THE YEAR IN REHASH: FEBRUARY - Frankenstein Wednesdays Saturday: "Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man" (1943)... Scavengers Dissemble!

 

This publicity still of Bela and Lon was on our living room wall 

when I was growing up. I had completely forgotten. 

  

 Continuing this review of my favourite, or at least more conspicuous posts from the last twelve months, I definitely wanted to include a "Frankenstein Wednesday", and this is the one I'm probably proudest of. I still hope it might some day help to restore the reputation of both this daft work and the great, if miscast, Bela Lugosi – Well, was he miscast? Was he even cast? And if so, as who? That's what I attempt to ravel and then unravel again. There's a particularly baffling scene in the baffling Netflix biopic Mank where a room full of playwright wankers pitch their classier version of Frankenstein and then go on to describe, almost exactly, the film Frankenstein, as if they've never actually seen it, adding only a weeping priest at the end, and I can't tell if it's supposed to be a joke or not, but anyway, I absolutely loved trying to do these films justice, and lockdown hadn't even happened yet. This is from February 16th.

 

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

Bela Lugosi IS not The Frankenstein's Monster!

  Here's the headline: I think I've uncovered something in this film not mentioned anywhere else, something quite important. It isn't the fact that Bela Lugosi's place in this film was often taken by a stunt double called Gil Perkins (pictured above), lending the Monster a sometimes pleasingly squished Ötzi the Iceman quality; that's well documented, for example here.

 Ötzi the Iceman

 It's to do with a twist very clearly given away in one shot – a secret one of the characters is hiding which should completely change our understanding of what we've watched, but which appears in no account or summary I can find. First though, some background. There's a lot of background.

 Not a scene from the film, more's the pity. 

 1941's "The Wolfman" was not Universal's first werewolf movie. That was 1935's "Werewolf of London", a surprisingly botany-heavy story steeped in Jack-the-Ripper atmos, and featuring an uptight British type called Dr. Wilfred Glendon. Its star, Henry Hull, fell out with make-up maestro Jack Pierce and refused to don the full muzzle later sported by Lon Chaney Junior, resulting in actually a far more frightening and influential – if less iconic – look for his man beast:

  It was WoL which established the mythos of a bite-created beast which must kill whenever the moon is full. However contemporary audiences dismissed the effort as a Jekyll and Hyde rip-off, so when Universal returned to the idea in 1941, they chose for their hero not an uptight English scientist this time, but a visiting American "Larry Talbot" played by Lon Chaney Junior. Talbot was a man of the people, sitting on the wrong bit of armchair in a fancy castle, or in the front seat with his chauffeur like John McClane in "Die Hard". While trying it on with locally engaged Gwen Conliffe, Talbot takes her to a "Gypsy Carnival". There he is bitten by a dog he then beats to death only to have it turn into the corpse of Bela Lugosi. Bela's mother, Maleva, the keeper of the lore, is the only one who can explain this mystery – a potentially problematic depiction of Romany life, unless one considers how much the Catholic Church would literally kill to be considered this powerful an authority on the Supernatural. The now infected Talbot is finally despatched in his wolfman form (not that of a dog, like Bela – never explained) when his father, Claude Raines, smashes his skull in with a silver cane. Maleva then recites over Talbot's dying body the beautiful elegy she previously spoke for her son: 

"The way you walk was thorny, through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end." 

 Maleva is played by Maria Ouspenskaya who studied under Stanislavsky, and the mixture of grief and relief she broadcasts upon reaching "... to a predestined end" may leave you feeling naked.

 Beyond that predestined, however, falls the sequel. 

 "Universe" is an overused word when talking about films, but it's an exciting one too, so let's use it: "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" may well have created the first Cinematic Universe. Before Marvel. Before DC. Before "Happy Days". Not only is it the first sequel to two previously unrelated films, it's also arguably an improvement on its predecessor "The Wolfman", and definitely an improvement on "The Ghost of Frankenstein". The look on Maleva's face when she sees the resurrected Talbot is why we have sequels, and making her the liminal instrument of this crossover is just one of many excellent ideas "The Wolf Man"'s screenwriter Curt Siodmak had which helped give this project any hope of making sense. When his screenplay descended to unmusical exposition, director Roy William Neil and cinematographer George Robinson were still there, to ensure every frame remained a painting: the shot of Maleva's cartwheel, for example, thicker than itself with the mud of worlds, as she and her newly adoped son move between myths in search of the secret of death...

