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Peter Cushing returns for Hammer’s first sequel to their highly successful The Curse of Frankenstein. The sequel opens with Cushing’s mad baron escaping the guillotine and setting up camp in a new town where he transplants the brain of his deformed assistant (Oscar Quitak) into a fresh, new reanimated corpse (Michael Gwynn). As much as I love Peter Cushing, he doesn’t really get a chance to cut loose and shine like he does in many later Hammer films. The film has fairly strong opening and closing sequences, but the middle portion is too much of a rehash of the original film (which already wasn’t especially memorable).

Highlights include Cushing demonstrating how fire still creates fear in a set of disembodied eyes and an amputated arm, and a climactic scene in which Cushing’s patients at a ‘hospital for the poor’ turn against him after learning he uses their bodies for his experiments. The supporting cast includes a fine turn from Michael Gwynn as the new ‘creation’, and Francis Matthews as an eager apprentice who ends up saving the baron’s life in a most fitting way.

Directed by Terence Fisher. With Eunice Gayson, John Welsh, and Lionel Jeffries.