Hats off, shoes off, and feet up to Matthew "Bishop" Woodcock for alerting me to this... The youtube channel Fear: The Home of Horror has been granted permission to share a generous clutch of beautifully restored Universal horror classics until January the 23rd! First up is the original, quite boring Dracula, which I wrote a little about HERE before I learnt to love Lugosi. I ecommmend it though, particularly for Dwight Frye's extraordinary Renfield, which I still like to think Tolkein might have seen before inventing Gollum.
Next on Fear's playlist is, surprisingly, not Frankenstein, but The Mummy, a film I remember being quite sexy. Edward Van Sloane is back, as is "The Dying Swan". The plot – in which is an undead snack courts the spitting image of an old flame – is now a firmly established vampire trope, Karloff's never looked more gorgeous, and the opening five minutes are genuinely chilling. (Fun twitter fact: apparently there were once laods of mummies, but we ate them.)
Next up is director James Whale's original, phenomenal Frankenstein, which I raved about almost exactly a year ago HERE, and stand by every single superlative.
The first time I saw James Whale's The Invisible Man, in my late teens, I felt like I was watching a film from another dimension. I adored it. In my Bride of Frankenstein piece (see below), I write "The villain's anatagonists are hilarious. Their
performances are shrill and dull... but enormous and precise
and musically human. To Rains' mad scientist everyone else in the world
is an expendable idiot, but thanks to the strengths of its comic relief The Invisible Man is a celebration of us expendable idiots."
And those antagonists, Una O'Connor and E. E. Clive, return in The Bride of Frankenstein, thought by many to be one of the greatest horror films ever made. I think... well, I write about it HERE.
Both Claude Rains and Bela Lugosi then return for The Wolf Man, Universal's second attempt at a werewolf picture. I break down the plot in my Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman piece thus (spoilers ahead): 'When Univeral returned to the idea in 1941, they chose for their hero... Lon Chaney Junior as a
visiting American, and man of the people, "Larry Talbot", who sits on
the wrong bit of the armchair in a fancy castle, or in the front with his
chauffeur, like John McClane. Talbot tries it on with locally engaged Gwen
Conliffe, whom he takes to a "gypsy carnival". There he is bitten by a dog
he then beats to death, only to have it turn into Bela Lugosi. Bela's
mother, the gypsy Maleva, is the only one who can explain this mystery, the keeper of the lore - a potentially problematic depiction, unless one
considers how much the Catholic church would literally kill to be
considered this powerful an authority on the supernatural. Talbot is
finally despatched in his wolfman form (not that of a dog, like Bela –
never explained) when his skull is smashed in with a silver cane by his
father, and Maleva repeats a beautiful elegy over his body, previously spoken for her
own 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." She is played by Maria Ouspenskaya, who studied under
Stanislavsky, and every time she reaches "... to a predestined end" the
mixture of grief and relief broadcast will leave you feeling naked.'
Finally, fast-forwarding through all the bad times and the shoddier sequels, we come to the superb and hugely influential horror/adventure/comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstien, which I write about all over the place... 'Han Solo's screaming flight from the Stormtroopers, Bugs Bunny's toying with Elmer Fudd, The Goonies,Young Sherlock Holmes, nearly all of Spielberg's output, even Dangermouse and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
All shared that tone of "Horror Comedy" - so much so it seemed the
only tone going - and all may have learnt a thing or two from A and C Meet F.'
An excellent oral history of Galaxy Quest can be read here.
A lot of great things are also said in the documentary about its making, Never Surrender. What's left unsaid yet still pleasingly integral to the documentary's structure is how important Enrico Colantoni – who plays the alien Mathesar – might be to letting all the love in.
Somehow, immediately upon seeing him, we know Mathesar's not only a genuine extra-errestrial, but that this is not his real body, and that's a strong start. The alien-as-innocent isn't a new idea, but they'll normally be played as a
kind of child-friendly robot butler. This is not how the Thermians are played. They have the monotone of a B-movie aggressor, but it's playful rather than haughty, a sign of vulnerablity – as if human speech is a frequency they're constantly having to tune in
to. Nothing Mathesar does in the movie will signal anything we've seen before, yet we will understand him perfectly, even painfully.
