The Curse of Frankenstein
The Curse of Frankenstein is a 1957 film from the UK, directed by Terence Fisher, running 82 minutes. reelscum files it under euro-gothic.
- Year
- 1957 · 1950s films
- Country
- UK
- Runtime
- 82 min
- Director
- Terence Fisher
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (15/100)
Defined in the glossary: Euro-gothic
The film that built Hammer, in blood-red colour the censors hated.
The film that invented Hammer horror as the world came to know it, and reoriented the whole genre toward colour, blood and heaving decolletage. Peter Cushing plays Baron Frankenstein as a cold, well-bred monster far more frightening than his creation, and Christopher Lee, under Phil Leakey's scarred makeup, makes the creature a pitiable ruin. Terence Fisher shot it in lurid Eastmancolor at a moment when horror was supposed to be safely monochrome and long dead, and the sight of actual red gore scandalised British critics into some of the best pans ever written. It made a fortune, launched a two-decade run of gothic hits, and turned Cushing and Lee into an institution. The one that started an empire, and still one of the best in it.
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The cycle in depth
- Fantaterror: the Spanish horror boom, 1968 to 1976
Two cuts of every film, one for the censor in Madrid and one for the drive-in. Democracy killed the trick in two years.
Filed alongside
Black Sunday
Bava's debut as director. Barbara Steele and a mask full of spikes.
Inferno
Argento's sequel to Suspiria. Even less plot, even more colour. A building that is alive.
The Vampire Lovers
Hammer clocks that the censors have loosened and sends Ingrid Pitt to make the most of it.
Black Sabbath
Three stories, one Karloff. The Wurdulak segment is the best thing Bava shot.
Vampyros Lesbos
Franco's most watchable. The soundtrack outlived the film by decades.
Hercules in the Haunted World
Bava shoots Hades in gel colours. Looks like nothing else in the cycle.
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
The film that invented the Amicus anthology, dealt out as tarot on a train.
The Whip and the Body
Bava and Christopher Lee doing sadomasochism the censors did not catch.
The House That Dripped Blood
Four Robert Bloch stories, Cushing and Lee on hand, and barely a drop of the title's blood.
I Vampiri
Freda walked off Italy's first sound horror; Bava finished it. The whole euro-gothic shelf starts here.
The Awful Dr. Orlof
Where the entire Franco machine started. Everything he made for forty years is in here somewhere.
Planet of the Vampires
Bava builds an alien planet out of fog and two rocks, and Alien quietly borrowed the skeleton.