From Zombos' Closet

Dracula (1931) Bela Does It Best

ZC Note: I first posted this in 2007. If you haven't seen Bela as Dracula yet (where the hell have you been?) this review does contain spoilers.

Zombos Says: Classic

It seemed the whole room was filled with mist. Then I saw two red eyes glaring at me, approaching quickly, giving way to a livid face contorted into the gravest mask of terror. It was only Zombos.

"For god's sake, hide me!" he cried.

"Daddos, where are you daddos? You've got a dance question." Zombos Jr was getting closer.

"Playing High School Musical the DVD Board Game, I see," I said, applying more steam to the corpse plants. I had been enjoying the warm, pleasant quiet of the solarium as it filled with mist, attending to my botanical chores. Warm, pleasant, moments never last, do they?

"I don't know why Zimba ever got him that hellish game!" Zombos frantically looked about the room for a hiding place.

"Try behind the bench over there," I pointed. For a man his age, he did move fast when given sufficient reason.

Perhaps I should mention I recommended the game to Zimba. It did make such a wonderful Christmas gift for Zombos Jr; the little fellow simply can't get enough of it.

Zombos Jr came running into the room.

"Did you see my daddos?"

Before I could answer, Zombos sneezed loud enough to wake the dead.

"There you are!" He gleefully ran to Zombos and hustled him out of the room. Zombos let out a moan of despair that followed him all the way up the stairs and down the east hall to the playroom. Wait a minute; I mistakenly told him to hide behind the bench next to the orchids. Silly me, the man’s terribly allergic to them. How could I have forgotten? I turned back to my duties, pondering on another pair of red eyes glaring through dark mist, deep into the dead of night.

The year was 1931. Universal Studios had originally planned a big budget movie, more along the lines of 1923's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and 1925's The Phantom of the Opera, but the Great Depression squelched those plans. Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces and master of extreme characterizations, was onboard to star in Dracula, playing both the titular vampire and Van Helsing, the titular vampire's nemesis. Chaney succumbed to a throat hemorrhage before production began, leaving director and creative partner, Tod Browning, disappointed and disheartened.

Other names were bandied about to replace him, including Conrad Veidt, but only one person was born to play the role of the undead count: Bela Lugosi. Say what you will about the shortcomings of Browning's movie, it’s Lugosi's performance as the aristocratic count of corrupting evil that has defined the sartorial look, voice, and mannerisms of Bram Stoker's Dracula ever since. Lugosi was and still is Dracula, down to his hypnotic stare, sensual cape swirl, and suave malice and upper-class pretentions.

Amazingly, Lugosi, who had starred in the smash stage play Dracula, by Hamilton Deane and later John L. Balderston, had to fight fang and nail for the movie role. The expatriate Hungarian actor whose singular, syllabic voice was both a blessing for playing the blood-thirsty count, and a curse for most of his other roles, took less pay then his fellow actors to get the part. Yet, it’s his performance that has provided horrorheads everywhere with undying dreams of immortality, and punsters with a Google's worth of Lugosi-like enunciations.

Lugosi took Dracula seriously, even though Browning may not have.

Cinema historians and fans have written and debated much on the movie's immobilized camerawork, long silent pauses, dialog-weighted pacing after we leave Transylvania, and a stifling confinement to the play's drawing-room set-pieces, with mostly Lugosi's performance making it all worthwhile. In every one of his endeavors, from B-movie to Poverty Row quickie, he never acted down to the material. And while the Spanish version of Dracula, filmed concurrently at night and on the same sets, may be technically superior to Browning's version, the overly melodramatic acting of Carlos Villarias as Conde Dracula is distracting.

Beginning with what would become the signature Gothic-neverworld of Universal; frightened villagers, dreary mist-shrouded landscapes, and expansive interior sets awash with ominous shadows and portents of supernatural danger, poor Renfield (Dwight Frye) doesn't know what he's in for as he heads to Castle Dracula to deliver the lease for Carfax Abbey to its new owner, Count Dracula—on Walpurgis Night, no less. Ignoring the pleas of the villagers not to go, he hops in a coach to make a midnight rendezvous with another that will take him the rest of the way.

The rendezvous with Count Dracula’s coach, pulled by black horses, in the mist-shrouded forest at midnight is foreboding. Renfield barely gets his feet on the ground before the frightened driver who brought him throws his bag down and whips his horses into a gallop to get away. Dracula himself is the driver of the waiting coach. Cinema historian David Skal points out how the scene as written differs from how it was filmed, leading to an anomaly.

In the script, Dracula has his face covered so only his piercing eyes can be seen by Renfield. On film, Dracula's face is not hidden. Renfield can clearly see him, but at the castle he doesn't realize his mysterious host was also his silent coachman. Or perhaps Dracula simply mesmerized him?

Dracula greets him in the cavernous hall of the castle. Renfield sheepishly walks toward the great stone staircase while Dracula slowly descends it, with both framed and dwarfed by the decaying battlements and desolation. The censors wouldn't allow rats to be shown so Browning chose armadillos instead, hoping they’d be creepy enough. They are. He even has a fat vampire bug crawl out of its tiny coffin, which is more odd than creepy. The art direction by Charles D. Hall, combined with Karl Freund’s cinematography generates eeriness and an underlying and indeterminate dread we sense as well as Renfield.

Hall would go on to helm the memorable art direction in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, while Freund continued casting ominous shadows in his brooding camera work in Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Mummy.

The howling of wolves prompts Dracula to wax poetic as he implores Renfield to "Listen to them…the children of the night…what music they make." Renfield, not quite sure what to make of all this, haltingly follows the count, who effortlessly passes through a large spider web blocking the stairs.

At this point, I'd be running down the stairs, but Renfield shirks it off and uses his walking stick to open a path through the enormous web. He follows his creepy host to a comfortable room, cheerily lit by a crackling fireplace. Greatly relieved, he even mentions how cheery it is.

It’s as cheery as the movie gets.

Before you can say " I don't drink...wine," Renfield is drugged, tapped out of a pint or two of blood, and turned into a raving lunatic who eats flies and fat juicy spiders for their life's fluid. In an energetic performance that would typecast him, Dwight Frye vividly illuminates the pain, pathos, and sinful pleasure of Dracula's questionable "gift" of immortality. His near feverish ravings contrast sharply with Lugosi's studied, methodical performance, setting the tone for every mad doctor's assistant to come.

Unfortunately, the movie leaves its momentum at the Borgo Pass in Transylvania when Dracula and Renfield sail to London aboard the Vesta. As Skal notes, the shooting script had scenes involving Lugosi baring fangs and attacking the Vesta's crew like some all-you-can-eat seafood smorgasbord. In the movie, the budget and censors took their toll, along with Browning's seeming disinterest, and the Vesta’s voyage is a short run of herky-jerky stock footage from a previous silent movie. Except for one chilling scene in which Renfield laughs and glares maniacally from the ship's cargo hold as he’s discovered when the ship drifts into port, the voyage is not a highpoint it could have been. A movie long in development hell called the Last Voyage of the Demeter aims to capitalize on this shortcoming. (Demeter is the name of the Russian schooner carrying Dracula to England in Bram Stoker’s novel.)

While the ponderously static drawing-room scenes slow momentum,  the tete-a-tete between Dracula and Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), and Renfield's more colorfully lucid moments between raving insanity and pitiable remorse, give sufficient animus to the proceedings to hold attention.

This character-driven intensity is lost in the Spanish version. For instance, Carlos Villarias’ Dracula clumsily uses a walking-stick to smash a mirror box that betrays him, diluting the defining confrontation between him and Van Helsing with bug-eyed theatrics. In comparison, Sloan’s Van Helsing quietly tricks Dracula into viewing the box just before he reveals the mirror. Realizing he’s been outwitted, Lugosi’s Dracula smashes the box to the ground with his bare hand while jumping back, his hatred and contempt burning through the short distance between them. Van Helsing calmly strokes his chin as if he’s conducting an experiment. Lugosi's feral glare turns to an apology as he regains composure. He gives Van Helsing a parting compliment to his cunning and a warning, noting how Van Helsing’s not lived even a single lifetime.

Renfield's vexing ability to roam freely around Dr. Seward's house provides humor and energy, enlivening what would otherwise be dialog-heavy situations. Frye alternates Renfield through bouts of ecstasy and damnation as he obediently, and at times unwillingly, helps Dracula get to Mina (Helen Chandler). His description of the thousands of rats with red eyes, shown to him by Dracula as a future reward, would have been an incredible scene if the censors and budget had allowed it.

I've seen Dracula many times over the years, but never noticed the large piece of cardboard placed next to the lamp in Mina's room until more astute viewers wondered at why this mysterious, ragged piece of paper is visible in the scene. Cinema historians and fans differ in their opinions: is it a mistake, having been used to diffuse lighting for a certain camera angle and forgotten? or is it there as part of the script, purposely positioned by Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston) to keep the harsh lamp light out of Mina’s eyes so she could sleep? Either way, it’s a testament to Lugosi's riveting performance that it usually remains unnoticed in the background.

The current consensus on Tod Browning’s directorial involvement is that he didn't direct much of the movie, but left it to Karl Freund, whose talents as a cinematographer were exceptional, and more adequate than his directorial abilities. I wonder what kind of movie Dracula would have been with Lon Chaney playing the parts of the undead count and his astute, unwavering nemesis Van Helsing. Would Browning have realized a different vision? Would Chaney have used his incredible make-up talents to fashion a more horrific Dracula than Max Shrek's in Nosferatu? If so, would he have been more or less effective than Lugosi's more socially mobile, suave, and seductive vampiric aristocrat?

While no longer scary—given today's desensitized audiences, not much is—Dracula still remains an iconic and important movie in the pantheon of horror cinema due to its initial art direction, and the eternal performances of Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye, and Edward Van Sloan. As Universal’s first talking horror movie, it set the tone for a new style of terror, creating generations of undying fans to come.

Movie Review: Dracula Untold (2014)

Zombos Says: Good (but I have reservations)

Dracula Untold is a good movie. It's just not a horror movie but more a blend of dark fantasy, historical rearrangement, and bloodless swordplay. Unlike Van Helsing, the CGI is apropos to the storyline. The story just lacks bite, you know, the usual bite we have come to expect from Dracula the vampire. Or, rather, have come to yearn for ever since Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee portrayed the blood-thirsty count. Too often sub-textual nuances are lacking in the predominantly visually interesting rehashings or re-imaginings we've been subjected to over the decades. With Lugosi and Lee it was very simple: evil begot evil, and evil was simply that, no more, no less, and very corruptive. No explanations to soften the terror, no apologies to bring on our sympathies: Dracula embraced his blasphemy and made playthings of anyone and everyone.

But ever since Dan Curtis gave us a vampire filled with feelings and remorse, letting us feel Dark Shadows' Barnabus Collins torment with each reluctant bite of his damnation, and more specifically, Jack Palance's lost love torment as Dracula in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1973), which is now an often used background story element--all this unfortunate emotional baggage has leeched onto Dracula, the supreme vampire. Horror fans have suffered the repercussions of this softened and more romantic anti-hero ever since.