Like Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, Colantoni successfully imagines the expression of emotion in a body only one day old. Below is the scene screenwriter Robert Gordon said was the moment that he
finally knew what he was doing, before going on to write what David
Mamet apparently descibed as one of only four perfect movies ever made. If you haven't seen Galaxy Quest, it's a very safe film to watch with someone for the first time – as my support bubble happily attested – so if you haven't seen it, like Mamet, I recommend it, but maybe don't watch this next clip. If you have seen it however, you know what's coming, because every decision Colantoni makes here is unforgettable.
Tim Allen's definitely great too, isn't he, faced with this, and suffering what Alan Rickman apparently called "a sudden attack of acting" (though, arguably, Allen seems more comfortable playing a version of himself than Alan.) Maybe Mamet was right. Everyone does seem to get everything right. Like Casablanca, this is one of those films that's Great because it's great. Casablanca though, on top of everything else, had an actual War going on to help with the emotional heft. But Galaxy Quest, on top of everything else, has Enrico Colantoni.
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.
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.
Yes, disparage the pioneer of "Percepto" and "Emergo" all you like, every horror film William Castle made had at least a couple of images that were unforgettable, for one reason or another, whether or not your seat was wired to buzz, or a luminous skeleton trolleyed over your date's head. Even Castle would grow sick of gimmicks however, so when Columbia Pictures demanded one be included in his historical thriller Mr. Sardonicus, he came up with the "Punishment Poll". Just before the film's final reel Castle himself would appear onscreen and ask the audience to vote for whether the rictus-afflicted anti-hero should receive his come-uppance, or mercy.
Only one ending was shot.
Happy Hallowe'en then, my old Unattendees! If that didn't get you in the mood, why not watch the opening fifty seconds of Castle's House On Haunted Hill with the volume way up? Or there are still the remains of my Frankenstein Countdown to polish off, so here's what I wrote about 1945's House of Dracula:
“Erle C. Kenton's House of Dracula does not bear close examination, if any. It is a bad film.”
And here is even more of what I wrote! Fortunately three years later Frankenstein would be met by Abbott and Costello and you can read my thoughts on that encounter HERE, along with whether or not it would become the most influential film ever made, because I can't remember.
This week's Ship, Sea and the Stars doesn't seem to have gone up yet, but that's okay, because I still haven't posted last week's, so here it is. The subject is "Stranded Seafarers". You can hear me reading accounts of friendlessness from Frankenstein at 4:48, and faithlessness from an old Charles Dibdin ballad at 30:43, but the episode's main focus is a lot more contemporary. At least four fifths of the world's trade is still transported by sea, which is obvious if I think about it, but I don't normally think about it, and Covid has seen pretty much all the contracts of those working these ships extended, or even doubled, meaning they will be at sea now for anything from six months to over a year, their shore leave perpetually threatened with cancellation in order to meet "Same Day Delivery" commitments. One of Helen's guests is a chaplain, and that's not because the workers are doing okay. Another illuminating engagement with something ignored but essential, I really recommend it, even though it ultimately has very little to do with Frankenstein.
The huge success of "Abbbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" meant numerous, lazier horror sequels for Bud and Lou, but none for Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula or the Wolf Man, so let's
say some goodbyes... Firstly, Glenn Strange: Of all the
Monsters we've seen over the past two months, his was by far the most reliably unconscious, but in this last outing we finally see him give lumbering chase, closing in like a moving wall, the perfect nightmare
somnambulist. Many commentators express disappointment, given the Monster's historic fear of flames, that he ends this film walking directly into a fire, but I like the look of pained surprise on his face as he does so, like a
sleepwalker suddenly waking. The fire's properly explained this time too. The
Monster's lost, his master gone, there's water beneath him and he's
done this before, he knows the deal now, so no, I'm fine with
"Junior" finally giving himself to the flames, and I remember watching his death as a child with a weird feeling of horror and pity new to me. Speaking
of which...
