Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And this is Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you
Speaker 2: an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This one originally
Speaker 2: published October twentieth, twenty twenty three. This was our Halloween
Speaker 2: season Weird House on the Bride of Frankenstein, directed by
Speaker 2: James Whale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of the all time greats. So
Speaker 1: this is definitely one of those episodes where it's going
Speaker 1: to be a lot of us talking about just how
Speaker 1: truly awesome this movie is. And it is truly awesome.
Speaker 1: If you haven't seen it, or you haven't seen it
Speaker 1: in a while, it's the perfect time to watch or
Speaker 1: rewatch Bride of Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: The best of the universal monster movies.
Speaker 1: All right, let's dive right in.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. This is Rob Lamp.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 2: in honor of the Halloween season, we are going to
Speaker 2: be talking about the nineteen thirty five universal horror classic
Speaker 2: Bride of Frankenstein. Directed by James Whale, the first sequel
Speaker 2: to the original Universal Frankenstein, also directed by Whale, which
Speaker 2: was released four years earlier in nineteen thirty one. So
Speaker 2: I know we're going to talk a lot more about
Speaker 2: the specifics of our appreciation for this movie as we
Speaker 2: go along, but I wanted to just start off by saying,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, Bride of Frankenstein is about as good
Speaker 2: as it gets. It is. I think shocking how great
Speaker 2: this movie is, how good it looks, how weird it is,
Speaker 2: how beautiful and funny and full of genuine feeling, and
Speaker 2: how fresh it feels. Something about it is the exact
Speaker 2: opposite of a relic from the past. It feels so
Speaker 2: exciting and new.
Speaker 1: I think the word that I would use for Brida Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: without even a hint of irony or parity or humor,
Speaker 1: is it is just truly transcendent. It transcends its genre,
Speaker 1: it transcends its time period. It is just a masterpiece.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I second way you said, if you're the
Speaker 1: type of film viewer who's like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I need or want to see a film from the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, I mean, fair enough, watch what you want
Speaker 1: to watch. But films like this, films like Mad Love,
Speaker 1: which we previously discussed on the show, these really stand out.
Speaker 2: And I love the other Universal monster movies, you know.
Speaker 2: I love Todd Browning's Dracula, I love Wales First Frank,
Speaker 2: I love the Invisible Man, Creature from a Black Lagoon.
Speaker 2: I mean, really enjoy all of those core monster frolics.
Speaker 2: But even though all of those are excellent, there are
Speaker 2: individually things in them that kind of drag Dracula. For example,
Speaker 2: I love Todd Browning's Dracula, but it gets markedly less
Speaker 2: interesting when Bella Legosi has been off screen for too long.
Speaker 2: You know, there are some there's some kind of slow
Speaker 2: moving talkie segments with the not terribly interesting human characters, which,
Speaker 2: to be fair, are trying to be faithful to the
Speaker 2: plot of the novel, but in some ways I think
Speaker 2: end up kind of holding the movie back from what
Speaker 2: it could have been. All of the other Universal Monster
Speaker 2: frolics have their their stuffy interludes, but for me, Bride
Speaker 2: does not. My opinion is that it is just wall
Speaker 2: to wall horror, profound weirdness, hilarity and powerful emotion. So
Speaker 2: I think not only is Bride of Frankenstein the best
Speaker 2: of all the Universal Monster movies. It's the best by
Speaker 2: a mile. It's the best by an astronomical unit. It
Speaker 2: leaves these other great movies in the dust. And I
Speaker 2: guess we can as we go on, we can talk
Speaker 2: about some of the reasons why I feel that way.
Speaker 1: It is kind of funny that in leading up to
Speaker 1: this episode, we were talking about maybe doing Son of
Speaker 1: Frankenstein or House of Frankenstein, a couple of the later
Speaker 1: movies in the Universal Frankenstein cycle, and then we were like, well,
Speaker 1: why are we denying ourselves, Like staring at the bar,
Speaker 1: there is the top shelf Frankenstein right there. Let's just
Speaker 1: do that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was realizing before we started recording that
Speaker 2: one way this movie will fit into the Weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema cannon is that we sort of have a show
Speaker 2: tradition of covering sequels without covering the original that they're
Speaker 2: following up, and we haven't done an episode on the
Speaker 2: original Universal Frankenstein, though I think it has come up
Speaker 2: a lot when discussing other movies. I think it might
Speaker 2: be fruitful to begin today's episode by thinking about Bride
Speaker 2: of Frankenstein as a sequel, And what can we learn
Speaker 2: about sequels from a sequel that works this well. I
Speaker 2: don't know exactly how the percentages break out, but I'd
Speaker 2: say at least maybe eighty percent of the time sequels
Speaker 2: are uninteresting derivations of the original, just sort of like
Speaker 2: trying to make a quick buck off of the success
Speaker 2: of the original. But sometimes, as we all know, there
Speaker 2: are sequels that are not only as good as the original,
Speaker 2: not only worthy of it, lots of people consider them
Speaker 2: better than the original. Quick list of commonly cited examples
Speaker 2: that I would agree with a Terminator two Star Trek,
Speaker 2: The Wrath of Khan, the Empire strikes Back, multiple mad
Speaker 2: Max sequels, I'd say, you know, Road Warrior, Fury Road,
Speaker 2: And there are plenty of other examples you can think
Speaker 2: of too, in even less well known franchises.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like I I'll often throw Blade two in there.
