"I swore I would have my revenge. They will never be rid of me!"

Dr. Frankenstein has met with many fates, and quite frankly, Mary Shelley's is the least satisfying. Exhaustion? Boring!

Trapped in a burning windmill with the monster was a more interesting way to go.

Todd Merriman suggests he once saved Christmas.

But if you're a fan of Peter Cushing you already know what he really did. He moved from town to town under a series of aliases and continued his research.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Revenge of Frankenstein.

This 1958 Terence Fisher's film is the first in a string of sequels to the highly successful The Curse of Frankenstein.

Peter Cushing offers a cold, ruthless portrayal as Victor Frankenstein, who has escaped the guillotine and moved to Carlsbruck, Germany to start a medical practice under the name Dr. Victor Stein. At least he didn't change his first name to Franklin. In Carlsbruck, he incites the ire and the envy of the medical council, is pursued by a woman who wants to marry off her daughter to a man of status, and works tirelessly to provide health care to the poor while collecting their body parts on the sly.

He transfers the brain of his crippled assistant Karl (Michael Gwynn) into a new body he's preserved and assembled, but Karl sneaks out and gets in a fight before his brain can properly heal from the procedure. Murders ensue.

It's uncertain who specifically Frankenstein is taking revenge against, as he is the film's only returning character. Maybe The Persistence of Frankenstein would have been a more apt title. He does indeed persist as Peter Cushing starred in at least five Frankenstein movies for the UK's Hammer Studios. My favorite was actually the gender-bending Frankenstein Created Woman, co-starring Playboy's  Miss August 1966 Susan Denberg.

Revenge is still pretty good, though -- no bunnies in it, but there is a chimpanzee.

The Revenge of Frankenstein streams on Shudder.