Oh, Bela! My happiest takeaway from these Wednesdays has been finding out just
how good an actor he was. It's said his manager
had to literally shame Universal
International's new bosses into recasting the now sixty-five-year-old Lugosi as Dracula, the oldest actor to play him until
John Carradine would return to the role in 1979. "You owe Bela this" his manager said apparently. They thought he was dead, it is said. That's Lugosi's myth anyway, and it's the Bela of Ed Wood,
and it's why I'm so reluctant to dwell on the lives of the artists on this blog,
because it shouldn't be necessary to pity Lugosi in order to love him. He doesn't need "points for trying", although God knows he earnt them. Five years earlier, he'd been slumming it as a heavy, opposite
Monogram Pictures' super-numerary East Side Kids in William "One-Take"
Beaudine's Ghosts on the Loose, so maintaining dignity in the
face of packaged zaniness was not a new trick for him, but here, allowed to be in on the joke again as he had been in Son of Frankenstein, and allowed to be Dracula again (this was actually only the second time he had played the Count on screen) Lugosi balances both tasks to achieve what I so loved Boris Karloff for achieving in Frankenstein: a performance no other actor would have known how to give. Actual magic.
I've written a little before about why I think this is Lon Chaney Junior's best Wolf Man too: he's on a
mission here, and he's noone's creepy love interest. That said, he does in this film sometimes get relegated to the status of guy-in-a-gorilla-suit, and his games of "behind you"
with Costello's Wilbur make very little sense. However, when there's a barrier between
them – a hotel wall or a transatlantic call – he's immediately thrilling in a way I haven't seen before. Putting a werewolf behind a door you shouldn't open clearly provides more interesting
nightmares than pouncing from the shadows.
I also said this film was the work of perfectionists. Well, here are some numbers: According to Gregory W. Mank's detailed Blu-ray commentary, Lon Chaney Jr. had to lie still for a day and a half while makeup job after makeup job was applied to his face for the opening transformation, after which the team decided they could still do better, and spent a second full day re-doing the whole thing. (These stage-by-stage transformations always fascinated me as a child – as is evident in this comic from 1987 – but the fact Talbot had to remain completely still for them was always a problem, only successfully addressed when it first happened in The Wolf Man and Talbot was already supposed to be dead.)
Awwwww!
Despite his exemplary behaviour on set, lying still for two and half days, or stepping in as the Monster when Glenn Strange had twisted his ankle, Chaney also apparently hated this film, retrospectively blaming itfor the change in Horror's tone towards self-parody in the second half of the twentieth century, which possibly mistakes the symptom for the cause, and is a huge shame. I don't know what the actual cause was, but off the top of my head, I'd suggest the more a culture identifies as middle-class, the more comfortably it favours for catharsis customers shouting at a comedian over torch-wielding mobs storming a castle. The Titus Andronicus Project's youtube commentary talks a lot about Chaney's unhappiness, but it also provides a beautiful coda to the series by noting that the last voice we hear in the film, that of the Invisible Man (great joke), belongs to an actor who would come to exemplify this lighter-hearted attitude towards the Gothic. The last laugh, literally, belongs to Vincent Price.
Having begun this project moaning about the lack of music in "Dracula", here to play us out is Frank Skinner's terrific "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" suite.
Given how protective Glenn Strange's Frankenstein Monster was of his previous
resuscitators, I don't know why in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein he throws Cinema's first female mad scientist out the window, nor can I really work out why Dr. Mornay tries to attack him in the first place. Has her transformation into a vampire made her overly
protective of Lou Costello's in-built blood bags? The script
suggests as much, but... Okay look, all this post is really here to do is say, I've just started watching Abbott & Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and it's clear the pair have always had quite a complicated history with feminism:
Also, I don't know how to stop this clip from running into the rest of the film.
Tomorrow, it ends though. I promise.
If Bela Lugosi's Dracula in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" is better than his Dracula in "Dracula", some thanks must go to co-star Lenore Aubert. A fellow Hungarian refugee (Lugosi fled the country in 1919 after a failed Communist revolution, Aubert fled the Nazis twenty years later) she plays Universal's first female Mad Scientist: Unspecified "curious experiments" have exiled Dr. Sandra Mornay to a castle off the coast of Florida, where Dracula has blackmailed her into finding a more dependably pliable brain to put inside his Frankenstein's Monster. Enter Abbott and Costello. When we're first introduced to Mornay, as Costello's "classy dish" tenderly nursing his head injury from fallen luggage, there's no indication she'll be anything other than the schlubby comic's typically glamorous love interest. The affection she showers upon Costello's Wilbur is entirely credible, as is everything else Aubert will do in every scene she's in.Look at the shot below, for example. Remove Aubert from the image... cover her up with your fingers or something...