Speaker 1: Aliens comes to mind, of course, Return of the Blind
Speaker 1: Dead to feature like a recent horror film that we
Speaker 1: did a rerun off. I throw Chronicles of Ritick in
Speaker 1: there as well. You know, I generally say when a
Speaker 1: sequel works, it either is a second attempt with improved
Speaker 1: skills and or budget at the concepts of the first
Speaker 1: Or is it it's a success full expansion of the
Speaker 1: original concept, you know, not just a sell them another
Speaker 1: scoop of the same ice cream, but give them something
Speaker 1: that is transformative, you know.
Speaker 2: I agree, and I think that's exactly what's going on
Speaker 2: with Bride Frankenstein. James Whale's original Frankenstein is really good.
Speaker 2: It's a solid adaptation of the novel, one of the
Speaker 2: best universal monster movies. But Bride of frank is absolutely divine,
Speaker 2: and so I'm wondering what exactly it does that really
Speaker 2: has this step up quality going into the second movie
Speaker 2: in this series. An interesting thing about Bride of Frankenstein
Speaker 2: is that it is both a fulfillment of the promise
Speaker 2: of the source material, in this case, Mary Wilston crafts
Speaker 2: Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus, and it forges
Speaker 2: a new path. So in the sense that it's a
Speaker 2: fulfillment of the source material, Bride of Frankenstein includes scenes
Speaker 2: and themes from Shelley's nun that were left out of
Speaker 2: the first movie, and also when it chooses to include
Speaker 2: totally new things from out of left field, they are
Speaker 2: great inclusions. So to start with like things that it
Speaker 2: brings in from the novel, I think they're typically things
Speaker 2: that deepen our emotional understanding of the creature. So one
Speaker 2: example is that in Bride of frank the monster can talk.
Speaker 2: The monster in the novel, of course, is amazingly articulate.
Speaker 2: In the first movie, by contrast, it's a silent performance.
Speaker 2: And I've seen film critics and historians make the interesting
Speaker 2: observation that Frankenstein was one of the first mega hits
Speaker 2: of the early sound film era, and yet its principal
Speaker 2: performance from Boris Karloff was a mostly silent one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, In this we do see some interesting growth
Speaker 1: in the monster. He's acquiring language, he's learning to express
Speaker 1: himself better, and it makes Karlov's performance all the more enthralling.
Speaker 1: There's this crackling, confused, traumatized and yet still hopeful energy
Speaker 1: in the heart of the creature, just straining to reach
Speaker 1: out and touch the world. Sadly, he lacks many of
Speaker 1: the tools he needs, and he finds himself continually on
Speaker 1: the other end of human violence and human manipulation. Like
Speaker 1: you said, it's not on the same level of the
Speaker 1: articulate monster we see in the novel who Is I
Speaker 1: think it can is often interpreted as being almost kind
Speaker 1: of like a fallen angel, you know, that's the kind
Speaker 1: of energy he brings, so, you know, not quite the
Speaker 1: same energy, but it moves a little closer to that
Speaker 1: concept and does its own thing with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The articulacy of the creature in the novel, I
Speaker 2: think is often and this is actually in the novel itself,
Speaker 2: is compared to Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. Yeah, Karloff
Speaker 2: in Bride is not like that. He's mostly speaking in
Speaker 2: like short clipped statements. And apparently Karlov was wary of
Speaker 2: the idea of having the monster speak in Bride. He
Speaker 2: wasn't sure that was a good idea, but I think
Speaker 2: it was the right move. Even though he's not giving
Speaker 2: these these long moving speeches like he does in the book,
Speaker 2: he has these heartbreakingly terse memorable lines, you know, like
Speaker 2: love dead, hate living. Another thing from the novel that's
Speaker 2: brought into to deepen the story here is the scene
Speaker 2: where the monster makes friends with a blind man living
Speaker 2: in a cabin. That is, it's not exactly the same,
Speaker 2: but it's based on a section of the novel where
Speaker 2: the creature observes people living in a remote cottage and
Speaker 2: learns language from them, but is ultimately driven away when
Speaker 2: sighted people finally catch a glimpse of him and react
Speaker 2: with horror to his appearance. The scene in the book
Speaker 2: where he realizes he is hated because he is ugly
Speaker 2: is one of the saddest in the book, and they
Speaker 2: explore those themes very well, and Bride I Think another
Speaker 2: one the creature's desire for an undead mate. This is
Speaker 2: also from the book, but left out of the first movie.