And continue to do so with director Gary Shore's Dracula Untold. The writers have penned this movie as a franchise-building first chapter in the super hero vein, so Vlad Dracula (who historically is Vlad the Impaler, Prince of Wallachia), who spiked thousands of innocent and not so innocent people for kicks and giggles, is now just a family man trying to keep his kingdom from being overrun by the Turks. He doesn't just become a vampire, he becomes a super vampire with a heart of tarnished gold to defend his people. While Penny Dreadful on Showtime shows more promise for those horror fans who remember Dracula as a true evil, unexplained and unapologetic, Universal Studios new Dracula is offering his services as chief character in their new franchise mythos. He's handsome, urbane, and keeps his fangs to himself as best he can. I wonder what the studio, the one that wrought the classic horror monster movie cycle in the first place, has in store for the Frankenstein Monster, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon now that they're to be joined at the hips like the characters in the Marvel and DC Universes?

For those who remember the all in one (or as many as the budget allowed) Monster Rallies, where the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, and Dracula prowled together in House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), Universal's approach seems like a more serious attempt at a meta-rally than the one used in The Monster Squad (1987). In that movie Dracula gathered the Monsters together in his quest to rule the world. But Dracula doesn't want to rule the world in Dracula Untold. He doesn't want to be evil, either. This tends to take a bite out of his more sanguine appeal and threat potential. To be fair, even though he may be a reluctant vampire, his intentions for good do get twisted into malevolence no matter what he does.

A beautiful, gothically-colored flourish has him change into a small colony of bats for quick trips and bedeviling enemies. A clever embellishment using point of view imagery mirrored on a sword blade, and a darkened palette throughout, makes Dracula Untold a beautifully rendered movie. But Dracula here is a pawn in a larger game, one being played by HIS master, the vampire that turned him, and this, by its structural implication, waters down the horror we should be seeing--and feeling--from the Prince of Darkness himself. Instead, the Master Vampire, the one who turned him, has all the plans and machinations for ill-intent. Go figure. All this time I thought Dracula was the master vampire.

Do you recall this line Lugosi speaks in Dracula (1931)? To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious.He says this to Mina during the opera's intermission. So much is implied in this odd utterance. Is Dracula yearning for true death? Is Dracula mocking those who CAN die? He follows this with his more ominous There are far worse things awaiting man than death. Is he referring to his fate or to the fate he brings? So much to ponder in two sentences. So little to ponder in Dracula Untold. There are no notable quotes, no outstanding performances, no suspense delivered from Dracula's potential terror.

In essence it's the streamlined actioner we've come to expect from cinematic franchises. Simple plot, lots of action, and an ending that doesn't quite end as it builds a bridge to the next movie in the series. Let the monster rally commence.

Movie Review: The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

My article, The Creature from the Black Lagoon Still Holds Us Captive,  first appeared in the British magazine We Belong Dead, issue number 13. I highly recommend you pick up a copy. WBD is the best fan written magazine available today covering classic horror. This issue in particular is a tribute to the Creature from the Black Lagoon movie series.

 

Where is Universal Orlando’s Creature from the Black Lagoon ride?

Since 1954, when Universal Studios grabbed on to the tail-end of the 3-D cinema craze with their tropical-locale beauty and the beast story, and ever since Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch instinctively empathized with the Creature’s need to be loved (or at least not shot at) , and after all these years of fond memories and undying merchandizing for this beloved “beastie” (as director Jack Arnold called the Creature), I want to know why there’s no ride, no tourist attraction to beguile us. Given the best they could do was Creature from the Black Lagoon: The Musical, which played from 2009 to 2010 at the theme park, I’m not that hopeful.

They did a ride for Jaws, loved it, but there’s none for the last great Universal Monster, the one whose box office success leveraged Universal-International’s entry into the 1950s science fiction atomica and alien-invasion cycle, where big and bigger monsters, and they were quite unlovable ones at that, weren’t as mesmerizing as this low budget, process shots galore, jungle adventure set in the mysterious isolated lagoon.

Imagine a boat ride, which would be akin to Disney World’s Jungle Cruise. Wouldn’t you get a thrill standing on the deck of the tramp steamer Rita, helmed by its crusty and resourceful captain, Lucas (Nestor Paiva), as it enters the mysterious lagoon no tourist has set foot in? Wouldn’t you get a chill encountering the Gill Man as his curiosity gets the better of him and he dares to come aboard looking for companionship, for understanding, for a soul mate after all those years of being alone? After all, the Devonian period he hails from goes back a few hundred million years.

With Creature from the Black Lagoon borrowing thematic elements from King Kong and Frankenstein, we already know how well his search for companionship and understanding will go; and that would be not well at all. Like Kong, he becomes infatuated with a woman, and like Frankenstein’s Monster he’s mistreated on sight, making him retaliate in kind. His mistreatment involves fire, too, but unlike the Frankenstein Monster, the Creature has to also dodge harpoons and cope with rotenone, a piscicide--yes, it’s a real chemical used to catch fish. The desperate scientists drop it into the lagoon to knockout the Creature after they’ve riled him up. 

Here is where sustained tension and subtextual motivations come into play, making Creature from the Black Lagoon a more intelligent and prescient script than many critics (Bill Warren among them) have given it credit for. While subsequent 1950s science fiction movie fare focused on the more horrific aspects of the aftermath of scientific meddling and hubris (all those big spiders, bugs, and dinosaurs chomping and stomping) the subtleties here center on conservation versus exploitation and research versus trophy-hunting. But the Creature is not the only prize being hunted and that opens another thematic element centered around the prima fascie movie gender roles of the 1950s that dictate male scientists are take-charge characters and decision-makers, and female scientists are always pretty, always think about romance, and always scream a lot when not making coffee or patching up those battered, take-charge males.

The beauty and potential trophy wife role is filled by Kay (Julie Adams), a research scientist who, in turn, draws much studious attention from her pushy boss, Mark (Richard Denning), who thinks he’s a better catch for her than her more reserved but earnest fiancé, David (Richard Carlson). Mogambo-minded Mark, seeing dollar signs and newspaper headlines, finances the expedition to the Amazon when a fossilized hand with webbed fingers is found in a geological dig by Dr. Maia (Antonio Moreno). It takes David’s enthusiastically delivered speech, part science-justification, part science lesson (fashionable for all 1950s science fiction movies) to lend gravitas to the expedition’s intentions. David is, surprisingly, the environmentalist and conservationist. He wants to study nature, not wrap it around his will. It takes Mark’s aggressive posturing directed toward Kay and the Creature to generate the sparks above and below the waterline. The action moves between David, Mark, and the Creature butting heads and gills over Kay and the interplay between them as each asserts his intentions over her and the outcome of the expedition.

It takes Bud Westmore’s makeup team to builld our feelings for the Creature while scaring our wits at the same time with his unique mix of piscine and humanoid features. Fess up now, it’s the Creature Aurora model kit you always preferred to build and paint, right? Commercial artist and part-time actress Milicent Patrick is now credited with designing the Creature’s iconic head, with Chris Mueller doing the sculpting. Jack Kevan created the airtight molded sponge bodysuits worn by Ricou Browning (doing the underwater scenes) and the larger Ben Chapman (doing the above water scenes). The original design called for a less fishy, more Oscar statuette looking Gill Man (a smooth-skinned humanoid) due to one studio executive’s preferences (I wonder if he was related to Irwin Allen?), but that didn’t prove scary enough on camera. More scales and gills were added, giving us the Creature we know and love today. Bud Westmore appeared to have taken offence at Milicent Patrick and her successful publicity touring for the movie, claiming she took too much credit for creating the Creature. He threatened to never use her talents again and followed through on his threat. She was good, having designed the alien in It Came from Outer Space and also that wonderful pants-wearing Metaluna Mutant. The consensus now is that Bud Westmore was the one actually in love with the limelight and taking too much credit in the first place for what his team had accomplished.

Another person who possibly received more credit than he truly earned is the underwater scenes director, James C. Havens. According to Tom Weaver, Havens didn’t bother to don scuba gear to join Ricou Browning, Scotty Welbourne (who worked the 3-D cameras), and the stunt doubles under the water to direct them in situ. Instead, Havens floated on top, looking down from above to direct the action taking place farther below. Quite a trick when you consider a 3-D movie like this relies on key coming-at-you moments and spatial-blocking to sell those three-dimensions within the frame; how could you gauge the effectiveness of these moments when you’re not looking at them the way you intend your audience to see them?

While Havens easily breathed air while directing his scenes, Ricou Browning, who could hold his breath a lot longer than you or I ever could, relied on air hoses kept close, but out of camera range, on either side of him during shooting. He already had experience with how to breathe from an air hose while underwater, and that came in handy when attempts to supply him with a self-contained air supply failed to work as too many bubbles were showing and there wasn't enough room in his suit to accommodate the tanks easily. Although breathing that way may have been second nature to him, the limitations of the Creature’s headpiece made clear sight difficult for both him and Chapman. During the filming of the climactic scene where the Gill Man is carrying an unconscious Kay through his grotto, Chapman guestimated wrongly and bonked her head against one of the grotto’s fake rocky walls. Luckily, Julie Adams was not actually rendered unconscious from that mishap, but the publicity department played up her head scrape for all it was worth, including a snapshot of Adams receiving serious medical attention: a Band-Aid applied by a nurse.

Heavy publicity during production and through the release of the movie was a new marketing slant undertaken by Universal-International Studios. That effort, combined with the use of the Moropticon single-projector 3D system instead of the cumbersome and expensive dual-projector system the majority of theaters still couldn’t afford, made possible the wide-release of Creature in 3-D to more urban theaters than usual, although many smaller neighborhood theaters still showed the movie flat (in 2-D). The Moropticon system allowed a standard 35mm projector to be “converted to 3-D in minutes by attaching the Moropticon prism lens to the front of the unit.” The installation of the system only cost the theater a hundred dollars, provided the theater agreed to purchase twenty-five hundred pairs of viewing glasses per month for twelve months. Then, as is the case today, those glasses generate a lot of money. The underwater scenes take full advantage of 3-D with harpoons whizzing by, retonone fizzing and clouding up the water in our direction, and a shimmering spatial dimensionality enhanced by careful choreography of the action moving toward and away from the viewer.

Jack Arnold, who personally storyboarded his movies, envisioned the most memorable scene, whether viewed in 3-D or flat: the alternatingly sexual and playful swim between Kay, gliding on the surface (not Julie Adams but her stunt double), and the Creature gliding through the water below her, entranced by her leggy aquatic form. He cautiously reaches out to her, draws back, then reaches out again. It’s a beautifully realized interplay that can be interpreted in various ways with varying levels of innocence and maturity, such as Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan's frisky swim in 1934’s Tarzan and His Mate. Here, however, the censors had much less to worry about.

The Creature’s moment of bliss is fleeting. Hunted, captured, shot at, harpooned twice, and made groggy from being doped up repeatedly with retonone, he manages to elude Mark’s best efforts to stuff and mount him and Kay’s best screams to deter his ardor. The final confrontation in the grotto leads to two more sequels and a mystery: just what are those three columns seen in the grotto’s background? Is the implication that the Gill Man’s parentage is not as Devonian as we think but alien? Or was a matte painting from a previous movie not moved in time and to save money they kept on shooting?

Even more problematic: why does Kay, a research scientist who should know better, carelessly throw her cigarette butt into the pristine lagoon she couldn’t wait to swim in? Maybe that’s what really pissed off the Creature?

