Frankenstein: The True Story
Victor Frankenstein (Leonard Whiting) is a newly trained doctor, and engaged to Elizabeth Fanshawe (Nicola Pagett). After Victor's younger brother, William accidentally drowns, Victor renounces his belief in God and declares that he would join forces with the devil if he could learn how to restore his brother to life.
Shortly afterward, Victor leaves the Fanshawe estate in order to engage in further medical training. He meets a scientist named Henry Clerval (David McCallum), who Victor later learns has discovered how to preserve dead matter and restore it to life. As Victor becomes fascinated by Clerval's experiments, Clerval reveals his ultimate plan: to create a new race of physically perfect beings by using corpses and solar energy to reanimate them. Clerval is unable to finish building the apparatus necessary to accomplish this on his own due to a worsening heart condition, but he persuades Frankenstein to help and the lab is soon completed.
Soon news reaches the pair that seven peasant laborers have been killed in a local mining accident. After their burial the doctors quickly dig up the bodies and through surgical alteration stitch together pieces from them, producing a physically perfect dead body. The night before the culmination of their work, Clerval is shocked to discover that a reanimated arm set aside weeks earlier has deteriorated, becoming unsightly and deformed. Horrified and overcome, Clerval suffers a heart attack and, unable to get to his medication in time, dies without completing the record of his discovery in the journal.
The next morning, Victor finds Clerval's body and misreads the incomplete journal entry ("The process is r--") as meaning "the process is ready to begin" rather than the intended meaning of "the process is reversing itself". Since neither of them wanted the perfect body to have the brain of a peasant, Victor transplants Clerval's brain into their creation and he is able to complete the experiment.
Victor soon introduces his creation into high-class London society, passing him off during an opera event as a friend from a far-off country with little grasp of English. Shortly thereafter, Victor discovers the still-living but now repulsive arm in Clerval's laboratory cabinet and realizes that a flaw in the system has caused the reanimation process to reverse itself. He destroys the deformed arm, but soon finds that the same reversal process is also beginning to break down the creature's tissues. Victor desperately searches for a way to correct the problem, but soon realizes that the degeneration is irreversible. The creature (Michael Sarrazin), unaware of his degenerating appearance, does not understand Victor's increasing coldness towards him. After Victor's landlady, Mrs. Blair (Agnes Moorehead), dies from shock soon after seeing the creature, Victor is retreats with him back to the laboratory. He contemplates destroying the sleeping creature with a decanter of strong acid but cannot bring himself to do it. The creature becomes distraught after discovering his deformed appearance and unsuccessfully attempts to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the chest with one of Victor's surgical knives. He then flees the laboratory and jumps into the sea from the White Cliffs of Dover. Victor assumes the creature is dead and realizes that perhaps it is for the best.
The creature has washed up on the beach, still alive and unharmed. He wanders into the countryside, where he befriends an elderly blind peasant (Ralph Richardson). The blind man is eager to introduce his new friend to his granddaughter Agatha (Jane Seymour) and her boyfriend Felix (Dallas Adams), but the creature remains elusive. He observes the family from afar and falls in love with Agatha. When Agatha and Felix return home unexpectedly one morning, they encounter the creature and react in horror. Felix is killed by the monster and Agatha, fleeing in terror, is struck by a carriage and is also killed.
The creature takes Agatha's body back to the laboratory, intent on asking his creator to restore her to life. He arrives to find that Victor has long since left and that the laboratory is now occupied by Dr. Polidori (James Mason), the crippled former mentor of Clerval. Polidori is aware of the creature's origins and devises a plot to use him to force Frankenstein to help him create another creature. In the meantime, Victor has abandoned his experiments and is celebrating his marriage to Elizabeth. He is confronted by Polidori, who blackmails him into returning to the laboratory to assist him with his procedure.