Speaker 2: For the most part. In the novel, after the creature
Speaker 2: realizes that living humans will all hate him and reject him,
Speaker 2: he thinks his only hope of finding love and companionship
Speaker 2: is for his creator to make another like him, so
Speaker 2: he threatens Victor Frankenstein. He threatens his loved ones to
Speaker 2: coerce him to make the creature an undead bride. But
Speaker 2: then in the book, Victor I Think abandons the project
Speaker 2: before it's completed, and he has a kind of stroke
Speaker 2: of conscience and he says, no, I can't do this,
Speaker 2: and then in a rage, the creature punishes him by
Speaker 2: killing his fiance.
Speaker 1: And it's in retrospect looking back on this, it's so
Speaker 1: great that they came back and took this part of
Speaker 1: the book and did something with it, because I remember
Speaker 1: this being like one of the most impactful sections of
Speaker 1: the novel, a novel that is full of fantastic ideas
Speaker 1: and scenes. But yeah, this section of the book where
Speaker 1: the doctor is forced to go back and do this
Speaker 1: mad thing one more time and attempt to create a
Speaker 1: mate for this monster just so it will leave him
Speaker 1: and his loved ones alone, and then decides that for
Speaker 1: the greater good he cannot go through.
Speaker 2: In it, I agree exactly. So I think the movie
Speaker 2: is really working because it pulls in all of these
Speaker 2: great resonant elements from the original source material that you
Speaker 2: know didn't fit into the first the plot of the
Speaker 2: first film. But on the other hand, there is all
Speaker 2: kinds of other stuff that is added purely from the
Speaker 2: original genius of the filmmakers, and I think you could
Speaker 2: you could bring up a lot of things here. One
Speaker 2: I wanted to mention is comedy. I have not read
Speaker 2: Frankenstein in a bit, but I don't recall it really
Speaker 2: having much humor in it at all. I think it's
Speaker 2: a very serious book, and while Bride of Frankenstein deals
Speaker 2: with serious themes and has many serious moments, it is
Speaker 2: also overflowing with irony and goofiness. Sometimes it's surprisingly goofy
Speaker 2: wail understood horror storytelling according I think to the Granginioal
Speaker 2: tradition of hot and cold showers, where tales of the
Speaker 2: macabre would be alternately play back and forth with comedy
Speaker 2: performances and good storytellers in the space. I think understand
Speaker 2: that comedy is a wonderful release mechanism for the building
Speaker 2: tension of the story. There's something that really works when
Speaker 2: you alternate mounting tension and horror with comedy. So and
Speaker 2: beyond that, there are also characters in this movie that
Speaker 2: operate on the knife edge between horror and comedy at
Speaker 2: all times. I think the prime example being probably my
Speaker 2: favorite character from this movie, doctor Septimus Pretorius, a character
Speaker 2: who is not in the novel, invented purely for Bride
Speaker 2: of Frankkenstein. And that brings us to the other thing
Speaker 2: I'd mentioned about this movie, a sort of original genius
Speaker 2: zany characters. I love the novel Frankenstein, but it does
Speaker 2: not have an ensemble of memorable characters with interesting quirks
Speaker 2: and personalities. I think the genius of the novel is
Speaker 2: in its scenario and themes, and in the development of
Speaker 2: the main character of the creature right of. Frank, on
Speaker 2: the other hand, convinced this whole ensemble of delightfully jagged
Speaker 2: weirdos to give the story flavor. There's a kind of
Speaker 2: Cohen Brothers quality to all of the secondary players here.
Speaker 2: And I think the greatest example of this is the
Speaker 2: villain of the movie, doctor Septimus Pretorius, played by Ernest Thesiger,
Speaker 2: a flamboyantly bizarre professor, a scientist matter than any mad
Speaker 2: scientist you've ever seen before. I think basically every single
Speaker 2: moment Thesager is on screen is just gold. He has
Speaker 2: turned up to eleven from his very first line, and
Speaker 2: he does not he does not stop.
Speaker 1: I agree, that's it's just amazing in this And.
Speaker 2: While doctor Pretorius is the greatest, there's room for all
Speaker 2: kinds of just you know, goobers and creeps and buffoons
Speaker 2: and weird personalities to weave in and out of the
Speaker 2: story here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think the other amazing thing about this
Speaker 1: is Okay, so the idea of horror in comedy working
Speaker 1: together that that's nothing new, But everything just works so
Speaker 1: smoothly in this film it can almost feel like a
Speaker 1: surreal experience, especially given how jarring, sometimes intentionally the transaction
Speaker 1: transition in and out of horror in comedy may be
Speaker 1: in other works. There's just just in general, there's absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing rough around the edges with this movie. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's much to be said again, how fresh and
Speaker 1: exciting this nineteen thirty five film feels in terms of
Speaker 1: its themes and performances, But even its effects are just
Speaker 1: staggeringly effective. The monster's basic makeup does is of course iconic,
Speaker 1: and you might expect that since it's iconic and you've
Speaker 1: seen it replicated often poorly, you know, on various other
Speaker 1: forms so many times, that it would lose some of
Speaker 1: its punch, but it really doesn't. It just looks incredible
Speaker 1: in every shot.