 Note: Sources used in the writing of this article include Tom Weaver’s audio commentary for the disc releases of The Creature from the Black Lagoon; the Wikipedia article on CFTBL; Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953-1968 by Kevin Heffernan; the documentary Back to the Black Lagoon written and narrated by David J. Skal; and Bill Warren’s love/hate relationship written up as Keep Watching the Skies! Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties. The use of the term “rad,” which is short for “radical,” comes from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. No common ancestry between them and the Gill-Man is implied.

Pictures used in this article are from http://www.vintag.es/2013/04/behind-scenes-of-creature-from-black.html.

Movie Review: Son of Dracula (1943) Slick Noir With Slight Overbite

Zombos Says: Very Good

We had finished watching Son of Dracula in the cinematorium. It was half-past midnight, and I had prepared our third round of New Orleans Fizzes, going a little heavier on the gin and somewhat lighter on the tonic.

"Son of Dracula does not receive the attention it deserves because," said Zombos, "as the usual criticisms go, Lon Chaney Jr lacks bite; and he does not have a compelling, accented voice suitable for a Hungarian vampire; and he is too pudgy; and he is not menacing enough, and—"

"True, true, true, to a point," I interrupted, "but this eerie, studiously filmed Southern-Gothic horror noir tells its occult story outside the typical Universal Studios scripting conventions. Instead of lab coats and operating tables, and motivations centered around jump-starting the Frankenstein Monster, and let's not forget those trite, pseudo-scientific explanations provided for supernatural monsters, Son of Dracula oozes inky blackness in its shadows stretching across rooms, enveloping tight corners, and graying the Dark Oaks Plantation's dour, moss-covered swampland."

"And it's also a love story," added Zimba," involving a Gothic-minded woman, Katherine, (Louise Allbritton), whose morbid interests in death and eternal life provide the opportunity that brings Count Alucard (Lon Chaney, Jr) from his blood-drained homeland to vibrant New Orleans. I like that part best!" She sipped the drink I handed her.

 

Son of Dracula Publicity Still (courtesy Classic Movie Monsters)

"The mistake most critics make when discussing this movie," I continued, "is due to the script's intentional muddling of the name Alucard with Dracula, hinting, fairly obviously—and I blame Universal's marketing department for this--that Lon Chaney is not playing the son, but is Dracula."

"But Katherine does tell Frank (Robert Paige), her boyfriend, that Alucard is Dracula," countered Zimba. "Don't forget she intends to spend eternal undead life with Frank, after he kills Dracula, of course. So is the title Son of Dracula worthless? How about Dracula Reverses Name, Visits America? Would that be more appropriate?" Zimba hiccupped. "Did you go heavy on the gin again?"

I ignored her.

"I suggest a different critical approach. First we must dismiss what Katherine said; she's mistaken or delusional and doesn't really know who Alucard is beyond the fact he's a vampire. An idea not all that farfetched when you've already accepted she's marrying Alucard so she can become a vampire, then plans to destroy him so she can put the bite on her boyfriend so they can live happily undead ever after. Secondly, believe the movie title. Count Alucard is not Dracula, he is, indeed, the son of Dracula, metaphorically speaking."

"Go on," said Zombos, finishing his drink. His pallid cheeks were rosier than usual.

"With this perspective firmly in place, Lon Chaney's interpretation of Dracula's son visiting America broadens to encompass fascinating vistas of backstory speculation. Such speculation can erase Hungarian accents and reimagine Alucard's pre-story as an overweight American visiting the Old Country. How he falls under Dracula's spell I'll leave to your imagination, but in some way he inherits the count's luggage, formal evening wear and ring, and heads to America to find new blood, just like his "dad" did in the original Dracula by going to Great Britain."

"Okay, so he has inherited the Dracula curse, so to speak, and travels to New Orleans with the promise of a new bride and fertile hunting grounds?" summed up Zombos.

"Precisely. Now let's examine the merits of the movie without the shackles of all this Chaney's-not-Bela negativity, shall we?"

Zimba started snoring. I may have gone heavier on the gin than I thought. I continued and spoke a little louder.

"For the first time we see the bat to vampire transformation onscreen. Not perfect, but it does look better than when done in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Then there's the vaporous transformations as Alucard, and eventually Katherine, flitter about; especially the sequence where Alucard's coffin rises out of the swamp water, then vapor seeps from under the lid to coalesce into Alucard himself, then he and the coffin glide across the water together. It's breathtaking. Not only does Chaney Jr look sartorially commanding in his evening wear, but the intrinsically supernatural elements of his power to shapeshift and move his coffin effortlessly across the swamp water is elegantly executed. Here's a creature of the night who's immensely powerful, yet vulnerable, as we see later on."

"But it is Robert Paige as Frank who provides the most dynamic by going bonkers," said Zombos.

"Yes, that's true. He's the one the story pivots around. His rough handling by Alucard, flinging him easily across the room, leading to his shooting Katherine to death, which leads to his mental unhingement—"

"—And Katherine's wish-fulfillment," said Zombos.

"Yes, and her wish-fulfillment," I agreed. "She becomes a vampire, visits Frank in his jail cell, and sells him on her live-happily-until-stake-do-us-part dream. Katherine plays like Vampira before there was a Vampira. She's Goth before there was Goth. The story's really about her and Frank, and Alucard plays second fiddle to them. The mighty vampire is being played for a fool." I sipped my Fizz. I definitely went too heavy on the gin this time. "You don't see that too often."

Zombos yawned, then took another sip.

"This is one Universal Horror production that is slickly directed above and beyond the basics by Robert Siodmak. His kicking his brother off the movie to go with Eric Taylor's screenplay allowed for the crime-noirish, vampire romance-nuanced storyline to flower. Another element that harkens back to the old style Van Helsing scientific reasoning that encompassed the occult is how Dr. Brewster (Frank Craven) plays into it."

I nodded in agreement. "That's right. Kindly country doctor recognizes the Dracula curse in action before anybody else does. He's the key authority figure, more so than the police. Around his normalcy Frank, Katherine, and Alucard do their dance macabre. Aside from wanting to commit Katherine on grounds of insanity because she's too morbid for his tastes, Dr. Brewster is the investigator who gathers information for the police, and eventually convinces them there's more going on than meets the eye."

I took a sip and continued. "The icing on the cake is the darkly poetic sets, from swampland to nursery. The confrontation between Frank and Alucard in the swamp drainage tunnel is surprisingly succinct and effective. Scratch one all-powerful vampire. At least for this movie, anyway. From his powerful tossing of Frank across the room with one hand, to his sheer terror at seeing his coffin go up in flames, Chaney captured an unusually telling final moment every vampire must dread deep down, no matter how old or powerful, making us feel it; one we seldom see beyond the quick stake or sunlight dissolution: death for the undead."

Both Zombos and Zimba were dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream by the time I finished my Fizz. They looked comfortable enough, so I let them be. I prepared another Fizz before bed, but this time I added a little more tonic.

But just a little. 

For more information on Son of Dracula, I recommend American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema by Jonathan Rigby, and Universal Horrors: The Studio's Classic Films, 1931 to 1946, 2nd edition. Both are essential reading for the horror fan. 

Ghost in the House of Frankenstein House of Dracula (1945) Part 7

Read Part 6: House of Frankenstein

Zombos Says: Good

House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula are situated within short walking distance of each other and their inhabitants use the same narrative roads to tell their stories. The furnishings are also similar, albeit a bit sparser in Dracula's house. But Larry Talbot is still here, Frankenstein’s creation is still in need of a jolt, and the battle between supernatural ambiguity and scientific clarity, begun in 1931’s Dracula, ends here with scientific reason ultimately winning, illuminating the irrational monsters of Universal’s horror pantheon from their primal darkness with the enlightening tools of science.

Taking a quick walk around House of Dracula’s façade, most genre buffs and critics would find it a lesser structural composition than Frankenstein’s house, although the rooms are basically the same. Also the same are the hunchbacked assistant’s role—although shockingly pretty and demure this time (Jane Adams), unlike the murderous Daniel in that other house—and once again the impotent Monster (Glenn Strange) is accidentally uncovered to await another jump start to his electrodes from the quintessential and ubiquitous electrical apparatus always at hand for just that purpose. Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) is here, too, showing up unexpectedly at the front door—you may recall he died in House of Frankenstein—and Dracula returns—although he died, too—showing up just before dawn to ask for help; but only one of them is sincere in his need for a cure.

It’s this medical help both werewolf and vampire receive in House of Dracula that makes this movie a pivotal and historically important notation in the transition from the supernatural horrors of the 1930s and 1940s to the scientific hubris (and its subsequent faux pas), and the technological fears of space alien confrontations and mass biological infections of the 1950s and 1960s sci-horror cycle.

Most compelling for this transition is Larry Talbot’s cure from lycanthropy through surgery, and the discovery that Dracula’s “disease” is caused by parasites in his blood; a theme to be expanded on in later vampire movies and fiction. Like versatile duct tape, “the miracle of medicine,” as Dr. Edelmann says, becomes the multi-use fix-it for conditions formerly considered primeval; cursed afflictions beyond practical understanding or abatement by conventional means, now understandable and curable by peering through a microscope and mixing chemicals in test tubes.

There’s a neatly executed budgetary and esthetically pleasing grace to be found in Erle C. Kenton’s staging of House of Dracula’s spook show drama, embellished by Dracula’s animated metamorphosis from bat to man, and the near operatically executed sequence of Dracula’s deception and subsequent destruction by sunlight, to foster a greater appreciation and reconsideration of its merits and position within the Universal Horror Mythos.

To be clear, yes, there’s a giddy abandon regarding plot tidiness—just how do Dracula and the Wolf Man come back to life after House of Frankenstein?—and common sense--just how does the Monster look so damn clean and tidy after swimming in sandy muck for so long?—to warrant some derision. But taken as a whole, when scenes are considered in relation to the movie’s breezy, theater play-like storyline (which rubs scripting elbows so close to House of Frankenstein they squeak) and contrasted against the requirements of the Hays and studio offices, and the impotence of the classic monsters compared to the ruthless efficiency of Dr. Edelmann’s ( Onslow Stevens) homicidal serial killer alter-ego, a curious thing happens: you can begrudge a few allowances for immortal monsters wearing immortal clothing and bats hanging from clearly visible wires; there’s simply so much more to think about.

For instance, why are Dracula and the Wolf Man without bite in this movie?

The only onscreen murder is committed by Dr. Edelmann after he’s intentionally infected by Dracula’s parasitic blood. Larry Talbot’s transformations end before he can visibly chew on anyone and Dracula—pardon me, Baron Latos—dons his silly top hat and opera cape to woo Ms. Morelle (Martha O’Driscoll) with more gusto than shown for his thirst for blood.

Lon Chaney Jr. may be dressed in Yak hair and putty, but that’s all there is to show us he’s the Wolf Man. When he transforms in the prison cell, rattles the bars half-heartedly, then falls asleep! what are we to make of this? Did the censors interfere with the Wolf Man’s ferocity, or did the presence of rational science strip him of his wolfhood? In the cliff side cave where Dr. Edelmann searches for him after he tries to commit suicide, he attacks but again fails to draw blood. His sudden transformation back to human form conveniently leads to the Frankenstein Monster’s discovery. At no time is Larry Talbot a real threat. Neither is Dracula. And especially, neither is the Monster.