Brawn, Brains and Madness. The Baddie Triumvirate.
Now put her back in... See? It's impossible for a scene to be dumb when she's present.
It's also far more engaging to watch Dracula trying to charm an equal rather
than seduce an innocent, and when their differences are finally aired, and he goes in for the kill, I think Aubert might be the first ever victim to smile onscreen when bitten. It's hard to say who out of Lugosi and Costello is the greater benificiary of her provision of reality, but both up their game. Lou, despite his ego, would never be as loveable as he is as Mornay's puppy, just as Bela, despite his frailty, would never be as imposing as he is as Mornay's blackmailer. Lou and Bela also complement each other superbly, but once you get beyond
the scare takes and the mesmerism, it's Aubert who is the chemist behind
this chemistry. She doesn't have much to do in the following clip, for example, but it's her they're playing to (discuss)...
This is the clip I'm posting for International Women's Day? This.
The short-sleeved stud at the end, by the way, is Charle Bradstreet as Doctor Stevens, Mornay's glamorous assistant, whom she definitely didn't hire for his smarts. To be continued...
How often is the last film in a series the one you'll have almost definitely seen first?
I saw "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" long before I ever sought out "Frankenstein" or "Dracula", and it's worth noting how smoothly the film went down with the rest of my childhood diet: "The Goonies", "Young Sherlock Holmes", Bugs Bunny's toying with Elmer Fudd, Han Solo's screaming flight from Stormtroopers, nearly all of Spielberg's output, even "Dangermouse" and "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" all shared this tone of Horror Comedy, so much so that it seemed the only tone going, and all of the above may have learnt a thing or two from "A and C Meet F". Ignoring the duff bit with the chair, consider the clip below (which comes towards the end of the picture, so might be a little SPOILER-y): sitcom director Charles T. Barton doesn't just juggle the comedy and threat, he protracts the threat long enough for it to become comic – a relentless piling on of threats that seems at least as big an influence on "Indiana Jones" as the joke-free adventure serials normally credited.
It's worth noting too how different this films's strengths are from the kind of routine which had made Bud and Lou famous stars of burlesque. The pair are best known nowadays for two entirely separate contributions to Culture: this film, and the sustained miscommunication of "Who's On First?" – still one of the most famous sketches ever written, over eighty years later. Their timing was atomic, but "AaCMF" has no classic spoken routines. Its laughs come almost exclusively from Lou Costello's obliviousness to, or acknowledgement of, danger. Few would put Abbott and Costello in the same comedy pantheon as Laurel and Hardy, but you always knew how the latter pair would react to a threat – they'd gulp, and go "Mimimi!" or "Whoahhh!" – whereas Costello innovated an entire language's worth of scare takes. With no spoken material he trusted enough to fall back upon, he was given little choice. Fortunately, his writers (credited here) had a far clearer idea of how funny this was going to be than Lou did, but still, with no live audience on set to gauge the laughs, this absence of patter clearly terrified him.
The Casino Theatre, Broadway. Bud and Lou played here
but really I just ike the picture.
"No way I'm doing this crap!" he apparently complained of the script, "My five-year-old daughter could write something better!" It should be noted then what an improvement this film's plot is over previous Frankenstein Wednesdays. Five-year-old Paddy Costello may have been able to write better, but Curt Siodmak couldn't.
Consider, if you can bare to, we who know, the screenwriter's three previous attempts to bring
the monsters together:
In "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man"
Larry Talbot seeks out
the Scientist, hoping to be rid of his werewolf curse by learning the
secret of
eternal death. Finding Frankenstein's Monster frozen in ice, he frees it, then transforms into a werewolf in the midst of transferring
his own
"life force" into its body. They then fight.
In "House of Frankenstein" a deranged
former associate of Frankenstein escapes from a dungeon, finds
Dracula's skeleton in a travelling circus and briefly brings it back to life to
wreak revenge. He then unrelatedly finds the bodies of Larry Talbot and Frankenstein’s
Monster frozen in ice and thaws them out, hoping to put the Monster's brain
into Talbot's body, but everyone dies before any of this is
achieved.