Speaker 2: I totally agree. Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying, Like,
Speaker 2: you know what the Carlos Frankenstein makeup looks like. You've
Speaker 2: seen it a million times, so how could it still
Speaker 2: be scary and shocking? But in my opinion, when you
Speaker 2: watch the movie, it is like seeing it actually come
Speaker 2: to life in motion situated within the context of the plot.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter how many times you've seen this pulled
Speaker 2: out of context on posters and stills and all that,
Speaker 2: it's still super creepy. It looks amazing, Yeah.
Speaker 1: At every shot. On top of that, everything, every shot
Speaker 1: is perfectly composed. The dialogue is all tight and interesting,
Speaker 1: and other effects are amazing as well. There's a scene
Speaker 1: late in the movie in which a model mountain tower
Speaker 1: collapses in on itself. We've seen similar effects that rained
Speaker 1: from terrible to great but clearly an effect in so
Speaker 1: many pictures, but this one just looks and feels real
Speaker 1: in a way that's truly admirable. Oh yeah, So, Joe,
Speaker 1: what's your elevator pitch for Bride of Frankenstein?
Speaker 2: You know it's difficult, so maybe it'd be something like
Speaker 2: after Frankenstein, you thought you knew what it meant for
Speaker 2: death to reign over life and for science to go mad,
Speaker 2: But we have such sites to show you yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that sums it up well. And of course,
Speaker 1: to steal a line from the movie itself, have to
Speaker 1: quote doctor Pretorius about a new world of gods and monsters.
Speaker 1: I mean That's just one of the great lines of
Speaker 1: the film and kind of sums up the spirit and
Speaker 1: energy of the sequel.
Speaker 2: Here in the scene, that line is offered as a toast,
Speaker 2: and it is so good. But it's especially good knowing
Speaker 2: the line which comes right before it, which is where
Speaker 2: doctor Pretorius claims that Jin is his only weakness, and
Speaker 2: he is clearly not correct in saying that.
Speaker 1: There's another point in the film where he says something
Speaker 1: else is his only weakness. Yeah, you're just so many
Speaker 1: wonderful little quirks that that they're able to fit into
Speaker 1: the dialogue here. All right, Well, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: listen to some trailer audio.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: Well, if you rightfully wish to go and watch Bride
Speaker 1: of Frankenstein on your own before you continue with this episode,
Speaker 1: well you're in luck because this is a Universal Monsters movie.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the shining gem of the Universal
Speaker 1: Monsters franchise. So this one is widely available in all formats,
Speaker 1: and I think it's streaming on Peacock right now, if
Speaker 1: that is available to you. But any way you do it,
Speaker 1: do see this movie in the best quality you can grab.
Speaker 2: Yes, I would say the same thing This is one
Speaker 2: where it really pays off to get the highest definition,
Speaker 2: best visual quality you can because this is a great
Speaker 2: looking movie and you want to get at every bit
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: All. Right now, getting into the connections here the people
Speaker 1: that made this movie, we want to stress here that again,
Speaker 1: this was a big sequel. This was a sequel to
Speaker 1: a highly successful movie in which director James Whale got
Speaker 1: to assemble a massively talented cast and crew. So we
Speaker 1: are not going to be able to do justice to
Speaker 1: everyone that was involved in bringing this film to life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a ton of people involved in this
Speaker 2: movie that each have fascinating biographies, But because there are
Speaker 2: so many of them, I think we're gonna have to
Speaker 2: give fairly short statements on most of them. Just know
Speaker 2: that there's a lot of people here that we will
Speaker 2: get to kind of briefly, but they're each worth looking up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, and we may come back to many of
Speaker 1: these people in the future. They're, like we were saying,
Speaker 1: a lot of these folks are individuals who have they
Speaker 1: came up in a smaller picture or a lesser picture.
Speaker 1: We might spend a lot of time talking about who
Speaker 1: they were and what their careers consisted of all right. Well,
Speaker 1: starting at the top, of course, with the director. It's
Speaker 1: James Whale, who lived eighteen eighty nine through nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: English director of film and the British stage, as well
Speaker 1: as an occasional actor himself. He primarily came over to
Speaker 1: the Hollywood system because with the transition to talkies, they
Speaker 1: wanted to invest in directors who were great with dialogue,
Speaker 1: and he had that reputation already. He's best remembered for
Speaker 1: his horror projects, namely the two Frankenstein films. Nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: three is The Invisible Man in nineteen thirty two's The
Speaker 1: Old Dark House. His first film, nineteen thirties Journey's End,
Speaker 1: was a war drama starring Colin Clive, and even after Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: he continued to make non horror dramas such as nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty threes by Candlelight, and even musicals like nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six's Showboat and late in his career the nineteen forty
Speaker 1: adventure film Green Hell, which does have a terrific cast.
