In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the amazingly weird and wonderful 1935 horror classic “The Bride of Frankenstein.” Has the doctor put his monster-making days behind him, or can he be tempted to even greater crimes of mad science by an even madder scientist? Find out… (originally published 10/20/2023)
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
And this is Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This one originally published October twentieth, twenty twenty three. This was our Halloween season Weird House on the Bride of Frankenstein, directed by James Whale.
Yeah, this is one of the all time greats. So this is definitely one of those episodes where it's going to be a lot of us talking about just how truly awesome this movie is. And it is truly awesome. If you haven't seen it, or you haven't seen it in a while, it's the perfect time to watch or rewatch Bride of Frankenstein.
The best of the universal monster movies.
All right, let's dive right in.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. This is Rob Lamp.
And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, in honor of the Halloween season, we are going to be talking about the nineteen thirty five universal horror classic Bride of Frankenstein. Directed by James Whale, the first sequel to the original Universal Frankenstein, also directed by Whale, which was released four years earlier in nineteen thirty one. So I know we're going to talk a lot more about the specifics of our appreciation for this movie as we go along, but I wanted to just start off by saying, in my opinion, Bride of Frankenstein is about as good as it gets. It is. I think shocking how great this movie is, how good it looks, how weird it is, how beautiful and funny and full of genuine feeling, and how fresh it feels. Something about it is the exact opposite of a relic from the past. It feels so exciting and new.
I think the word that I would use for Brida Frankenstein, without even a hint of irony or parity or humor, is it is just truly transcendent. It transcends its genre, it transcends its time period. It is just a masterpiece. And yeah, I second way you said, if you're the type of film viewer who's like, I don't know if I need or want to see a film from the nineteen thirties, I mean, fair enough, watch what you want to watch. But films like this, films like Mad Love, which we previously discussed on the show, these really stand out.
And I love the other Universal monster movies, you know. I love Todd Browning's Dracula, I love Wales First Frank, I love the Invisible Man, Creature from a Black Lagoon. I mean, really enjoy all of those core monster frolics. But even though all of those are excellent, there are individually things in them that kind of drag Dracula. For example, I love Todd Browning's Dracula, but it gets markedly less interesting when Bella Legosi has been off screen for too long. You know, there are some there's some kind of slow moving talkie segments with the not terribly interesting human characters, which, to be fair, are trying to be faithful to the plot of the novel, but in some ways I think end up kind of holding the movie back from what it could have been. All of the other Universal Monster frolics have their their stuffy interludes, but for me, Bride does not. My opinion is that it is just wall to wall horror, profound weirdness, hilarity and powerful emotion. So I think not only is Bride of Frankenstein the best of all the Universal Monster movies. It's the best by a mile. It's the best by an astronomical unit. It leaves these other great movies in the dust. And I guess we can as we go on, we can talk about some of the reasons why I feel that way.
It is kind of funny that in leading up to this episode, we were talking about maybe doing Son of Frankenstein or House of Frankenstein, a couple of the later movies in the Universal Frankenstein cycle, and then we were like, well, why are we denying ourselves, Like staring at the bar, there is the top shelf Frankenstein right there. Let's just do that one.
Yeah. So I was realizing before we started recording that one way this movie will fit into the Weird House Cinema cannon is that we sort of have a show tradition of covering sequels without covering the original that they're following up, and we haven't done an episode on the original Universal Frankenstein, though I think it has come up a lot when discussing other movies. I think it might be fruitful to begin today's episode by thinking about Bride of Frankenstein as a sequel, And what can we learn about sequels from a sequel that works this well. I don't know exactly how the percentages break out, but I'd say at least maybe eighty percent of the time sequels are uninteresting derivations of the original, just sort of like trying to make a quick buck off of the success of the original. But sometimes, as we all know, there are sequels that are not only as good as the original, not only worthy of it, lots of people consider them better than the original. Quick list of commonly cited examples that I would agree with a Terminator two Star Trek, The Wrath of Khan, the Empire strikes Back, multiple mad Max sequels, I'd say, you know, Road Warrior, Fury Road, And there are plenty of other examples you can think of too, in even less well known franchises.
Yeah, yeah, Like I I'll often throw Blade two in there. Aliens comes to mind, of course, Return of the Blind Dead to feature like a recent horror film that we did a rerun off. I throw Chronicles of Ritick in there as well. You know, I generally say when a sequel works, it either is a second attempt with improved skills and or budget at the concepts of the first Or is it it's a success full expansion of the original concept, you know, not just a sell them another scoop of the same ice cream, but give them something that is transformative, you know.
I agree, and I think that's exactly what's going on with Bride Frankenstein. James Whale's original Frankenstein is really good. It's a solid adaptation of the novel, one of the best universal monster movies. But Bride of frank is absolutely divine, and so I'm wondering what exactly it does that really has this step up quality going into the second movie in this series. An interesting thing about Bride of Frankenstein is that it is both a fulfillment of the promise of the source material, in this case, Mary Wilston crafts Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus, and it forges a new path. So in the sense that it's a fulfillment of the source material, Bride of Frankenstein includes scenes and themes from Shelley's nun that were left out of the first movie, and also when it chooses to include totally new things from out of left field, they are great inclusions. So to start with like things that it brings in from the novel, I think they're typically things that deepen our emotional understanding of the creature. So one example is that in Bride of frank the monster can talk. The monster in the novel, of course, is amazingly articulate. In the first movie, by contrast, it's a silent performance. And I've seen film critics and historians make the interesting observation that Frankenstein was one of the first mega hits of the early sound film era, and yet its principal performance from Boris Karloff was a mostly silent one.
Yeah. Yeah, In this we do see some interesting growth in the monster. He's acquiring language, he's learning to express himself better, and it makes Karlov's performance all the more enthralling. There's this crackling, confused, traumatized and yet still hopeful energy in the heart of the creature, just straining to reach out and touch the world. Sadly, he lacks many of the tools he needs, and he finds himself continually on the other end of human violence and human manipulation. Like you said, it's not on the same level of the articulate monster we see in the novel who Is I think it can is often interpreted as being almost kind of like a fallen angel, you know, that's the kind of energy he brings, so, you know, not quite the same energy, but it moves a little closer to that concept and does its own thing with it.
Yeah. The articulacy of the creature in the novel, I think is often and this is actually in the novel itself, is compared to Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. Yeah, Karloff in Bride is not like that. He's mostly speaking in like short clipped statements. And apparently Karlov was wary of the idea of having the monster speak in Bride. He wasn't sure that was a good idea, but I think it was the right move. Even though he's not giving these these long moving speeches like he does in the book, he has these heartbreakingly terse memorable lines, you know, like love dead, hate living. Another thing from the novel that's brought into to deepen the story here is the scene where the monster makes friends with a blind man living in a cabin. That is, it's not exactly the same, but it's based on a section of the novel where the creature observes people living in a remote cottage and learns language from them, but is ultimately driven away when sighted people finally catch a glimpse of him and react with horror to his appearance. The scene in the book where he realizes he is hated because he is ugly is one of the saddest in the book, and they explore those themes very well, and Bride I Think another one the creature's desire for an undead mate. This is also from the book, but left out of the first movie. For the most part. In the novel, after the creature realizes that living humans will all hate him and reject him, he thinks his only hope of finding love and companionship is for his creator to make another like him, so he threatens Victor Frankenstein. He threatens his loved ones to coerce him to make the creature an undead bride. But then in the book, Victor I Think abandons the project before it's completed, and he has a kind of stroke of conscience and he says, no, I can't do this, and then in a rage, the creature punishes him by killing his fiance.
And it's in retrospect looking back on this, it's so great that they came back and took this part of the book and did something with it, because I remember this being like one of the most impactful sections of the novel, a novel that is full of fantastic ideas and scenes. But yeah, this section of the book where the doctor is forced to go back and do this mad thing one more time and attempt to create a mate for this monster just so it will leave him and his loved ones alone, and then decides that for the greater good he cannot go through.
