Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

1970 "The Most Frightening Frankenstein Movie Ever!"
6.7| 1h41m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 11 February 1970 Released
Producted By: Hammer Film Productions
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
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Blackmailing a young couple to assist with his horrific experiments the Baron, desperate for vital medical data, abducts a man from an insane asylum. On route the abductee dies and the Baron and his assistant transplant his brain into a corpse. The creature is tormented by a trapped soul in an alien shell and, after a visit to his wife who violently rejects his monstrous form, the creature wreaks his revenge on the perpetrator of his misery: Baron Frankenstein.

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Director

Terence Fisher

Production Companies

Hammer Film Productions

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Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed Audience Reviews

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever
Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
Micransix Crappy film
Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
simeon_flake If he had one to begin with. Peter Cushing in this variation on the Frankenstein legend is more ruthless than ever. The first thing we see here is the Baron lopping some poor guy's head off & carrying the head back to his lab--a lab with more than a few corpses in it. And, the somewhat infamous "rape" scene. It seems the good Doctor has lost all moral code in this film.The motivation for the Baron this time is brain transplants & getting a secret formula from an old colleague. The surgery--of course--is a success, but this time, Frankenstein's subject is neither a "creature" or "monster." But rather a somewhat sympathetic figure looking for revenge for what has been done to him. This sets up the great, fiery climax where Frankenstein is indeed destroyed.Honorable mention also to Veronica Carlson, looking absolutely stunning throughout the whole movie. Another great Hammer feature....
Jackson Booth-Millard This was the fifth entry in this British Hammer (Horror) Studios series of Frankenstein movies, based on the classic Mary Shelley story, it was already up and down with the previous three sequels, so I hoped this one would be good, directed by Terence Fisher (Dracula, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Mummy). Basically Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) has moved to a new town and formed a laboratory for his illegal experimentation, he has obtained a new brain for his next experiment. But a thief surprises him, he is forced to destroy the evidence and move on, also Police Inspector Frisch (Thorley Walters) is on his trail. Frankenstein finds a room at a boarding house run by Anna Spengler (Veronica Carlson), her fiancé is Dr. Karl Holst (Simon Ward), who works at the local insane asylum, where the Baron's former scientific collaborator Dr. Brandt (George Pravda) now resides, having lost his mind. Frankenstein discovers Karl is stealing narcotics to help her sick mother, the Baron tells him and Anna the consequences and blackmails them to help him. Frankenstein wants to kidnap the now insane Dr. Brandt, he wants to operate on Brandt, to cure his insanity, the Baron also seeks Brandt's knowledge of brain transplantation. The Baron and Karl go to the asylum, but Brandt suffers a heart attack during the break out, forcing Frankenstein to operate, to transfer his brain into another body, they kidnap asylum director Professor Richter (Freddie Jones) and transfer Brandt's brain into his body. Brandt's now useless body is buried in the garden, but it almost discovered when a water main bursts and unearths it, the police are searching the area following the break out of the insane doctor, Anna manages to cover up these instances, she is much more fearful of Frankenstein after he forced himself upon her. Brandt's wife Ella (Maxine Audley) sees Frankenstein walking the street and recognises him, she confronts him, but he persuades her that he has cured her husband of his insanity, the near conscious body he has created, under bandages, is responding, the Baron asks for time. After Mrs. Brandt leaves, Frankenstein forces Karl and Anna to help him escape with the "Creature", they relocate to a deserted manor house. While Frankenstein is away, he is unaware that the Creature has awoken, the cured mind of Brandt is horrified by his new appearance, he scares Anna walking about, she stabs him with a scalpel, he escapes, Frankenstein returns and is angered by the escape and Anna's actions, he kills her in rage. The Creature goes to its former home, Mrs. Brandt does not recognise the voice or appearance of the Creature claiming to be her husband and refuses to accept him. The Creature lets his wife go free, he seeks revenge and pours flammable liquid around the house, Frankenstein arrives, with Karl following him, the fight between the Creature and Frankenstein causes a fire, the Creature knocks out Karl, and the end sees the Creature carrying Frankenstein into the burning house, to be engulfed by the inferno. Also starring Worzel Gummidge's Geoffrey Bayldon as Police Doctor, Harold Goodwin as Burglar and Colette O'Neil as Mad Woman. Cushing remains impeccable as the mad doctor, and Jones is fantastic as the victim of his terrifying experiment, this is one of the most well crafted of the sequels, the gory sequences are disturbing, and the rape sequence is shocking, all in all it is a satisfying and worthwhile horror film. Good!