 

 Or the justly celebrated opening scene, in which Talbot is inadvertantly resurrected by graverobbers in an iconically crooked cemetery busy with crows. Even the simple phone call to a police station in Llanwelly a few scenes later, made by Inspector Owen hoping for some clue as to the identity of his hospitalised American, is an evocative example of just what can be done with care and a camera: a perfect composition of character and clutter, suggesting either cosiness if you're a local, or claustrophobia if you're a stranger (apologies for all the "c"s).

Not an example of what I just said, but I can't screengrab from Blurays.

  But in the end, maybe too much care was taken over this film, because "Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man" predicts the future of franchise blockbusters not only in its creation of a cinematic universe, but in its butchering of a story through posthumous reshoots. Working out what that original story might have been is one of both the happiest, and saddest aspects of watching the film. Because, beautiful as it is, what reaches us is a mess, most remembered for what it got wrong: Frankenstein's Monster.

We never see Lugosi do this in the film.

 Bela Lugosi was sixty when he finally got to play the Monster, found by Talbot encased in ice beneath the ruins of a castle in Vasaria. This however, you may remember, is not how we left him at the end of "Ghost of Frankenstein". That ended with the Monster given the brain of his devious "familiar" Ygor, a brain which would give him world-conquering intelligence, but also, because of a blood mismatch, leave him blind. In that blindness the Monster then stumbles into a shelf that was presumably put up by Linda Barker, because everything blows up when it falls over, including the sanitarium of Ludwig Frankenstein, (younger son of Heinrich Frankenstein who first created this Monster,) who mistakenly implanted the brain of Ygor into, oh blah etc... One can understand why, having to deal with both this continuity and that of "The Wolf Man", the studio decided to smooth a few things out for the sequel, scrapping the idea of a smarter Monster voiced by Ygor, and reintroducing the lumbering, mute giant audiences were more familiar with. We also know this was a decision made quite late however, maybe too late. We know the monster was originally given dialogue, but when test audiences heard Lugosi's Hungarian accent they laughed it out of town. We're also told Lugosi played the monster blind, which is why he always has his arms out, in that I'm-coming-to-get-you stance which is now short-hand for the undead, but then all references to his blindness were removed, which is why – the story goes – Lugosi's performance seems so stiff. Even that, though, doesn't really explain how an actor as capable of poetry could wind up giving such a clunky performance, in a film in which everyone else is so very, very good, including this guy:

 "The Song of the New Wine" might be my favourite scene. Anyone who has sat through "Cosi Cosa" in the Marx Brothers' "Night At the Opera" will sympathise with Chaney's longing for death as he sits surrounded by this ersatz buffoonery. However, given the year of "Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man"'s release, the nightmarishness of this lederhosen-heavy, rural knees-up might not be unintentional. The singer praises proprietor Vazec's warm welcome, for example, but the last time we saw this tyrolean Tim Wetherspoon, he was hounding a Romany out of his inn. And while no mention is ever made of how good a war the locals of Vasaria might be having, their police have definitely had a change of uniform:

 Rolecall left to right: That's Lionel Awill again in the foreground. Definitely Lionel Atwill this time. Not Sir Cedric Harwdwicke. He's the Mayor, he collects pipes, he's a goody. Next along is Baroness Elsa Frankenstein, played by Ilona Massey. Is this the same Elsa who was daughter to Ludwig in "Ghost"? I'm not sure we're not supposed to be asking. She talks about the work of both her father and her grandfather though, so yes she must be, which begs the question, if she's now inherited the lot, what happened to her cousin Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo Peter from "Son of Frankenstein"? Anyway, Talbot wants to buy the castle/sanitarium/ruin off her, because it may contain equipment which will finally free him from the curse of his lycanthropy ie by killing him. And Elsa is fine with that. This Frankenstein is not remotely interested in Science. She's interested in good times and fabulous hats...

  Back to the rolecall: To Elsa's right, bearing down on Maleva, is "Dr. Frank Mannering from Cardiff", played by Patrick Knowles. He loves Science. He's been after Talbot ever since the latter fled his hospital to tour central Europe in 1943, looking for death with a band of Gypsies. (Knowles also played the fiancé of Talbot's love interest in "The Wolf Man", which contributes beautifully to the sense of oppression he feels waking up in care.) He has pursued Talbot by following his "trail" in the newspapers, which suggests that Larry must have continued to kill while on the road with Maleva, and that every damn night must have a full moon. Finishing off the role call, between Maleva and the black-clad policeman Guno on the right, yes! That's Dwight Frye! In lederhosen! One site credits his character as "Rudi the Tailor", but I can't find any evidence of his profession elsewhere. There are some excellent clothes in Vasaria though, so it's nice to think Rudi might have had a hand in them. This is the last we'll see of Dwight Frye on Frankenstein Wednesdays. I love Dwight Frye. So it goes.