In it, I agree exactly. So I think the movie is really working because it pulls in all of these great resonant elements from the original source material that you know didn't fit into the first the plot of the first film. But on the other hand, there is all kinds of other stuff that is added purely from the original genius of the filmmakers, and I think you could you could bring up a lot of things here. One I wanted to mention is comedy. I have not read Frankenstein in a bit, but I don't recall it really having much humor in it at all. I think it's a very serious book, and while Bride of Frankenstein deals with serious themes and has many serious moments, it is also overflowing with irony and goofiness. Sometimes it's surprisingly goofy wail understood horror storytelling according I think to the Granginioal tradition of hot and cold showers, where tales of the macabre would be alternately play back and forth with comedy performances and good storytellers in the space. I think understand that comedy is a wonderful release mechanism for the building tension of the story. There's something that really works when you alternate mounting tension and horror with comedy. So and beyond that, there are also characters in this movie that operate on the knife edge between horror and comedy at all times. I think the prime example being probably my favorite character from this movie, doctor Septimus Pretorius, a character who is not in the novel, invented purely for Bride of Frankkenstein. And that brings us to the other thing I'd mentioned about this movie, a sort of original genius zany characters. I love the novel Frankenstein, but it does not have an ensemble of memorable characters with interesting quirks and personalities. I think the genius of the novel is in its scenario and themes, and in the development of the main character of the creature right of. Frank, on the other hand, convinced this whole ensemble of delightfully jagged weirdos to give the story flavor. There's a kind of Cohen Brothers quality to all of the secondary players here. And I think the greatest example of this is the villain of the movie, doctor Septimus Pretorius, played by Ernest Thesiger, a flamboyantly bizarre professor, a scientist matter than any mad scientist you've ever seen before. I think basically every single moment Thesager is on screen is just gold. He has turned up to eleven from his very first line, and he does not he does not stop.
I agree, that's it's just amazing in this And.
While doctor Pretorius is the greatest, there's room for all kinds of just you know, goobers and creeps and buffoons and weird personalities to weave in and out of the story here. Yeah.
Yeah, And I think the other amazing thing about this is Okay, so the idea of horror in comedy working together that that's nothing new, But everything just works so smoothly in this film it can almost feel like a surreal experience, especially given how jarring, sometimes intentionally the transaction transition in and out of horror in comedy may be in other works. There's just just in general, there's absolutely nothing rough around the edges with this movie. You know, there's there's much to be said again, how fresh and exciting this nineteen thirty five film feels in terms of its themes and performances, But even its effects are just staggeringly effective. The monster's basic makeup does is of course iconic, and you might expect that since it's iconic and you've seen it replicated often poorly, you know, on various other forms so many times, that it would lose some of its punch, but it really doesn't. It just looks incredible in every shot.
I totally agree. Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying, Like, you know what the Carlos Frankenstein makeup looks like. You've seen it a million times, so how could it still be scary and shocking? But in my opinion, when you watch the movie, it is like seeing it actually come to life in motion situated within the context of the plot. It doesn't matter how many times you've seen this pulled out of context on posters and stills and all that, it's still super creepy. It looks amazing, Yeah.
At every shot. On top of that, everything, every shot is perfectly composed. The dialogue is all tight and interesting, and other effects are amazing as well. There's a scene late in the movie in which a model mountain tower collapses in on itself. We've seen similar effects that rained from terrible to great but clearly an effect in so many pictures, but this one just looks and feels real in a way that's truly admirable. Oh yeah, So, Joe, what's your elevator pitch for Bride of Frankenstein?
You know it's difficult, so maybe it'd be something like after Frankenstein, you thought you knew what it meant for death to reign over life and for science to go mad, But we have such sites to show you yet.
Yeah, I think that sums it up well. And of course, to steal a line from the movie itself, have to quote doctor Pretorius about a new world of gods and monsters. I mean That's just one of the great lines of the film and kind of sums up the spirit and energy of the sequel.
Here in the scene, that line is offered as a toast, and it is so good. But it's especially good knowing the line which comes right before it, which is where doctor Pretorius claims that Jin is his only weakness, and he is clearly not correct in saying that.
There's another point in the film where he says something else is his only weakness. Yeah, you're just so many wonderful little quirks that that they're able to fit into the dialogue here. All right, Well, let's go ahead and listen to some trailer audio.
Oh yeah, all right.
Well, if you rightfully wish to go and watch Bride of Frankenstein on your own before you continue with this episode, well you're in luck because this is a Universal Monsters movie. I mean, this is the shining gem of the Universal Monsters franchise. So this one is widely available in all formats, and I think it's streaming on Peacock right now, if that is available to you. But any way you do it, do see this movie in the best quality you can grab.
Yes, I would say the same thing This is one where it really pays off to get the highest definition, best visual quality you can because this is a great looking movie and you want to get at every bit of it.
All. Right now, getting into the connections here the people that made this movie, we want to stress here that again, this was a big sequel. This was a sequel to a highly successful movie in which director James Whale got to assemble a massively talented cast and crew. So we are not going to be able to do justice to everyone that was involved in bringing this film to life.
Yeah, there are a ton of people involved in this movie that each have fascinating biographies, But because there are so many of them, I think we're gonna have to give fairly short statements on most of them. Just know that there's a lot of people here that we will get to kind of briefly, but they're each worth looking up.
Yeah, Yeah, and we may come back to many of these people in the future. They're, like we were saying, a lot of these folks are individuals who have they came up in a smaller picture or a lesser picture. We might spend a lot of time talking about who they were and what their careers consisted of all right. Well, starting at the top, of course, with the director. It's James Whale, who lived eighteen eighty nine through nineteen fifty seven, English director of film and the British stage, as well as an occasional actor himself. He primarily came over to the Hollywood system because with the transition to talkies, they wanted to invest in directors who were great with dialogue, and he had that reputation already. He's best remembered for his horror projects, namely the two Frankenstein films. Nineteen thirty three is The Invisible Man in nineteen thirty two's The Old Dark House. His first film, nineteen thirties Journey's End, was a war drama starring Colin Clive, and even after Frankenstein, he continued to make non horror dramas such as nineteen thirty threes by Candlelight, and even musicals like nineteen thirty six's Showboat and late in his career the nineteen forty adventure film Green Hell, which does have a terrific cast.
Like many of the directors we talked about who were making great horror films in the early days of sound cinema, I don't know if it would be right to say that like horror was a passion of James Whale. I think he probably wanted to focus more on dramas and such, but you know, he did the work that he got and he made great, great horror movies.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's time and time again. It's the case with these directors, like they wanted to go up the ladder towards bigger a list type pictures, prestige pictures that had the cast, but also didn't deal with these lesser genres of horror and sci fi. And that was just part of the cinema world of the time, that was the industry. And it's just kind of ironic that nowadays so many of these individuals are best remembered, if not remembered, exclusively for their genre entries.
This seems to be a situation where the original Frankenstein was a huge hit. It made incredible money for Universal, and that earned James Whale the right to make the sequel on his own terms. Essentially, however, he wanted very minimal studio interference, so Bride Frankenstein is the result of Whale getting more or less total creative freedom and almost all the resources and support he needed.
That's right, IM to understand. He had a lot of say over the script, presented a lot of ideas for the script. So yes, this is a film that more accurately gives us James Whale's vision of Frankenstein. Now, I should also note that James Whale was an openly gay man during a time during which this was rare, So his personal life has long been an area of interest to both biographers and also just film theorists and people analyzing his films and discussing the themes explored in them. It's especially the case with Bride.
Yeah, I've read differing takes over the extent to which Bride of Frankenstein should be interpreted as intentionally having gay themes in it. Some film historians read a lot of gay themes and to Bride. Others have said, I think based on some comments about people who from people who knew James Whale said that they didn't think he was intending to put anything like that into the film. But based on the sources available to us, I guess it's impossible to know for sure, but whether it should be interpreted as part of Wales's intention or not. Definitely, this film has been a rich subject for a lot of gay film historians.
