Tag Archives: Christopher Lee

The Curse of Frankenstein Review

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If you thought that the Dracula film was bad, just wait until you see this film! Hammer Film Productions definitely seems to be slipping when it comes to horror films. This is their weakest installment yet and I fear for whatever sequels may follow this one. Frankenstein’s never been a likable concept for me and this film won’t help that. Rather than scare you, this will simply leave you dissatisfied.

Frankenstein starts off the story in prison and tells a priest about how he got here. He was a scientist who was rich and he convinced his mentor to dabble in the ways of science together. It was all innocent and fun at first, but then Frankenstein decided that he wanted to be able to create life. To do this, he would have to rob many graves and even murder people so that he could get the parts that he needed. His partner backed off at this point, but nothing could stop Frankenstein until he finally created a monster!

Where to start with this one right? Well, the main big negative is the fact that it’s incredibly violent and gruesome. Seriously, we’re talking Daredevil levels of violence at some points as you see a lot of body parts as Frankenstein assembles them and it’s all very gruesome and gross. It may be old so the effects aren’t great, but it’s still rather bad and one character’s head is even cut off. We don’t see it as we only see from Frankenstein’s shoulders and up as he is cutting, but it’s still a really bad scene and just keeps on hurting a film that wouldn’t have been any good anyway.

As explained, Frankenstein is a really bad character. He’s essentially insane and a very cruel person. His partner is supposed to be the likable character, but he wasn’t. Rather than reporting the acts of murder and grave robbing, the partner just stays silent. He even leaves the house, but decides to come back and tempt fate for no real reason at that point. In the final battle, he decides to run off and grab some help instead of staying to fight the monster. You can see why he did it based on what happened in the first round, but it’s still a dicey situation since the heroine could have gotten injured.

The heroine’s portrayal isn’t too good as she is here thanks to an arranged marriage from when she was a child. She claims that this doesn’t matter and even though she has never seen Frankenstein before, she will love him. As the partner says, she’s mixing up gratitude for love. (As Frankenstein provided for her family since she was a child) She also acts like less of an equal to Frankenstein and more of an underling as she even allows the husband to have an area that is off limits to her. That’s something that would be absurd in a current movie and the partner kept hinting that Frankenstein was doing something hideous in there so she should have gone in sooner.

There’s also a rather unnecessary subplot where Frankenstein decides to cheat on his fiance/future wife with a maid for no real reason. Then he dumps her when he feels like it and she is naturally killed off by the monster. It’s just another scene to show us how cruel Frankenstein is, but we already got the memo on that so this scene was really just fluff. The ending is supposed to be the scene of comupence for Frankenstein as we see that justice has finally caught up, but it’s at the expense of making the partner look bad once again. Essentially, he just visited Frankenstein to rub the whole thing in his face and lie by omission to ensure that Frankenstein was doomed.

It’s a very grim ending to a grim film. Dracula and Frankenstein’s movies were both rather solemn, but at least Dracula was light hearted some of the time and The Mummy was fun most of the time. This film didn’t really have any good moments once Frankenstein became an adult. It’s too bad because the beginning had some slight potential, but then everything went downhill at breakneck speed.

As for the monster, he is made to look as ugly and broken as possible to hammer in the fact that he’s a monster. The problem is that they also make him look like a slave and you feel bad for the monster. It has no idea what its doing and it is forced to obey commands before it is shot more than once and things never go its way. It destroys anyone who comes close, but its effectively mindless so it’s like a wild animal attacking someone. The monster is not a likable character by any means, but the whole plot is just sad.

I’m really glad that this film wasn’t quite up to the feat of being 2 hours or longer. As it is, the film started to get tiresome very quickly and I’m not sure how much longer it could have kept plummeting down the well before critics would start giving it awards for being the worst film of the year. Another negative for me would be that the victims are very distasteful in this film. The monster goes after a blind, old man. Seriously? What’s the point of making the victim so helpless already. It just makes the scene even more distasteful. Another victim is an old man who is thrown off of a high floor and quickly dies. Frankenstein fools the guy’s colleagues of course and the only person who knows the truth decides not to stop him.

Overall, This is a film that you should skip at all costs. It’s definitely one of the worst films that I’ve seen and I’ve seen quite a few stinkers in my day. This one just makes almost every mistake that it can possibly bump into except for the animal violence and we did see a dead animal before it was brought back to life, which would mildly count as there is no real reason to having it there. The very plot/concept was doomed from the start and the excessive violence plus the distasteful deaths sank it even deeper into the pits of infinity and beyond. At least this reminds me why the classic monsters have nothing on the modern ones like the Teletubbies. What we need, is a reboot of the film with the tone of Avengers mixed in with the guest star power of Pixels. So long as it is created correctly, that is a film that could have some potential. Perhaps, a lot of potential! They would just need to change the concept a little, maybe make Frankenstein a robot or something and skip the whole grave robbing plot along with the rest of the plots. Until then, if you want to watch a good horror film, check out Scooby Doo Zombie Island!

