Frankenstein Wednesdays: "Son of Frankenstein" (1939) – An Heir to the House of Fronkensteen!

 Continuing my weekly "But What Do I Know!" through Universal's first 8 Frankensteins...

 

 Boris! Basil! Um, Bela?

 There are few scenes in Rowland V. Lee's "Son of Frankenstein" where one couldn't imagine the company bursting into laughter the second the director shouted "Cut!" It is an extraordinarily happy film – extraordinary especially as one of its happiest elements is fallen star Bela Lugosi playing a body-snatcher with a broken neck. Lugosi had just become a father, as had Karloff, seen here sharing a moment of swagger with Bela Jr.:

  And the story of the film's making is also often a happy one. In 1936 Universal had resolved to stop making Horror after a British boycott of the whole genre (stupid bloody country), but this hiatus proved short-lived. A nation-wide re-release of both "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" in 1938 proved so popular, the studio immediately dug out the old tesla coils and machines that go BVURRRP, as well as Bela Lugosi, whose reputation and career had taken a horrific hit from this hiatus. According his widow, Lillian Donlevy Lugosi:

"[The studio] cut Bela's salary from $1,000 per week to $500. Then they planned to shoot all his scenes in the picture in one week! When Rowland V. Lee heard about this, he said, and I quote, Those God-damned sons of bitches! I'll show them. I'm going to keep Bela on this picture from the first day of shooting right up to the last! And he did."

  Lee really did. There's barely a scene in this film's opening twenty minutes where Lugosi isn't eavesdropping somewhere as "Ygor", his shaggy, snaggle-toothed head popping up from behind a rock or a broken window for a day's pay. A good gig, especially as Ygor wasn't even in the first shooting script.

 But, boy, is Ygor in the finished film! Not the scoliotic assistant from future spoofs, this Ygor-with-a-Y is a shunned criminal, who having survived hanging, is now something of an embarrassment to other Frankensteinians. Oh yes! It turns out "Frankenstein" is actually the name of the village, and Frankensteinians is what they call themselves! Lugosi gives a revelatorily anarchic performance as the real monster of this movie, a million miles from the Margaret-Dumontish aristocrats he played previously. There's something of the wicked witch about him too – children dare each other to approach his crooked house – and in his shrewd adoption of lowest possible status to avoid suspicion, there's also something of Columbo, but if Columbo was the murderer (Ygor's using the Monster to kill off the jury who sent him to the gallows; that's the sort of the plot Lee manages to rustle up.)

 The face he's coughing into above? Michael Mark! Maria's father in "Frankenstein", but as I remarked last week, absent from its sequel "Bride"! And just off camera is Lionel Belmore! The Burgomaster from "Frankenstein", also absent from "Bride"! Both of the Monster's final victims are refugees from the Frankenstein canon, whom Rowland V. Lee has returned to the fold. See? Happy!

 Aw, and the mob's back too. But instead of torches, they now weild axes (which might be safer, who knows?) but when we first meet them they're a sea of umbrellas, braving torrential rain to meet the late Doctor's American heir, Wolf (sic) von Frankenstein at the Bahnhof, only to then showily walk out on him. They're a miserable bunch of rock-throwers, and I'm not sure we're meant to mind when they're murdered. Obviously Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" was influenced by this film, but there's a strong possibility "Blazing Saddles" was too.

 And "The Shining"! Because, unlike Gene Wilder's Frederick, Basil Rathbone's Wolf has brought his family along with him. As Elsa, Josephine Hutchinson's almost immediate disenchantment with the adventure her husband has undertaken is perhaps the saddest thing in the film, not that you can blame her: "If the house is filled with dread, place the beds at head to head..." This relationship is no more happily heteronormative than its predecessors, and their new home has neither the claustrophobic chintz of "Frankenstein", nor the eccentric kitsch of "Bride". It's just... well, this:

 And this:

 And this:

  Although some people might find that last view quite sexy. It's nice too, after the lever from nowhere that blew everything up in "Bride", to finally have some foreshadowing: Oh okay, that's how the monster's going to die.

  It's surprising to hear even Wolf acknowledge in this film that nine out of ten people think "Frankenstein" is now the name of the monster. It's also funny. And as he descends deeper into the sulphurous unniceties of his father's sexless work – literally trying to save his name – Elsa starts fearing for his sanity (again, you can't blame her.) Rathbone is a brilliant actor, but not a sympathetic one. He's physiognomically incapable of looking anywhere other than down his own nose, and the further he falls, the funnier it is to watch him imperiously try to maintain any semblance of dignity. Also, Rathbone's manic performance suggests he knows this.*

  Meanwhile! Wolf and Elsa's tiny son, Peter, in scenes we never see, has started happily communicating with the horrors in the walls. Potentially terrifying, if only it weren't that everything young actor Donnie Dunagan does and says is hilarious. Tragically I can't find any audible footage of his performace online, but imagine Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo, and to help, here's a still image of the future voice of Bambi being restrained by Karloff's monster, who in turn is menacing Lionel Atwill's Inspector Krogh with his own prosthetic arm.

  So it's that kind of a film: Huge fun, but also you can understand why Karloff didn't return for a fourth. His creature is comatose for much of it – again, a good gig – and we are finally, three Frankenstein films in, presented with the tableau so often recreated in comedy routines to come (although it's Frankenstein's bird-skeletoned butler Benson here who throws the switches, not Ygor):

 There is one superb, wordless sequence, three minutes long, when Frankenstein's two offspring – the Monster and Wolf – first face one another: Karloff's monster no longer talks. I'm fine with that. In fact I'm fine pretending, for the sake of this movie, "Bride" never happened. Some of what Karloff does – examining his brother's face, then his own reflection – has the poetry and clarity of his reaching up for the light, back in 1931. But some of it is distressingly, if convincingly, unreadable. When he brings Wolf over to the mirror, what's he doing? Is he seeing if the mirror is lying? Is he performing an experiment? What's he asking for? I don't know. Nor does Wolf. So the monster gives up. And you can't blame him. He is a stranger to us now.

  It's unusual to see him carry out Ygor's murders so slily. Making things look like an accident was never really our boy's style. Oh well, one-armed Inspector Krogh is on the case, an almost Spielbergian portrait of dependability and genuine goodness from Lionel Atwill, and perhaps the most deadpan performance of the film. But Krogh's dry tone serves not only the film's comedy, but also its surprising celebration of humanity. Atwill brings no bitterness to the loss of his arm, just clarity. And when he sticks darts in the wooden prosthetic, yes it's funny, but also, how else was he going to hold the darts? We may laugh, but we'll catch up with Krogh. 

 It's all good.

 Okay. I'll stop there. 

 The quote from Lugosi's widow comes from here, where you'll also find extracts from Willis Cooper's orginal Ygor-less shooting script. This lovely blog on "Son" also provided useful background, although, generally, I'm trying not to write too much about artists' private lives here. But I like hearing that people were happy.

 Next week, kids, it's 1942's "Ghost of Frankenstein". More Ygor!

 

* Rathbone embarked upon perhaps his most famous role, Sherlock Holmes, this same year. Nigel Bruce's Watson had to be a harmless buffoon for an audience to care what happened to either of them, and it was a perfect partnership. I sort of wish I was writing about those films from now on, rather than what's to come. Still...