Frankenstein's Monster is the main antagonist of Hammer Studios' Frankenstein film series, based on Mary Shelley's 1818 Gothic horror novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. As in other adaptations of the novel, he is the undead creation of Victor Frankenstein that spreads chaos and destruction wherever it goes.
Appearances[]
The Curse of Frankenstein[]
While studying under scientist Paul Kempe, Baron Victor Frankenstein decides to create a perfect being from parts of dead bodies that he and Kempe take from graveyards and charnel houses. To make sure his creature has a first-rate intelligence, Victor murders one of his professors and harvests his brain, but it is damaged when a horrified Kempe tries to stop him. When Victor brings the creature to life, it attacks and kills an old man, the brain damage having rendered it insane and violent. Kempe shoots the creature in the eye, and he and Victor bury it in the nearby woods. Victor is obsessed with playing God, however, so he digs the creature up and reanimates it.
When his mistress Justine Moritz tells Victor she is pregnant with his child, Victor has the creature kill her to prevent his fiancee Elizabeth from finding out about his infidelity.
On the eve of Victor's wedding, he shows Kempe the revived creature, and Kempe threatens to go the police. In the midst of their ensuing argument, the creature escapes and attacks Elizabeth. Victor shoots at the creature, but he accidentally wounds Elizabeth, rendering her unconscious. Victor then throws an oil lamp at the creature, setting it on fire; as it reels in pain, the creature falls through a skylight into a vat of acid, destroying it. Kempe then goes to the police, and Victor is sentenced to death for Justine's murder.
The Revenge of Frankenstein[]
Victor escapes execution and practices medicine under a new identity. He conducts an experiment in which he places his deformed, hunchbacked assistant Karl's brain into a healthy body, but it backfires when Karl starts exhibiting violent mood swings and redeveloping his deformities. After Karl kills two people, he begs Victor for help and accidentally reveals his true identity to the local townspeople before dying. The angered villagers then attack and kill Victor.
The Evil of Frankenstein[]
Victor (his death in the previous film having been retconned) orders his new assistant Hans to steal human body parts so he can build another creature. They are eventually caught in Victor's hometown of Karlstad, however, and flee the enraged villagers with help from a deaf-mute peasant girl named Rena, who leads them into a cavern where's Victor's original creature is preserved in a block of ice. They thaw out the creature, but its brain is unresponsive, so Victor employs a magician named Zoltan to bring it back to life.
Zoltan double-crosses Victor, however, and uses the creature to commit several robberies and murder the town officials who exiled him from Karlstad for practicing dark magic. Zoltan then orders the creature to kill Victor, but the creature kills instead and goes on a rampage, accidentally setting Victor's laboratory on fire. After Hans and Rena escape, the lab explodes, killing Victor and destroying the creature.
Portrayals[]
In the Hammer Frankenstein series, the monster was portrayed by three different actors:
- In Curse of Frankenstein, it was portrayed by the late Sir Christopher Lee, who also portrayed Count Dracula in Hammer's Dracula film series and in the 1970 film Count Dracula, Fu Manchu in The Face of Fu Manchu, Kharis in Hammer's remake of The Mummy, Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man, Francisco Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun, Cushing Catheter in Gremlins 2: The New Batch, King Haggard in The Last Unicorn, Kato in Mio, My Son, Saruman in Sir Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and the Jabberwocky in Tim Burton's The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland.
- In The Revenge of Frankenstein, he was portrayed by the late Michael Gwynne.
- In The Evil of Frankenstein, he was portrayed by the late wrestler and actor Ernest "Kiwi" Kingston.
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 Villains
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