Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
The fourth in Hammer’s Frankenstein franchise and the Baron moves away from creating life to extending life. Having developed an apparatus to capture the soul at death Frankenstein, aided by his assistant Doctor Hertz, take advantage of the recent execution of their servant, Hans.
Hans was framed for the murder of a local innkeeper whose heavily scarred and disfigured daughter, Christina, he was sweet on. The real murderers are three drunken toffs who also have a thing for cruelly tormenting Christina. However on witnessing her boyfriend’s demise at the local guillotine Christina flings herself off of a bridge into the river and drowns.
Rather than cobbling together various body parts to create life within a monstrosity Frankenstein, already in possession of Han’s decapitated corpse he also takes possession of Christina’s and sets about installing Han’s captured soul within the her body. Doctor Hertz meanwhile attempts to correct her scars and disfigurements.
Hertz’s’ operations are a success and Christina emerges from her bandages a beautiful young woman, completely different to how she use to look. But she now has two souls, her own and Hans’, whose memories start to resurface and one by one the real murderers are offed. The villagers naturally assume that the infamous Baron is up to his old tricks and set about confronting him. However when they dig Han’s body up they discover that the head is missing.
Realising what is happening Frankenstein tracks down Christina just as she viciously stabs the last murderer to death. Leaving the dead man with the head of Hans Christina then commits suicide for the second time and jumps into the raging river leaving the Baron to walk away sadly.
When Hammer’s previous Frankenstein picture was released, ‘The Evil of Frankenstein’ (1964), it was almost a reboot of the series with no connection to the established events of its two previous outings ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ (1957) and ‘The Revenge of Frankenstein’ (1958). ‘Frankenstein Created Woman’ seems to have little in connection with either timeline making no reference to the previous reboot or the original story. It is perhaps not the best of the series with neither pulsating brains within pickle jars nor copious amounts of ‘Hammer’ red blood. Denberg, post op, also seems somewhat underused and you get the feeling that not only is the ending rushed but a lot more could have been done with her later character.
