're right on in pointing out all the good stuff about it. In addition, I feel like the change in general tone (and the lack of visual surgery, which is such a draw in the other films) has a lot to do with the fact that this film provides a female creature for the first time. I also think this new, gendered focus gives the film some interesting thematic weight-- I wrote about exactly this earlier in the year, if you want to check it out: http://nessuntimore.blogspot.com/2012/04/frankenstein-created-woman-1976-dir.html
You've also got me thinking about how because of all of Frankenstein's steampunk machinery and soul-gathering intentions, this film would make a swell double feature with Peter Newbrook's The Asphyx.
And if I were to revisit a Hammer film I disliked in order to give it a reevaluation, it would have to be The Witches-- or, the only Hammer film to make me groan in agony. But I'll let that one stew for another decade or so, I think.
Jeffery- Thank you for your comments and I think your post on the film is exceptional. I posted a link to it over on 1951 Down Place's Facebook page an the response has been great. Thanks for chiming in. I need to post a link to your blog!
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