What gives?

Surprisingly, John Carradine, when sans hat and cape, presents an imposing vampire this time out, aided by Gothically-toned encounters with Ms. Morelle. Her piano music, turning from romantically poetic to darkly troubled when Dracula appears, provides one of the more engrossing effects of the vampire’s formidable supernatural underpinning. Like his magical glowing ring in House of Frankenstein, he wields it to seduce his desired bride. Ms. Morelle becomes intoxicated by its troubling, foreboding, yet strangely compelling sound.

Yet Dracula’s sinister sexual intensity has been stripped away as much as his devilish prowess. And this is the second time he’s left his coffin—his only refuge from sunlight—where it could easily be found (in House of Frankenstein he left it in the care of Doctor Niemann; smart move, there.)

Let’s recall who ultimately defeats him and Frankenstein's Monster, shall we?

Dracula, seconds after seeking safety in his coffin from the morning’s light, is efficiently pushed and pulled into the sunlight, to quietly fade away when Dr. Edelmann opens the lid; so he’s defeated by a man of science and medicine (in spite of his infection from Dracula through a blood transfusion, but not turned into a vampire through a neck bite). The Monster, finally recharged and ambulatory, is quickly and easily stopped with flammable chemicals enthusiastically deployed by Larry Talbot; so he’s defeated by a man, formerly cursed with lycanthropy, but now medically cured. The monstrous other, that dangerous and abnormal thing to be feared in every horror movie, novel, and story, and often cited by more sociological theory-prone genre buffs, is succinctly dealt with in House of Dracula using practical means. Even Dr. Edelmann’s Mr. Hyde-like alter-ego is quickly brought to heel by Talbot using a handgun; the last old monster to be cleansed from the new world, not by cleansing fire or wooden stake or evil-erasing silver, but by an ordinary bullet.

Let’s tally it up, shall we?

Talbott shot Dr. Edelmann dead and killed the Frankenstein Monster.

Talbott was cured of his supernatural affliction by an operation to relieve pressure on his brain.

Talbot lived, werewolf free. Of course, he became the Wolf Man again for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein--no explanation given--but for now he's happy.

Watching him look at the full moon without changing into the Wolf Man is a fulfilling climax to his journey to find true death in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, then to find a cure in House of Frankenstei, and then a better cure in House of Dracula.

A cure!

Before this, monsters weren't cured, they were to be feared and exterminated as promptly as possible. When Talbott forces Inspector Holtz (Lionel Atwill) to lock him up so he doesn't kill anyone, his transformation brings pity from Dr. Edelmann and tears from nurse assistant Milizia, not fear. And when Dracula introduces himself to Dr. Edelmann and requests his help in finding a cure, the doctor isn't scared or even a little worried. Instead he poo-poos the whole notion of vampires, although he seems to know the folklore quite well, and then consents to take on the challenge after discovering Dracula is suffering from a blood infection. Just like that!

From doctors pushing past the boundaries of God's domain (Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein), to doctors misguided by an intoxicating taste of mastery over nature (Son of Frankenstein, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man), to doctors unwavering in their scientific hubris (House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein), the message is simple: it's not about the monsters outside, but the monsters within, and the strength of their power comes from fear.

But there were worse things than imagined monsters and worse fears to be generated from a society carrying torches constantly without realizing it. With the not-of-this-world threats of classic monsters supplanted by the realistic technological and sociological ones springing up from world war and the grim dawn of the Hiroshima Age, our nightmares could no longer hide behind folkloric, superstitious terrors from an ancient world; they danced uncontrollably at the periphery of our imagined armageddons.

What remained for Universal's now rendered harmless bogey men would be a final sendup in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and a rebirth as "friendly" monsters, sparked by a generation of monsterkids looking for safety, and their imagination's comfort from the sturm und drang of an increasingly insensible and unfriendly world as the nuclear horrors of the 1950s take the spotlight, followed by the 1960s, where a peeping tom, a few zombies eating Pennsylvania, and a wizard of gore are about to bring the terror inside the home.

And yet there's one more monster rally to hold, one more jolt for the Frankenstein Monster to take, and one more chance for Bela Lugosi to don his Dracula cape. It’s also one more chance to look the classic fears of another world squarely in the the face and laugh, asking is this what I was afraid of?

Ghost in the House of Frankenstein Part 6 House of Frankenstein (1944)

Zombos Says: Very Good

Read Part 5: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

Despite its all star cast, and the return of Boris Karloff to the fold, the movie was the silliest and dullest of the entire series. In its non-stop and methodical rushing through stock horror sequences, it approached the standardization of the "B" Western, and even lacked the kind of bravura dialogue that at least can provide a pseudo-Gothic veneer. (William K. Everson, Classics of the Horror Movie)

Although Everson pans House of Frankenstein, this second monster rally from Universal's production treadmill is not silly or dull, and steps lively through its "stock horror sequences" of brain-swapping mad science, murderous hunchbacked assistants, and star-crossed lovers, all with a patina of Gothic-noir finesse. It's slick-slacks, neatly pressed and sharply creased, and while it does not dwell deep in meaning, House of Frankenstein remains a well-directed, entertainingly acted, and visually appealing Universal-style horror movie.

But John Carradine's portrayal of Dracula is another matter.

Except for his glowing, mesmerizing, ring providing most of the vampire's menace—it offers a glimpse of evil shadows moving furtively in a nightmare world—Carradine's Big Bandleader accoutrement and eye-pop stare brimming from under a silly, tilted tophat and short opera cape dandily draped across his shoulders, do their best to murderlize the spookshow tone entirely. At least Dracula's early demise in the movie lessens our burden of having to suffer Caradine's ham and corn buffet for long, and frees Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr) to pine away and lament his lycanthropic curse, which is really the main storyline anyway.

Perhaps Universal was banking on the audience appeal for the Frankenstein name, but House of Frankenstein and the subsequent House of Dracula are two peas in a pod, and should have been named House of the Wolf Man and Sublet of the Wolf Man respectively.

Maleva the gypsy is no where to be found; and the Frankenstein brothers, daughters, and baronesses are gone, too. The Monster (Glenn Strange) remains; more lifeless than ever in body and spirit, but still recognizable dressed in those defining neck bolts. Erle C. Kenton's patent leather direction, Hans J. Salter's mood-rich music (along with Paul Dessau), and the creative best from the art and set decoration B movie crews with what's at hand all funnel through a lean filming schedule and penny-pinching budget to stir shadow, menace, and monsters briskly when the lightning strikes again.

Imprisoned mad Doctor Gustav Niemann (Boris Karloff) escapes the dark, dank prison cell he's in, along with the homicidal Daniel (J. Carrol Naish), a hunchback outcast dreaming of a straight and handsome body. Niemann's incessant raving about brain transplants, swapping human brains with dog brains, and getting even on those who locked him up appeals to Daniel, who buys into the bad doctor’s promise to give him a better body.

And isn’t that what the Frankenstein franchise has always been about? A yearning to be better at science and medicine; a yearning for a better existence; a yearning for a better companion; a yearning for a better brain; and a yearning for a better body?

Daniel follows the Doctor when a lightning bolt blasts open an escape route for them through their dark prison’s massive stone walls, hoping Niemann will place his brain into that better body. As the rain pours down, they chance upon Lampini's (George Zucco) traveling sideshow of horrors. Lampini's reluctance to take them where they want to go ends abruptly between Daniel's tightly gripping hands, shown through a flash of sudden terror in Lampini's eyes, Daniel lurching menacingly closer with those outstretched hands, and a gurgling cry as Niemann smirks in quiet satisfaction.

With plans for revenge on those who imprisoned him, and a driving desire to find the life and death secrets of Frankenstein, Niemann assumes Lampini's name and travels to Visaria ( or freel free to insert your own village name here since continuity went out the door with Lampini's body). 

 

Bela Lugosi was originally slated to play the role of Dracula, but the movie’s shooting schedule was dependent on the presence of Boris Karloff being released from the stage tour of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). Shooting was delayed, and John Carradine was cast instead of Lugosi, who had a prior engagement: ironically, playing Karloff's "Jonathan Brewster" role in another touring company of Arsenic and Old Lace (IMDb entry on House of Frakenstein).

 

In the mold of Bride of Frankenstein's Pretorius, Niemann is a maniacal scientist bent on one-upping Frankenstein. Brain-swapping becomes modus-operandi, raison d'être, and bargaining chip for Niemann as he pursues his revenge, first on Burgomeister Hussman (Sig Ruman), with the help of Count Dracula.

Early drafts of the story reportedly involved more characters from the Universal Stable, including the Mummy, The Mad Ghoul, and possibly The Invisible Man (Wikipedia), but the only monster to remain in Lampini's traveling horror show is Dracula. Curiously, he is not the vampire late of Whitby Abbey, or even the vampire last seen burning to ashes in Dracula's Daughter. No continuity from there to here is intended.

The skeletal remains of Dracula, with a stake embedded deep into its ribcage, is pure spookshow dramatics parlayed into a rapidly unfolding and stylish vignette of terror for Hussman, kicking off Niemann's revenge with a flourish. It begins with the piecemeal reconstitution of Dracula's body and clothes when Niemann pulls out the stake in a huff after meeting the Burgomeister. With his threat of the dreaded stake poised to strike again, and his promise of fealty to the Lord of the Undead, Niemann convinces Dracula to help him.

In quick succession, Dracula ingratiates himself to Hussman, seduces and hypnotizes Hussman's Americanized (meaning perky and hip) granddaughter-in-law Rita (the effervescent Anne Gwynne), turns into a large bat to kill Hussman (done with a nifty animated transformation capped by a neck attack shown in silhoette), and is discovered by Hussman's son Karl (Peter Coe) who realizes what's happening and sounds the alarm to Inspector Arnz (Lionel Atwill).

With the inspector and his men in hot pursuit on horseback, Dracula, in turn, chases after Niemann and Daniel as they race away with his coffin in Lampini's wagon. With the sunrise moments away, Niemann directs Daniel to dump it. Unable to reach his daytime santuary in time, Dracula is reduced to a skeleton once again. His hypnotic influence over Rita ends when his ring falls off his boney finger.

Economically directed and succinct in execution, it's still exhilarating and entertaining with flair, and certainly not the script calamity it's purported to be in many critical analyses. Carradine projects a more energetic Dracula when he's not staring with widened eyes or donning his tophat, but he doesn't have Lugosi's seductive and menacing silent presence, or malevolence when in motion, which, arguably, could be considered a hindrance to the faster pace of action here.

Continuing to Visaria, they rest at a Gypsy campsite, where Daniel comes to the aid of a girl being whipped. He insists they shelter her and Niemann reluctantly agrees. Daniel's infatuation with the playful Ilonka (Elena Verdugo) is not returned when she sees his hunchback, making him more impatient to receive the new body promised to him by Niemann.

And the one he wants is already occupied by Larry Talbot.

