Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

The Revenge of Frankenstein Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 10, 2021

In a way, it’s probably a good thing that Hammer virtually stumbled into what would be its calling card for much of the late 1950s and beyond, the all color Gothic horror film. Perhaps surprisingly, at least for those of us who grew up with films like Universal’s Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy playing ad infinitum on at least late night television (in the Salt Lake City market where I was a kid devouring television, there was a regular Friday night show called Nightmare Theater that aired all of these, as well as countless others), Joe Dante mentions in the appealing overview of Hammer Horror included on this disc as a supplement that the 1931 James Whale film hadn’t yet been released for broadcast when he was a kid, and so Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein was his first “sighting” of the hideous monster at the center of Mary Shelley’s tale. Even given the fact that some of the Universal films may have faded a bit in the general public consciousness by the mid-fifties, Hammer was still more than a bit audacious to consider reimagining what was still one of the most iconic horror franchises in the entire history of film. As a number of supplemental features on various releases over the years have gotten into, and which is also covered at least tangentially in Diabolique Films’ Hammer Horror: The Warner Bros. Years, Hammer kind of arrived at its whole horror enterprise almost by accident, but once The Curse of Frankenstein and then Horror of Dracula became stratospheric global successes, the die (in more ways than one) was cast, and a slew of both “new” projects (like The Mummy) and various sequels were put into production. The Revenge of Frankenstein was the first of several Frankenstein features the studio released, though kind of interestingly while The Revenge of Frankenstein followed The Curse of Frankenstein in relatively short order (only more or less a year after the first film), the others in the series were doled out more sporadically, and in fact the next film in the series, The Evil of Frankenstein, didn’t make it to theater screens until 1964.

One of the perceived “problems” with crafting a sequel to The Curse of Frankenstein is that the first film had ended with Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) being led away to the guillotine. Producer Anthony Hinds evidently dismissed screenwriter Jimmy Sangster’s concerns in this regard by telling him, “You’ll think of something”, and of course Sangster did, positing a “replacement” for the good (?) doctor who meets his fate at the end of a rapidly descending blade. That allows Frankenstein to reinvent himself as Dr. Stein, who sets up a successful practice in Carlsbrück, where he even seems to have developed a conscience, as evidenced by his work with the indigent class. The sociopathic qualities of Frankenstein are soon enough displayed, however, when it’s revealed that his “help” for the poor and uneducated has given him an unwitting “donor pool” from which he can extract various limbs and/or organs to build a “new, improved” creature.

While Universal had evidently put Hammer on notice that if anything was deemed too duplicative of Universal's efforts legal action would ensue, this film does feature one notable "call back" to Universal's Frankenstein features, a hunchbacked assistant for Frankenstein, here named Karl (Oscar Quitak). Again, Frankenstein seems to actually have some empathy in that he has told Karl he will transplant Karl's brain into a strapping new body, which perhaps makes the whole "creating life" element a little more palatable. In the meantime, however, an interloper named Hans Kleve (Francis Mathews) has arrived and recognized Frankenstein, insisting he be allowed to aid Frankenstein in his god like aims.

Several plot elements in this outing clearly presage what would be the fourth film in the Hammer series, Frankenstein Created Woman, but The Revenge of Frankenstein has its own decidedly spooky ambience a lot of the time. In terms of Frankenstein and females, however, as is discussed in the Diabolique featurette, The Revenge of Frankenstein just kind of shoehorns in the appearance of a woman named Margaret (Eunice Grayson), who really doesn't have much to do and who never totally fulfills either a romantic interest angle or indeed a damsel in distress element. That one potential shortcoming aside, The Revenge of Frankenstein is the rare second entry in a series that doesn't suffer from any "sophomore slump", and may indeed outdo its progenitor in terms of creepiness and production values.

The Revenge of Frankenstein Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Revenge of Frankenstein is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Anolis Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. When compared to the pretty lackluster looking Region A release from Mill Creek Entertainment Marty Liebman covered in his The Revenge of Frankenstein Blu-ray review, this transfer will probably strike most videophiles as vastly superior. It's perhaps arguable that things occasionally skew a bit too much toward yellows, but overall the palette is really pretty gorgeous looking, and I was particularly struck by tones in the all important red to purple ranges. (By comparison, the Mill Creek release had a kind of pink tint some of the time.) Clarity is variable, though in the best moments fine detail on things like fabrics and props is typically very good to excellent. There are also some variances in grain resolution, and some of the grain can add to an overall yellowish cast, but there aren't any major problems in this regard. This may not be at the same level of consistency and especially nice color temperature that Frankenstein Created Woman, but considering its prior release in Region A, this looks pretty darned good a lot of the time, and none, or at least very little, of the damage that Marty mentioned in his review of the Mill Creek release is still evident.

The Revenge of Frankenstein Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Revenge of Frankenstein features DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono mixes in either German or the original English. Perhaps surprisingly, the German track is arguably just a bit fuller sounding, especially with regard to the score, and it also sounds a bit hotter overall to my ears. That said, there's really nothing to complain about with regard to the original English language track. The English track is just slightly thinner sounding in the upper registers, but all dialogue comes through cleanly and clearly. Optional German subtitles for the English language track are available.

The Revenge of Frankenstein Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Dr. Rolf Giesen (in German, no English subtitles)


• Audio Commentary with Uwe Sommerlad and Volker Kronz (in German, no English subtitles)


• Audio Commentary with Steve Haberman and Constantin Nasr (in English, with optional German subtitles)


• The Birth of Hammer Horror (HD; 46:22) is another interesting and well done piece from Diabolique Films which gets into the genesis of Hammer's horror output. This features a number of the "usual suspects" in the bonus features from Diabolique that have been included on previous Blu-ray releases from Anolis, including Steve Haberman, Kat Ellinger and David Huckvale, among others. In English with optional German subtitles, though the disc is perhaps understandably authored to default to the German subtitles being on (they can be toggled off if you wish).


• German Title Sequence (HD; 3:36) begins with a kind of funny introduction that I assume was part of a prior home theater release or perhaps television broadcast.


• Super 8 Version (HD; 8:26)


• David Huckvale on the Music (HD; 3:58) is actually kind of cheekily titles Music to Watch Ghouls By, and offers another interesting (if too brief) analysis from Dr. Huckvale.


• German Trailer (HD; 1:52)


• American Trailer (HD; 2:17)


• Trailers from Hell with Joe Dante (HD; 1:59)


• Film Program (HD; 2:02)


• German Advertising Brochure (HD; 2:58)


• French Advertising Brochure (HD; 00:47)


• Image Gallery (HD; 8:38)

Additionally, this is another extremely handsomely packaged release from Anolis Entertainment, with an oversized DigiBook featuring glossy pages filled with text (in German, which I'm not sufficiently schooled to translate very effectively), stills and production data.

The Revenge of Frankenstein Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Revenge of Frankenstein is a fun and occasionally scary second outing for Hammer in its reinvention of the venerable Shelley tale. As the interesting feature from Diabolique Films gets into, one of the kind of ironic ways that the Hammer Frankenstein films depart from the Universal ones is that in the Universal films a slew of different actors played various Frankensteins (and or course another list played the monster), whereas the Hammer films keep Cushing (by and large, anyway), while having a bunch of totally different monsters (not just different actors portraying the same monster). This particular monster is arguably not quite as monstrous as Christopher Lee was in the first Hammer film, but there's still a nicely Gothic ambience to this enterprise, and the production values are quite high. Technical merits are solid, and the supplementary package very enjoyable. Recommended.