Back from the dead: "The Curse of Frankenstein"

A quarter-century on from James Whale and the Universal horror cycle, Hammer assembled what was to become its A-team - writer Jimmy Sangster, director Terence Fisher - to give Mary Shelley's writing enthralling new life. For 1957's The Curse of Frankenstein - the latest Hammer reissue, serving as an appetiser for Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Shelley adaptation - Bad Science was to be given the full colour treatment, ideal for those gruey close-ups of severed body parts; Peter Cushing was cast as an especially cruel and supercilious Victor Frankenstein, while Christopher Lee emerged from bandages as his Goth-faced creation. The title had already served notice of Sangster's intent to tinker creatively with his source material. Some of his changes were an inspired matter of economy: the small child the movie Creature has always traditionally tossed into a lake is here the grandson of Shelley's blind forester, allowing Fisher to suggest two kills within a single setpiece. Elsewhere, those changes went towards characterisation, of a kind rarely attempted in straight horror adaptations of this book. This narrative is framed as a tale the incarcerated Victor tells a priest, not as a confession (he's too arrogant to believe in any power greater than his own) but as a boast; it also features far less of the kind of fizzy-beaker laboratory action we now associate with this title, preferring talky set-tos in handsomely appointed parlours where our Vic can set out the full extent of his warped philosophy.

This Frankenstein doesn't have an Igor at his side, but a fully sentient tutor (Robert Urquhart), who bridles when his charge starts playing God, and a cousin (Hazel Court) keen to tempt him outside (and into a life of righteousness), whom he pushes away so as to head deeper into his deadly obsession, murdering a colleague whose brain he has an eye on, and allowing his maid-cum-mistress to suffer a terrible fate after she threatens to expose his science project. For once, the title really does point to the doctor and not the monster - or, rather, seems to underline how the doctor is the monster - and Cushing comes through with a great, endlessly hissable performance that counts among the actor's very best. Such nuances suggest that, this time, the book had found its way to sensitive horror scholars, though Fisher and Sangster also come up with a riproaring finale in which the Creature takes to the rooftops, King Kong-style, and the Baron gets (or at least appears to get) his long-overdue comeuppance. The following year, the same team would reunite for a sequel, The Revenge of Frankenstein, and their immortal take on Dracula - Lee this time given the starmaking screentime as the Count, Cushing in support as Van Helsing - and, lo and behold, the genre that refused to die rose from the grave all over again.

The Curse of Frankenstein returns to selected cinemas from Thursday; a new 4K box set will be available from October 13.