 

Read Part 7: House of Dracula

Photograph of Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein Monster (with Boris Karloff) courtesy of Dr. Macros High Quality Movie Scans.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) Movie Program

My eyes popped out when I saw this 1923 souvenir program for The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Professor Kinema's archives. After I put them back in so I could see better, I knew I had to share these fantastic 18 pages of movie history. And you don't even need to pay the 25¢ cover charge!

See more movie pressbooks From Zombos' Closet.

Universal Monsters Iron-On Transfers

These are copyright 1992 from Joy Insignia, Inc. and Troll Company (although the graphics show 1991). I picked them up from eBay a while back, when eBay was still an enjoyable place to find interesting monster collectibles.

Not quite as stylish and colorful as the Mani-Yak iron-on transfers, but still worth adorning your t-shirt to strut around a horror convention or two. Click each one for a larger image.

Ghost In the House of Frankenstein Part 5 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

Part 4: The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) 

Zombos Says: Good

Haven't we tried before to get rid of the Monster by force? We burned down the sanitarium and yet we didn't destroy Frankenstein's fiendish creation. We must be more clever this time. Let's use our brains for once. (Mayor of Vesaria in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man)

Frankenstein's creation has changed; both spiritually and physically, he behaves differently from when he first reaches upward toward the sunlight streaming in from the skylight his creator, Henry Frankenstein, briefly opens in Frankenstein. But was the Monster simply reacting to the light or reaching toward understanding it? And was Henry's abrupt closing of the skylight a sign of his reluctance to foster that understanding, to renege on his new role of being a parent?

These are questions no longer asked in The Ghost of Frankenstein, and they are expediently ignored in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. By removing God and Henry's fatherly responsibilities from the equation summing Monster and soul, and by removing the mysterious cosmic spark of life present in the lightning, Universal's script writers could churn out simpler stories of mayhem, brain-swapping, and spook show dramatics unencumbered by philosophical and social musings. Like the Monster's soul, the spirit of the series had fled, to be replaced by rote movements deprived of deeper motivations, slickly paced on Universal's production treadmill so as not to even break a sweat.

But if you look closely at this treadmill you will see a glimmer of something new. Accidentally born out of necessity, perhaps, but still important to take note of. It's the beginning of what would become the essence of the 1950s sci-horror cycle, when science anomaly, outer space threat, and the well-intentioned but catastrophic effects of laboratory discoveries all move to the forefront of our fears, replacing the Gothic darkness and musty passageways of folklore. It is the cross of faith giving way to belief in the crucible of technology. Holy vestments previously used as defense against evil are replaced by the white lab coat and practical instruments used for experimentation, analysis, and resolution.

Vampirism?

It’s a malady of the bloodstream—science will cure it.

Frankenstein's creation?

It’s a botched surgical operation—proper medical procedure and simple electricity will correct it.

Lycanthropy?

It’s a mental disorder—a pressure on the brain that psychological intervention and medical skill will provide palliation for it.

Wielding this newfound confidence and superiority of scientific method over any natural or unnatural adversity is the self-assured scientist. He (and rarely, she) assumes the high status once held by the priest, to sermonize a new religion more palatable for the atomic age about to flourish; and more reassuring in the face of its abuse in an age of global conflict.

Blame it on a) the spiritual disenfranchisement brought on by the conflict of a second World War, or b) a society becoming more distrustful and less naive, or c) a loss of faith in God's handiwork because of both a and b.

Regardless of the reasons, the once frightening monsters of horror were becoming more understandable, more rational in cause and effect and, therefore, less threatening, rendering them weaker in their abilities to terrorize. To compensate for this power drain, Universal mustered the monster rally: if one monster isn't scary enough, two or more will do the trick!

Maybe.

In Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the self-assured scientist's role is played by Dr. Frank Mannering (Patrick Knowles), and the precise point at which out with the old and in with the new takes place occurs when Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr) wakes up in Queen's Hospital in Cardiff, after surgery to repair the head injury incurred from the bludgeoning his father, Sir John Talbot, delivered in The Wolf Man.

Before this, the rebirth of Larry Talbot's cursed existence in Llanwelly Cemetery, under a full moon, contradicts an older age of superstition, when the precious metal silver could end a werewolf curse with certainty, and bring peaceful death to its tormented victim. But not now and no longer, even here in this horror staple of windswept tombstones, moldy earth, and decaying corpses. The curse is not ended and Talbot is not killed by the pounding his feral noggin received with the silver-headed cane. To the dismay of the grave robbers who dared open his tomb, and the awakening Larry Talbot, the creeping moonlight revives the Wolf Man to hunt the streets and woodlands once again.

 

Come one and all and sing a song
Faro-la, faro-li!
For life is short, but death is long
Faro-la, faro-li!
There'll be no music in the tomb
So sing with joy and down with gloom
Tonight the new wine is in bloom
Faro-la, faro-li! (Song of the New Wine, sung by Adia Kuznetzoff, in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf man)

 

Once Roy William Neal (The Scarlet Claw) directs the moonlight to creep across the floor in Talbot's tomb and then again in his room in Queen's Hospital, Jack Pierce's man to wolf transformation begins. Talbot explains he's cursed, but the doctor believes him to be delusional. Biting through his straitjacket during a moonlit night, Talbot hoofs it to Maleva the old Gypsy woman for help. But Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) is of the old world and therefore powerless in this new age of medicine and science Talbot has awakened in. She tells him only Doctor Frankenstein may possess the knowledge to help and soon they are off to Vasaria to find the doctor.

What happened to the charm she gave him in The Wolf Man, to keep him from turning into a wolf? Why doesn’t she make another one?

Once again, Universal's timeless, placeless horror qualities—ones convenient for the scriptwriters, but hell on continuity—eschew motor vehicles for horse drawn wagons and muddle locations, again, for Frankenstein's laboratory.

Although Ludwig Frankenstein supplied the surgical skill in the previous Ghost of Frankenstein, his manor house and laboratory were destroyed by fire. The watchtower and laboratory shown here are similar to the ones Henry Frankenstein used in Frankenstein. Go figure. At least one quality, the ever ready torch-bearing mob (where DO they get those torches?), does change: the villagers carry lanterns instead. Not as exciting as burning clubs held aloft, but definitely more economical and manageable on set.

Another necessity has the Monster buried under or in something, waiting to be found and released in each movie. A rebirth, it seems, which occurs again and again: in Frankenstein, the cadaver for the Monster is unburied from a fresh grave; in Bride of Frankenstein, the Monster, buried beneath the burned-out windmill, is unwittingly freed; in Son of Frankenstein, after being buried in the rubble of the destroyed watchtower, the Monster is unearthed by Ygor; in Ghost of Frankenstein, Ygor digs out his only friend from the dried sulfur pit; in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Talbot stumbles onto the Monster, frozen in a block of ice, buried under the charred remains of Ludwig's manor house and sanitarium.

Or is it the watchtower?

Audiences didn't seem to care or notice how Frankenstein’s laboratory and monster-energizing equipment kept changing locale.

Talbot, who always manages to dress the part of the Wolf Man (same neat dark shirt, same neat dark (and pressed) slacks), after being chased into the ruins regains consciousness in his human form after falling into a catacomb filled with ice, frost, and burned timbers—a poetically eerie scene that exemplifies the Universal Horror mystique. He frees the Monster (Important! Don't forget Ygor's brain was transplanted into the Monster's cranium at the end of Ghost of Frankenstein), and the two of them chat up a storm over a brisk fire. Ygor, now in the Monster's body, tells Talbot about his tribulations in trying to reach his goal of ruling the world.

Wait. That’s wrong. That’s not what happened in the movie.

The Monster's lengthy speech, which explains the odd mannerism Lugosi had of holding his arms stiffly in front of him as he stumbles around because of near blindness due to blood type incompatibility (it happened at the end of The Ghost of Frankenstein), was cut.

In fact, all of Lugosi's speaking parts were cut. They were removed because preview audiences giggled at the Monster speaking in Lugosi's heavily-accented voice. At least this is the reason often cited by movie historians, repeating the explanation given by Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man's scriptwriter Curt Siodmak.

But is it entirely true?

The important continuity support needed to make sure the audience remembered the Monster was now Ygor, whose brain was plopped into the Monster’s cranium in Ghost of Frankenstein, no longer existed. There was no chance Lugosi would give a convincing performance because Siodmak's dialog, and Neal's efficient but standard direction of the Monster's talking scenes, highlights the Monster speaking, not Ygor as the Monster speaking. Without this understanding, Ygor’s voice, spoken by the Monster, appears incongruous.

One effective continuity builder Siodmak and Neal could have used would have been a flashback showing Ghost of Frankenstein's climax to reestablish Ygor's presence in the Monster's body. Dialog exchanges between Talbot and the Monster could also have been written with more regard for Lugosi's unique speech patterns (less dialog for him), and more carefully chosen words when he did speak. Talbot also shouldn't be calling the Monster “dumb” as he does in the original script, and the Monster begging for help is out of character even for Ygor.

 

“Don’t leave me–don’t go! I’m weak…They’ll catch me and bury me alive!” (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Universal Moviescript Series, Classic Horror Movies, Volume 5)

 

While it’s easy to assay Lugosi's role as inadequate, he received little help from the script and the subsequent revisions to the movie to be successful.

After the Journal of Life and Death (or How I Did It if you're a Young Frankenstein fan) is found with Baroness Frankenstein's (Ilona Massey) help, Dr. Mannering, who's been tracking Talbot all over Europe, discovers that changing the plus and minus poles on Frankenstein's equipment can either strengthen or deplete electrical energy. Mannering, falling under the Frankenstein curse of hubris (or perhaps simple curiosity), decides to power up the Monster while draining the life out of Talbot to end his werewolf curse.

Oddly, Mannering decides to do this during a full moon.

Cue the slugfest between a rejuvenated Monster/Ygor and the Wolf Man and the destruction—again—of the laboratory. No mention is made of Maleva’s whereabouts after everything blows up, but being Old World anyway, she’s no longer needed to prop up the supernatural aspects of the franchise since they were no longer needed. (Her unexplained absence later in the film was due to an on set injury. I guess they thought no one would notice.)

, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man remains an energetic and enjoyable excursion to Universal's quintessentially obscure world of mad science and monsters. And we even get to see Dwight Frye one last time.

Both the Wolf Man and the Monster wind up frozen in ice under the flooded ruins of Castle Frankenstein, waiting to be freed in House of Frankenstein. Like the Monster, the ubiquitous laboratory equipment is just as immortal, and those neck bolts beckon for yet another round of mad science.

Time for the mad scientist to make a house call.

Read Part 6: House of Frankenstein

Ghost In the House of Frankenstein Part 4 The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

Part 3: Son of Frankenstein (1939)

Zombos Says: Very Good

The Ghost of Frankenstein is in many ways the last of the vintage horror movies. Val Lewton, The Uninvited, and Dead of Night were about to bring a new sophistication and literacy to the genre. If the Ghost is already an assembly line job, it's a good, thoroughly professional, and entertaining one, an honorable close to a solid decade of first rate chillers. (William K. Everson, Classics of the Horror Movie)

 Although The Ghost of Frankenstein may be a shade more pale compared to the first three movies in Universal Studios' Frankenstein series, I disagree with calling it "artless" (Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas and John Brunas, Universal Horrors: The Studio's Classic Movies 1931-1946, 2ed). Slick, yes; budget assembly line production, yes; but artless? No. Even with Universal's shift of the series from A to B movie status, Erle C. Kenton's no-frills direction and Jack Otterson's art direction still manage to spark a little magic between those electrodes one more time.

