General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Revenge of Frankenstein

The Revenge of Frankenstein is a 1958 British horror film from Hammer Film Productions, directed by Terence Fisher and starring Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein, who escapes the guillotine and continues his experiments under an assumed name. It is the direct sequel to Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and the second entry in the studio's Frankenstein series.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Terence Fisher; screenplay by Jimmy Sangster, with additional dialogue by Hurford Janes and uncredited additional dialogue by George Baxt²
Producer / companies	Anthony Hinds for Hammer Film Productions and Cadogan Films, released by Columbia Pictures¹
Lead cast	Peter Cushing (Baron Frankenstein / Dr. Victor Stein), Francis Matthews (Dr. Hans Kleve), Eunice Gayson (Margaret Conrad), Michael Gwynn (Karl)²
Filming	6 January to 4 March 1958 at Bray Studios, Down Place, Oakley Green, Berkshire³
Release	UK release 17 November 1958; American release by Columbia in June 1958³^•²
Technical	Technicolor, RCA Sound Recording, 89 or 91 minutes, BBFC certificate "X"¹^•³
Critical standing	87% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 15 reviews; 68% on the audience Popcornmeter from more than 1,000 ratings⁴

Spoilers

Story

The film begins with a written foreword explaining that Baron Frankenstein received a death sentence in 1860 for the savage killings carried out by the creature he had made, and that across the continent people sighed with relief when the guillotine was used to end his notorious life.¹ The blade falls, but the Baron has made a deal with his deformed dwarf assistant Karl (Oscar Quitak), who performed a switch at the guillotine in exchange for the promise of a new body; a priest is beheaded in Frankenstein's place and buried in his coffin.²

Three years later the Baron practices in the town of Carlsbruck as "Dr. Victor Stein," working in a hospital for the poor and popular enough to draw the jealousy and suspicion of the local Medical Council. Dr. Hans Kleve (Francis Matthews) confronts Stein about his true identity, and instead of exposing him becomes his assistant. In a cellar laboratory, Frankenstein assembles a new body for Karl from parts acquired through the poor clinic; the transplanted Karl, now played by Michael Gwynn, is restrained in the laboratory until a meddling hospital worker (Richard Wordsworth) assists his escape.² Sony Pictures' synopsis adds that something goes amiss and the monster turns into a cannibal and must be destroyed.⁵

Production

Producer Anthony Hinds later recalled that he and Jimmy Sangster had assumed The Curse of Frankenstein could not spawn a sequel because the Baron went to the guillotine at the end; Hammer head James Carreras joked to The Sunday Express in 1958 that in the sequel "Oh, we sew his head back on again!"² Shooting began on 6 January 1958 at Hammer's Bray studio, a grouping of manor houses, days after The Horror of Dracula had wrapped there; production designer Bernard Robinson redressed some of that film's sets.²^•³

The crew included cinematographer Jack Asher, production designer Bernard Robinson, editor Alfred Cox, and composer Leonard Salzedo.² Director Terence Fisher told The Kinematograph Weekly that horror filmmaking required sincerity: "It's no good having your tongue in your cheek when you are making horror films." Writer George Baxt ghosted two comic scenes, one with the grave robbers and one in which Cushing "amputates" a roast chicken.²

Release and reception

Columbia Pictures released the film in America in June 1958 as a co-feature with Jacques Tourneur's Curse of the Demon (1958); the AFI Catalog lists the release date as July 1958.²^•¹ In Britain it premiered at the Plaza cinema in Piccadilly Circus on 27 August 1958, with Francis Matthews and Peter Cushing in attendance; Matthews remembered the audience laughing as his character prepared to transplant the Baron's brain.⁶ A September 1959 news item reported that Hammer had a deal to produce sixteen films for Columbia, of which this picture was one.¹

British critical notices diverged sharply. The Kinematograph Weekly called the film "immaculately tailored" with a "gripping and intriguing story" and "faultless atmosphere," while The Observer dismissed it as "a vulgar, stupid, nasty, and intolerably tedious business." Jack Moffitt in Variety noted a more genteel approach than the predecessor and judged that the story lacked "an anxiety for the characters being menaced."² On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 87% among critics and 68% among audiences.⁴

Place in the Hammer Frankenstein series

The film consolidated Terence Fisher's position as the series' principal director and Peter Cushing's as Hammer's Frankenstein.⁷ It also marked a shift in the character. Phil Hardy, in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies, wrote that where the Baron of the first Hammer film "was merely an over-reacher," in The Revenge of Frankenstein Cushing's Baron is "rather more merciful and humane, more the victim of the prejudices his work inspires than of his sadistic inclinations," so that it is others who transform his creation into a murderous animal; Hardy called this heroizing of Frankenstein Fisher's greatest contribution to the Frankenstein myth.² Time Out's David Parkinson ranked it among Cushing's best performances, describing the Baron as "a kind of Wildean martyr, alternating between noble defiance and detached cruelty."⁸

The film also features what one account calls perhaps the least monstrous "monster" of any Frankenstein film: Michael Gwynn elicits sympathy as Karl's new body begins to betray him, and in a confrontation with his creator the creature is more pathetic than terrifying.² Cushing went on to play the Baron in further Hammer films over the following sixteen years.⁶ The franchise lay dormant after the parallel television pilot Tales of Frankenstein (1958) found no American buyers, until The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), directed by Freddie Francis.²

A new restoration by Sony Pictures, presented as an 89-minute 4K DCP, screened in the Cinema Revival festival at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, on 1 March 2020.⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026