Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

While illegally procuring a brain for his next experiment, Baron Victor Frankenstein finds a thief when he returns to his lab. He destroys most of the evidence and moves on, with a haughty police inspector on his trail. He obtains a room at a boarding house run by Anna Spengler, whose fiancé Karl Holst is a doctor at the local insane asylum where a former scientific collaborator of the Baron's, Dr. Brandt, who has lost his mind, now resides.

After discovering that Karl has been stealing narcotics in order to support Anna's ailing mother, Frankenstein blackmails them into helping him to obtain surgical supplies and kidnap Dr. Brandt so he can operate on his brain and cure him, thereby allowing the Baron to obtain his discovery of successful brain transplantation. Frankenstein and Karl kidnap Brandt, but he suffers a heart attack during the escape, necessitating a transfer of his brain into another body. The Baron and Karl then kidnap the asylum's director Professor Richter and transplants Brandt's brain into the Professor's body. That night, Frankenstein enters Anna's bedroom and rapes her.

Frankenstein and Karl bury Brandt's body in the garden, but a water main break almost gives up the game. The police start searching every house in the area in their search for the missing men. Brandt's wife Ella recognises the Baron on the street, but he is able to convince her to give him time to cure her husband.

Frankenstein, Karl, Anna and Brandt relocate to a deserted manor house as the police begin to close in. Refusing to put up any longer with Frankenstein's blackmail, Karl and Anna secretly plan to leave together. However, Frankenstein finds this out when he cathes Karl loading his and Anna's luggage on to the waggon, and they fight. In the lab, Brandt awakens and is horrified by his appearance in a mirror. He unintentionally scares Anna, who attacks him, causing him to escape. Frankenstein returns and finds Brandt gone. In a fit of rage, he kills Anna and goes after Brandt. Karl finds Anna's body and goes after Frankenstein for revenge. Brandt makes it to his former home, and Ella refuses to accept him as her husband. Wanting revenge on Frankenstein, and knowing the Baron will eventually track him there, he allows Ella to go to the police.

Frankenstein arrives, and Brandt sets fire to the house to trap him. Frankenstein finds the secret formula for his experiment and flees, but Karl ambushes him and tries to kill him. Brandt kills Karl and takes Frankenstein back into the burning house.

The scene where Frankenstein rapes Anna was filmed over the objections of both Peter Cushing and Veronica Carlson, and director Terence Fisher, who halted it when he felt enough was enough.[3] It was not in the original script, but the scene was added at the insistence of Hammer executive James Carreras, who was under pressure to keep the American distributors happy.[3] This explains why there is no mention of the rape subsequently by Anna or Frankenstein.

The scenes featuring Thorley Walters as Inspector Frisch were also late additions to the original script; they have been described as unnecessary, adding an unwelcome element of comedy into the suspenseful story and also making the film too long.[4][5][6]

In 1978, the Welsh television station HTV Cymru/Wales broadcast a version dubbed into the Welsh language called Rhaid Dinistrio Frankenstein, a more-or-less literal translation of the English title. This was one of three films that were dubbed into Welsh, another being Shane, with Alan Ladd. Both these were rebroadcast on the new Welsh language channel S4C on its launch in 1982.[7]

Variety called the film "a good-enough example of its low-key type, with artwork rather better than usual (less obvious backcloths, etc.) a minimum of artless dialogue, good lensing by Arthur Grant and a solid all round cast."[8] The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "the most spirited Hammer horror in some time. The crudities still remain, of course, but the talk of transplants and drugs seem to have injected new life into the continuing story of Baron Frankenstein."[9]

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed currently holds an average 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.[10]

• Frankenstein in popular culture
• List of films featuring Frankenstein's monster

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

• Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed on IMDb
• Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed at AllMovie
• Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed at the TCM Movie Database