Absolutely now. The source material, of course, is Mary Shelley's novel. Mary Shelley lived seventeen ninety seven through eighteen fifty one English writer responsible for a good seven novels and multiple short stories, but her first novel, eighteen eighteens Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, was the one that made her a legend. To this day, it stands as a powerful, entertaining and richly rewarding novel, highly influential over science fiction. She was the wife of English poet Percy Shelley, with whom she also worked. They, along with a friend and poet Lord Byron, are depicted in this movie.
I was watching a making of documentary and people were talking about how apparently Whale insisted on having this framing narrative in the film, because the movie doesn't start in the narrative itself. It starts with us seeing Lord Byron, Percy and Mary Wilson Craft Shelley sitting around a roaring fire and talking about the idea of the novel Frankenstein. Apparently Whale thought that this framing was crucial and he insisted that it be in And I think it does some interesting things. Maybe we can talk about that when we get to the plot section.
Yeah, yeah, I do think it's essential. It's hard to imagine this movie without it. But more about that when we get into the plot, all right. In terms of the people involved with writing the screenplay and developing the story, they're a number of uncredited writing credits that pop up for this film on the Internet movie database. We can't go through all of them, so I'm just going to focus on the two names that are credited in the actual credits on the film. Adapted by and screenplay credit goes to William Hurlbut, who lived eighteen seventy eight through nineteen fifty seven, American writer and screenwriter, certainly best remembered for this film, but he has forty credits on IMDb, going back to nineteen fifteen and then stretching up till the mid fifties. Other notable credits include nineteen thirties The Cat Creeps, The Will of the Dead Man, and nineteen thirty four's Imitation of Life. He also did additional dialogue on Robert Flore's Daughter of Hong Kong, starring the legendary anime Wo And then we have An adapted by credit for John L. Balderston, who lived eighteen eighty nine through nineteen fifty four, American playwrights, screenwriter, and journalist with a nak var horror and fantasy. His work includes nineteen thirties Dracula adapted from his own play, nineteen thirty two is the Mummy, the nineteen thirty three time travel movie Berkeley Square, nineteen thirty five's Mad Love, and nineteen forties The Mummy's Hand. He was one of the Love Yeah, it's quite a pedigree. He was also one of the writers on nineteen forty four's gas Light, from which we get the term gas lighting. All right, now getting into the cast clearly right at the top, we have the Monster. The monster is played, according to the opening credits, by Carloff.
First name, Yeah.
Yeah, I love this. This is of course, we're, of course, of course talking about Boris Karloff. This is the stage name of British actor William Henry Pratt, who lived eighteen eighty seven through nineteen sixty nine. He's gone up on the show a couple of times already. His credits go back to nineteen nineteen, and he already had a long filmography by the time with nineteen thirty one It's Frankenstein, in which he of course plays the monster. Afterwards, some of his big horror roles included nineteen thirty two is the Mummy and the Old Dark House, nineteen thirty three Is the Ghoul, nineteen thirty four's The Black Cat. After Bride, he remained very active, playing the monster one more time in nineteen thirty nine, Son of Frankenstein, but he remained a superstar of He appeared in nineteen forty four's House of Frankenstein, though not as the monster, and of course he remained active throughout the rest of his life. All right, So that is the monster, But of course we need a true Frankenstein, and Frankenstein is, of course in this movie Henry Frankenstein, the Creator, played once more by Colin Clive, who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen thirty seven. Just a tremendous but of course troubled and short lived British actor who we previously discussed on our early Weird House Cinema episode about nineteen thirty five's Mad Love, in which he played Stephen Orlock. He's wonderful in that as well.
Yeah, he is and he. I think Colin Clive went back to having worked with James Whale from the stage, like that they had worked together before the transition to film here.
Yeah, yeah, a lot. There are a number of players in this that had personal connections to Wale. Whale had worked with them before, he knew their talent, and they were hand picked. Colin Clive is, I've never seen him outside of a genre movie. I've only seen him in these horror films, but he is always just this live wire of anxiety and terror. He's perfect for a horror movie.
Of course.
In this he's reprising his role fro nineteen thirty one's Frankenstein. That was only his third emotion picture. The two Frankenstein films, along with Mad Love, constitute his only horror pictures. The rest of his nineteen credits, including the title role in nineteen thirty three's Christopher Strong, are all more mainstream.
Yeah. I think I also only know him for his horror roles. But I recall in Mad Love he is he gives a performance of such anxiety. I think the way I put it then was that it feels like he is undergoing vision.
Yes, in a way, you compare the two Roles. He's actually more chill in this movie. Despite being an individual who's gone through a horrifying and near death experience and get and then is sucked back into that same world once more, he still feels a little bit more chill. I guess at least he can throw himself into his work in a way that Stephen Orlock was no longer able to do. All right. He has a love interest in this though, and that is Elizabeth, played by Valerie Hobson, who of nineteen seventeen through nineteen ninety eight Irish born English actor. She takes over the role here from May Clark, who played Henry's love interest Elizabeth in the previous film. After this, she appeared in nineteen thirty five's were Wolf of London and various other films through about nineteen fifty four.
So the character here is Elizabeth, that is Henry Frankenstein's fiance, and I think she is supposed to represent goodness and virtue, you know. So there are like there's this forking path in the story where Henry could just choose a good life. He could just you know, have a life of love and family and pursuing regular noble career. Pursuits and all that. But no, you know, she's that option. Instead, he's going to go with dangerous knowledge.
Yes, of course he ends up having to choose that direction, in part because he was manipulated, in part because she has taken hostage.
In the book.
Of course, this is all part of the manipulations of the monster. But the monster as presented in that first film, the first Frankenstein film, is of course not a master manipulator. Like he doesn't even speak. It's a huge step up in this movie for him to be able to speak, and you can see where it would have been unrealistic for suddenly Frankenstein's Monster to be able to lay out some sort of a vast scheme. So you need a different sort of enemy, a different sort of villain, and that is, of course doctor Pretorius played by Ernest Messiger.
The way to fight evil is with a different kind of evil. To vote Chronicles of Britag.
I guess so yeah. Messenger lived eighteen seventy nine through nineteen sixty one an English actor of stage and screen, best remembered for this brilliant and flamboyant performance as the maddest of mad scientists and mad Science Enablers. His other credits include thirty two is the Old Dark House, thirty threes The Ghoul, and nineteen fifty threes The Robe, in which he plays Emperor Tiberius. It's my understanding he was not the like original studio pick for this role, but after whoever they wanted for it was not available or it didn't work out, Like this was clearly Whyale's pick. Whyal you know, had a history with this actor. He really looked up to his his abilities and his talent, and so this was like the obvious choice for this role. And clearly it's impossible to imagine anyone else breathing life into this character the way Thatsagre does.
Unreal, just brilliant, absurd, hilarious, sneering evil. I love Messager here. Doctor Pretorius is a great character, and I yeah, I could not imagine this going to a different actor. This is like he is perfect all right.
Up next, we have Elsa Lanchester playing really the title character of the film, even though the title character, the Bride, is just credited with question marks in the opening scroll, you know, because it's going to be a surprise, I guess. But she it's a dual role because She also in the early part of the film plays Mary Shelley, so she plays both female creator and feminine creation, and these two performances kind of bookend the rest of the picture.
I think the choice to have the same actress in both those roles is significant. Though I don't know exactly what it means, it feels right, Yeah.
I think that's one of the beauties about the show's treatment of some of its more serious subject matter is that it's kind of amorphous in a way, like you can feel the connections, but the filmmakers don't like just hammer it home in all cases. So there's plenty of room for interpretation. Endless room for interpretation.
Really, right, but we should not hold back in thing. Elsa Lanchester is great. She doesn't have actually a ton of screen time, but the few minutes she is on the screen, Wow, does she make an impression. Yeah.
I mean she's fun in the intro and then as the Monster's mate she's accredited or the bride she has. She has a wonderful and very different energy. It's almost kind of an Avian energy. It's also also kind of like a hyper focus like, while Frankenstein's Monster has more of a like a lantern level of understand of analysis of the world, and also kind of like a lantern level anxiety and trauma about it. Hers is more laser focused. She has that like flashlight intensity.
