The Curse of Frankenstein: Collector's Edition - Warner Archive Collection 4K UHD

So a few years back, I had the enormous pleasure of reviewing WAC’s fantastic Blu-ray of The Curse of Frankenstein. Looking back at that review, I still largely feel the same about the thoughts I put down, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why I only rated it 4/5. As I mentioned in the review (which I’ll repost here shortly), I’m a tremendous fan of this film. It was among the first Frankenstein films that actually scared me as a child and it spurred my interest and love for the original novel. Now that I’m an adult and the more I get to watch it because it’s a mere arm's reach on my shelf, the more I appreciate what it accomplishes. Peter Cushing is amazing as Victor, gradually sliding from genius into insanity; never satisfied with incredible accomplishment, he pushes the boundaries of nature until they snap back like a trap. And that’s to say nothing of Christopher Lee’s magnetic and tragic performance as the Monster.

And to that end, I’ll simply leave my previous review (after I notch up the film’s score to full marks because it is brilliant):

The once esteemed scientist Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is a shadow of his former self as he sits in a dank, dirty cell awaiting execution for murder. Desperate for anyone to believe him, he tells the confessor his sordid story of tampering in God's domain by creating a man, a horrible Creature (Christopher Lee), out of the discarded parts of dead people with his partner Paul (Robert Urquhart). Will this wild tale be enough to keep Victor from the guillotine chopping block - or will it condemn him to death as a murderous madman? 

I owe my Dad a lot of credit for my cinematic upbringing. He's responsible for showing me a lot of the best movies of any genre ever made, and it's not even because he's a big movie guy. He just enjoyed them and wanted me to share that enjoyment. While I'm a huge fan of the classic Universal Monsters today, it took me a long time to get there as a kid. When I was a boy, anything made in black and white that wasn't the Three Stooges or Abbott and Costello wasn't interesting to me. For years, the only Universal Frankenstein or Dracula movie I would watch was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. After a failed attempt to get me into the original 1931 James Whale classic, my Dad brought home 1957's The Curse of Frankenstein. The movie that scared my Dad when he was ten, freaked me out when I was all of six or seven years old.

While I will forever love Boris Karloff and his creepy version of the Monster in Frankenstein and the more heartfelt turn he took with the role in The Bride of Frankenstein, that first introduction to Christopher Lee's Creature for me is the most terrifying and iconic presentation of Mary Shelley's gothic horror monster. It's the movie that drove me to try and read Shelley's novel entirely too young - that book was way beyond my reading level for years, but I kept trying to nail it! Once I managed my way through it, it's remained an all-time favorite I like to revisit every few years. 

To that end, I have a weird love for pretty much every Frankenstein movie. When one gets announced, I'm usually at the theater to enjoy it. I'm a realist when it comes to their overarching quality. I still don't quite know what I, Frankenstein was trying to do, but for the most part, it's pretty damn hard to make a bad Frankenstein movie. The weirder the better in my book. Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound is a particular favorite because it breaks so many of the classic story's conventions as a sort of bizarre version of Back to the Future with a time-traveling John Hurt meeting Raul Julia's Victor Frankenstein and a particularly gnarly version of the Creature played by the always great Nick Brimble. But for films that aim to stick to the basics, Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein is probably my absolute favorite of the bunch. Again, I do love Karloff, but there's something about the approach to this one that makes it truly great and stands out from anything ever seen before on the big screen. 

I love that this movie is essentially a confession from Victor. He did such horrible things that he has no choice but to admit to what he's done in the slim hope that it gives him some measure of clemency. Even with the film's rather definitive ending, there were two more sequels of substantially lesser quality. Cushing's Victor Frankenstein is the perfect mad genius. He's charming and driven to explore, but at the same time, his obsession is his folly. As he's blinded by his own madness, it's too late for him to realize the true horror he's created. 

The next thing I love about this film is Christopher Lee's depiction of the creature. His makeup is gnarly, horrifying, with open wounds and what clearly amounts to a blind eye. His big reveal is one of the movie's most chilling moments. That moment he takes the bandage off his face, it's not a mad rage that crosses over the creature's face when he sees Victor - it's recognition! The brain may be damaged, but it remembers what was done to it! And as the film progresses - and, true to the book, the creature becomes a tragic figure and less and less of a monster. 

But then everyone has a favorite version of Frankenstein. I used to love the Kenneth Branagh Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Robert De'Nero as the Creature, but after repeated viewings over the last 25 years or so, it slips further down the list. I've only ever seen Andy Warhol's Flesh For Frankenstein a handful of times. I've long hoped that a fully restored 3-D Blu-ray would become available, but that seems less and less likely now as the years go by. So until some really creative nut cracks the code for a new take on Frankenstein, I'll keep revisiting the classics. And now, thanks to Warner Archive, I can retire my old DVD of The Curse of Frankenstein for my future viewings. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Warner Archive Collection and Hammer join forces to deliver the devilishly terrifying The Curse of Frankenstein on 4K UHD!  The set delivers the film in all its aspect ratios in a three-disc set. A BD100 disc serves the 4K versions of the 1.66:1 and 1.37:1 presentations and extra features; a BD100 disc serves the 1.85:1 presentation and more extras; then we have a BD50 disc serving as the extra bonus features disc. All discs are held together in a standard multi-disc case, with each disc in its own tray, not stacked. The set comes with a nice slipcover as well. 

If you’re a massive fan of the film, Hammer has its own 6-disc Limited Edition set to offer, with the films in 4K and 1080p, with even more extra features and additional swag items! But that can't be ordered directly here in the States, you'd have to work through a third-party seller like DiabolikDVD or Orbit. 

