Posing as Dr Fenner, Frankenstein moves into a boarding house run by Anna Spengler. She and her boyfriend, Karl, are involved in illegal drug dealing, using supplies which Karl gets from the asylum where he works. One of the patients there is Dr Barndt, an old associate of the Baron’s, who was driven hopelessly insane by their experiments and, when Frankenstein discovers Anna and Karl’s illicit activities, he blackmails them into helping him smuggle Brandt out of the asylum. For Brandt’s brain holds a secret which the Baron desperately needs and, in order to get it, he intends to operate on him and cure his insanity. But things go badly wrong during the escape when Brandt suffers a massive heart attack and now Frankenstein needs a healthy body into which he can transplant Brandt’s brain…..
Production Details
A Seven Arts-Hammer Film production released through Warner-Pathe Distributors Limited (UK) and Warner-Seven Arts (USA) Copyright MCMLXIX Hammer Film Productions ltd. – All rights reserved
MPAAApproved Certificate No. 22109
The characters and incidents portrayed and the names used herein are fictitious and any similarity to the name, character, or history of any person is entirely accidental and unintentional
Based on the character created by Mary Shelly
RCA Sound System
Produced at Associated British Studios, Elstree, London, England
Technicolor 97 mins
Filming Began: 13th January 1969
UK Release: 22nd May 1969
Studio:
EMI-MGM Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire – Town street scenes
Location:
Stanmore Hall, Wood Lane, Stanmore, Middlesex – Baron Frankenstein’s hiding place house
Tykes Water Lake & Bridge, Aldenham Country Park, Hertfordshire – Countryside horse and carriage riding scenes
Stills from film
Click an image for enlarged slideshow
Original Poster
Click to enlarge
Footnotes
This was the last production to be designed by Bernard Robinson, whose death in 1970 represented an irreplaceable loss to Hammer.
This was also the last film to be produced for Hammer by Anthony Nelson Keys. In 1972, he produced Nothing but the Night, an unsuccessful occult thriller starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, the only film to come out of Lee’s own production company, Charlemagne. After that, Keys retired until his death in 1985.
The notorious rape scene was added to spice the proceedings up at the insistence of Hammer supremo James Carreras. It was kept to the absolute minimum by Terence Fisher, who, along with Peter Cushing and Veronica Carlson, felt the whole thing tasteless and unnecessary and detested making it. To make matters worse, the scene was written in after subsequent scenes had already been shot, so Veronica Carlson’s character shows absolutely no reaction at all to Frankenstein’s attack!