Yes, she has I see what you mean when you say Avian. She has a jerky, almost bird like movements of the head and the eyes. Once she's brought to life as the reanimated Bride, is kind of like quick, jerky adjustments of her attention around the room, and she it seems like she doesn't like she's seeing.
No, and there's not a lot to like, but we'll get to that after a bit. Elsa Lanchester Live nineteen oh two through nineteen eighty six, English actor of film, stage and TV. This is probably her most iconic role. I mean it's just a very iconic role. Everybody knows this look. Everybody knows that hair, right, I mean, the whole costume is wonderful. As this we'll get into. She'd already been acting for film for ten years by the time of Bride, and continue to act through nineteen eighty. Her later screen credits include forty three's Lassie Come Home, forty six's The Spiral Staircase, forty nine is the Secret Garden nineteen sixty four, is Mary Poppins that darn cat in sixty five Other films of another There's fifty eight's Bell Book and Candle, seventy three's Terror in the Wax Museum, seventy six is murdered by death in nineteen eighties die Laughing. She also appeared on such TV shows as The Magical World of Disney and Night Gallery. I don't know why I stressed it like that Night Gallery, not Night Gallery. That's strange. Up next, we have to mention the character Minnie. Minnie is another just this is just a ridiculously fun character role, blatantly there for comic relief. And you know the thing about comic relief characters in older pictures, they don't always stand the test of time. Sometimes they don't even stand the test of time, like ten years later, much less with an eighty eight year old picture. But Minnie is wonderful. This scared, nosy but also bloodthirsty old maid u still delivers, still absolutely delivers.
I love the way that she is terrified of the monster, but she also somehow seems to be following the monster everywhere it goes. There's one part where the creature is captured by the authorities and put in like a dungeon, and Minnie is there looking down through the bars and she's like, Ooh, wouldn't he ugly, you know, I'd hate to wake up and find him hiding underneath my bed at night. But she says it in a way that suggests she would like to find that.
Yeah.
She she seems kind of like what would later be known as or maybe was known in the time period. I forget the time frame on this is a hat ten mary. I think it's the term. This would be an older woman at a pro wrestling show who would try and poke the heels on their way to the ring with their hat pins. So there's kind of yeah, blood the fuity to her afraid of the monster, but also really wants to be there when the monster is tormented.
But also this is a very broad comic performance, I would say, almost cartoonish, but it works perfectly.
Yeah, And the actor here is Una O'Connor, who lived eighteen eighty through nineteen fifty nine. She was only in her mid fifties. Here she's played up as this old woman, but she was not an old woman by any stretch at this point. A tremendous Irish character actor with extensive stage experience often cast in this sort of role. Though, like I mean, and clearly why not, She's got it nailed perfectly. Other films include The Invisible Man from thirty three, The Informer from thirty five, and The Adventures of Robin Hood from thirty eight.
Oh Man. Next, just to make sure we don't leave him out, we should mention Dwight Frye, who has a small role in this film as Carl, who is essentially the new Egor, even though actually Egor wouldn't come until later, is the new Fritz, and he's played by the same actor who played Fritz in the original Frankenstein. So. Dwight Frye lived eighteen ninety nine to nineteen forty three. He was Wrinfield in Todd Browning Stracula. He apparently at first had a more substantial part in the movie, but it was allegedly cut down by censors.
Yeah, there's apparently like fifteen minutes or so that the sensors cut out of this film just because they really wanted to play it safe. A lot of it was stuff that they thought might come off as blasphemous talking you know, getting into the whole thesis of creating live. I think some of it too, was Mary Shelley's dress. They thought some angles on it were maybe a little too risky for the time period, that sort of thing. And some sort of subplot here with Carl and and whatever he's up to outside of his grave robbing side gig.
I think he was supposed to murder the mustache guy.
Oh, the burgermaster.
Yeah.
Yeah, so you mentioned that he's the egor of the film. He was very much the egor of the film. But yeah, the timeline of this is interesting because we were chatting about this off of Mike earlier. There is no egor in the novel Frankenstein. There is no egor in the first Frankenstein movie. Instead, you have, like you said, Fritz played by Dwight Frye, and then they bring him back to play Carl, which is essentially the same sort of character. And then it's not till nineteen thirty nine, Son of Frankenstein that we get Igor Igor, we get this role that is played by Bella Lagosi. But in retrospect, it's like that that's what we think of as this position, this sort of like deranged henchman to Doctor Frankenstein. We think of it as the Egor role.
I also think it's interesting that the actual character named Egor was played by Bella Lagosi, So you would think you would really remember that casting, you would associate Bella with the character. But I very much think of Dwight Fry when I think of Igor.
Yeah, yeah, he's good in this role. He's got some good Hinchman energy. He'd go on to have small roles in other Frankenstein films, various other pictures. He also pops up in nineteen thirty one's The Maltese Falcon. All right, real quick. The Burgo Master, who we mentioned is very fun, a very very fun mustachio of performance. This character is played by the actor E. E. Clive, who lived eighteen eighty three through nineteen forty. He was also in thirty three's The Invisible Man. Another one I'm going to point out real quick in passing. Again, we don't have time to go into all of these characters. Opi Hedge plays the Blind Hermit, an Australian born actor. This is one of his final roles. He lived eighteen seventy seven through nineteen thirty six.
Oh he brings a lot of humanity to the story he does.
It is a really it's a shame not to spend more time on him, because it is. He gets a lot of screen time, brings humanity to the role and brings humanity out of the monster. But let us not forget Lord Byron. He's fairly in the film, just in that opening bit that I believe was rather cut down. But Gavin Gordon plays Lord Byron. He lived nineteen oh one through nineteen eighty three. He was a Mississippi born American actor whose credits include nineteen thirty three's Mystery of the Wax Museum, fifty four's White Christmas, fifty six is the Ten Commandments, the Eldest film from fifty eight Keen Creole, and also the nineteen fifty nine movie The Bat opposite Vincent Price.
I love him in this role, but I have no idea what he's trying to do with this accent. It is so over.
I mean, it's a wonderful campy way to start off this film. It kind of sets the tone. Once you've seen Gavin Gordon's Lord Byron, I mean, where can you go? You know you're already in the clouds it's.
Like part really like rolling the rs on the Irish accent, but then also part English accent, part Southern accent. It is is it's something, it's something else.
Yes, now, a very small role, but one is a lot of fun for film film fans and you know, and horror fans certainly. There's a scene, of course, where we're talking about the We have the hermit who's blind. He forges this relationship with the monster, but then sighted people show up and ruin it. The two sided people that show up are a couple of lost hunters, one of whom is played by John Carodine. Oh yeah, who's literally in everything, it seems.
In every movie ever made. So of course he would be in this one too. But yeah, you wouldn't have known.
Yeah, it's it's an uncredited role, but it's also unmistakable because he does have some lines. And also, I mean it's just clearly John Carrodine, you know he has he has that lean and hungry look even though he's very young here he lived nineteen oh six through nineteen eighty eight. We've we've discussed him on the show before. Very long career, all manner of films he was in, he had. He had already had uncredited roles in thirty three Is in the Visible Man and thirty four's The Black Cat. He'd go on to be a horror staple and would play Dracula in nineteen forty four's House of Frankenstein.
I don't really know exactly why he should be lost. Wouldn't he just know to get on the night train to Mundo fie.
I you'd think you would, You'd think you would. All right, just a few quick behind the scenes references. They're just because I'm not going to go into them in depth, but just got to mention them, just because they're part of the alchemy here. Franz Waxman did the score. He lived nineteen oh six through nineteen sixty seven. Two time Oscar winner for nineteen fifty one Sunset Boulevard in fifty two Is A Place in the Sun. He also scored nineteen forties Rebecca in nineteen forty one Suspicion It is. It is a very classic Hollywood score, but it is also a very good score. A lot has been written about this. It's not necessarily the kind of music I listened to an isolation or anything, but it is.
It is not a.
