Guillermo Del Toro is doing a version of the Mary Shelley story due next year. No stranger to remakes, interpretations of nostalgia, and comedy with Clive/Karloff or Lee/Cushing or perhaps even De Niro/Branagh or someone else as a reference point. Hammer Studios created its mythos which became more the story of the Baron than the creature.
Paul Dudbridge’s Frankenstein: Legacy is a pleasant well-crafted look at a pursuit of Victor Frankenstein’s’ diary of experiments in creation. This was a story element in Universal’s Frankenstein Meets The Wolf man (1943), Son Of Frankenstein (1939) and The Ghost Of Frankenstein (1942).
The film opens after Victor Frankenstein passes away on a schooner in the Arctic, his diary falls into the hands of a sailor, who passes the notebook on and on until it reaches the hands of Millicent Browning (Juliet Aubrey) a rebellious scientist and noble wife of the bedridden Robert (Philip Martin Brown). Millicent is conducting basic electrical re-animation experiments with animals in fact in sequence she resurrects a malevolent CGI rat using the diary.
Millicent is trying to cure her spouse with the help of the book’s secrets of life and death. Robert does succumb to his ongoing illness after thugs from P.T. Barnum beat him relentlessly, to obtain the book. Though Millicent’s son William (Matt Barber) and daughter Clara (Katie Sheridan) disapprove of her research, they discover Millicent has brought Robert’s body to life. Still, the curse of Frankenstein’s fight against death seems to have followed the diary as the monster that rises has no soul or compassion for their father.
Frankenstein: Legacy solidly recalls the Hammer Frankenstein Cycle of films particularly the indurated Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969). It could easily have been a script for that studio back in the halcyon days subbing in Peter Cushing as it explores similar themes of a lost spouse, and the inability to recognize the newly resurrected for the original.
The actors are all top end recalling TV series like Downton Abbey, The Crown and Bridgerton. Production values of large sets with sumptuous furniture, clothing, foggy graveyards, rainy nights, and dark foreboding exteriors all work well with the flowing camera. The actors all get to do some wonderful dialogue reminiscent of domestic drama which in a sense is really what the story is about, which is one family’s experiences with the Frankenstein diary.
Frankenstein: Legacy is budget conscious as Hammer films were yet like those it pulls off an effective film world. The drawback is that some may find this picture talky and not gory yet the dialogue is wonderful. Filled with acid digs, sentimental affection, murderous accusations, dry wit and pathos, especially when Robert (Philip Martin Brown) is telling his son goodbye as he feels it is almost the end for him after the beating he received. The actors even though they are in the Victorian time sport modern-day hairstyles which Hammer Studios and others did for the men but not the women. The effects are CGI in the lab moments, the opening ship scene, and the resurrected rat but that’s ok. The creation scene usually a big number in a Frankenstein film is wonderfully underplayed likely due to budget more to the point that the story is about the resurrected father and his family, not the thunder, lightning etc.
Frankenstein: Legacy is reminiscent of a Hammer Film without Peter Cushing, cleavage from what became known as Hammer Glamour and the usually magnificent musical score that the studio used. One could easily imagine later Hammer Studios leading man Ralph Bates in a role with Ingrid Pitt, Veronica Carlson or Kate O’ Mara along for the ride. If you look particularly at the opening ship scene you can see glimpses of characters that look similar to Michael Ripper and others from the Hammer troupe which adds a good touch. Well worth seeing for a feast for the ears and the eyes with blood yes of course yet more like a genre film was before the jump scares and buckets of blood became the norm.
Review by Terry Sherwood
Frankenstein: Legacy is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK thanks to 101 Films
Frankenstein: Legacy is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the USA thanks to Amcomri
