The Horror of Frankenstein

Quite a thematic blow to the series, in that Baron Frankenstein is hardly an idealist but a single-minded horror of an aristocrat quite capable of murder, his monster is a brute murdering beast sufficiently tamed to kill for his master, but finally drugged into unconsciousness to avoid exposure, and destroyed quite accidentally.

Sangster therefore devotes himself to abstracting all the noble elements of pity from the cinematic legend. What remains was compared by Howard Thompson of the New York Times to Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets, the young Baron is so wry and charming at times.

Lust for a Vampire

The great lesbian vampire is a smashing Nordic number with icy blue eyes and blonde locks, she tumbles with an English novelist named Richard Lestrange (the song is “Strange Love”) and finds the ecstasies of mortal amour. Still, she retreats to the ancestral abode as mater and pater endure the undying fire unscathed, but a roof-beam ablaze plummets down into her vacillating heart.

It’s all set at a German girls’ school in 1830. Two even more estimable institutions, the British Film Institute and the New York Times, could not perceive this beyond Roger Greenspun’s due notice of the costumes.