#and i was watching some hammer horror thinking of cushing!frankenstein x lee!dracula as a pairing

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taking a quick break from my post apocalyptic fantasy world building to dive into gothic toxic yaoi

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A subjective best-of Peter Cushing list

So, for context, I spent much of 2021 falling a bit in love with the late, great Peter Cushing – best known for appearing in EVERY British horror film made between 1957 and the collapse of the genre*, sharing an epic bromance with Christopher Lee, and maaaaybe inspiring a certain video-game vampire. If you know him only as ‘oh wasn’t he that Moff guy from Star Wars?’ I am here to tell you what you’re missing out on.

I’ve said it before, but he and Christopher Lee really were what Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen have been to films like the X-Men franchise: no matter how cartoonish the events going on around them, their presence grounds the drama with a touch of gravitas and a lot of style.

Googling ‘Peter Cushing movies’ produces plenty of listicles opining on which of his (many) films are the best (no bad thing considering how many were so low budget not even several Peter Cushings could have saved them). Trouble is, none of those lists really seem to match my own taste in Peter Cushing movies – they’ll rave about films that left me cold and dismiss some of my personal favourites. So what the hell, one more list can’t hurt, can it? I’ll stick with one per post for my top 5, so I can give myself more space to go on about them.

All that said, I can’t imagine my first pick is going to be all that controversial.

1.       The Frankenstein series

Every best-of-Peter-Cushing list has to include Hammer’s Frankenstein series. If you don’t enjoy at least some of these films, then Cushing’s oeuvre is probably not for you.

Between 1957 and 1974, Hammer produced 7 Frankenstein films, and it’s hard to overstate just how significant they were. The studio’s own 90’s retrospective documentary  proudly declares that “Frankenstein created Hammer.” It also effectively created Peter Cushing, who had two decades of jobbing C-to-B-list work behind him before finding his niche in horror film. And though Dracula would do more to establish the epic pairing of Cushing and Lee, Frankenstein marks the point where their decades-long relationship (on screen and off) began. The whole landscape of British horror cinema might well have been very different without this film to establish the Hammer horror style.

But I’m not recommending you the Frankenstein series because it looks significant in retrospect – I’m recommending them because I kind of adore them. They may not be the most iconic version of Frankenstein (Universal), or the most faithful to Shelley’s novel (that award, amazingly, goes to a 2004 miniseries produced by the Hallmark Channel), and Universal’s Frankenstein series has them tied for longevity too (both series lasted 17 years). They’re not even Hammer’s most iconic Cushing/Lee property – Dracula has them beaten there. But while Universal’s Frankensteins fell rapidly into diminishing returns before resorting to self-parody, and Hammer’s Draculas soon ran into similar issues, it’s remarkable how well Hammer’s later Frankenstein films still hold up. Heck, I’d argue Cushing’s last two appearances in the role are by far his best.

I have Dark Corners’ excellent two part Frankenstein retrospective to thank for putting me onto the series, and I can only echo their conclusions: though there are a dud entries and overall continuity is janky, somehow the sense of character continuity still holds up. The feeling you’ve watched Cushing’s Frankenstein age and develop across all those years is something quite special. The series as a whole adds up to much more than the sum of its parts.

But obviously, we’ll start at the beginning.

For better or worse, any Frankenstein adaptation made after 1931 lives in the shadow of Universal’s iconic Frankenstein film. Most of what anyone thinks they know about Frankenstein comes not from Shelley’s novel, but from Universal’s version** ‒ and even Hammer (who were obliged to set themselves apart for legal reasons) takes as much from Universal as it does from Shelley. But where Universal series was always very much about Frankenstein’s monster, Hammer’s recurring ‘monster’ would be Doctor Frankenstein himself. Even in the 1950’s, that probably wasn’t a terrifically new idea, but to build an entire series around a human monster like Cushing’s Frankenstein is still almost unique.

