Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
His brain came from Moe. His soul came from Larry. His hair came from Curly Joe.
I don’t know how much of “Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell” Sena actually saw, but I stayed awake for the whole thing. A little Pepto-Bismol afterward and I was just fine.
This is Hammer Films last Frankenstein movie and Peter Cushing’s last time reprising the role of Dr. Frankenstein. He wore gloves nearly all the time to hide the nicotine stains on his fingers. The best part was the “13, 13, 13” joke by the “hand at the door” guy who always interrupts Svengoolie at the end of the show. There’s a YouTube of a version of this class dad joke:
Anyway, this 1974 film features Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein (although “operating” under an assumed name, “Dr. Victor”); Shane Briant (as Simon Helder, a surgeon also specializing in spare body parts); Madeline Smith (as Sarah, nicknamed Angel who has almost no lines to memorize as she’s cast as a mute); David Prowse (as the monster); and John Stratton (as the lecherous asylum director Adolph Klauss).
Simon gets busted for buying body parts, including jitterbugging eyeballs, from a drunk body snatcher played by a former Dr. Who, played by Patrick Troughton. He’s sentenced to the local insane asylum where the director locks him up after ordering the orderlies to hose him down with the famous Copper Bullet Pocket expandable garden hose with 13 settings from “Prostatism Dribble” to “Old Faithful Geyser” with the flip of a switch.
Angel stitches up Dr. Helder’s five-inch-wide lacerations from the hosing because Dr. Victor (who is actually Dr. Frankenstein) can’t manage because of 13-inch-deep nicotine stains all over his hands. Dr. Victor takes him on rounds of the asylum inmates. One of them is a brilliant mathematician, Dr. Durendel (played by Charles Lloyd-Pack) who has a crush on Angel.
Another is a guy named Tarmut (played by Bernard Lee) who is a gifted sculptor and Angel had to suture Tarmut’s hands on Herr Schneider’s arms by tying 13 shoestrings with sheepshank knots. The monster, Herr Schneider (played by Prowse), won a cribbage game with Dr. Durendel (who lost by a skunk!), so Durendel had to give his brain to Schneider, which was welded into place by Dr. Helder.
The monster, former inmate Herr Schneider, was a savage brute who supposedly killed himself by breaking all 13 bars of his cell window and throwing himself out on the rocks in an escape attempt. Obviously, this was after the cribbage game.
Are we good with all that? I had to piece it together like the monster had to be assembled.
When the monster starts kicking the crap out of Dr. Helder, Angel suddenly finds her voice! She yells, “jab, jab, cross!”
I try to avoid spoilers so I’ll just say I think this is a so-so movie and I give it a 2/5 Shrilling Chicken Rating.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 