The Curse of Frankenstein

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.