From the first film, where Cushing’s Frankenstein is still at least nominally young and idealistic, he’s already willing to kill for the sake of his ‘noble’ scientific goals without a moment’s remorse. But for all his most ruthless moments, his enthusiasm is infectious, not all his arrogance is unjustified, and you’ll spend a lot of the film (and the series) in two minds about whether you want to see him succeed or fail. It’s the kind of role that really needs an actor with Cushing’s old-fashioned, gentlemanly charm to make it work – and though you can see the studio very much still finding their feet with this one, there’s still lots to recommend it.

For one thing, there’s Christopher Lee’s monster. Though he simply hasn’t the screentime to dominate the film like Karloff’s version, the balance Lee hits between ‘terrifying’ and ‘tragic’ truly sets the bar for Hammer Frankenstein monsters. Lee very deliberately played his twitchy, blankly-staring creature to move like a marionette, to an effect that is worlds away from his Dracula (and really most other roles he’s known for), and with a quality that no later monster from this series can match.

Hammer’s Frankenstein also features my favourite take on the questionable “romance” subplot between Frankenstein and his cousin-slash-adopted-sister from Shelley’s novel. Though the incest implications are much toned down here, Victor and Elizabeth are still incomprehensibly content with the idea his parents have pretty much paid for her welfare since she was orphaned as a child, with the explicit intent of marrying her to their son one day.

But for once we have at least one character on board who can see what a terrible idea this is (and not least because Frankenstein is now planning a wedding while building monsters in his basement by night). Playing the crucial role of naysayer is the newly invented character of Paul Krempe (played by Robert Urquhart), Frankenstein’s former mentor and later research partner, who serves as his primary foil throughout the film as he watches the Doctor’s intentions go further and further off the rails.

Curse of Frankenstein was such a success that sequels were more or less inevitable – and so only a year later, Revenge of Frankenstein was neatly retconning that awkward thing where Frankenstein was executed for his crimes at the end of the first film.

Unsurprisingly at that turnaround time, the result is a film very much in-keeping with the first, though Frankenstein is now without any sort of family or long-time friends to try and keep in check as he flees and starts all over again. Though for once, Frankenstein’s new creation features the brain of an eager doner, whose body is partly paralysed, the doctor’s own arrogance and bad luck set what will be the pattern for his failures. The one letdown of this film for me would have to be his new assistant, Hans, who seems to be about to get something of a character moment when he’s called to explain himself to a medical board near the end of the film, only for the action to cut away. But the plot is otherwise solid, and the ending ups the ante wonderfully.

The third film, 1964’s Evil of Frankenstein, marks an unfortunate turning point for the series. While Hammer was once threatened with litigation if their films borrowed too much from Universal’s own Frankensteins, now Universal was eager to work out a deal with Hammer in exchange for a cut – but trying to merge the two so-different franchises was a terrible idea.

Now Cushing’s Frankenstein is the one rediscovering his ‘first’ monster – a square-headed Karloff-a-like – frozen in the ice. Flashbacks rewrite the doctor’s origin story and explicitly break continuity with the first two films, but the Doctor we’re left with has been toned down into a pale shadow of himself (who even loses most of his villain duties ‒ ironically, given that title ‒ to a hypnotist who takes control of his creation), and the new monster is no Boris Karloff. The film still has a few decent moments, but the pacing is poor and nothing else about it really works. It’s the one Cushing Frankenstein film I can’t really recommend, and from here on out, what’s actually still in continuity is anyone’s guess.

The fourth film, provocatively titled Frankenstein Created Woman, leans back towards the series’ strengths – though it’s an odd beast on other grounds. I’ve seen it lauded for its ambition, setting Frankenstein to transplant not just brains and body parts, but the human soul – but for all its lofty goals, it’s hard to feel the writers had any strong idea what that should actually mean. What results is mostly the recipient being vaguely haunted and occasionally possessed by the displaced soul (though said soul has somehow learned to play femme fatale since his death, despite coming from an uneducated and very mild-mannered country boy). Standard ghost-story material.

