| See also:
Frankenstein movies after 1950 Home pages: The Greatest Literature of All Time Movies of the Greatest Literature
|
(1931 DVD)
(1948 DVD) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frankenstein to 1950 Over 100 movies about Frankenstein have been produced in various languages. But the version that has to be considered classic, the one that gave us the flat-topped, big-headed monster with the neck bolts, padded shoulders, and the vocabulary consisting of two words, "Arrrrr" and "ARRRRRR!", is the 1931 Hollywood film. In other words, the Boris Karloff Frankenstein.
I know, I know, Frankenstein is the name of the man who creates the monster, not the monster itself. But millions of kids around the world who scream "It's Frankenstein!" are enjoying their fear of a monster, not of a lab-coated doctor. This is thanks to Karloff's portrayal of the creature that stole the movie named Frankenstein and established the association in the public mind for at least the rest of the century. Poor Colin Clive, who played the doctor with outlandish panache, is known only as the character who screamed "It's alive! It's alive!" in the 1931 film and again in 1935's Bride of Frankenstein. Clive did however originate a dubiously iconic figure of his own in these two films—the mad scientist—who would also become a Hollywood staple. The first Frankenstein movie from Universal Studios is not really a direct adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel. It was actually based on a stage play by Peggy Webling, one of several playwrights who tried to adapt Shelley's vision for the theatre since the novel was published in 1818. The novel's bookends—Frankenstein chasing his monster through the Arctic, getting picked up at sea by an explorer to whom he tells his tale—are gone. Instead of the medical student Victor Frankenstein building the monster in an urban loft, the full-fledged scientist, now named Henry, works in a rural castle in darkest Bavaria where he uses incredibly huge and sophisticated equipment, powered by lightning flashes, to animate his creation. (Those "bolts" on the monster's head are actually supposed to be electrodes.) This actually improves on the novel in my view. I never quite accepted Shelley's idea that the creature was stitched together in a small room, and then just got up and walked away. And the film is so much more dramatic. The whole animation sequence, directed by James Whale, has seldom been equalled as a cinematic experience—it's impossible now to imagine how it must have thrilled audiences in the 1930s, long before computer graphics took over Hollywood special effects. Other plot points from the novel are also left out or changed. The monster doesn't learn to speak (another improvement on Shelley). He kills not out of an innate savagery but because he is misunderstood. Without dialogue and through mounds of makeup, Karloff conveys a confused, well-intentioned but ultimately doomed creature. While the book concerns a being without a civilizing soul and condemns the arrogance of man for trying to create life, the film to a surprising degree enlists our sympathy on the side of the creature and condemns those ignorant people who attack it out of fear. One other iconic horror-film figure is created in Frankenstein, the sycophantic hunchbacked lab assistant. Here he's named Fritz, portrayed with panache by Dwight Frye, who had been so memorable as the insane Renfeld in Dracula and who would appear as minor characters in subsequent Frankenstein and other horror flicks. Many consider the sequel Bride of Frankenstein (1935), also directed by Whale, to be an even greater film. Elsa Lanchester plays Mary Shelley, who recaps to Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron the plot of her novel—but actually describing the plot of the Hollywood film, not her real story. Then she reveals the monster and doctor did not die at the end as thought. In her planned sequel, which she then relates and the movie follows, both protagonists survive. Another unscrupulous scientist, one Doctor Pretorius, forces Frankenstein to create for the monster a mate, briefly but memorably also portrayed by Lanchester.
This imagined tale actually picks up some of the previously missing elements of Shelley's original novel, such as the monster learning to speak and asking Frankenstein to make a woman for him. It is also a more elaborate story than the first Frankenstein movie with obviously more money spent on its sets and actors, and with some sophisticated camera work. At times it does veer into old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama, particularly concerning Dr. Frankenstein and his fiancée (whom we really don't care about), but Karloff is most affecting as the supposed monster and veteran British actor Ernest Thesiger steals several scenes as the sinister Pretorius. Karloff made one more serious sequel as the monster in Son of Frankenstein (1939). Sherlock-Holmes portrayer Basil Rathbone is the mad scientist's son, Wolf Frankenstein, who takes over the old man's castle and is convinced by evil blacksmith Ygor to revive the monster. Ygor is Bela Lugosi, the great portrayer of Dracula who is unrecognizable here with full beard, peasant's clothes, and a stooped walk (the beginning of the hunchbacked assistant sterotype?).
This film too is highly rated by Frankenstein fans. But after this the quality starts falling off more dramatically, first with first Lon Chaney Jr. taking up the monster's role in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). This film might better be called The Other Son of Frankenstein, as it follows Ygor's attempts—now that Henry and Wolf Frankenstein are gone—to get the Henry's second son, the brain surgeon Ludwig Frankenstein, to fix the monster. Having just come off a big success as the title character in The Wolf Man, Chaney is an inexpressive, sleepy-eyed monster and fails to evoke the pathos that Karloff brought out. He also appears to have forgotten how to talk, at least until near the end when another brain is implanted in his head. Apart from a few early scenes of the villagers once again attacking the castle where the monster is kept and the monster escaping alongside Ygor, the atmosphere is leeched out of this film with its bright lighting and unimaginative camera work. Suspense is supplied by some already clichéd shots of scary shadows cast on walls by lightning, shadows that don't really match what's casting them. The "ghost" of the title, by the way, comes from some cheesy scenes of Henry Frankenstein (obviously not Colin Clive) appearing to his second son, exhorting him to give the monster a new brain.
In the next year's sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Lugosi switches to the monster and Chaney is back in his hairy role. But now the big, flat-topped fellah evokes the audience's laughter more than fear or sympathy as it appears just too stereotypical in its clumsy lumbering around with outstretched arms. (The "Frankenstein walk" was actually created in this film because the monster was supposed to be blind, but the scene explaining this was edited out.) The monster has again forgotten how to talk and is back to grunting. (Again due to editing it seem. According to Hollywood legend, Lugosi's lines were cut because early audiences found his Transylvanian accent funny.) Anyway, this is more a Wolf Man movie than a Frankenstein flick, as the monster comes in only about halfway through. Larry Talbot (the Wolf Man when the moon is not full) digs it out of ice to lead him to Dr. Frankenstein's diary which he thinks will give him the secret to ending his own eternal misery. Along the way he recruits yet another obsessed scientist and Frankenstein's granddaughter (daughter of one of the Frankenstein Jrs.—I couldn't tell you which one). It all climaxes with crackling experiments in a castle, a mob of fearful villagers, and a showdown between monsters—curtailed by a watery deluge. I understand for Wolf Maniacs, this movie is a decent sequel but for Frankensteinians it's a bust. Nonetheless it did okay at the box office. So in 1944 Universal Studios upped the ante and brought all three of its most famous monsters together in House of Frankenstein. The cadaverous John Carradine is the vampire now, Lon Chaney Jr. has his usual role as the Wolf Man, and Glenn Strange takes over the Frankenstein monster role. Former monster Boris Karloff plays the mad scientist who brings them all back to life. They continued this reunion (minus Karloff) in House of Dracula the following year. Moving from the ridiculous to the sublimely ridiculous: no kid should grow up without at least once seeing Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Nothing whatsoever to do with the novel. Just our comic heroes being chased around by the monster, as well as by Dracula and the Wolf Man, all portrayed by horror stars of the era (though not Karloff unfortunately). Possibly the best film by the comedic duo. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But fun, fun, fun. — Eric |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
© Copyright 2005–2007 Eric McMillan. All rights reserved.
|
|