Scott Darling, needing more room to meander the Frankenstein Monster's misadventures further, introduces the second son of Frankenstein, the more sedate Ludwig (Cedric Hardwicke). Ludwig Frankenstein (neither a 'Baron' nor a 'Von' in his name like his brother in Son of Frankenstein) is a doctor. He’s mastered the science of moving brains in-between craniums. Ludwig practices his brain surgery and psychiatry in the small and happy town of Vasaria. Oddly, Vasaria's townsfolk do not know anything about his unfortunate family tree, or the problems his deific-prone father and brother have made for that other small and unhappy town within walking distance. But soon those problems will become Vasaria's when Ygor and the Monster pay a visit after being thrown out of Castle Frankenstein by torch-wielding, grudge-bearing villagers (although they were giddy with happiness at the end of Son of Frankenstein).

The ghost of Dwight Frye puts in an all too brief appearance as one of the despondent villagers. After a Town Hall meeting (note the Americanization) where they pin everything from unhappy babies to bad crops on the 'Frankenstein Curse,' the mayor (another Americanization) gives them carte blanche to blow up the castle and pesky Ygor along with it.

Ygor conveniently survived his 'mortal' gun wounds received in Son of Frankenstein to continue his chief-instigator role here. He also seems to have scrounged up enough money for much needed dental work and grooming aids. Seeing Lugosi reprise his best role since Dracula and Murder Legendre in White Zombie is more than satisfying, and keeps the action moving briskly. More briskly than Lon Chaney Jr's portrayal of the Monster—under Kenton's direction, at least—can muster alone.

Tossing dynamite sticks up at the castle while Ygor drops broken stone battlements from above, the villagers manage to topple one of the castle's massive towers, revealing—

Look! The sulphur pit's all dried and hardened since the last movie! And there's the Monster nestled in it like a bug in a rug! Wait a minute. Wasn't the pit in the laboratory and both lying adjacent to the castle in Son of Frankenstein? How did the pit and the Monster wind up under one of the castle's towers for this movie?

 —his only friend pickled in the now dried sulfur. Or so surmises Ygor, who is delighted to see the Monster still kicking. He pulls him out of the pit and both make a hasty exit while the villagers blow up the rest of the castle to their heart’s content and much needed venting.

The village mob hysterics may be patent Universal artistry, now economically packaged for filming—I can't fathom why Universal's theme parks haven't picked up on such a great role-playing idea—but Kenton's artistic flair still comes through and is first seen when a lightning storm erupts and Ygor, trying to persuade the Monster to seek shelter, is pushed aside as Frankenstein's creation reaches toward the heavens. A bolt of electricity strikes the Monster's outstretched arms and he welcomes it. Still covered in dried sulfur and surrounded by the desolate nightscape and gnarled trees, he looks like a ghost defiantly rising from his grave.

"The lightning. It is good for you! Your father was Frankenstein, but your mother was the lightning!" says Ygor, who decides to seek out Ludwig, residing in the nearby town of Vasaria, for help.

More becoming to his familiar costume, along the way to Vasaria the Monster loses his Go Go-styled fuzzy vest worn in Son of Frankenstein and dons a dark jacket. When the overly cricked neck Ygor and his overly tall friend walk into town—yes, they simply stroll into town in broad daylight—Ygor stops to chat with a girl to ask directions.

As Ygor talks with the girl, the Monster wanders off when he sees a little girl (Janet Ann Gallow) being bullied by the little boys. He helps her retrieve her ball, which the boys had tossed onto a nearby roof. In the process he manages to panic Vasaria's townspeople and break enough bones to quickly make Vasaria as unhappy a town as the one he recently left. Low angles with the camera looking up at the towering Monster—showing the little girl's point of view—increase his menacing presence.

From this movie onward the Frankenstein Monster becomes a scene prop of immense proportions. By the time Glenn Strange takes over the role in House of Frankenstein and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the Monster is relegated to being a creepy, big, dummy-like figure; usually strapped to an operating table, around which, indirectly, much of the action occurs. It is this mute, inert body, with arms outstretched in front of him when he does occasionally walk (attributed to Lugosi's blind Monster performance in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man) that gives us the iconic image of Frankenstein's Monster prevalent in the 1960s up to today.

The plot device of restoring the ailing Monster's vitality by electrically recharging him, introduced in Son of Frankenstein, now goes one step further here, where it becomes a matter of recharging him before exchanging his abnormal brain with a normal one. Re-energizing and brain-swapping will continue as the main modus operandi for the Monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, as well as the du jour blueprint for countless future spookshow skits involving mad scientists and Frankenstein Monsters—or plain old gorillas. (For a deliciously goofy example of the gorilla variety see the Three Stooges 3D short, Spooks!)

This shift from Boris Karloff's misunderstood Monster yearning for acceptance and companionship to Lon Chaney Jr's mute, lumbering Monster, now weak and semi-conscious, lessens the complexity of the storyline for easier reuse and allows any actor of the right size to mimic the role since it has few emotive requirements, with both conditions important for keeping the budget low and the production simple.

 

The brain-swapping routine is a hangover from Curt Siodmak's Black Friday script, facilitating a startlingly gruesome moment when Bohmer wheels a bottled brain directly into the camera lens. (Jonathan Rigby, American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema)

 

There is also a more important thematic shift in the Monster's relationship with his world. This theme, begun in Son of Frankenstein and developed further here, either accidentally or subconsciously, as a result of Universal moving the series to B production status, contains layers of meaning not usually discussed when The Ghost of Frankenstein and House of Frankenstein are mentioned.

And what is this theme, pray tell? 

Read Part 3: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

Ghost In the House of Frankenstein Part 3 Son of Frankenstein (1939)

Part 2: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

“Your pants are talking,” said Wally the Bat.

“What...oh.” I reached into my pocket for the two-way radio.

“Zoc? Zoc? Where are you?” It was Zombos’ voice. He sounded frantic.

“Yes, what is it? I'm still…” I looked at Wally. “…I’m still in the attic.”

“It is your—” 

A bolt of lightning flashed close to the mansion, quickly followed by a thunderous boom. It shook the dormer window open again.

“What’s that? I didn’t hear you,” I said through the static.

The door to the attic flew open. A tall, slim silhouette glided ominously through the door frame and headed toward me.

“It is your sister!" said Zombos. "I tried to warn you. She is—”

“Iloz! Where the hell are you?” she loudly asked. "This place is a mess. What the hell is taking you sooooo long. Ouch!" She tripped in the gloom. "Where the hell are the lights? I can't see a thing."

Wally the Bat, startled, squeaked as he rapidly unfurled his wings. “Time to go! It's been a real pleasure.”

He flew out the dormer window. I closed it behind him, wishing I could do the same. My sister Trixie was coming closer.

 "You're all wet! Well, don't stand there like a cow," said Trixie. "Everybody's waiting for the birthday boy." She took me by the arm and alternately pushed and pulled me downstairs.

"Here he is!" announced Trixie as she pushed me into the drawing room. Everyone was gathered around Chef Machiavelli and his serving cart. He held a large cake knife poised at the ready. My birthday cake shimmered beneath the flames of numerous red candles. Ace of Cakes would have been jealous. 1313 Mockingbird Lane was represented right down to the crooked bat weather vane.

"I don't recall the Grim Reaper appearing in any Munsters episode," I said, noticing the hooded scion of death standing, scythe poised at the ready, on the little dilapidated porch. 

"The Grim Reaper is my idea," said Trixie. "I thought you would adore it. Well, go on. Hurry up and blow out the candles."

"Marilyn Munster I adore, Grim Reaper not so much. Don't rush me. I'm savoring the moment. You don't turn fifty-two more than once, you know." I sucked in a long breadth, took aim at the little plastic Grim Reaper, and blew out the candles. He held fast. Damn.

"How does it feel being fifty-two?" asked Zimba, pulling a candle out to lick the icing.

"A lot like fifty-one, only older," I replied.

The number fifty-two: it's the atomic number of tellurium. It's one of the tombstones in Goth: The Game of Horror Trivia. The Mayan Calendar moves through a complete cycle every fifty-two years. At age fifty-two, Alfred Hitchcock directed Strangers on a Train. At fifty-two, Boris Karloff played the Frankenstein monster, in earnest, for the third and last time in Son of Frankenstein.

"What were you doing stumbling around up there?" asked Trixie as she helped remove the candles.

"Zombos thought he left his--"

"Oh, let us not start this again," said Zombos. "I clearly remember I did put it—"

"Hush," said Zimba. "You'd forget where your own head was if it wasn't bolted on." She pulled out the last candle. "Let's cut the cake!"

"I can help with that," volunteered Trixie. Before I could stop her she snapped her fingers. Instinct took over and I ducked just in time. The cake split open down the middle, sending the Grim Reaper high into the air along with most of the cake's hazelnut icing. Zombos was standing closest to the calamity. Zimba handed him a napkin to wipe the icing off his glasses as he removed the Grim Reaper, now stuck in his hair.

"Oops. Sorry. I thought I had that spell down pat." My sister's witchery skills always did leave much to be desired.

"So. How  are those lessons coming along at the Witch Finders School of Cauldronic Arts? asked Zombos.

"Never mind, dear," said Zimba. "No harm done." She gave Zombos her always persuasive stare-of-Medusa and he kept quiet. "Let's get comfortable by the fire while Rudolpho puts more frosting on the cake."

Only Zimba called Chef Machiavelli by his first name. Mostly because only she could keep a straight face while doing so. Rudolpho wheeled the cake back to the kitchen as we made ourselves comfortable by the fire.

Lightning still flashed now and then across the large windowpanes, and streams of water ran pell-mell across the glass. The roaring flame on the grate lulled me with thoughts of torches held high by beleaguered villagers chasing down the Frankenstein Monster, again and again...

 

...Lightning, dreary, near endless, drizzle, and beleaguered people play their important parts in all the Frankenstein movies. It took four years after Frankenstein to make the lonely Monster a reluctant mate in Bride of Frankenstein, and another four years for Wolf Von Frankenstein to take on his father's less than stellar work habits in Son of Frankenstein to restore the Monster's health.

Boris Karloff returns as the Monster, but he is a ghost of his former self, playing a lesser role as foil to Bela Lugosi's indelible performance as another equally undying monster, Ygor. Finally, the Monster has found a friend, although a homicidal miscreant one with a penchant for black humor.

With Basil Rathbone as the effusive Wolf Von Frankenstein and Lionel Atwill as the studious Inspector Krogh playing to the rafters, Lugosi's Ygor takes center stage this time around. Karloff realized his beloved creation had become just another fixture in the mad scientist's lab, like the glassware and electrical apparatus, providing the means but no longer the method to an end: Frankenstein's Monster, truly given life by Karloff the Uncanny's emotive portrayal, had been reduced to mere appliances and neck bolts anyone willing to undergo the grueling makeup process could wear.