Speaker 2: Like many of the directors we talked about who were
Speaker 2: making great horror films in the early days of sound cinema,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it would be right to say
Speaker 2: that like horror was a passion of James Whale. I
Speaker 2: think he probably wanted to focus more on dramas and such,
Speaker 2: but you know, he did the work that he got
Speaker 2: and he made great, great horror movies.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's time and time again. It's the case with
Speaker 1: these directors, like they wanted to go up the ladder
Speaker 1: towards bigger a list type pictures, prestige pictures that had
Speaker 1: the cast, but also didn't deal with these lesser genres
Speaker 1: of horror and sci fi. And that was just part
Speaker 1: of the cinema world of the time, that was the industry.
Speaker 1: And it's just kind of ironic that nowadays so many
Speaker 1: of these individuals are best remembered, if not remembered, exclusively
Speaker 1: for their genre entries.
Speaker 2: This seems to be a situation where the original Frankenstein
Speaker 2: was a huge hit. It made incredible money for Universal,
Speaker 2: and that earned James Whale the right to make the
Speaker 2: sequel on his own terms. Essentially, however, he wanted very
Speaker 2: minimal studio interference, so Bride Frankenstein is the result of
Speaker 2: Whale getting more or less total creative freedom and almost
Speaker 2: all the resources and support he needed.
Speaker 1: That's right, IM to understand. He had a lot of
Speaker 1: say over the script, presented a lot of ideas for
Speaker 1: the script. So yes, this is a film that more
Speaker 1: accurately gives us James Whale's vision of Frankenstein. Now, I
Speaker 1: should also note that James Whale was an openly gay
Speaker 1: man during a time during which this was rare, So
Speaker 1: his personal life has long been an area of interest
Speaker 1: to both biographers and also just film theorists and people
Speaker 1: analyzing his films and discussing the themes explored in them.
Speaker 1: It's especially the case with Bride.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've read differing takes over the extent to which
Speaker 2: Bride of Frankenstein should be interpreted as intentionally having gay
Speaker 2: themes in it. Some film historians read a lot of
Speaker 2: gay themes and to Bride. Others have said, I think
Speaker 2: based on some comments about people who from people who
Speaker 2: knew James Whale said that they didn't think he was
Speaker 2: intending to put anything like that into the film. But
Speaker 2: based on the sources available to us, I guess it's
Speaker 2: impossible to know for sure, but whether it should be
Speaker 2: interpreted as part of Wales's intention or not. Definitely, this
Speaker 2: film has been a rich subject for a lot of
Speaker 2: gay film historians.
Speaker 1: Absolutely now. The source material, of course, is Mary Shelley's novel.
Speaker 1: Mary Shelley lived seventeen ninety seven through eighteen fifty one
Speaker 1: English writer responsible for a good seven novels and multiple
Speaker 1: short stories, but her first novel, eighteen eighteens Frankenstein or
Speaker 1: The Modern Prometheus, was the one that made her a legend.
Speaker 1: To this day, it stands as a powerful, entertaining and
Speaker 1: richly rewarding novel, highly influential over science fiction. She was
Speaker 1: the wife of English poet Percy Shelley, with whom she
Speaker 1: also worked. They, along with a friend and poet Lord Byron,
Speaker 1: are depicted in this movie.
Speaker 2: I was watching a making of documentary and people were
Speaker 2: talking about how apparently Whale insisted on having this framing
Speaker 2: narrative in the film, because the movie doesn't start in
Speaker 2: the narrative itself. It starts with us seeing Lord Byron,
Speaker 2: Percy and Mary Wilson Craft Shelley sitting around a roaring
Speaker 2: fire and talking about the idea of the novel Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: Apparently Whale thought that this framing was crucial and he
Speaker 2: insisted that it be in And I think it does
Speaker 2: some interesting things. Maybe we can talk about that when
Speaker 2: we get to the plot section.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I do think it's essential. It's hard to
Speaker 1: imagine this movie without it. But more about that when
Speaker 1: we get into the plot, all right. In terms of
Speaker 1: the people involved with writing the screenplay and developing the story,
Speaker 1: they're a number of uncredited writing credits that pop up
Speaker 1: for this film on the Internet movie database. We can't
Speaker 1: go through all of them, so I'm just going to
Speaker 1: focus on the two names that are credited in the
Speaker 1: actual credits on the film. Adapted by and screenplay credit
Speaker 1: goes to William Hurlbut, who lived eighteen seventy eight through
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, American writer and screenwriter, certainly best remembered
Speaker 1: for this film, but he has forty credits on IMDb,
Speaker 1: going back to nineteen fifteen and then stretching up till
Speaker 1: the mid fifties. Other notable credits include nineteen thirties The
Speaker 1: Cat Creeps, The Will of the Dead Man, and nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four's Imitation of Life. He also did additional dialogue
Speaker 1: on Robert Flore's Daughter of Hong Kong, starring the legendary
Speaker 1: anime Wo And then we have An adapted by credit
Speaker 1: for John L. Balderston, who lived eighteen eighty nine through
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, American playwrights, screenwriter, and journalist with a
Speaker 1: nak var horror and fantasy. His work includes nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: Dracula adapted from his own play, nineteen thirty two is
Speaker 1: the Mummy, the nineteen thirty three time travel movie Berkeley Square,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five's Mad Love, and nineteen forties The Mummy's Hand.