This is no sloppy score here. This is one of those scores where there's a lot of thought that goes into what different musical themes match up with the characters and so forth.
Agreed. Now, this is also an amazing looking film and one with a superb makeup effects, so I think we should call out those credits. That's right.
On the makeup front, we have Jack p. Pierce credited for the monster makeup. He lived eighteen eighty nine through nineteen sixty eight. He also did the makeup on nineteen forty one's The Wolfman And Yeah, the cinematographer on this was John J. Mescal who lived eighteen ninety nine through nineteen sixty two, also known for thirty four as the Black Cat.
I've watched some interviews with people talking about what it was like to work with Jack Pierce supplying makeup. There's a story of Elsa Lanchester talking about the painstaking, delicate procedure that he would use to apply the makeup for the scar running underneath the bride's jaw, which she was like, ultimately was only on screen for about a second that you could actually see, but that you know, he really was taking a kind of religious care to make it perfect.
Yeah, I mean in that level of craftsmanship just matches up with everything else we see on the film. All right, well, shall we get into the plot of this baby a bit more?
Okay, Well, we start on a dark and stormy night. We see a retigenous castle perched up on a rocky mountaintop in the dark, with light pouring out from one of the windows and thundercracks, rain battering the stonework towers. It's perfect Gothic setting. And inside the castle we get some poets. There are three writers sitting around a roaring fireplace. There's also a quick shot of a lady who looks almost like she's being pulled by it, like sled dogs indoors. I think she's actually just walking dogs on a leash, and she has a you know, one of those large wide skirts, so you don't see her legs moving much. But yeah, she's like walking dogs indoors. For some reason, she's quickly out of frame. And then we get to this prologue, this framing idea, with the characters of Percy Biss, Shelley Lord Byron, and Mary Wolstoncraft. Shelley, who again is the author of the novel Frankenstein. Oh and by the way, if you don't know the backstory Frankenstein, the novel began as a spooky story that Mary Shelley dreamed up for a sort of contest. I think when these three and at least one other writers, you know, some group of them, were staying at a mansion near Lake Geneva one year. Yeah.
This would go on to be sort of the germ for the nineteen eighty six film Gothic, in which Gabriel Byrne plays Byron, Julian Sands plays Shelley, and Natasha Richardson plays Mary as a kin Russell film.
By the way, Oh really, I haven't seen that one.
It's been a while. I don't remember much about it.
Is there somebody playing John Pauladorian?
Know?
That was the at least one other there was John Paulodori, who ended up turning a story from this summer get together into a novel or novella called The Vampire.
Yes, and he is played by the always excellent Timothy Spall.
Oh. Okay, now, as we mentioned, the guy playing Lord Byron really gets into his part. In fact, I decided to type out his opening monologue here because he's he's looking out the window at the storm, and he says, how beautifully dramatic, the crudest, savage exhibition of nature at her worst without and we three, we elegant three within. I should like to think that an irated Jehovah was pointing those arrows of lightning directly at my head, the unbowed head of George Gordon, Lord Byron, England's greatest sinner. But then he says, but I cannot flatter myself to that extent. Possibly those thunders are for our dear Shelley, referring to Percy Heaven's applause for England's greatest poet. But then Percy says, well, what about my Mary? And Byron says, oh, she is an angel? And Mary looks up from her embroidery with this flashing smile and says, you think so ooh, And I love that because her smile is a little bit creepy.
Yeah, yeah, because as they're about to allude to here, you know, they're talking about how great they are, these two male poets. But they have to acknowledge that Mary, even though they're kind of treating her like this very fragile thing that she has already created something that is terrifying to everyone there, and then they're already at least a bit in awe of her creative powers.
That's right. I've read that at some point James Whale said to someone that with this opening scene and in the movie in general, he wanted to emphasize that quote, pretty people can harbor the most twisted imaginations. So we have Byron here chattering somewhat condescendingly about how, oh Mary you are, this delicate, beautiful, angelic creature, and yet she has written a story so dreadful it curdled my blood. Meanwhile, she's just blasting out this creepy smile with gleaming eyes and giggling, and she says, why shouldn't I write monsters? And there's something in this that suggests, buddy, you ain't seen nothing yet.
They're also kind of toying with the prestige of Lord Byron and Percy Shelley here, his famous and influential writers, while of course Mary's work I think ultimately casts a far greater shadow over the following centuries, you know, far greater than both of them combined. I don't know, my fellow English majors may respectfully disagree on the matter.
Oh no, I would totally agree, and I think it'd be kind of hard to argue with that. So not to knock either Percy Shelley or Lord Byron. I enjoy them both. I think they're both necessary reading if you want to understand the Romantic movement in English literature, and that each wrote some poetry that's still wonderful to read today, I think especially. But it could be argued that Mary essentially is the founder of modern science fiction, and I think that's like hugely more significant in the long run, and especially in the way that she established themes like the themes of Frankenstein are themes that are still explored in science fiction and science fiction horror to this day, especially ideas about the dark side of the power unleashed by advances in science and technology. You know, Frankenstein. It was a story about how not all increase of human power is good, and sometimes in blithely plowing ahead with newly acquired scientific and technological powers, if you don't think through the consequences, you make monsters, or you make a monster out of yourself. It's one of the most enduring themes of modern storytelling and it still finds new ways of being entertaining, frightening, and socially insightful. You'll encounter hundreds of novels and movies and all kinds of interesting stories coming out this year that are still hashing through themes that Mary Shelley raised in Frankenstein.
Yeah. Yeah, and each time it's retold, you can do it in a way that reflects modern anxieties and modern s. It's abilities all right. But the other part of this whole intro is that basically we get a previously on Frankenstein.
Yes, I love that. So the framing narrative with Mary Shelley serves as a way to remind us what happened in the previous movie. It's sort of narrated by Byron's like he's basically like a kid explaining the plot of his favorite movie, except he's explaining the plot of the movie Frankenstein to the author of Frankenstein.
Perfect though, it's perfect for what they're putting together here. Yes, this was before man'splaining was the thing. I mean, well, obviously it was a thing already, but before it was a term. It's what we have here.
So the broad strokes go like this Frankenstein. The man Henry in the movie, even though he's named Victor in the book, creates a monster out of corpses. He uses science to bring this dead man to life. There is an unfortunate series of events. The monster escapes the laboratory and roams the country. He is at first a gentle and childlike, but he accidentally kills a young girl without realizing what he is doing, and this raises an angry mob, which pursues the creature. The creature flees to a windmill with the unconscious Henry, carrying Henry with him, and then the creature is seemingly killed in the blaze after the angry mob sets the windmill on fire. So like Byron goes back through all that, and then Elsa Ancester is like, oh for real, though that's not the end of the story. Would you like to know what happened next? And yes, yes, Elsa, we would.
And so it's time to Halloween too. This baby right to just go pick up right where the last one left off and start the new journey.
I love that no time passes in between. Yeah, it's just right there. The mill is still burning. So the action begins with the mill burning down, presumably having killed the monster. Henry Frankenstein lies unconscious at the foot of the Flaming Tower, having been thrown nearly to his death by his own creation. Henry's friends and servants load him into a wagon to be taken back to his family estate. I think they believe he is dead at this point, but he's not. Meanwhile, the angry villagers cheer and they shake their torches and pitchforks at the demise of the hated Boris Karloff, and we get zoom ins on several characters in the crowd. Here. There is, as we mentioned earlier, Henry's talkative housekeeper Mini, wearing this what would you call this piece of headwear that she has on?
I don't know. I was trying to figure it out. Is it like some sort of a cultural thing that I'm supposed to pick up on or it's something historic? But yeah, it threw me for a curve trying to figure out, like what it's supposed to tell us the viewer about her role.
