Make no mistake: Peter Cushing's Baron
Frankenstein was one of the world's worst misogynists. He had his Creature murder
his maid, whom he, the Baron, had impregnated; he had little time for his
fiancee, Elizabeth; he railed against 'interfering women;' he 'created' a woman
with the soul of a man, with no thought for the consequences; he raped his
assistant Anna, whom he later said he wanted to keep around so she could 'make
coffee;' and he had a mad plan to mate the beautiful asylum inmate Angel with
his latest monstrous creation.
Baron Frankenstein was, in short, the kind of
man who would make feminists' blood boil. Yet, during the making of The Evil
of Frankenstein - surely a misnomer, for the Baron was in a very mellow
mood in that episode - Cushing noted, 'I don't think Frankie's a villain,
really.' Perhaps he was merely misunderstood? His long-suffering 'mistresses'
may have disagreed. Unlike the Universal series, Frankenstein himself is the
Monster in Hammer's world and it is he who returns in every film, not his
creation, the first one played, of course, by Christopher Lee in a star-making
performance.
Interestingly enough, Frankenstein's first
onscreen 'mistress' was played by the same actress who later portrayed
Christopher Lee's first vampire bride: Twenty-three-year old Valerie Gaunt was
cast in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) as Justine, the maid with whom
Frankenstein has his amorous fling. Born in Birmingham, Gaunt had appeared in
several British television episodes in 1956, including an episode of Dixon
of Dock Green and Television Playhouse.
As the ill-fated Justine, Valerie Gaunt became
the first of Hammer's sacrificial lambs. Justine was a voluptuous, dark-haired,
dark-eyed and inquisitive woman who made the mistake of seducing the Baron (or
did he seduce her?) and then attempted to blackmail him. Their sexual
relationship is implicit in the film, but it was still rather daring for that
time, as the cinema in the late fifties was just beginning to explore more
frankness in depicting sex on the screen.
Justine Blackmails The Baron
'Why choose me as the father?' Frankenstein
taunts Justin when she tells him she is pregnant. 'Why not
choose any man from the village? The chances are, it'd be the right one.' This
scene was a shocking - for the time - example of the sexual undercurrents
of Gothic horror that Hammer would bring
more and more to the forefront as screen censorship became more liberal.
Gaunt's death scene, in which Frankenstein
locks her into his laboratory and lets his Creature have his way with her,
highlights the Baron's sociopathic personality. If anyone wants to find out
more about his experiments, they end up getting closer to them than they ever
intended. Poor Justine; we never know exactly what the Christopher Lee's
Creature does to her, but our imaginations fill in the blanks.
Justine Goes Snooping!
Red-haired Hazel Court was cast as
Elizabeth, Frankenstein's fiancee. Thirty years old at the time, Court had made
her screen debut at the age of eighteen in the 1944 film Champagne Charlie, directed
by Alberto Cavalcanti. Court's lookalike daughter Sally also appears in Curse
as Elizabeth's younger self, in an early scene that features Melvyn Hayes
as the young Frankenstein.
As Elizabeth, Court is radiant in a role
that began her long association with Gothic horror. Stunningly beautiful, she
also possesses a kind of regal bearing which is entirely appropriate for the
part of a well-bred Victorian lady. She does not have a great deal to do in the
film besides look lovely - which she accomplishes without even trying - but she
leaves the audience with an impression of a somewhat repressed and genteel
woman of leisure who seems to have inner passions that simmer just beneath the
surface, something along the lines of Alfred Hitchock's 'cool blondes.'
Court was no blonde, though; she was a fiery
redhead whose hair was made for Technicolor - or Eastman Colour - with all the
eroticism which that - and her copious cleavage - conveyed. At the film's climax,
when Frankenstein attempts to shoot the Creature but hits Elizabeth instead, it
comes as a shock because it's completely unexpected. Audiences expecting the
old Universal Frankenstein movie cliches were in for a surprise with many of
the elements, both sexual and violent, in The Curse of Frankenstein.
The Climax Of The Curse of Frankenstein
Composer James Bernard's life partner, critic
Paul Dehn, was one of the few in the British press to give Curse a
favourable review. In a piece entitled 'I Like it Grisly!,'
Dehn noted the presence of what would later be called 'Hammer Glamour' in the
film. He wrote: 'Hazel Court as the Baron's wife and Valerie Gaunt as his
servant pant their way prettily through a series of nasty fixes.'
Many years later, Court recalled the film's
Leicester Square premiere: 'We never believed The Curse of Frankenstein would
be what it is. Peter Cushing, Robert Urquhart and I went to the premiere in
Leicester Square. We had our dark glasses on and coat collars sticking up and
we all sat in the back row. Then we suddenly realised something was happening -
that maybe we had a success - so the glasses came off and the collars came
down.'
THE FEMININE TOUCH: WOMEN IN GOTHIC : PART TWO : THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN BY BRUCE G HALLENBECK : HERE
IMAGES AND ARTWORK: JAMIE SUMERVILLE AND MARCUS BROOKS
