It’s virtually impossible to comprehend the impact that The
Curse of Frankenstein had in 1957, much as it’s impossible to appreciate what a
shocker James Whale’s Frankenstein was all the way back in 1931. Terence Fisher’s Gothic classic broke new
ground and filmmakers have since picked up the gauntlet and unleashed films
that are far more graphically violent; Fisher himself would finish his career
with his goriest film ever, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, in 1972. One of the film’s major innovations was that
of color – it wasn’t the first horror film to be produced in color, of course,
but it was the first ever Frankenstein in color.
The use of color is one of many elements which helped The
Curse of Frankenstein to stand out from the rest of the pack. Fisher and cinematographer Jack Asher
sensibly realized that the color should be used for emotional effect; as such,
they threw caution (and logic) to the wind by indulging in some stylistic
flourishes which would later be expanded on in Hammer’s subsequent horror films
– and those of Roger Corman in America and Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda in
Italy. Consider the scene in the forest
where the pitiful creature (Christopher Lee in one of his best, yet least
appreciated performances) encounters a frightened blind man (a marvelous Fred
Johnson) and his little grandson (Claude Kingston). In order to heighten the tension on a
subliminal level, Fisher had the crew pain the leaves red – literally. This effect is almost lost in the current,
faded home video prints, but one can still get a sense of it – and it certainly
must have looked grand when the prints were newly circulated in 1957. It was a showy bit of technique for a
director not revered for his stylistic prowess and no one less than
Michelangelo Antonioni would reuse the idea in his watershed thriller Blow Up
(1966).
The color red is prominently featured in the film and for
good reason: it’s the color of violence… the color of passion. Both are on ample display here, as the randy
Baron (Peter Cushing at his most icy) takes advantage of his servant Justine
(Valerie Gaunt), only to have her killed off by his creature when she reveals
that she’s pregnant with his child! As
the Baron conducts experiments in his makeshift attic laboratory, he is prone
to wiping blood on his jacket – a gesture which looks natural and thoughtless,
but which would have been worked out in detail by the ever-meticulous Cushing.
Other bursts of primary colors are evident as well, notably
in the multi-colored liquids found in the lab scenes. Fisher and Asher would go on to hone this
technique in Dracula (1958), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) and The Hound
of the Baskervilles (1958) before positively perfecting it for The Mummy (1959)
and the otherwise disappointing The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959). As such, the film doesn’t have scenes bathed
in the same irrational but visually sumptuous pools of red, blue and green
lighting familiar from those later films – but as with all good staring points,
The Curse of Frankenstein has little signposts which allude to where their
experiments in color would take them.
Written By Troy Howarth
Banner and Images Marcus Brooks
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