The Curse of Frankenstein
Short description
Baron Victor Frankenstein has uncovered the secret of life and used it to animate a body assembled from the dead. The result is not the ideal human being he intended, but a violent creature with a horrifying face. As the body count rises, Frankenstein finds himself condemned for crimes he insists were committed by his own creation, and he recounts his story to a priest while awaiting execution. The film follows his scientific ambition from his youth in Switzerland, where he studied under Professor Krempe and the two revived a dead dog, through the experiments that led him to challenge the limits of nature. His assistant Paul Krempe tries in vain to talk him out of the work and leaves the castle, returning to find the disaster already underway.
Terence Fisher directed the film, the second of the sixteen features he made in chronological order, following Spaceways and preceding Dracula. Jimmy Sangster wrote the screenplay, and Anthony Hinds and Max Rosenberg produced it for Hammer Film Productions. Peter Cushing plays Baron Victor Frankenstein, with Hazel Court as Elizabeth, Robert Urquhart as Paul Krempe, Christopher Lee as the Creature, Melvyn Hayes as the young Victor and Valerie Gaunt as Justine. The film earned about 7 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from 15,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.8 from 357 votes.
What's left behind the scenes
- Christopher Lee’s monster makeup was applied literally at the last moment. All previous attempts had been unsuccessful, and makeup artist Philip Leakey (1908-1992) created the monster’s image the day before filming began directly on the actor’s face, using cotton and other materials that were at hand. He used no latex or plaster casts, so the makeup had to be recreated from scratch each morning before filming began.
- The friendship between Christopher Lee (1922-2015) and Peter Cushing (1913-1994) began when Lee burst into Cushing’s dressing room and complained that he hadn’t been given a sheet with his character’s lines, to which Cushing phlegmatically remarked that Lee was lucky because he, Cushing, had read the script.
- Many years after filming this movie, Christopher Lee recounted that during the scene in the forest when the Creature is hit by a bullet, he genuinely cried out in pain because prop blood got into his eye during a take.
- In some shots of outdoor scenes (such as the scene with the child on the river), the leaves in the background were painted red and yellow. This was done to match the shots of autumn leaves at the very beginning in the forest scene, shown when the Creature escapes from Frankenstein’s laboratory.
- According to actress Hazel Court (1926-2008), her dresses were part of a preserved collection of Victorian-era clothing (1837-1901 – the period of Queen Victoria's reign over Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India).
- Robert Erkhart (1921-1995), who played Krempe, disliked the film so much that he stormed out of the cinema during the premiere. Moreover, he vowed never to appear in a horror film again and never worked with Hammer Film Productions again.
- A scene showing severed heads lying in acid was cut from the film.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