Overall 0/10

The Mummy (1959) Review

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It’s time to look at another take on The Mummy franchise! I’ve seen quite a few Mummy films at this point and he’s probably my favorite horror icon when compared to the other classics like the Werewolf, Dracula, and Frankenstein. The Mummy isn’t as strong as Dracula or potentially the Werewolf, but he defeats his opponents in more honorable ways. Slow and steady is typically how you want to fight against opponents and that’s just how The Mummy works. This film was actually decently good.

A few guys wander into a tomb and find a mysterious scroll. It activates the Mummy and puts one of the characters into a coma. Three years later, the old man wakes up and warns the main character that the Mummy will destroy them all. John essentially chuckles at this and heads back home, but he may have underestimated the message. The Mummy begins to systematically take the heroes down and John will have to think of a way to take it down once and for all!

The film plays out like you would expect it too. The Mummy formula is classic and the heroes can only wait for their ultimate demise, but I do appreciate the fact that John tries to fight back. He locks himself up in the study and prepared himself with some blunt objects. The Mummy easily chokes him, but the important part is that he tried. Luckily, he is saved by Isobel twice. The Mummy’s eyesight is failing so he believes that he recognizes her and decides to stop his attack on John. Man, John may have been the big hero in the film, but he definitely couldn’t get the job done when it counted.

The Mummy actually isn’t Imhotep this time, but a guy named Kharis instead. It doesn’t actually make a difference in the end, but it’s worth noting. You may even feel bad for the Mummy by the end since he can barely comprehend what is happening and he just wanted to be reunited with his love once more. Instead, he is simply used the entire time and doesn’t get to be friends with anyone. What a sad way to go. At least he got to show off his slight degree of super strength as the film went on and he used his patented choke attack on everyone.

I didn’t really have any big problems with the film. It all played out fairly well. This isn’t exactly the most exciting film though and it maybe dragged on a little at times, but never that much. It was a fairly short film after all so it’s not like any of the scenes went on forever. I do think that the calm before the storm scenes could maybe be a little dull at times, but it’s a minor issue and not something that would actually hurt the film.

The characters are a little bland, but not bad. John is a decent hero and I do appreciate the fact that he takes the initiative. He enters the home of the suspect who may be plotting to destroy him and he does it very casually with some veiled threats the whole time. That was a fun part in the movie as John wasn’t even pretending to be polite. He was openly insulting the villain and everything that the guy believed in. John is nothing if not bold after all. While the visit didn’t help him all that much, it did utterly prove that the villain was responsible for the Mummy. John succeeded as a secret agent!

Isobel didn’t have much of a role before we found out that she looked like the old Princess. She was able to trick the Mummy that way, but it was mostly accidental and she ended up fainting from the excitement so I can’t say that she was a great character. The Inspector was fun, but he was out of his league the whole time. It was very humorous to see just how unprepared he was the whole time. He really did not act like much of an inspector.

The climax was a lot of fun as a result though. The Inspector had hired several men to protect John, but they were no match. Not against the Mummy, but against the Mummy’s assistant! The human actually ends up taking just about all of them down, which was the funny part. It’s seriously not something that you would have expected. The hired guns just forgot to keep their ears alert for any signs of danger. The climax is more sad than funny though as the Mummy is shot to pieces by the trained professionals. The Swamp helped the intrigue factor I suppose.

Mehemet was the main human villain. He’s fairly generic and prays to a large statue of a cat god. Mehemet is very sensitive about people poking fun at his beliefs and he decides to destroy all of the main characters because they desecrated the tomb. It’s an interesting point of whether we should really be grave robbing or not. Essentially, that’s what is being done when people open tombs right? I actually agree with him that we shouldn’t be doing that because it is just like breaking into someone’s grave. It was his only valid point, but the guy naturally went off the deep end instead of going into that point a little more.

Granted, I doubt that John would have even considered the notion of stopping. He was way too interested in the new findings and didn’t seem to have any doubts about the moral ambiguity of what he was doing. John just wanted to win the fight at that point and he was looking for clues to do so. Luckily, the hero didn’t bring a dog over to the villain’s place like last time, which immediately gave this film an advantage over the original.

This Mummy film certainly beat the original one. I’m not sure how it stacks up against the 1999 version as it’s been a while, but I’m tempted to say that it may beat that one. It’s a tough bout of course, but I’d say that the main character here may be a little more likable. I still can’t get over how he casually went up to the main villain and started trash talking him. That was definitely classic. I was also glad that the heroes left Egypt right away so we got to go to a more city like environment for the duration of the film. Definitely a good move on their part.

Overall, The Mummy was a good film. It was actually better than I had anticipated since these classic Hollywood monsters don’t always have the greatest of reputations. Just wait until I review the Frankenstein film..heh heh heh. The characters are good and the writing is naturally solid as well. While the climax is a little more emotional than intended, this makes for a fun retro film to watch. It’s interesting to see how different the Mummy was back then. Watch a modern version of it and you’ll notice the differences. The new one is made to be more of an action blockbuster, while this one is more subdued. It’s also very short as I mentioned earlier so you’ll breeze through it.

Overall 6/10