The humanity and soul-stirrings of Frankenstein's creation were not the only things left out in subsequent movies. Any dichotomy of nature versus nurture, dialectic regarding the balance between responsibility and determinism, and all displays of sympathy gave way to a plot gimmick that begins in Son of Frankenstein and continues through Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein: since the monster's brain is bad, he is bad; replace his brain with a good one and he becomes good. But first, like a drained rechargeable battery, he must be powered up to full strength through his bolt-like electrodes before the operation can take place.

The role of the Monster was not the only thing that changed.

Son of Frankenstein stands as the bridge spanning the ambivalent melancholia and mania of James Whale's and Todd Browning's Gothic night sweats to the slick-slacks, neatly cleaned-and-pressed, B budget trimmed finery of Universal's front-office controlled monster package for a new decade of movie-goers versed in the realities and hardships of World War II. But it’s an impressive bridge, nonetheless, thanks in large part to four consummate actors playing horror for all it was worth and then some.

The placeless-ness of Universal Studios' Grimm's fairy tale-like world of monsters and madmen is strongest here. The train that Baron Wolf Von Frankenstein and his family travel on to the cursed village of his father—which, oddly enough, is now named after the man who brought so much misery to it—seems modern enough; until it passes through a particularly dark and dreary landscape of withered, gnarled trees and the Baron and his family arrive at their destination. Mel Brooks in Young Frankenstein plays off this stark change from present day to not-quite-sure-when-or-where for laughs, but it is this blurring of past and present, an abstract recognizability, which makes Universal's horror canon so appealing, even though it was probably driven more by script and budget and global market necessities than artful construct.

In these first few minutes we've crossed into a distorted, unhealthy landscape and unpleasant climate, where technological and agrarian artifice mingles with the arcane; where people dress in both contemporary and quaintly antiquated, but nondescript, clothing, and where mundane laws of continuity from movie to movie no longer need apply. Here be villains, heroes, and those caught between the two, walking through shadows, strutting and fretting their fears, triumphs, and downfalls on a timeless stage that leers at the face of convention.

Only in this peculiar environment can art director Jack Otterson's team compose an architectural chiaroscuro of overgrown, expressionistic buildings more suited to a Max Fleischer cartoon than a sane town, and fill them with dark cavernous rooms containing overbearing archways, oddly intersecting angles, and recklessly sprawling wooden staircases without handrails. Austere furnishings accentuate the cheerless emptiness of Castle Frankenstein, in contrast to the extravagant furniture and dressings in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. Outrageously large commonplace artifacts, like the metal knocker that Inspector Krogh pounds against the front door to announce his arrival, complement the surreal dreamscape of this isolated fiefdom.

The villagers meet the train, huddling under a sea of oversized black umbrellas, in the pouring rain, waiting to see—not greet—the new face of their fear. They quickly dissolve away as the Baron stumbles across ill-chosen words of praise for his father. Receiving a brusque welcome by the town council, his father's chest of papers is quickly dumped into his hands. Only Inspector Krogh is somewhat cordial. He realizes the danger Wolf Von Frankenstein is in: the intoxicating allure of power that comes from dabbling in forbidden science; a devastating family trait. Driving up to the estate, a skulking Ygor is briefly seen in a flash of headlights as the motor car pulls up to the front door; a portent of bad things to come.

 

In the minds of many horror aficionados, [Lionel] Atwill's greatest performance came in a supporting part--as the unforgettable, wooden-armed Inspector Krogh in Son of Frankenstein. Constructed with equal parts bottled rage and gallows humor, Krogh ranks as the most completely assembled supporting character of Universal's entire Frankenstein series (unless you count Bela Lugosi's Ygor, who became the de facto star of Son and Ghost of Frankenstein). Krogh also remains the only hero from the entire canon of Universal horror classics who's as much fun to watch as the studio's monsters and mad scientists. (Mark Clark, Smirk, Sneer and Scream: Great Acting in Horror Cinema)

 

Falling under the black shadows of Frankenstein's legacy, the surrounding, bog-filled countryside, accentuated by Hans J. Salter's sumptuous music, reflects more death than life. Through the mist-covered tombstones tilting left and right—much like Ygor's teeth—the hanged but still kicking shepard prowls, gleefully playing a dirge on his horn to annoy the already agitated villagers. These moonlight spookshow tableaus move to the forefront of Universal's later efforts.

 In Philip J. Riley's SON OF FRANKENSTEIN: Universal Moviescripts Series Classic Horror Movies Volume 3, it’s mentioned director Rowland V. Lee made sure to use third-billed Bela Lugosi as much as possible after the studio cut the former Dracula star's contracted weekly salary in half by insisting all his scenes be shot in one week. Not in the original shooting script to begin with, the character of Ygor was hastily crafted by Lee and writer Willis Cooper as production started, but it was Lugosi's character-acting skills that fleshed out Ygor with wicked panache. Not much of the finished movie comes from the initial scripting either. Scenes were written throughout the shooting schedule, resulting in a somewhat uneven flow in the action. Watching the glee with which Lugosi, Atwill, and Rathbone chew on the scenery tends to hide this unevenness, however.

 

Bela Lugosi, originally signed to play a police inspector in the movie, had the role of a lifetime improvised on the set—the broken-necked, snaggletoothed, and demented Ygor. Gone completely was any hint of Dracula; here, for virtually the only time in Hollywood was Lugosi as the versatile character actor he really was. Unfortunately, Hollywood paid little attention, and would never extend Lugosi such an opportunity again. (David J, Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror)

 

Ygor, who has been using the monster to do his revengeful dirty work, insists Wolf Von Frankenstein revive his only friend, made comatose by a lightning bolt strike (although it is a lightning bolt the monster seeks to innervate him in Ghost of Frankenstein). Frankenstein's son can’t resist the challenge. Soon the villagers are throwing rocks at the large boxes of equipment heading for the watchtower laboratory.

Wait a minute; wasn’t it blown to smithereens in the last movie?

Yes, it was reduced to rubble in Bride of Frankenstein, with the Monster buried deeply under it.

Well, if you are going to break that continuity, why not go big time and throw in a boiling pit of sulfur, that’s been around since the Romans, in the middle of it, and how about a split-level design for the lab? And put it right next to Castle Frankenstein so the Monster and Ygor can easily prowl around using secret passages running from the lab to the castle. 

Okay. Done.

The Monster is revived through Kenneth Strickfaden's quintessential electrical phantasmagorical high amperage light show of pyrogeysers, crackling and arcing away. Before Wolf can say "why haven't the sulfur fumes knocked me out?" the Monster is back on his eighteen-pound asphalter boots and kicking up mayhem at Ygor's bidding.

After trying to make friends and woo a lab-ordered bride, Karloff's Monster no longer seeks understanding; he is fed up with people screaming at the sight of him, shooting at him, and chasing him with flaming torches. Passing in front of a mirror he pauses to despise his visage (or perhaps it is the woolly vest he despises, a holdover from the color tests, which now replaces his iconic jacket?). He hates what he is and not even Dr. Phil can help him now. Misunderstood and feared, after being treated as a monster for so long, he now acts accordingly.

The hunt for a new brain begins with little Shirley Temple cute Peter Frankenstein (Donnie Dunagan), Wolf's son. The monster takes a liking to Peter--the boy reads fairy tales to him—and eventually figures out that if he had Peter's brain, perhaps he would be as sweet and innocent and fun to be with; still awfully big and creepy, but fun to be with. Of course, Donnie Dunagan's grating Southern drawl should have given the monster pause for concern.

 

Corny. And I had a Southern accent! With this dignified European cast, they had this little kid in there with this loud voice. They kept saying "Speak up!" because I didn't speak that loud then...And as you speak up, your accent is always accentuated. So here's this little curly-haired jerk runnin' around there with this very deep Memphis-Texas accent (laughs)! They had the courage to do that! (Dunagan interview in Universal's Horrors: The Studios Classic Movies 1931-1946)

 

Inspector Krogh begins to suspect foul things are afoot when town council members start turning up dead while Ygor brazenly plays his horn in public. Wolf becomes increasingly high-strung—astounding, really, given Rathbone's already energetic delivery—becoming more ill-tempered each time Krogh pays a visit. Both Rathbone and Atwill, classically-trained British actors who could intentionally overact, play off each other, with Atwill slowly simmering and Rathbone rapidly boiling. As the villagers once again ready their torches, Krogh's impatience with Wolf's supercilious attitude reaches fever pitch. In answer to Wolf's defiant question to name one person who the Monster has killed or hurt, Krogh matter-of-factly recollects his own horrific experience.

Here’s the scene as written in the movie script:

 

Wolf: Do you honestly know of one criminal act that this poor creature committed? Did you ever even see him?

Krogh: The most vivid recollection of my life.

[Solemn instrumental music]

Krogh: I was but a child at the time, about the age of your own son. The monster had escaped and was ravaging the countryside...killing, maiming, terrorizing. One night, he burst into our house. My father took a gun and fired at him...but the savage brute sent him crashing to a corner. Then he grabbed me by the arm.

[Thud] Inspector Krogh slams his fake arm against the wall, a vacant look on his face.

[Tense instrumental music]

Krogh: One doesn't easily forget, Herr Baron, an arm torn out by the roots.

[Pause] Wolf is stunned, humbled.

Wolf: No, I...

Krogh: My lifelong ambition was to have been a soldier. But for this...

 

Atwill's little bits of business as he remembers—he pushes his monocle between the wooden fingers of his prosthetic arm and casually polishes it with a handkerchief—make this scene a show-stopper. The sudden thump as he slams his useless wooden arm against the wall in disgust punctuates the intense revelation. Krogh, in spite of his loss, still has a sense of gallows humor: during a heated game of darts with the Baron, he uses his wooden arm as a convenient dart holder. If you’ve seen Young Frankenstein or Dr. Strangelove you understand how influential Atwill's Inspector Krogh performance has been.

The dart game is interrupted by the disappearance of Peter and a search ensues. Inspector Krogh finds the secret passage that leads from Peter's room to the laboratory, while Wolf heads to the laboratory by other means.

When Ygor is gunned down, Karloff has one last moment of glory with the Monster legacy he created: realizing his only friend is dead (until the next movie, that is), he vents his sorrow. With Peter now under foot—the monster's left one—Inspector Krogh has his wooden arm torn off before Wolf grabs hold of a chain and swings into the Monster, sending him screaming into the boiling pit of sulfur.

All's right with the village now.

Wolf deeds over his castle and estate to the cheering villagers before leaving the Village of Frankenstein for good. Perhaps they’re happy because the Monster pays a visit to the next town over, for a change, in Ghost of Frankenstein.

Ghost In the House of Frankenstein Part 2 Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Part 1: Frankenstein (1931)

Zombos Says: Sublime

It took four years, rewritten scripts, and lots of coaxing to get the reluctant James Whale to direct Frankenstein's sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. Karloff, who acted in over eighty movies before finally hitting stardom in Frankenstein, in spite of sustaining severe back injuries manhandling Henry in the first movie, was eager to reprise his star role. Dwight Frye, whom Whale liked very much, definitely dead after the first movie, was given a new role—sort of. He plays Karl, the murderous, club-footed assistant to Dr. Pretorius (Earnest Thesiger).

Once again, Frye takes a meager role and embellishes it to perfection. Colin Clive is back as Henry Frankenstein, more morose and unbalanced than in Frankenstein, and still looking for peace of mind after his near fatal fall from the windmill. Clive broke his leg just before filming began, forcing him to be seated most of the time in his scenes (Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas, Tom Brunas, Universal’s Horrors: The Studios Classic Films, 1931-1946).