What stands out most for me, however, is that this is the one entry that feels less like a Frankenstein movie than a movie with Frankenstein in it. The drama centres instead around the generic folktale of a disfigured innkeeper’s daughter and her lover, pitted against the asshole nobles who torment them to their deaths – and then pay – and no-one in that little morality play is up to carrying the film for me. All that said, Frankenstein is back to his charmingly arrogant self again, and that’s always going to be worth the price of admission – it’s just a shame this feels so much like just your standard gothic, ghostly revenge tale, with Frankenstein posed loosely on top.

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is where the series really takes it up a notch, in what is definitely the most tense (and probably also the darkest film) of the lot. For once, Frankenstein has no willing assistants and resorts to blackmail to acquire them – in the form of a young student doctor and his fiancée. Without the least qualms left about resorting to murder, with the law rapidly catching up to him, and with even his nearest confidants only helping under duress, this is the doctor at his most ruthless and desperate. Never have these films left me so torn over whether I wanted the police to catch on with every scene – especially when the framing does such a terrific job of putting you right there on the edge with their ill-fated heroine, stuck desperately trying to cover for his crimes. None of the supporting cast are letting this one down.

The one caveat that has to come with my love for this film is, well, the rape scene. No-one involved seems to have wanted to shoot it, or thought it made the least sense as something this Frankenstein would do – not Cushing, not the director, and not Veronica Carlson, the actress stuck shooting it with him. But the producers wanted this film to be sexy (which this scene isn’t), and insisted – only to have it cut from US releases anyway (and if only it was easier to find that version now, because this scene emphatically does not need to be there).

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed does what it says on the tin, and legitimately seems to have intended be Cushing’s final appearance in the role. It’s here that we get to Hammer’s attempt to reboot the franchise with a new lead, producing their one Cushing-less Frankenstein film, Horror of Frankenstein – an attempted reboot with Ralph Bates in the lead role.

The resulting film isn’t awful, but it is awfully bland ‒ a generic retread of Universal’s version (complete with damaged brain, square-headed monster and lightning-storm re-animation), only sexed up and with more murder. Amused as I was by the oddly homoerotic take on the monster (who is muscular, bare-chested, and collared), nothing about this is a success ‒ and perhaps nothing could more clearly communicate its failure than the fact that when Hammer finally returned to the franchise again in 1974, it was with Cushing’s Frankenstein returning.

This final film, Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell is ranked has the series’ lowest score on Rotten Tomatoes, but I could not tell you why, because for me, it’s up there with Must Be Destroyed as the best of this series. The title is admittedly a bit meaningless, and the monster design here is not at its best ‒ but in all other ways, this is the kind of film that justifies pulling the character out of retirement.

Our plot follows a young Frankenstein-wannabe medical student, who discovers his idol has been committed to an asylum, which (in true Baron Frankenstein style) he’s pretty much taken over. Though Frankenstein is showing his age and the years of failure have taken their toll, his old arrogance and ambition are undaunted. You’re certainly expected to wonder if he’s gone mad in his new environs, but then, how sane was he to begin with? Most importantly, Cushing is as magnetic in the role as he’s ever been, if not more so – I’m entirely convinced he only gets better with age.

This really would be the final Frankenstein film for Cushing. By 1974, Hammer was well past its peak and already in financial troubles from which there would be no recovery. Even so, to still be making films of this calibre so many years and so many sequels after their first success is no mean feat. Hammer’s Dracula series may have racked up more films in total (9 overall, and 7 starring Lee), but I couldn’t earnestly recommend you even half of them. But I’ll gladly recommend you almost all of Cushing’s Frankensteins.

To have made even one or two of these films would be an achievement. To have kept it up for 17 years of a mid-budget horror property is something truly outstanding. And it’s just about impossible to imagine anyone else who could have played the role half as well.

* This is, of course, an exaggeration. But less so than you may think.

** The rest probably comes from Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' 1974 spoof.