I do not know what it is that makes her head look like a venus fly trap. H She is discussing how happy she is to know the monster is roasting in the inferno there as she also explains with apparent glee, how the insides of a body are the last part to burn in a fire. That's just science. There's also this old, blustery guy with a big mustache, the Burgomaster. He's wandering around telling everyone that it's time for them to go to bed now, and I'll just love for this guy to do a buddy cop team up with Christopher Lee from the Devil rides out and they can tell everyone to go to bed. He's like, go home, go to bed also. Though, then amidst these funny characters, we have tragic characters, the parents of the girl who was killed accidentally by the monster in the previous movie. As the crowd gets bored wanders away from the wreckage of the mill, the girl's father, Hans, decides that he will not be satisfied until he's the creature's charred bones, so he starts picking his way down. He climbs into the rubble, but then slips and tumbles down into the cellar of the burning mill, which is now flooded with water and oh, in a beautifully unsettling series of shots, we see in the dark with water falling all around. A pale hand reach out across the stone work of the wall, and then from behind a corner emerges carl Off. The creature is burned but still alive, and then the light of the fire reflects off of the flowing water and projects shimmering patterns on the monster's face. All over this great makeup and the creature you can see it. He no longer has the innocent and childlike nature that he had in the movie before. Now the creature just immediately descends on Hans and murders him. He pushes his head under the waters of the flood. He's full of rage. And then Hans's wife comes to help her, but the hand that reaches up from the cellar is not the hand she expects. It's the monster coming out, and the monster throws her down to her death in the rubble below.
This is a great way to re establish the monster, because again we all know what everyone going into this film knew what the monster would look like. Retroactively watching this film, you know, decades later, we know what the monster looks like. But the monster is so perfectly reintroduced here in this dark, shadowy, submerged world, and then proceeds to just brutally murder these two sympathetic characters, Like when he throws the old woman back down, like it was obviously one of these you know stunts where they have a dummy that is standing in for the body of the woman, but she like lands head first on the water wheel and the mill and then tumbles down. It's brutal.
I totally agree. And I've always found something so profoundly dark about this opening. The set design is a about as dank and heavy as one could possibly achieve. Like we begin in this flooded basement underneath the ruins of a burning building. It is as close as it could be to meeting the creature again in hell. And the creature was supposed to be the ugliest thing imaginable before, a monster just scrabbled together out of dead flesh. And now somehow he is even worse. His hair is singed off by the fire, his skin has been melted and torn open, He's got all these scars. He murders the grieving parents of the child that he never meant to harm in the first place, and then he staggers out under a sky that is so gray and dismal it's like the sun has never existed. This is such a strong opening, absolutely, but then in a reversal that will presage that the tone of the film going forward, and a lot of whales other works as well. It goes straight from the sorest gloom ever committed to film to a comedy bit. So, the monster staggers up to Minnie, who is still wandering around on the hillside, apparently looking for somebody whose business she can get up into, and she sees the monster and she starts making Looney Tunes noises for what feels like a solid minute before running away.
Yeah, it does just goes so Looney Tunes. It's wonderful. And yet again everything feels balanced, it doesn't feel jarring somehow, And part of that may be that we started out so campy, we started out so broad, and we're already weaving in and out smoothly between the comedy and the horror.
Yeah, and you said the word camp. I think that's important. A lot of critics and film historians have pointed to the importance of the camp sensibility within the rich Tonal architecture of Bride Frankenstein. Camp is core to what this movie is. I think, especially once Ernest Thesiger arrives and in the role of doctor Preetorious. But anyway, so to come back to the plot, Henry Frankenstein is carried unconscious and apparently dead back to his family estate, where he is greeted by his good hearted fiance Elizabeth. And I should add also that this is true for pretty much the whole movie. But the sets here are tremendous. The Frankenstein home is full of arches and firelight and all kinds of gothic flare. It's photographed beautifully, so you can just see in every moment that Universal like really opened up the purse to allow Whale to make the best movie he could. Yeah.
Absolutely, just beautiful, beautiful sets.
Somewhere in the sequence, Many comes back and reports that the monster is still alive, that she saw him, and of course she is ignored. I think it's the head butler who tells her to shut up and then says, we don't believe in ghosts around here. So they initially think that Henry is dead, but then he moves suddenly in the presence of Elizabeth, and so she's like, oh, he's still alive, and she nursed Henry back to health. All the casting is good, but I wanted to call out the casting of Elizabeth as also quite good. You know, it's a it's a little bit more thankless of a role than a lot of the other roles in the film, where actors really get to ham it up. Elizabeth doesn't quite get to do that. But I think Hobson is selected because she comes off as a beacon of undiluted love and kindness in the middle of this wretched setting. I mentioned this earlier, but I think she represents the other life, the life of virtue and bliss that Henry could have had if he had just been content rather than questing into these domains of unknown knowledge and power. Like Elizabeth is as good as gold, and they could have been happy and had that golden life together. But he wanted more. He had that faustian temptation. He wanted, He wanted more than it is healthy for a person to want.
She's like the girlfriend on the second season of The Bear For you TV viewers, I don't know the Bear well, same role, like saying you don't maybe you could. We could have a life together and you don't have to go through this painful experience of opening this restaurant or reopening it, which is kind of the same thing. It's like, we have a reopening of a destructive project in this in this personally destructive project in this film, just like in that show.
And we yeah, and we see some remorse. Like while recovering, Henry wonders if he is being punished for his experiments in creating the monster. He says, perhaps death is sacred and I've profaned it. But his remorse is only half the picture. It's kind of fleeting because he also still thinks, you know, in piecing together a superhuman strangling machine out of the mangled odds and ends of dead bodies, I might have really been onto something. He says, quote, I dreamed of giving to the world the secret that God is so jealous of, the formula for life. So Henry has not completely abandoned his ambitions.
Yeah, there's at least there's some embers still hot in there. Of course, it's left for us to wonder, well, does he actually have the wherewithal to do this again? Is he just sort of idly dreaming? And maybe that's the case. Maybe he wouldn't have the courage and the strength to go through with that nightmare again. As long as nobody comes along and encourages him to pick it up again.
Right, that's right, And here things really start cooking. Into the picture comes Doctor Septimus Pretorious. What can we say of Doctor Septimus Pretorious, The look, the attitude, the scowl, he's so ernest Messager is this tall, gaunt man with light colored, frizzy, curly hair, and he he puts on this amazing scowl, this resting stink face that throughout pretty much the whole movie. And from his very first line, he is committed to being a lot.
Yes he is.
He is a lot.
He is so much the I mean the most, the most entertaining character in this film. Among so many other entertaining characters, he has to stand out as one of the most the most entertaining characters in just cinema in general. Like, it's everything we see from him is golden here, it's it's it's almost a shame that we don't get to experience this same actor in this same role in other pictures. But and again that's kind of what makes it special.
That's right. So he arrives at the door of the Frankenstein estate. He says he must see Henry tonight. On a secret matter of grave importance, and I guess it's many who lets him in, Like, okay, grave importance. So we learned. Doctor Pretorius is a professor, a former mentor of Henry's, but has recently been ejected from the academy for reasons that are only vaguely alluded to with summaries, such as for knowing too much. But once doctor Pretorius has gotten Elizabeth out of Henry's bedroom, he goes to Henry's bedside and says that he knows of Henry's experiments, he knows about the monster, and he says, we've got to work together. He wants their experimentation to go on, no longer as master and pupil, but as fellow scientists. In fact, he says, in Henry's absence, he has continued his own forbidden studies in secret and managed to create life of a sort on his own. So Henry initially tries to resist doctor Pretorius's recruitment. He's like, no, no, I have to get married to Elizabeth. But when he hears that his former teacher has also found the formula for life, he says he must see what he has accomplished.
And you know you might expect that doctor Pretorius has created something more or less like the monster, but maybe not as good, you know, like it's it's it's less powerful thing imperfect about it. And I think this is a this is a this would be a good guess, but this film is not going to align with the easy guesswork you might have in Blaze here like this, Well, what he has been working on is tremendous.
That's right. So they go back to Pretorius's lab to see what he has done, and here we come to the famous homuncular scene. First at his lab, Pretorious, this is the part where he offers a toast to a new world of gods and monsters, and then he gets out this huge black box to show Henry what's inside, talking the whole time about how enthralling it is to create life. He says, my experiments went in a different direction than yours, But science, like love, is always full of surprises. Why does he say that? Like love? There seems to be something really inherently sensual about doctor Pretorius's idea of science.
