Frankenstein's New Monster
Having been sentenced to death by guillotine Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) manages to escape and heads to Germany where he takes the new name of Victor Stein. But a new name does not mean a new way of life as 3 years after moving to Carlsbruck he is still secretly experimenting with creating life although his popularity as a doctor doesn't sit well with the other local doctors who are miffed that not only his continual resistance to joining the council of doctors but also that they are losing patients to him. But those experiments to create life once again go terribly wrong as the monster he creates using a dwarf's brain turns cannibal.
For some they see "The Revenge of Frankenstein" as another Hammer horror classic and for others they see it as just another Frankenstein movie where the mad scientist creates another monster who of course becomes uncontrollable. Having often mentioned that I struggle with what is so appealing about Hammer horror movies I am in that second camp. For me the whole thing of Frankenstein creating another monster just feels like an idea being twisted slightly but failing to really add anything new to what has been done in other Frankenstein monsters.
Of course it is hard to understand what audiences saw in "The Revenge of Frankenstein" and similar movies back in the late 1950s and maybe the whole mad scientist thing was a lot more scary back then than it is now whilst the effects of a pair of eyeballs suspended in liquid which move when near a flame was fantastical. But as I said all that this movie does for me is rework the whole creation of a monster story again and doesn't really advance the over all story of Dr. Frankenstein.
What this all boils down to is that "The Revenge of Frankenstein" is not a bad movie and is certainly a case has a superior look to those later Hammer horror movies. But for me it is still a movie which probably has a greater appeal to those who grew up on Hammer horror movies when they first came out rather than those who watch them for the first time now.