Polidori reveals that it was he who perfected the preservation and reanimation of dead flesh, only to have his secrets stolen by Clerval. He rejects Clerval's use of solar power in favor of his own chemical reanimation process. Victor attaches Agatha's head to a new body and they bring to life a beautiful female creature whom Polidori names Prima. Victor, believing that his association with Polidori and the creature is over, leaves for his honeymoon with Elizabeth.
While Victor and Elizabeth are away, Polidori returns and persuades Elizabeth's family to take Prima in as a houseguest; when the couple return, Victor is forced to accept the situation. It becomes evident that Prima is evil, and Elizabeth begs Victor to send her away. At the laboratory, Victor confronts Polidori, who agrees to leave with Prima as soon as she has become an established member of society. Before they leave the laboratory, Polidori attempts to destroy the creature by having two of his chinese assistants push him into a vat of acid as he sleeps, but Victor stops them by waking the creature. The enraged creature throws one of the assistants into the acid bath as all of the others make their escape. Polidori locks the creature in the laboratory and sets the building on fire, resulting in a series of huge explosions as the flammable chemicals in the lab ignite.
A few days later, a lavish ball is held at the Fanshawe mansion to present Prima to the social elite of the area. Prima delights the guests, and a beaming Polidori reveals his ultimate plan to use her as a courtesan to gain international political influence. Suddenly, the badly burned creature bursts into the ballroom and after wreaking havoc among the attendees confronts Prima, who in a hissing fury attacks him. He rips off her neckband, revealing the scar where her head was attached to her body. In the chaos that follows, the creature rips her head off and throws it at Polidori's feet as the surviving guests flee in terror. Weeping and on his knees in the middle of the ballroom, Victor asks the creature why he has done this. The creature gently responds before making his exit into the night.
The next morning, Victor and Elizabeth are questioned by the local constable regarding the events of the previous evening. They learn that Dr. Polidori has suffered a nervous breakdown and admitted to reanimating Prima from a corpse. Victor attempts to assume guilt and also admits to fashioning the creature from pieces of dead bodies, but Elizabeth manages to convince the constable that her husband is deluded and the police soon leave. Elizabeth persuades Victor to leave England with her and travel to America in order to begin a new life.
After setting sail, Victor and Elizabeth are dismayed to discover that Polidori is also on board the ship. Polidori then tries to convince Victor to resume the experiments once the ship reaches its intended destination, the United States. Unbeknownst to all, the creature has stowed away and soon emerges from a lifeboat, looking for Victor. Elizabeth sees the creature hiding in Polidori's cabin and locks the two of them together in the room. Because of Polidori's previous use of hypnosis, Clerval's mind has resurfaced in the creature, and he is determined to have his revenge on Polidori. Victor unlocks the door and as the ship's captain and crew become involved, the conflict moves to the upper deck. The creature yards Polidori to the top of a mast of the ship, Polidori is struck by lightning and killed. Victor, in attempting to climb the mast in order to reason with the creature is knocked unconscious and falls to the deck. The crew members flee in a lifeboat and the creature takes Victor below deck to care for him.
The creature lashes the wheel of the ship on a heading straight for the North Pole. In Victor's cabin, Elizabeth cruelly repudiates the creature, who (his mind now that of Clerval) subsequently strangles her. As Victor remains unconscious below deck, the creature mans the ship's helm, maintaining its course to the north. When Victor awakens, he finds the frozen body of Elizabeth on deck and the ship locked in ice. He follows the creature to an ice cave, where he confesses that the entire tragedy was caused by his rejection of the helpless, deteriorating creature. He also knows that, upon his death, the creature will be utterly alone, cursed with an "iron body" that will keep him alive against his will. As Victor begs the creature's forgiveness, the sound of his shouts sets off an ice avalanche. As tons of ice begin to fall upon them both, the creature (in Clerval's voice) forgives his creator, who laughs joyfully as he realizes that their ordeal is at an end.
violence, romantic, cruelty, murder, gothic