Yeah, I mean it is all consuming, that's for sure.
So he unveiled Pretorious unveils these glass jars with tiny living people inside them, and I should just say that the effects here are spectacular. He has created homunculi, and he explains that he first created a woman who was so lovely that he had to make her a queen. So she's here in this regal gown on a throne. And he says next, since he had a queen, he had to make a king, and the king is apparently obsessed with getting out of his jar and getting to the queen. Then he says he made another tiny man quote who looked so disapprovingly at the other two that they made him an archbishop. Now I guess this somehow got past the Hayes Code prohibition and gets making fun of the clergy or I don't know, to be fair, I'm not sure exactly how the Hayes Code affected this movie, but this was left in for some reason.
Yeah, I mean it's like, likewise, there are some other lines we've already touched on that feel like if you were gonna be picky about blasphemous statements, it might have been picked on.
But I don't know.
It's like, I'm not sure offhand what they cut compared to what they kept, And maybe they let this slide too, because it's like, it's not as much about the clergy being dumb as it is about like, just look how awful this king is. He's like, this clergy member is just done with them. But to be clear, these are little people wearing full costumes. They're like a miniature king and queen, a miniature archbishop or whatever it's it is. This is so comedically weird.
Yes. Oh and the fourth homunculus, by the way, is a devil. It's the devil. Messenger says, there's a resemblance to me, don't you think. And Doctor Pretorius then muses that wouldn't life be simpler if we were all devils? No nonsense about angels and being good.
He's really laying it out out there. He's like, look, there's no good, there's no bad. There's just the work at hand. And we've got a team up again, because I've got my ideas, you've got your ideas. Together, we can really make the perfect being.
Oh. Also he made a ballerina and a mermaid.
Yeah, I'd forgotten that there were so many additional creature being some unculi that he had made. Because this scene goes on a while and a lot of effort went into into making each of these Homunculi tubes. It's very impressive.
So Henry is appalled by this. I'm not quite sure exactly why Henry is so appalled by the Homunculi compared to the monster he made. But he says, this isn't science, it's more like black magic. And doctor Pretorius says, you think I'm mad. Perhaps I am, but listen to Henry Frankenstein. While you were digging in your graves piecing together dead tissues, I, my dear pupil, went for my materials to the source of life. I grew my creatures like cultures, grew them as nature does from seed. Yeah, and I think that means exactly what it sounds like. I think Pretorius here is operating on the basis of the ideology of spermist preformationism.
Yeah.
I believe we discussed in some past episodes of Stuff.
To Blow your Mind, the idea that, like the human body, it's sort of an alternative to cell theory, is that, like the human body is fully formed, just very tiny in the sex cells, and the spermists thought that they were that the human bodies were in the sperm, not in the eggs.
Yeah.
So, I mean already they're laying out a really cool idea and one that the film will will fulfill. The idea that on one hand, doctor Pretorius is all about growing new life, Frankenstein is about assembling new life and instilling energy in it. And if you bring these two disciplines together, well then there's no there's no limit to what you can create.
That's right. Soretorius beckons Henry to join him. He says, together they can discover all all the secrets of creating life. He says, leave your Charnel house and follow the lead of nature or of God if you like your Bible stories. So doctor Pretorius wants to not only create life from non life, but together with Henry, he thinks that they can make two living beings that can join in sexual union and reproduce with one another, giving rise to a whole new line of created creatures. Henry is horrified. He claims he won't do it, but Pretorius is mighty persuasive.
Yeah, he doesn't even really have to get heavy handed at this point. He's just like like, do it, do it, You're doing it. Come on, you're doing it.
And he's like, okay, now meanwhile, so we leave that scene for a while and we revisit the creature. So the creature, having escaped to the burning mill, wanders through a forest, which is an absolutely gorgeous bucolic indoor forest set, you know, I love those. It's got a canopy of slanted pine trees and a rushing waterfall, and the creature drinks from a stream, but he sees his face reflected in the water and then strikes out at it in anger. He hates his own image.
And again, I just want to drive home that while there's so much about Carlos Frankenstein's Monster that has become a stereotype of the horror genre, that has become kind of cliche, when you see the actual performance, there is so much more nuance to it.
You know.
It's easy to think of it as just you know, like firebag, you know, and sort of think of the like the Phil Hartman Saturday Night Live version of the thing, But yeah, there's just so many additional levels to it, Like there is this real authentic feeling of this being that cannot communicate properly about the world around him, but has like intense emotions and trauma and even a little bit of hope still remain about how he connects to it all.
I totally agree that the Frankenstein creature is so much more complex than the impression you would get from the parodies. And as I said earlier, that does go straight back to the novel. The creature is an extremely complex and thoughtful and emotional being in the novel. So in the scene there's a shepherdess leading some lambs through the forest. The shepherdess sees the creature and she screams in terror and falls into the water, and the creature actually goes and saves her from drowning. And you know, I think something interesting is going on here where Just in the scene before, a character fell into the water with the creature, and the creature drowned that character on purpose. He was so filled with rage. Here somebody falls into the water and he tries to save their life. So I think this is also supposed to communicate something about the creature just being so filled with churning emotions and contradictions. It doesn't know what it is. The creature doesn't know if he is if he is good or evil, and doesn't know which path to embrace. He's just sort of flying back and forth from one to the other. Yeah, but anyway, so the woman falls in the water. He saves her, but then she is of course terrified of him. She starts to scream, and the creature is frightened by this. He tries to stop her screaming by covering her mouth, which just makes it worse. And then men with guns come and start shooting at the creature. They wound him, but he escapes into the wild and the townspeople raise a mob to chase the monster once again. This is another chased by the crowd scene. And one thing I wanted to point out is how the forest set changes from the previous scene to this one. So when the monster is wandering alone before the mob attacks him, before he has been seen and hated again by humanity, the forest is lush and lovely and alive, and now that he is again being hunted and despised, the trees are all these straight, bare trunks without leaves or branches, and it's set against a dark sky and these crooked rocks. And I think the film uses set and setting to infuse the scenes with emotion.
I'm glad you mentioned this because this is something that I don't think I actually I didn't think about it as I was watching. I was so caught up in the action of it all. But I think you're absolutely right. Like they're they're manipulating their their tightly controlled set world here to uh to imbue the scene with just the right amount of just the right emotion and just the right energy.
So this all has a momentum of its own that the creature is caught by the mob, bound up like tied to a pole, taken to town, thrown into a dungeon, chained up to this heavy wooden chair that looks like some kind of torture device. All throughout the creature is groaning in pain and misery. This is the scene where Many is looking down the window at the dungeon and is like, ooh ooh, she's just getting too excited about this. But of course, first chance he gets Karloff, snaps the chains, breaks out of prison, kicks down the heavy wooden doors. Meanwhile, that mustachioed character, the Burgomaster from the guy from earlier who was telling everybody to go to bed, there's a really funny part where he's trying to clear the crowd. He's saying, nothing to worry about just an escaped lunatic, quite harmless, while the monster is kicking down the door of the prison in the background.
Yes, yeah, this is great because, yeah, this part is funny, and yet at the same time, the daytime rampage is still terrifying, and I think it's more terrifying because it is in the daylight.
I agree. So there's this rampage. The monster harms people in the process of escaping the town, but eventually gets out into the woods. And so eventually this leads up to the part where the monster is drawn to the cabin. The cabin in the woods where the old hermit lives. He's drawn by the sound of music. So this old blind man lives alone in a cottage and he's playing ave Maria on the violin. The creature likes the music, and so he comes to the door of the cabin, and unlike everyone else who fears and rejects the monster, the blind man welcomes the creature into his house. He offers him hospitality, and he offers him friendship, gives the creature food, he cares for his wounds, and he shows him kindness. When the creature is unable to speak, the old man says, perhaps you are afflicted too. I cannot see and you cannot speak. But he says, I've prayed many times for God to send me a friend. God has taken pity on my loneliness, and we can be friends to each other. And so this turns into a really beautiful short story in the middle of the movie. Here, you know, the blind man does not even understand how uncommon the friendship he's offering is to the person he's offering it to, and so the creature seems he accepts the hospitality, and the creature goes on to live with this blind man for some unspecified length of time, during which he learns to speak. The old man teaches him words, teaches him about bread, wine, and cigars, and oh boy, when you know what he's learning about cigars, at first fire bad. So the creature doesn't like that, but he figures out pretty soon that he likes smoking cigars.