Speaker 1: He was one of the Love Yeah, it's quite a pedigree.
Speaker 1: He was also one of the writers on nineteen forty
Speaker 1: four's gas Light, from which we get the term gas lighting.
Speaker 1: All right, now getting into the cast clearly right at
Speaker 1: the top, we have the Monster. The monster is played,
Speaker 1: according to the opening credits, by Carloff.
Speaker 2: First name, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this. This is of course, we're, of course,
Speaker 1: of course talking about Boris Karloff. This is the stage
Speaker 1: name of British actor William Henry Pratt, who lived eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven through nineteen sixty nine. He's gone up on
Speaker 1: the show a couple of times already. His credits go
Speaker 1: back to nineteen nineteen, and he already had a long
Speaker 1: filmography by the time with nineteen thirty one It's Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: in which he of course plays the monster. Afterwards, some
Speaker 1: of his big horror roles included nineteen thirty two is
Speaker 1: the Mummy and the Old Dark House, nineteen thirty three
Speaker 1: Is the Ghoul, nineteen thirty four's The Black Cat. After Bride,
Speaker 1: he remained very active, playing the monster one more time
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine, Son of Frankenstein, but he remained
Speaker 1: a superstar of He appeared in nineteen forty four's House
Speaker 1: of Frankenstein, though not as the monster, and of course
Speaker 1: he remained active throughout the rest of his life. All right,
Speaker 1: So that is the monster, But of course we need
Speaker 1: a true Frankenstein, and Frankenstein is, of course in this
Speaker 1: movie Henry Frankenstein, the Creator, played once more by Colin Clive,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen thirty seven. Just a
Speaker 1: tremendous but of course troubled and short lived British actor
Speaker 1: who we previously discussed on our early Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: episode about nineteen thirty five's Mad Love, in which he
Speaker 1: played Stephen Orlock. He's wonderful in that as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is and he. I think Colin Clive went
Speaker 2: back to having worked with James Whale from the stage,
Speaker 2: like that they had worked together before the transition to
Speaker 2: film here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a lot. There are a number of players
Speaker 1: in this that had personal connections to Wale. Whale had
Speaker 1: worked with them before, he knew their talent, and they
Speaker 1: were hand picked. Colin Clive is, I've never seen him
Speaker 1: outside of a genre movie. I've only seen him in
Speaker 1: these horror films, but he is always just this live
Speaker 1: wire of anxiety and terror. He's perfect for a horror movie.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: In this he's reprising his role fro nineteen thirty one's Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: That was only his third emotion picture. The two Frankenstein films,
Speaker 1: along with Mad Love, constitute his only horror pictures. The
Speaker 1: rest of his nineteen credits, including the title role in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three's Christopher Strong, are all more mainstream.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I also only know him for his
Speaker 2: horror roles. But I recall in Mad Love he is
Speaker 2: he gives a performance of such anxiety. I think the
Speaker 2: way I put it then was that it feels like
Speaker 2: he is undergoing vision.
Speaker 1: Yes, in a way, you compare the two Roles. He's
Speaker 1: actually more chill in this movie. Despite being an individual
Speaker 1: who's gone through a horrifying and near death experience and
Speaker 1: get and then is sucked back into that same world
Speaker 1: once more, he still feels a little bit more chill.
Speaker 1: I guess at least he can throw himself into his
Speaker 1: work in a way that Stephen Orlock was no longer
Speaker 1: able to do. All right. He has a love interest
Speaker 1: in this though, and that is Elizabeth, played by Valerie Hobson,
Speaker 1: who of nineteen seventeen through nineteen ninety eight Irish born
Speaker 1: English actor. She takes over the role here from May Clark,
Speaker 1: who played Henry's love interest Elizabeth in the previous film.
Speaker 1: After this, she appeared in nineteen thirty five's were Wolf
Speaker 1: of London and various other films through about nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 2: So the character here is Elizabeth, that is Henry Frankenstein's fiance,
Speaker 2: and I think she is supposed to represent goodness and virtue,
Speaker 2: you know. So there are like there's this forking path
Speaker 2: in the story where Henry could just choose a good life.
Speaker 2: He could just you know, have a life of love
Speaker 2: and family and pursuing regular noble career. Pursuits and all that.
Speaker 2: But no, you know, she's that option. Instead, he's going
Speaker 2: to go with dangerous knowledge.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course he ends up having to choose that direction,
Speaker 1: in part because he was manipulated, in part because she
Speaker 1: has taken hostage.