  While Dr. Frank's oath prevents him from taking Talbot's life, it is still he, rather than the Baroness Frankenstein, who gets the old life-and-death equipment up and running,  Lugosi's monster having directed them to the equipment, and the Baroness having found her father's books. In the only version of the film which survives, it is Talbot who first asks to be shown this kaboodle after freeing the Monster from the ice, but this appears to have been added afterwards in Audio Dialogue Replacement, and we know that Lugosi's dialogue was cut – we can see his lips moving – so maybe we don't have the whole story.

Definitely blind.

 Anyway, Dr. Frank learns with some direction from the awkward, mute Monster, that life can be transferred from one body to another, and that it can also be drained, which is how Talbot wishes to die. The Monster has just done a rampage, so Elsa hopes Frank will drain the Monster's life too, and clear her family name. In fact, not just Elsa's freedom, but that of Frank and Maleva seem conditional upon the Monster's destruction post-rampage. That's the best Atwill's mayor can offer them. So everyone waits for Frank to repair the machinery, Elsa nervous that he might be secretly planning to make the Monster stronger – just because that's what scientists do – while, back at the inn, landlord Vazec and his superb shirt are stirring shit and plotting to blow up the dam by the hospital/castle/ruin so that our heroes will all drown "like rats". (Oh yes, an enormous dam was pointed out when Talbot and Maleva arrived, like the sulphur pit suddenly in the basement of the laboratory in "Son". Again, good to have some foreshadowing.) Now! It is at this point in our story that the shot I hyped up at the beginning of this post occurs. Forgive the poor quality, I can't rip Blu-rays, but...
 

 Did you see that?!!  

 THE MONSTER'S PRETENDING! That walk! Those dumb stiff arms! They're not there because that's how Lugosi thought blind monsters walk, they're there because, all this time, we haven't actually been watching Lugosi play the Monster at all! We've been watching Lugosi play Ygor, posing as the stupid Monster! It's a con! So there might originally have been continuity all along. That's what we lost in the reshoots. Not just lines of dialogue, or an explanation of the Monster's blindness, but an explanation for – and justification of – Lugosi's entire performance: a storyline in which Ygor was simply using the Monster's guileless body to manipulate the others into granting him super-human strength. Consider also the look Lugosi gives as the Wolf Man's life is slowly transferred...

 Every commentary I've seen suggests this look was proof that, in the orginal script, the Monster's sight had now returned. But as the clip above proves, he could already see, this is just him getting stronger! The moon is full, however, and so Talbot, though drained of life, is transformed once again, and defeats Ygor's evil plans in a final battle, saving the world and finally achieving redemption. Maybe he was still drowned at the end, I don't know, but what a story that would have been! But of course that's not the story we have, as Universal decided as a result of test screenings that people didn't want a megalomaniacal, Hungarian-voiced Monster. Without the presence of Ygor though, the Monster has no agency, and the film's final fight is completely without stakes. Someone simply ADR's "Don't pull that lever", some beams fall, and Gil Perkins takes over Monster duties, keeping things stiff despite shots in which we see can Lugosi move far more fluidly and threateningly, despite his sixty years and his bad back...

  Finally it's Vazec of all people who saves the day, Elsa looks on pointlessly as the Dam bursts, the valley floods, and the crimes of her grandfather are finally wiped clean, but this isn't "Frozen 2". The nazis won. And Lugosi's performance will be forever condemned to mockery, without anyone realising that mockery may have been exactly what he was going for. When he roars at the Wolf Man in the final ruckus, he's taking the piss! A beautiful, sly, brave performance which, robbed of context, proved to be Lugosi's last in any Horror film for Universal. So it goes.

 Oh Bela. As Maleva might say, "the way you walked was funny, through no fault of your own..." 

 But Thank the Gods for Roy William Neil! Because he smuggled in that shot, it's unalterably there, and for those in the know, only Ygor's presence can explain it. So actually, no, we do have that story. We've had it all along. It just seems weird that I can't find any evidence anyone else ever noticed it. But it's definitely there! You saw it, right? If you did, pass it on. Bela deserves this. And let's celebrate perhaps the best B-movie ever made!

"Insane? He's not insane. He simply wants to die."

 Next week... well in four days' time I guess, if Frankenstein Wednesdays are still going to be a thing, 1944's "House of Frankenstein". Karloff's in it. And I'll probably write more about werewolves and make-up and stuff. Guys, this is important.