In "House of Dracula" Larry Talbot and Dracula independently
approach a doctor completely unconnected with Frankenstein,
hoping to be cured of their respective spookinesses. The doctor agrees to treat
Dracula, Talbot impatiently throws himself into the sea, and looking to retrieve
his body the doctor finds Frankenstein's Monster buried in some mud. Talbot is
then cured, Dracula turned into a skeleton, and the doctor goes mad and brings
the Monster back to life for just over a minute before everything explodes.
By contrast, in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" Dracula wants to revive Frankenstein's Monster, and Larry
Talbot the Wolf Man is trying to stop them. That's it.
It’s not just the simplicity of this story that comes as such a relief, it’s
the dramatic improvements made upon delineating its main characters' whole deal: Dracula
wants mastery, the Monster wants a master, and Talbot wants to do good rather
than just kill himself – a mission tragically hampered by his own curse. As a result of this clarity, Lon Chaney Junior, Glenn Strange, and even Bela Lugosi all give arguably their greatest performances in the roles for which they are best known, and it's now three o'clock in the morning so this will have to be continued...
UPDATE: Okay. It's not. Apologies. While you wait, here is some absolutely excellent burlesque from the opening scene of Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.
The man being spat on is Bobby Barber, employed on the set of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein specifically to prank the crew, dress up, throw pies, drop eggs from a gantry, ruin shots, whatever it took to keep the team's comic energy up between takes. Not a normal provision for a film shoot, his presence suggests two things: that onscreen jokers Bud Abbott and Lou Costello might not have been a guaranteed barrel of laughs to work with themselves, and crucially, that they knew it. A&CMF is the product of perfectionists, something Frankenstein Wednesdays have been short on recently, and I might even find myself arguing by the time this post is written, that it's the single most influential movie ever made.
After yesterday's dross, a macarbre palette cleanser. "The Vampire Bat" is a public domain 1933 chiller I came across on Amazon, directed by Frank Strayer and starring Dwight Frye, Fay Wray, Melvyn Delveyn Douglas, and Lionel Atwill as Dr. Otto Von Niemann (a possible relative of the Niemann Karloff would later play in "House of Frankenstein"?): Villagers have been found dead in their beds, two puncture marks to their necks. The locals led by "Frankenstein"'s Burgomaster Lionel Belmore blame vampires, and single out Dwight Frye's village idiot. What's actually been happening however is revealed below, in an astonishingly Lynchian scene that comes out of nowhere and has everything "House of Dracula" lacked. This is the good stuff (that gurgling!) and you can watch more of it, the whole film in fact, on youtube here.
Here is a publicity still of Award-Winning Make-Up Artist Jack Pierce, preparing Boris Karloff for "Bride of Frankenstein" in 1933:
And here's a publicity still of Onslow Stevens, making up his stand-in, Carey Loftin,for "House of Dracula" twelve years later (source):
I don't know who did Onslow Stevens' makeup. My guess is it might also have been Onslow Stevens – there's something just not very Award-Winning-Make-Up-Artist-Jack-Piercey about it. John Carradine may also have done his own make-up as Dracula – a little talc to the temples – but at least in this film his moustache stayed on.
Not a play. A scene from an actual film.
Digital restoration can be unkind, and blog least-favourite Erle C. Kenton's "House of Dracula" does not bear close examination, if any. It is a bad film. I may just keep talking about the make-up then. Stevens is sporting a fake beard because he is playing a scientist, Dr. Franz Edelmann. Edelmann has been approached by Dracula who wants to be cured of Vampirism, or maybe just because he has a crush on Edelmann's nurse Miliza (played by Martha O'Driscoll), it's not clear which. Both motives are rubbish, but at least this film didn't have a misleadingly good opening like "... of Frankenstein".
"I wear this top hat so my waddle when ascending or descending stairs might describe an even wider arc. And I ascend and descend stairs a lot"
Just as in the previous sequel, Carradine's Dracula introduces himself as "Baron Latos", possibly because he's trying to conceal his identity, or possibly because nobody wants to hear John Carradine say "I am Dracula." He's moved his coffin – bearing the Dracula crest – into Edelmann's cellar though, and showed it to Edelmann the moment they meet, so it's probably the latter. Edelmann, a man of science, believes Vampirism is simply a mental disorder, so prescribes a series of transfusions of his own blood into Dracula's as a cure.