Speaker 2: In the book.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is all part of the manipulations of
Speaker 1: the monster. But the monster as presented in that first film,
Speaker 1: the first Frankenstein film, is of course not a master manipulator.
Speaker 1: Like he doesn't even speak. It's a huge step up
Speaker 1: in this movie for him to be able to speak,
Speaker 1: and you can see where it would have been unrealistic
Speaker 1: for suddenly Frankenstein's Monster to be able to lay out
Speaker 1: some sort of a vast scheme. So you need a
Speaker 1: different sort of enemy, a different sort of villain, and
Speaker 1: that is, of course doctor Pretorius played by Ernest Messiger.
Speaker 2: The way to fight evil is with a different kind
Speaker 2: of evil. To vote Chronicles of Britag.
Speaker 1: I guess so yeah. Messenger lived eighteen seventy nine through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one an English actor of stage and screen,
Speaker 1: best remembered for this brilliant and flamboyant performance as the
Speaker 1: maddest of mad scientists and mad Science Enablers. His other
Speaker 1: credits include thirty two is the Old Dark House, thirty
Speaker 1: threes The Ghoul, and nineteen fifty threes The Robe, in
Speaker 1: which he plays Emperor Tiberius. It's my understanding he was
Speaker 1: not the like original studio pick for this role, but
Speaker 1: after whoever they wanted for it was not available or
Speaker 1: it didn't work out, Like this was clearly Whyale's pick.
Speaker 1: Whyal you know, had a history with this actor. He
Speaker 1: really looked up to his his abilities and his talent,
Speaker 1: and so this was like the obvious choice for this role.
Speaker 1: And clearly it's impossible to imagine anyone else breathing life
Speaker 1: into this character the way Thatsagre does.
Speaker 2: Unreal, just brilliant, absurd, hilarious, sneering evil. I love Messager here.
Speaker 2: Doctor Pretorius is a great character, and I yeah, I
Speaker 2: could not imagine this going to a different actor. This
Speaker 2: is like he is perfect all right.
Speaker 1: Up next, we have Elsa Lanchester playing really the title
Speaker 1: character of the film, even though the title character, the Bride,
Speaker 1: is just credited with question marks in the opening scroll,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's going to be a surprise, I guess.
Speaker 1: But she it's a dual role because She also in
Speaker 1: the early part of the film plays Mary Shelley, so
Speaker 1: she plays both female creator and feminine creation, and these
Speaker 1: two performances kind of bookend the rest of the picture.
Speaker 2: I think the choice to have the same actress in
Speaker 2: both those roles is significant. Though I don't know exactly
Speaker 2: what it means, it feels right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the beauties about the show's
Speaker 1: treatment of some of its more serious subject matter is
Speaker 1: that it's kind of amorphous in a way, like you
Speaker 1: can feel the connections, but the filmmakers don't like just
Speaker 1: hammer it home in all cases. So there's plenty of
Speaker 1: room for interpretation. Endless room for interpretation.
Speaker 2: Really, right, but we should not hold back in thing.
Speaker 2: Elsa Lanchester is great. She doesn't have actually a ton
Speaker 2: of screen time, but the few minutes she is on
Speaker 2: the screen, Wow, does she make an impression. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean she's fun in the intro and then as
Speaker 1: the Monster's mate she's accredited or the bride she has.
Speaker 1: She has a wonderful and very different energy. It's almost
Speaker 1: kind of an Avian energy. It's also also kind of
Speaker 1: like a hyper focus like, while Frankenstein's Monster has more
Speaker 1: of a like a lantern level of understand of analysis
Speaker 1: of the world, and also kind of like a lantern
Speaker 1: level anxiety and trauma about it. Hers is more laser focused.
Speaker 1: She has that like flashlight intensity.
Speaker 2: Yes, she has I see what you mean when you
Speaker 2: say Avian. She has a jerky, almost bird like movements
Speaker 2: of the head and the eyes. Once she's brought to
Speaker 2: life as the reanimated Bride, is kind of like quick,
Speaker 2: jerky adjustments of her attention around the room, and she
Speaker 2: it seems like she doesn't like she's seeing.
Speaker 1: No, and there's not a lot to like, but we'll
Speaker 1: get to that after a bit. Elsa Lanchester Live nineteen
Speaker 1: oh two through nineteen eighty six, English actor of film,
Speaker 1: stage and TV. This is probably her most iconic role.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just a very iconic role. Everybody knows
Speaker 1: this look. Everybody knows that hair, right, I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole costume is wonderful. As this we'll get into. She'd
Speaker 1: already been acting for film for ten years by the
Speaker 1: time of Bride, and continue to act through nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: Her later screen credits include forty three's Lassie Come Home,
Speaker 1: forty six's The Spiral Staircase, forty nine is the Secret
Speaker 1: Garden nineteen sixty four, is Mary Poppins that darn cat
Speaker 1: in sixty five Other films of another There's fifty eight's
Speaker 1: Bell Book and Candle, seventy three's Terror in the Wax Museum,
Speaker 1: seventy six is murdered by death in nineteen eighties die Laughing.
