Revenge of Frankenstein

Death has never stopped anyone from crafting a sequel to a successful film, but Terence Fisher and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster rather ingeniously twist the climactic execution of The Curse of Frankenstein into the opening of The Revenge of Frankenstein. With a cold-blooded flourish that would become his trademark, Frankenstein plots his escape and sends an innocent (a priest, no less) to take his place on the guillotine, leaving himself free to continue his experiments. As the new head of a hospital for the poor, he builds a body for his crippled assistant from parts amputated from his patients, but body battles mind for supremacy and turns the newly ambulatory man into a bloodthirsty cannibal. Once again Fisher makes the most of a constricted budget, turning his poorhouse hospital into a cramped, dank hole and splurging on another colorful laboratory of buzzing devices and a centerpiece tank for his suspended creature. There are few innocents in the Frankenstein films and this is no different: high-society dandies are hypocrites, poorhouse patients thieves and opportunists, and of course the driven doctor is willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to achieve his goal. The clever conclusion, which lays the groundwork for the next sequel, was curiously ignored when the third installment finally arrived six years later in The Evil of Frankenstein. --Sean Axmaker