Yes, these things are hilarious, but also very poignant as well. He's because the monster is learning to enjoy life for the first time, and the blind man is sharing the enjoyments of life with him.
After gaining a vocabulary, the creature learns to express his feelings in words, and he says things like alone, bad, friend, good. But this happy interlude is broken when two hunters, including John Kerroty and come to the cabin asking for directions, and uh oh, they see the monster, you know exactly what. A fight breaks out, the cabin catches fire, and everyone runs off in their separate directions. So the creature's chance here and having a good life is thwarted. And the creature wanders at night through a desolate cemetery in a rage. And this graveyard set is fantastic. It's like the graveyard at the end of the world. High contrasts, dead trees reaching like ghostly fingers. There's mist rising from the consecrated earth. And then in his anger and despair, the creature is literally toppling monuments and grave markers. He hates every work of man, but he decides to hide out. The creature tries to hide from the angry mob by climbing down into a subterranean crypt. And what's this. Down in the crypt he sees three figures coming carrying lanterns, descending into the catacomb, and one of them is our old friend, doctor Septimus Pretorious.
Yes, now, before even encountering him. Though this is already so perfect because the monster earlier in the film emerges from the underworld, has all these encounters, seems to find a new a new way to look at life, and now he is forced to descend back into the underworld. You know, it's it's like all his attempts have failed. But sometimes in the underworld you do run into the devil and enter yet doctor Pretorius and his guns.
Two Oh my god, she's accompanied by these two cursed waxen goons, one of them played by Dwight Fry. The characters are named Karl and Ludwig. They're here to do the heavy lifting for this midnight grave robbing mission. They're supposed to be criminals of some sort of Pretorious threatens to send them back to the gallows where they belong if they don't get on with the body removal, so they select a grave. They steal the woman's body from the grave. Looking on, Pretorius says, I hope her bones are firm, but eventually so they get the body. The grave robbers leave, but Pretorius stays and then this is probably my favorite scene in the movie, where he Pretorious is just like I rather like this place I shall stay here for a bit, and just has himself a cackling picnic in the middle of the catacomb, wine cheese, skeletons. He won't stop laughing. He's having a great time.
I think he has her bones, that the woman's bones like piled up there in the middle of his little pic neck.
Right, Oh, is that what it is? Okay?
If not her bones, someone else's bones. Either way, it's a gothic delight. I should I should also point out like he's already like he's shown that he's such a you can't trust anything, he says, because this whole thing to Frankenstein was like, we're done with with dead bodies, old boy. Yes, the next thing we see from him is he's down there grave robbin with a couple of goods.
That's right, Okay, I think you're right. Actually, I was thinking about the that the goons still took the body with them, but I think they got these bones out and he's like just hanging out with the bones. I think that's right.
But yes, tremendous saint just cackling in the crypt.
But the monster comes out of hiding and meets doctor Pretorius. Pretorius says oh, I thought I was a And then he shares his food, wine, and cigars. But the creature much like the old man did in the Cottage in the Woods, except whereas that was wholesome and friendly, there's a different subtext here. Instead, it feels more like he's being enticed into a deal with the devil here. Yes, yes, So they sort of get to know each other, and then Pretorius explains his plans to the monster. He says that he promises that he will make the monster a friend, a woman like him to be his wife. So this takes us into the last act of the movie. Henry and Elizabeth are married again by the time we meet them, and I'm going to skip more lightly over the plot now, but basically, Pretorius comes to Henry and Elizabeth's home and he confronts Henry for help about making the bride. He's like, I've got to make this undead woman. You're gonna help me. Henry tries to refuse, but he's got an ace up his sleeve. He has the monster kidnap Elizabeth as a hostage. Henry will have no choice but to help him do unholy science. That's right, that's right. So together they work on bringing this dead woman to life, and there's one hilarious part where they're trying to get a heart that will be appropriate, and the heart they have doesn't work. Henry says he needs a better one. So Pretorius calls up Carl, that's Dwight Fry, and he's like, Carl, go to the accident hospital. We need a fresh heart from a young woman. And you know where this is going, yeah, exactly. So Carl just like goes and murders someone and then he shows up with a heart and Henry's like, wow, this is a really fresh heart. Good job, and Carl's like it was a police case. But anyway, So they do all their unholy science and the bride is brought to life during an electrical storm, wrapped up like a mummy in these bandages, and eventually the bandages are peeled back and the reveal this is the bride of Frankenstein. It's Elsa Lanchester. Uh what what would you say to describe her here?
Rob oh Well, I already mentioned the Avian energy, and certainly everybody knows the look, the hair, but god like, initially she's still wrapped in bandages. You don't know what you're gonna see. You know, there's there elements of a mummy to the way she's wrapped up, and then when we start taking them off, yeah, you begin to see that she is this one they've they've really managed to look for the bride. That is this uncanny place between otherworldly beauty and and and and really the grave.
That's right, and tragically so they so the monster comes out after his bride has been created, and the monster hopefully approaches her, saying friend, friend. But here's where the real tragedy comes in. Even she from beyond the grave rejects Karlof rejects the monster. She she screams, she finds him to terrifying and ugly.
And she kind of does this hiss thing eventually too. Maybe that's towards the end, but I really like that moment as well because it also sort of served to underline the fact that like she is, she is monster as well, like she's not I mean, in the same way that that Karlov's monster is also a victim. Yes, she is also a victim. She did not ask to be brought into this world, but she is also not human in the same way that the monster.
Is not human. That's right. She immediately seems to recognize the wrongness of her own existence, like you know, love dead, hate living, and she hisses, and that that hiss signals almost that like she doesn't want to exist. The hiss apparently was Elsa Lanchester's idea, and she got the idea from observing geese. You know, geese hiss. Yeah, so she was trying to do like a goose's threatening hiss.
Oh, very good, excellent addition.
So in the very end, the cree sure just defeated by uh by this rejection. He allows Henry and Elizabeth to escape the castle. He tells them to live. But as for himself, the bride and doctor Pretorius, he says, we belong dead and flips this lever that had been established. Would would reduce the h I think Pretorius said it would reduce their castle to atoms. It doesn't quite do that, but it does cause a great destruction.
Yes, again, this is the beautiful discruction scene that I was talking about at the top of the episode. Just oh, it's so beautiful everything I mean in the film, certainly, but this this last stretch, this last third of the picture, I mean, the the laboratory looks amazing, the lightning effects, the kites they send up, the the the resurrection or or or energizing of the bride is so wonderful. Everything is just pitch perfect.
I totally agree. And I guess that's got to be the end, right, that's Bride of Frankenstein. I will just say again, I love this movie. I think it's like top tier weird horror, just unbeatable.
Yeah, and solid ending too. We cut to the Frankenstein's not the monsters, Henry and Elizabeth, you know, reunited and it's a nice little moment. Kind of serves as a nice cap, but it doesn't feel kind of like unearned and tact on like the happy moment at the end of the first Frankenstein film, Like this one feels like it. It honestly got to that feel good moment at the end where everything's put right.
Yeah.
Like Joe said, it's a beautiful movie. Go see it if you haven't seen it, And if you've seen it before, even a few times, go watch it again because you know you love it. Just a reminder out there that Stuffed to Blow your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a list of all the movies we've covered over the years here, you can go to U. We can go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E R B O x D dot com. That's a site where people create accounts and review movies and make lists of movies. Well, we have a username on there, it's weird House, and you can see a wonderful visual list of all the movies we've covered thus far, and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next. I also blog about these films at some mutomusic dot com Huge Things.
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