GL84 Forced to flee town again, the Baron learns a colleague has perfected a process invaluable to his own research and brings along new helpers to do so, but a series of incidents results in the creation of a new monster that upon realizes what he has done to him sets out to avenge his death.There was a couple of good points to this one at times, making it far more watchable than expected. The main factor with this one here is the fact that despite its extreme boredom his one manages to mostly stay interesting the whole way through its incredibly strong story. This is one of the strongest in the series, mainly due to how it manages to avoid many pitfalls and keep things moving along. Here, Frankenstein branches out into other fields of research, still homing in on the freakish advance of medicine but no longer so obsessed with creating life, a great way of bringing back an old character but giving him new things to do and not settling for a hackneyed retread of the monster. The experimentations offered up are also handled well, especially with the way that the original intent of the whole thing is pretty logical and not all that unrealistic, which serves to make the irrational actions later on seem all the more normal. There's also some really good action scenes, starting with the opening where a thief breaks into an underground laboratory only to be confronted by a horrible monster carrying a severed head when the monster rips off his face revealing the hideous skeletal visage of Victor in one of the most dramatic and engaging ones in the genre. The scenes of the monster-on-the-loose out in the countryside are always fun, and this one is no exception, taking on several fun encounters here. The best, though, is the film's explosive and undeniably fun encounter at the end. With the usual house- in-flames ending coming into play again, there's a difference with the cat-and-mouse games between the two taking place amongst the flames, which makes for some really exciting sequences and is enough to make it end on a high point. The last plus here is the fact that the film has one of the usually high-standard surgery scenes in place, and this is one of the best. There isn't a whole lot here to really dislike, though there are a few flaws to it. One of the main issues to come up is the fact that the film is just way too long and drawn-out with a tendency to drag on for way too long, getting in plenty of scenes that, while they do give the film the impression that it's actually doing something and going somewhere, ultimately suffers from the lack of energy during them. It seems to go about it's own deliberate pace, never really doing anything that really offers up some excitement until the end. The fact that the monster doesn't really show up in the film at all is another problem, and the monster here is one of the weakest. There's nothing at all to fear from this creature, as it's entirely human-looking in behavior and appearance, while the scenes of it trying to persuade his wife to recognize him generate nothing but eye-rolling at the fact that this is supposed to be a monster and is acting nothing like what one should be like. The last flaw here is the rape scene, which really should've been eliminated as it stops the film dead and barely recovers. Overall, this is a fun if slightly flawed entry. Today's Rating/PG-13: Violence including graphic surgery scenes and a Rape Scene.
Prichards12345 Hammer's Frankenstein movies are, for me, superior to most of their Dracula efforts, and this one, with Peter Cushing(who else?) again in top form as Victor Frankenstein, is one of their very best films.Frankenstein, perhaps hardened by his previous failures to a kind of ruthless insanity,is here a callous and manipulative soul. Blackmailing two young lovers (Veronica Carlson and Simon Ward) into helping to kidnap an insane former colleague, one who holds the secret of cryogenically freezing brains indefinitely, he sets about transplanting the brain of his abductee into another body, in order to gain the secret.This bleak, nihilistic, richly rewarding film is a constant eye-opener, full of classic grotesque moments superbly realised by director Terence Fisher. From the opening murder (with a sickle no less) to the frantic tussle with a burglar in Frankenstien's laboratory, to the woman patient terrified by imaginary spiders in the asylum, the action never lets up.Perhaps the highlight is a terrific sequence involving a burst water pipe which causes a previously disposed of corpse to bob back to the surface of the garden where he was buried, causing a frantic Carlson to try and drag it into some bushes before the repair men get there. A masterful scene that Hitchcock would be proud of.And of course there is Freddie Jones' wonderful performance as "the monster". I use quotations as Jones makes him a wonderfully sorrowful creation. It's perhaps gone unnoticed that this is the best performance since Karloff in this type of role. The attempted rape sequence - inserted at the last moment over the actors and the director's protests, is perhaps the only false moment in the movie. The movie is harsh enough without it.After this, and set designer Bernard Robinson's untimely death, cheapness and slackness set in at Hammer. They staged a partial recovery with some interesting movies such as Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde and Demons Of The Mind, but not enough to save the company. Still, one can savour the rich texture of this film and the remarkable Cushing in compensation.