But (?) Dracula then tricks (?) Edelmann by reversing the flow of the syringe (??) which (???) transforms the good doctor into an evil Mr. Hyde version of himself. You can see the make-up for Edelmann's HIDEOUS TRANSFORMATION at the top of this post, as well as below IF YOU DARE. I have literally no idea what anyone was thinking at this point.
"Push the button, Frank!"
Also, excuse me but who in red hell is Onslow Stevens, and why is he the star of this film? Anyway! Believing now in vampires, the good doctor moves Dracula's coffin into the sunlight, killing its occupant, and ending Dracula's stupid story that makes no sense. Meanwhile! Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, natch) has also come to Edelmann looking for a cure for his Werewolfism, which makes a bit more sense, except that both he and Dracula definitely died in the last film. Edelmann, however, is too busy with "Baron Latos", so Talbot hands himself in to the local police station, where he transforms into the Wolf Man, but it's fine because he's safely locked up. He doesn't escape or anything. Nobody is killed. It's all fine, and so is his make-up.
"This is actually fine."
If he looks a little bushier than before, that's because – according to The Titus Andronicus Project – the War had caused a serious shortage of European yak hair, which Jack Pierce previously relied upon for the fur. It's still basically fine. Talbot is then released from his cell and throws himself into the sea. Edelmann follows him on a winch to look for him in the mud, where he finds the reliably unconscious body of Frankenstein's Monster. He brings both back to his not mad hospital/lab/castle, where he then does not revive the Monster because another nurse, trailblazing FEMALE hunchbacked assistant Nina (played by Jane Adams) points out that this would be bad. He does cure Talbot though, which is good, and so ends the Wolf Man's stupid story.
"You have been cured with spores. Now I love you."
We haven't seen a moustache on Talbot before, but obviously he has every right to try one; perhaps he'd just seen "A Matter of Life and Death" and hoped that, in concert with silk pyjamas and head bandage, it would make him look more like David Niven (and not Houdi Elbow). It looks real anyway. Martha O' Driscoll and Jane Adams both look superb, but that doesn't mean they didn't also do their own make-up. Adams really sells the scoliosis too. Her performance as Nina is probably the best thing in the movie, which is not to say that her role isn't exploitative and infantilising. Regardless, she manages to make Nina the protagonist of every scene she's in – heroic, if childishly heroic – until she is horrifically thrown to her death down a trapdoor at the end by Mr. Hyde Edelmann, in long shot, because this film is bad.
Also fine is Glenn Strange's make-up as the Monster, athough, yet again, he has absolutely nothing to do for most of his time onscreen, except lie unconscious on a gurney until called upon to break free from its straps by a mad scientist, so there isn't much that could have gone wrong. If his firey death the next minute, trapped beneath Linda Barker's shelves, reminds you of the end of "Ghost of Frankenstein", that's because it is. The studio literally recycled the footage. And so ends the Monster's non-story. It doesn't look like Strange was given a dresser either:
"Lon Helping Glenn into his Costume" Actual caption.
Lionel Atwill's back and probably did some recycling too, wearing the same uniform for Inspector Holtz he wore for Inspector Arnz in "House of Frankenstein" and Inspector Krogh in "Son of Frankenstein", while Skelton Knaggs is a new face, this film's version of the sweaty weirdo who the whole village listens to instead of their Police Inspector, and I'm not sure anyone did his makeup. I'm not sure he's wearing any. I think that face is just Skelton Knagg's deal.
Anything else?
Oh, there's one other death; a scene in which the evil Edelmann toys with, then murders, his gardener. For this one scene we're reminded of the queasily attractive power fantasy that Horror promises, what Steven Moffat called "the game of the monster", While there's so much more to the best of these films than this game, you still have to play it. It's through this game, in fact, we first came as children to Frankenstein, and Dracula, and the Wolf Man, not through "Scooby Doo".
Exactly as we might have dressed up as super heroes, we groaned, and
hissed, and adopted the stiff walk, and suddenly felt power because
people were running from us, because that was the game. And the fangs,
and the claws, and the face paint, and the stick-on bolts, and the scars
were the toys we bought to play that game. We learnt of these monsters
through make-up. House of Dracula forgot the rules of that game however, and there would be no sequel the following year.
