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Cushing as Hammer's Frankenstein:

Unlike the well-known Frankenstein film from 1931 by Universal Studios, the Hammer films revolved mainly around Victor Frankenstein, rather than his monster. Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster wrote the protagonist as an ambitious, egotistical and coldly intellectual scientist who despised his contemporaries. Unlike the character from the novel and past film versions, Cushing's Frankenstein commits vicious crimes to attain his goals, including the murder of a colleague to obtain a brain for his creature. The Curse of Frankenstein also starred Cushing's old Hamlet co-star & a Sir Christopher Lee, who played Frankenstein's monster. Cushing and Lee became extremely close friends, and would remain so for the rest of Cushing's life. They first met on the set of the film, where Lee was still wearing the monster make-up prepared by Phil Leakey. Hammer Studios' publicity department put out a story that when Cushing first encountered Lee without the make-up on, he screamed in terror.

The Curse of Frankenstein was an overnight success, launching both Cushing and Lee into a level of world-wide fame they had never previously known. The two men would continue to work together in many films at Hammer Studios, and their names became synonymous with the company. Cushing reprized the role of Baron Victor Frankenstein in five sequels. In the first, The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), his protagonist is sentence to death by guillotine, but he flees and hides under the alias Dr. Stein. He returned for The Evil of Frankenstein (1963), where the Baron has a carnival hypnotist resurrect the monster's inactive brain; and Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), in which the Frankenstein's monster is reincarnated as a woman played by Playboy magazine centerfold model Susan Denberg.

Cushing played the lead role twice more in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1970). The former film originally featured a scene with Cushing's Dr. Frankenstein raping the character played by Veronica Carlson. Neither Carlson nor Cushing wanted to do the scene, and the filming of it was so awkward that director Terence Fisher ended it in mid-session, and the sequence was not used in the final film. In Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Cushing portrayed the Frankenstein doctor as completely mad, a departure from the previous movies. That film featured David Prowse as the monster; the actor would later go on to play Darth Vader alongside Cushing in Sci-Fi classic Star Wars (1977).

Sources: Online Archives & Articles