Full marks for all three aspect ratio presentations. That’s pretty much it. I don’t need to say more… but I will. As detailed in one of the extra features, this is a brand new restoration collaboration between Warner Bros. and Hammer. Warner scanned the negative and the color separation elements; Hammer handled the restoration from there. The previous 2020 Blu-ray from Warner Archive was a beauty, and I lamented the lack of a 4K option at the time, but this is a next-level effort and was worth waiting for. It’s honestly gobsmackingly beautiful with clean lines and fine details, a healthy veneer of film grain, and a magnificent Dolby Vision grade for each aspect ratio. 

Because BD100 discs were used and the film is so short (only 83 minutes), each presentation is encoded perfectly, with robust bitrates throughout. I didn’t detect any anomalies or compression issues at all. Even the numerous optical transitions looked better. Other restorations for films of this vintage tend to let the footage for the optical transition last for however many seconds each end run. Here, the transition occurs, loses some of the tell-tale detail, but immediately sharpens when the transition completes. So instead of a long scene that only looks so-so, we’re catapulted into a full-resolution, beautiful image without the protacted optical softness or increasingly noisy film grain. 

Now, because the film was originally shot in 1.37:1 and then reframed for each relevant territory, there are some slight shifts in detail clarity and grain rendering. However, nothing is too out of the ordinary or unsightly. Comparatively, the 1.37:1 comes out looking the best, but the 1.66:1 and the 1.85:1 look terrific. So that comes down to preference over any kind of dramatic difference in picture quality. For my money, I enjoy the 1.66:1 the best; it feels the most balanced of the two, but that’s just me. Take some time to enjoy each aspect ratio and decide for yourself. 

On the audio side of the discs, we have two tracks to enjoy, a crystal clear and strong LPCM 2.0 mono mix (it’s listed as DTS-HD MA 2.0 on the box art, but at playback it indicates LPCM), and a brand new, solid DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. Now, watching through the various aspect ratios, the LPCM 2.0 track sounds right on point with the previous DTS-HD MA 2.0 track from the 2020 Blu-ray release. It’s an excellent mix and feels organic to the film. If it has been updated or cleaned up at all, they didn’t mention it in that restoration featurette. 

However, it was mentioned that the new 5.1 mix was created in part using an AI tool to separate the elements, since separate dialog and effects tracks didn’t exist. As a whole, I’d say this is a fairly successful reworking of the audio. I’ll be keeping to the 2.0 mono, personally, but I can’t dissuade anyone from at least trying this new surround track. It may remain a fairly Front/center-loaded track, but I did like how some of the scoring and atmospheric audio elements would slide into the surrounds. The busier the scene, the more effective this surround track becomes. I chalk this up as a welcome if unnecessary addition.

Not to leave anything to waste, Hammer and Warner Archive cooked up a fabulous set of extras. I rated the previous WAC Blu-ray full marks in part because the 1.37:1 was technically listed as an extra feature. But this release is something else entirely! Each framing of the film gets its own commentary track; four tracks total, two of which are brand-new, and each is a very interesting listen. I only got to preview the new commentaries, but I aim to circle back and give each a full listen as I have the time. If that wasn’t enough, Hammer produced a massive slate of new and interesting extras alongside the previous assortment, offering five and a half hours worth of fascinating content on top of the four commentary tracks!

UHD Disc One:

• NEW 1.66:1 Audio Commentary featuring Kim Newman, Barry Forshaw, and Stephen Jones
• 1.37:1 Audio Commentary featuring Marcus Hearn and Jonathan Rigby
• NEW Beside the Seaside (HD 50:17)
• NEW Reviving the Curse of Frankenstein (HD 8:11)
• Alternative Eyeball Scene (HD 1:11)
• Original UK Theatrical Trailer 
• UK Censor Card

UHD Disc Two:

• 1.85:1 Audio Commentary featuring Dr. Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr
• NEW 1.85:1 Audio Commentary featuring Heidi Honeycutt and Toby Roan
• NEW Recreating the Creature (HD 34:41)
• NEW A Fitting Vocation (HD 10:11)
• NEW Topped and Tailed (HD 16:21)
• NEW Good or Tuesday? (HD 39:06)
• NEW Painting with Fine Brushes (HD 11:49)
• NEW A Gothic History of Frankenstein (HD 24:15)
• Image Gallery

Bonus Blu-ray Disc

• Frankenstein Reborn (HD 34:35)
• Life with Sir (HD 12:31)
• The Resurrection Men (HD 21:51)
• Hideous Progeny (HD 22:49)
• Torrents of Light (HD 15:14)
• Diabolus in Musica (HD 17:05)
• 8mm Cutdown (HD 10:35)

The film that started Hammer’s glorious run at horror, The Curse of Frankenstein, remains the gold standard for Gothic horror. If this film hadn’t been a success, there’s an entire catalog of incredibly memorable and scary features that likely wouldn’t exist - or at least not in the form we know and love today. The iconic working friendship between Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee started here. And as should be the case for any iconic piece of cinema, The Cursr of Frankenstein is given a genuinely incredible home video release on 4K UHD. Thanks to Warner Archive and Hammer, we get all three aspect ratios with glorious 4K Dolby Vision transfers and two audio options. If that wasn’t enough to entice fans, this edition offers four commentary tracks and nearly six hours of new and archival bonus features. And this isn’t even the most elaborate version of this film out there! The Hammer-exclusive six-disc 4K set has even MORE extra features to devour if you're willing to spend the extra bread. Regardless of whether you go full out for that more expensive (but justifiably so) edition, or you stick to this slightly slimmer domestic release, this is a Must Own 4K upgrade for any horror fan.