Nasty and Nihilistic Film...
but very well-made and entertaining. One of the better Hammer movies, actually.
shareIt's nasty on occasion, like the rape sequence, which I felt was out-of-character for the Baron and forced into the story to make the flick more edgy & profitable in 1969. But I don't know about nihilistic. Victor's certainly the most criminal here, yet -- despite this -- he heals Dr. Brandt's mind and preserves his life by successfully transplanting his brain into a healthy body. Moreover, he plainly reveals his beneficial goal -- to preserve the brains of brilliant people so their knowledge doesn't go to waste in the grave, but will be accessed by people in future generations for the good of humanity.
This is why Hammer's Dr. Frankenstein is such a interesting character as opposed to the one-dimensionally evil Dracula.
It portrays the baron as a vile character and the real monster. As for healing Dr. Brand's mind I doubt that he really did in this film. Also he had to murder someone to use his body for the transplant. Which goes to show that he was not above murder when it comes to furthering his experiments. Dr. Brandt ended up in an asylum due to the nature of what they were doing. It's possible that he (Brandt) may have killed some people too, as part of their brain transplant experiments. This isn't really expored/explained in the movie of course. If so it might have explained him suffering a mental breakdown, due to the grisly nature of their research.
Also justifiably his brain transplant victim ended up turning against him.
I didn't find Baron Frankenstein a character I can sympathize with at all. Of course not surprising.
I can easily see Baron Frankenstein as another Dr. Mengele.
If he was living in Nazi Germany I could see him experimenting on people in the concentration camps. Just like Dr. Mengele did.
That would make an interesting story/movie.
One-note evil characters are relatively boring. What makes Dr. Frankenstein interesting in the Hammer flicks is that his gruesome work has a positive side despite the crimes he commits in order to carry it out. For instance, his desire in this film to benefit humanity by preserving the brains of brilliant individuals so that their knowledge doesn't go to waste and thus benefit future generations.
The problem of course is the immoral extents he's willing to go to reach his goals. Then there's the rape, which reveals gross arrogance, as if he thinks he's so great he deserves any beautiful woman he happens to crave at the moment.
Also in addition to murder and rape he blackmails his assistants into cooperating unwillingly.
On the side these two were dealing in drugs which could have landed them in prison.
He uses this info to get their cooperation.
Regardless of the nature of his research I'm happy to see that he ended up getting what he deserved in the end.
Yes, one loses all sympathy for him in this particular movie despite his arguably good mission in life. His brilliance went to his head and so he's soiled by arrogance and immorality. I need to give it a fresh viewing to compare his positive and negative points (even though it's clear the latter outweighs the former).
In other Frankenstein stories the baron is painted a little more sympathetically.
For instance, his work with Hans' soul and Christina's resurrection in "Frankenstein Created Woman" were entirely experimental and so there was no way for him to accurately predict the outcome. But that's a constant theme in Shelley's original tale, as well as the more faithful sequels: His "becoming God" to create new life with all the justifications thereof inevitably results in tragedy.
While Victor didn't do what he does in "Frankenstein Created Woman" "out of the goodness of his heart," it bespeaks of his extraordinary talents, not to mention that preserving someone's life/soul (Hans) and resurrecting someone else plus fixing her deformities (Christina) is ITSELF good or, at least, arguably good.
My point in this discussion is that Victor isn't a paragon of unadulterated evil, like Freddy Krueger or Christopher Lee's Dracula, he's somewhere in between black and white, which makes him a more interesting character.
Yet I don't view Victor as a good person. The proverbial "there is no one who does good" applies. However, I have no doubt that he has good intentions about the work he passionately endeavors to develop and offer to the world, at least in the grand scheme of things. For instance, his techniques for the 'fixing' of Christina's deformity and partial paralysis could be used to heal other people in decades & centuries to come. The morally questionable things he does he obviously justifies so he can live with himself and carry on his work.
You could say the films in the Hammer series testify to Victor's good, bad and ugly sides. In short, they don't make him out to be one-dimensionally evil.