The third Hammer Studios Frankenstein film was the first in six years, and in current parlance it constituted a reboot of the franchise, for director Freddie Francis, and screenwriter Anthony Hinds (writing under his pseudonym of John Elder), took over the reins after Terence Fisher suffered a car crash, adding to his woes after the failure of the archly romantic The Phantom of the Opera (1962). Evil begins in line with the series continuity, with Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), exiled and hunted out by guardians of morality everywhere, returning to his old town of Karlstaad to try and salvage some remnants of his inheritance. He’s still accompanied by his scientifically curious assistant Hans (Sandor Elès), and soon gains a third assistant in the form of a deaf-mute beggar girl (Katy Wild).
Evil soon diverts from the series narrative when Frankenstein explains to Hans the circumstances of his original exile, tossing out the story of Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and substituting a tale that allows for a new development: Frankenstein discovers his original monster frozen in ice, and now bearing a distinct resemblance to the old Boris Karloff monster design. This contrivance takes advantage of the fact that Hammer, whose films were being distributed by Universal, had struck a deal to imitate the Jack Pierce monster, unfortunately realised through some staggeringly clumsy make-up that more closely resembles Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein (1974). The film digs further back into the Universal template, borrowing a castle-levelling calamity from Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and the idea of the monster entrapped in ice from Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). In this way, Evil becomes more a one-off tribute to famous forebears than a proper instalment of the Hammer cycle.
It also allows Francis and Hinds to push even further the redesignation of Frankenstein, hinted at in The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), as a closet humanitarian, and now make him a long-suffering, far less ambiguous figure than the borderline psychopathic, grossly privileged aristocrat of Curse. When he arrives back in Karlstaad, he’s horrified to find his shuttered chateau has been looted and trashed, and, outraged to see his possessions in the hands of local potentates. But it’s a fairground hypnotist, Zoltan (Peter Woodthorpe), whom Frankenstein approaches to stimulate the creature’s addled brain once it’s been thawed and revived, who utilises the monster for means of theft and vengeance.
The drunken, power-seeking Zoltan, then, becomes Frankenstein’s guilty conscience, which is exactly what the creatures in Fisher’s Frankenstein films tend to become, and also a substitute as malefic misuser of medical arts. But the half-hearted script doesn’t find much charge in that contrast, and the film as a whole doesn’t work up anything like the serial pace and force Fisher could work up, which papered over even the thin script of another series reboot, 1966’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness. Francis was a technically proficient filmmaker who took advantage of Hammer’s higher budgets in the mid ‘60s to make some good-looking films. But he was also a fairly plodding director who never could dig into the more scurrilous side of genre in the way that Hammer stable-mates like Fisher, Peter Sasdy, or Seth Holt could.
Still, if you’re after an enjoyable old horror film, it’s certainly worthwhile, because at this point Hammer’s template still demanded sober telling and decent acting. Evil manages to be quite entertaining even whilst being one of the least worthy early Hammer productions, because it is well-produced by Hammer standards, whilst retaining the studio’s crisp, no-nonsense solidity in settings and lustrous colour, and replicates Fisher’s imbuing the Baron’s experiments with the flavour of some lost mid-ground between Victorian science and alchemy.
But Zoltan’s villainy never gains any real crackle because his sub-plot is rushed and clumsy, his reasons for misusing his influence badly articulated, as is the tentative relationship between the speechless, victimised girl and the hulking but malleable monster, whilst both the Baron and his beast become, in essence, pathetic victims. The finale consequently fails to build much real tension, or to generate any pathos in their (apparent) mutual destruction.
Where Fisher in Curse and Revenge managed to construct dark complexity in making the Baron both despicable in his free and easy sense of life and death, and yet moving in his dedication to his vision constantly threatened by self-righteous and intrusive, destructive people, here he’s just a put-upon anti-hero. Cushing, nonetheless, is as committed to the role as ever and even gets to exhibit some of the swashbuckling dash he had as Van Helsing.