Saturday 20 August 2011

The Ultimate in Evil


'Frankenstein Created Woman' is a rather confused film, not least because he doesn't create a woman at all, simply transfers the soul of a murderer into the corpse of the murderer's disfigured girlfriend (the 'simply' in that sentence is fairly ironic). That said, it's a good film, with lots of interesting angles on the formula and a philosophical and metaphysical feel that is not generally a big Hammer characteristic.

Peter Cushing plays the Baron once again as a polite but utterly ruthless monomaniac with dear old Thorley Walters in able support.

The woman Frankenstein doesn't create is played by Susan Denberg, who was dubbed because of her strong German accent. Despite some high profile relationships (including Sammy Davis Jr, Sidney Poitier, Jim Brown, Roman Polanski and Charles Bronson), Susan never really secured much work and, by the late sixties, had gone off the rails in spectacular fashion, taking LSD every day, compulsively stripping in public and beating up her Mother. She's still believed to be alive, but was last heard of residing in a Viennese mental institution. I wish I hadn't researched that, really.

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