It is Ernest Thesiger, however, as the effete, nefarious Dr. Pretorius who does most of the instigation, and a good share of scene stealing, this time around. While Claude Rains and Bela Lugosi may have been considered for the role, Whale preferred Thesiger as the pompous, perverse mentor.

Thesiger’s Pretorius is morally superficial, whimsically condescending, and deeply sinister; a gentleman dabbling in dark alchemical arts. He knows he is naughty and he revels in it. He is a hedonistic Baroque patriarch to his own dark morality and desires, reflecting Whale's own drive toward self-expression, self-destruction, and discomfort from his commercial directorial success, and his gayness.

To entice Whale back to the laboratory he was practically given carte blanche to direct his way, which he did by greatly loosening conventionality with his caustic wit tipped off by derision for having to succumb to commercial necessity, and by an unbridled flair for pushing boundaries; all of which combine to produce a less serious and less sedate movie than Frankenstein, but one far grander.

Bride of Frankenstein borders on the outrageous; part parody, part satire, it is a reluctant parable touched with fantasy that periodically explodes into quintessential horror theatrics, providing Whale with a lucrative vehicle to poke fun at domestic relationships, the budding horror genre he helped foster, and the freedom to allow him to lay bare his inner struggle between his homosexuality and society's ambivalence toward it. Henry, the Monster, Elizabeth, Pretorius, the townspeople, all represent parts of Whale's tag team match with his inner demons, yearning for, while frustrated with, a social conventionality he can never attain, but still desires deeply.

Bride of Frankenstein celebrates the maverick, the rebel, the outsider, the creative being who dares to counter mainstream culture and its prissy morality, no matter what the personal cost” (Garey J. Svehla, Midnight Marquee Actors Series: Boris Karloff). 

Whale's insistence on having the Monster speak, albeit rudimentarily, did not sit well with Karloff who felt a speaking monster would lose the audience’s sympathy. Time appears to have settled this point in Whale's favor. Karloff’s guttural growls and halting speech bring greater depth to the Monster's soul as he reveals his distrust of the living and his need for companionship. Mentally and emotionally a child in the first movie—inquisitive, innocent, and in need of guidance—he is now more mature and although still inquisitive, has learned caution and guile to satisfy his wants.

Punctuating this arty mix of the fantastic, Franz Waxman’s original music reflects the different moods of scene and character, providing an alternating exuberant melodic and sinister harmonic accompaniment, lighthearted one moment, darkly portentive the next. From the whimsical yet ghoulish bone-tinkle of the dance macabre, heard while Dr. Pretorius is in the crypt, to the Monster’s imposing entrance, Waxman’s notes play across a spectrum of charnel creepiness to mocking crescendo as they resonate cynicism with a grin during the wedding ceremony as Bride and Monster meet for the first time.

A precursor to the now de riguer techniques employed for continuing a commercially viable horror franchise, Bride of Frankenstein begins with a recounting of the first movie's ending, told through the artifice of saucy drawing room chit-chat between Romantic poets Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon), Percy Shelley (Douglas Walton), and Frankenstein's real creator Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester), whose ample bosom and double entendres caused much concern with the Production Code censors.

Prompted by Byron (in florid speech filled with rolling 'R' puffery) for more of her story, she tells them how the Monster survives the fire. As the flashback takes form, we leave the romantic trio in their drawing room—the past—and return to the windmill—the present—where little Maria’s parents find out why it’s a bad idea to lag behind when everyone else has gone home.

Boris Karloff, now successful in his acting career and able to eat regularly, is heavier in body and face than his first appearance as the Monster. The way in which he reappears, and the hysterics dramatis of Minnie (Una O'Connor) signal Whale's intent to make Bride of Frankenstein a more fanciful excursion into the macabre than his first movie. Whale had a fondness for O'Connor and allowed her burlesque-styled antics to overshadow (self-destruct?) more serious scenes.

Universal makeup artist Jack Pierce paid special attention to the Monster's appearance in this movie. He altered his 1931 design to display the after-effects of the mill fire, adding scars and shortening the Monster's singed hair.

As the monster prowls the countryside again in search of acceptance, Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson this time around) and Henry are lounging about their incredibly large bedroom (even Donald Trump would be jealous). Elizabeth, always the stronger and more resolute one, though directed toward more melodramatic acting, is distraught as she tells Henry how she senses Death lurking in the dark corners. Henry, ignoring her fear, ponders how his meddling in life and death must be part of some divine plan.

After all the death and heartache caused by his hubris against the natural order, now he seeks divine succor and intervention?

Overcome with worry and Henry's indifference, Elizabeth swoons as Dr. Pretorius makes his bold entrance, immediately ingratiating himself between her and Henry. The gaunt, arrogantly tousle-haired doctor has been experimenting with creating life also, and insists on showing Henry his accomplishments that very minute. Over her objections, Henry is soon impatiently sitting in the doctor’s apartment.

Dr. Pretorius disappears into another room and returns carrying a large chest. Dressed in clothes that could be mistaken for those of an alchemist or a cleric, he pulls glass cylinders from the chest. In a display of special effects that are still impressive today, each one is shown to contain a miniature person he’s grown 'from seed:' a King, a Queen, an Archbishop, a Devil, a Ballerina, and a Mermaid.

The shooting script called for a seventh figure, a baby—

—already twice as big as the Queen, and looking as if it might develop into Boris Karloff. It is pulling a flower to pieces. Wisely, Whale dropped both the baby and the script's self-conscious flippancy. Pretorius is a manipulative God figure who gave these beings life, determined their identities, and controls their actions. He is archly disdainful of them, which is revealing of Pretorius and probably of Whale, who conceived of them in the first place (Paul M. Jensen, The Men Who Made the Monsters).

Over gin (Pretorius says it’s his only vice), the two argue, but Pretorius finally persuades—actually inspires—Henry to make a female because Pretorius' seed process for growing pocket-sized people lacks Henry’s ability for stitching together the seven-foot tall variety. Given the homosexuality of Thesiger, Clive, and Whale, this tete a tete over procreation is ripe with layers of innuendo, or not, depending on how you are inclined to view it.

In a separate story thread from Pretorius' and Henry's pursuits, the Monster, trying to befriend a shepherdess in an idyllic pastoral landscape, causes her to almost drown. She screams as he tries to help her, inciting the exasperated villagers to chase him, again, from this paradise into a forest of starkly barren tree trunks. The villagers eventually overpower him and truss him up in symbolic crucifixion fashion, which Whale captures in an elaborate series of close-ups, midshots, and farshots, then cart him off to the town dungeon, where he is chained to a garroting chair with massive links of iron.

Oddly, although he was overpowered by the villagers initially, he breaks free of the more restraining chains and goes on a murderous rampage, which Whale softens by showing a series of random deaths after the fact. Hungry, the Monster stumbles into a gypsy campsite and, having no quarrel with them, uses his hands to beg for food and a warm seat by their fire. The attempt is a futile one and they drive him away. Now more tired and hungry, he makes his way through the woods until he hears serene music and follows it to a small cottage. Looking through the window like a curious little boy, he sees an old man playing a violin. He barges into the cottage with a growl, but this time there’s no fear at his appearance. The old man is blind and as much an outcast from society as the Monster. Fortune through a man's sightless eyes finally brings respite.

In a touching scene that carefully skirts becoming maudlin, both outcasts tearfully rejoice in each other's company. Rembrandt lighting illuminates the faces of the old man and the Monster, and flickering light cast by the fireplace frolics across the cabin's walls in a meticulous composition of shadow and emotional substance, music and motion. In the days (weeks? the duration is not clear) that follow, the monster learns to speak a few basic words and enjoys wine and a good cigar, though his first energetic puffs on it make him even greener than he usually is. For the first and only time he is happy. It doesn’t last, of course.

Huntsmen spoil his joy with their calamitous entry and the Monster is once again being chased by exasperated, torch-wielding, villagers. After toppling a religious statue in disdain, he finds sanctuary in the crypt where Dr. Pretorius is having a grand old time among the bones. Over wine and a good cigar (Pretorius says smoking is his only vice), they hatch a plan to force Henry to make a female companion. Karloff has his most introspective lines here. The tortured soul of the Monster is revealed. Between his studied pantomime and simple, carefully spoken words, he makes us forget the killings and elicits our sympathies. Without his spoken words this scene would be greatly weakened.

Following Pretorius’ direction, the Monster kidnaps Elizabeth, forcing Henry to acquiesce. After Karl produces a fresh heart through murder, the kites are once again prepared for the approaching storm to harness the cosmic energy of life. Whale alternates between a series of rapid close-ups and farshots, keeping actions lively between the laboratory and roof-top preparations.

Exhilarating electrical flashes, smoky sparks, and zapping, buzzing noises erupt. Slanted close-ups (Dutch shots as they’re called) showing Henry and Pretorius—their faces lighted from below to create shadows obscuring their faces, intensify the already feverish cranking of levers and twirling of dials while the body is raised to the storm in this highly charged atmosphere of expectation. Karl is suddenly killed by the impatient Monster after he sticks a flaming torch in his face (it seems dying a horrible death was part of Frye's role requirement).

With much anticipation the body is lowered after absorbing the life-giving energy from the heavens. The cosmic diffuser is raised and her bandages are unraveled. “She’s alive!” cries Henry, Waxman's music building to his words. Pretorius preens and says “the bride of Frankenstein,” to wedding bells mockingly ringing at his words.

After the delicate balance of humour and horror showcased in The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man, Whale was perfecting in Bride of Frankenstein the then unknown quantity called 'camp', and for the most part the results are a delight. But, faced with Pretorius' miniature creations, one becomes aware of a director who is out of control. Ambivalent about directing the movie in the first place, he condescended to do so only on his own terms—and those terms occasionally included a frank display of contempt for his material (Jonathan Rigby, American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema).

Elsa Lanchester’s wildly elongated hairdo (copied by Matt Groening for Marge Simpson) , flowing white gown mimicking a wedding dress, and hissing response to the Monster saying the word "friend" as he moves closer is a hoot on one hand, yet a stark, sad moment of brutal rejection for him on the other. She turns to Henry instead. The Monster presses his intentions, but soon realizes she hates him like everyone else. Rejected, he falls backward, stumbling upon a lever the size of a baseball bat that can blow up the laboratory when pulled (who the hell puts a lever the size of a baseball bat like that in easy reach?). He tells Henry and Elizabeth—she shows up just in time to be blown up—to go. Pretorius is not so lucky. The Monster pulls the lever and blows himself, Pretorius, and his lamentable bride to atoms, telling them "we belong dead."

But this horror franchise has only just begun and monsters never truly die in horror movies that show a profit. Praise James Whale or curse him, his demons eventually overwhelmed him; but before they did, his struggle against them produced two fright movies that still remain daring, perplexing, and defiant of convention.

Without Whale to helm the next entry in the Frankenstein saga, Karloff becomes a caricature of the Monster, and is upstaged by an actor who, though a Hollywood outcast, is struggling against his own demons, and in so doing creates an unforgettable fiend more monstrous than Frankenstein's creation.

Part 3: Son of Frankenstein