Frankenstein Created Woman [1967]

A neat inversion of the Hammer Frankenstein legend with Terence Fisher back in the saddle, bringing with him his trademark gothic sensibilities and another of his downbeat endings. Boasting a beautifully crafted script, Frankenstein Created Woman found Hammer abandoning the attempts to recreate the look and feel of Universal which had scuppered The Evil of Frankenstein [1964] and instead setting out for pastures new.

Frankenstein Created Woman is remarkable for many reasons: it positions the Baron as a more sympathetic figure than he had ever been before, signaled by his sudden interest in the more spiritual aspects of human existence at the expense of the physical, his usual domain. Frankenstein is less of the transgressive, anarchic figure of past films and his railing against conventional society is here motivated less by his blasphemous attempts to attain godhood than by his need to see justice done [witness the scenes in which he tries to save Hans from the guillotine]. In earlier films, Frankenstein had represented a particular strand of male authoritarian power while here, he fights that same intractable illogic, making a stand against the idiocy and superstition he sees around him. Unusually, his actions are largely benign this time out and his actions cause no direct harm to befall anyone - it's made perfectly clear that Anna / Christina / Hans is acting for her / himself and their actions are their own responsibility, not Frankenstein's.

So Frankenstein Created Woman marked the beginning of a repositioning of the Baron by Hammer, a move away from the cold-hearted aristocrat and towards the well intentioned but frequently wrong headed scientist. One could never accuse Cushing's Baron of altruism, though there is a decidedly unselfish theme to his actions here. Hinds' script is exemplary, easily the best that Hammer's Frankenstein had been blessed with thus far. The use of binaries, in both characters and events, is fascinating, with Frankenstein positioned at the centre of a complex ballet over which he seems to have little control. Frankenstein is paired with Hertz [who provides both comparison and contrast]; Hans with Christina; Christina with Anna; and there are doublings of most of the significant events [death by guillotine, the execution of a loved one witnessed by an innocent, Christina and Anna's deaths in the river].

Inevitably, Frankenstein Created Woman has come under the gaze of critics favouring the psychoanalytical approach and their contributions to the study of this particular entry have been many and varied [see for example Paul Twitchell's Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy of Modern Horror, Peter Hutchings' Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film and of course David Pirie's Heritage of Horror]. Though the approach has its flaws, often leading observers down critical dead ends, or off on searches for meanings that simply aren't there, there is some mileage in applying it to this film in particular. However, as Bruce Lanier Wright noted in Nightwalkers, much of this work has been predicated on data supposedly derived from the film which is simply false or misleading. In particular he quotes Twitchell, illustrating how in his haste to apply his theory, he simply gets his facts horribly and hopelessly wrong.

Here, the temptation must have been particularly strong - the Baron may be making his stand against the idiocy of local patriarchal bluster, but he's still positioned as the "creator" of Anna, who spends much of her time struggling to find a sexual identity for herself. Frankenstein may have made her into the 'perfect' woman, but her perfection is predicated by her having a male soul - while she was wholly female, she was scarred, incomplete, the object of both fascination and revulsion for the local men. While female, she was incomplete, flawed and unknowable - only when she has Hans' soul transferred into Christina's reconstructed body does she become knowable, if only as a vengeful killer. Frankenstein may have created the physically perfect woman, but in doing so he has created a killer of men, a femme castratrice with a male soul whose excesses are halted only by her own actions. Wracked with guilt, she takes her own life, just as she had done when she was
the physically flawed Christina.

Throughout all of this, Frankenstein is a curiously passive onlooker - he may create Anna, but he has no control over her and seems to take little interest in doing so. His male creations had been hulking brutes, easily tamed and usually disposed of at the hands of an angry mob. Here, his female creation [the only time he ever switched genders in his career at Hammer] is beyond his control. While Anna struggles to find her own sexual identity [and it's debatable whether she ever really does], Frankenstein is left powerless to intercede, even failing to prevent Anna from taking her own life at the climax. It's the first time we've seen Frankenstein so emasculated [his constantly covered hands have frequently been hailed as a symbol of castration, though it's more tempting to see them as a barrier, preventing Frankenstein from engaging sensually with his creation] and so unable to exert control over his creations.

But such concerns were surely not uppermost in Fisher or Hinds' thoughts. Hammer may have made some fascinating films [socially, politically or sexually] but primarily they were all made for profit and often the weight of critical attention can cause the film to crumble and reveal itself as rather less than it is. Thankfully, this hasn't yet happened to Frankenstein Created Woman which has retained its charms and powers despite such intense study. It remains one of Hammer's finest achievements, a thought provoking but ultimately enjoyable revision of standard Hammer tropes that has stood the test of time rather better than most of its contemporaries.
KEVIN LYONS