Empire Down: The Revenge of Frankenstein/The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Revenge of Frankenstein picks up right where The Curse of Frankenstein leaves off, and that’s a pretty apt metaphor for the production of Hammer’s early color films. Terence Fisher directed one movie after another, starting principal photography for The Revenge of Frankenstein only three days after Dracula wrapped. There’s a tightness to these films that establishes Hammer’s reputation; when Fisher takes a break from Hammer, the studio’s films rapidly dip in quality. So these first few movies are the baseline of quality, the playbook for Hammer’s later movies.

The Revenge of Frankenstein is as extraneous a sequel as you can imagine. It picks up where The Curse of Frankenstein left off (quite conclusively), bungles its way through one goofy idea after another, exchanges the seriousness of its predecessor for camp horror antics, and worst of all, doesn’t have a second of Christopher Lee.

Which is to say it works rather well. Director Terence Fisher and his team are already old hands who can make a Hammer movie in their sleep. The Revenge of Frankenstein began principal photography a startling three days after Dracula wrapped, and it benefits from having a production team that’s clearly in the groove. Revenge moves along with unsettling confidence, almost too rapidly for the audience to ask “hey, how did Frankenstein survive the guillotine?”

Most of what stands out about this film is its gentle competence. There’s not a lot of overwhelming stuff in here, although the stuff that works is pretty interesting. There’s no typical Frankenstein’s monster here but a disabled man whose exploitation is arguably more profound than what Lee’s Creature endures in Curse of Frankenstein. Hardly the best Frankenstein, but a very solid sequel.

With The Hound of the Baskervilles, Terence Fisher and company stray slightly out of their comfort zone, if mostly to bring another work into their comfort zone. They’re not adapting a cornerstone piece of the Gothic canon this time, but The Hound of the Baskervilles is certainly compatible with that. Sherlock Holmes has always belonged to the Victorian adventurer tradition, a fellow traveler of Frankenstein’s and Dracula’s Gothic horror tradition. Doing a Sherlock Holmes movie was simply inevitable for Hammer — and one wonders why they didn’t produce anymore.

Hammer’s The Hound of the Baskervilles works quite well, capitalizing on the suppressed feudal horror of the book’s backstory and bringing it into step with Hammer’s Gothic ethos. Peter Cushing is as good a Holmes a cinema has ever seen, and Christopher Lee makes a nothing of a supportive role sing. Not one of the masterpieces, but definitely one of the second-tier classics.