Speaker 1: She also appeared on such TV shows as The Magical
Speaker 1: World of Disney and Night Gallery. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I stressed it like that Night Gallery, not Night Gallery.
Speaker 1: That's strange. Up next, we have to mention the character Minnie.
Speaker 1: Minnie is another just this is just a ridiculously fun
Speaker 1: character role, blatantly there for comic relief. And you know
Speaker 1: the thing about comic relief characters in older pictures, they
Speaker 1: don't always stand the test of time. Sometimes they don't
Speaker 1: even stand the test of time, like ten years later,
Speaker 1: much less with an eighty eight year old picture. But
Speaker 1: Minnie is wonderful. This scared, nosy but also bloodthirsty old
Speaker 1: maid u still delivers, still absolutely delivers.
Speaker 2: I love the way that she is terrified of the monster,
Speaker 2: but she also somehow seems to be following the monster
Speaker 2: everywhere it goes. There's one part where the creature is
Speaker 2: captured by the authorities and put in like a dungeon,
Speaker 2: and Minnie is there looking down through the bars and
Speaker 2: she's like, Ooh, wouldn't he ugly, you know, I'd hate
Speaker 2: to wake up and find him hiding underneath my bed
Speaker 2: at night. But she says it in a way that
Speaker 2: suggests she would like to find that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She she seems kind of like what would later be
Speaker 1: known as or maybe was known in the time period.
Speaker 1: I forget the time frame on this is a hat
Speaker 1: ten mary. I think it's the term. This would be
Speaker 1: an older woman at a pro wrestling show who would
Speaker 1: try and poke the heels on their way to the
Speaker 1: ring with their hat pins. So there's kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: blood the fuity to her afraid of the monster, but
Speaker 1: also really wants to be there when the monster is tormented.
Speaker 2: But also this is a very broad comic performance, I
Speaker 2: would say, almost cartoonish, but it works perfectly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the actor here is Una O'Connor, who lived
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty through nineteen fifty nine. She was only in
Speaker 1: her mid fifties. Here she's played up as this old woman,
Speaker 1: but she was not an old woman by any stretch
Speaker 1: at this point. A tremendous Irish character actor with extensive
Speaker 1: stage experience often cast in this sort of role. Though,
Speaker 1: like I mean, and clearly why not, She's got it
Speaker 1: nailed perfectly. Other films include The Invisible Man from thirty three,
Speaker 1: The Informer from thirty five, and The Adventures of Robin
Speaker 1: Hood from thirty eight.
Speaker 2: Oh Man. Next, just to make sure we don't leave
Speaker 2: him out, we should mention Dwight Frye, who has a
Speaker 2: small role in this film as Carl, who is essentially
Speaker 2: the new Egor, even though actually Egor wouldn't come until later,
Speaker 2: is the new Fritz, and he's played by the same
Speaker 2: actor who played Fritz in the original Frankenstein. So. Dwight
Speaker 2: Frye lived eighteen ninety nine to nineteen forty three. He
Speaker 2: was Wrinfield in Todd Browning Stracula. He apparently at first
Speaker 2: had a more substantial part in the movie, but it
Speaker 2: was allegedly cut down by censors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's apparently like fifteen minutes or so that the
Speaker 1: sensors cut out of this film just because they really
Speaker 1: wanted to play it safe. A lot of it was
Speaker 1: stuff that they thought might come off as blasphemous talking
Speaker 1: you know, getting into the whole thesis of creating live.
Speaker 1: I think some of it too, was Mary Shelley's dress.
Speaker 1: They thought some angles on it were maybe a little
Speaker 1: too risky for the time period, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And some sort of subplot here with Carl and and
Speaker 1: whatever he's up to outside of his grave robbing side gig.
Speaker 2: I think he was supposed to murder the mustache guy.
Speaker 1: Oh, the burgermaster.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you mentioned that he's the egor of the film.
Speaker 1: He was very much the egor of the film. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the timeline of this is interesting because we were chatting
Speaker 1: about this off of Mike earlier. There is no egor
Speaker 1: in the novel Frankenstein. There is no egor in the
Speaker 1: first Frankenstein movie. Instead, you have, like you said, Fritz
Speaker 1: played by Dwight Frye, and then they bring him back
Speaker 1: to play Carl, which is essentially the same sort of character.
Speaker 1: And then it's not till nineteen thirty nine, Son of
Speaker 1: Frankenstein that we get Igor Igor, we get this role
Speaker 1: that is played by Bella Lagosi. But in retrospect, it's
Speaker 1: like that that's what we think of as this position,
Speaker 1: this sort of like deranged henchman to Doctor Frankenstein. We
Speaker 1: think of it as the Egor role.
Speaker 2: I also think it's interesting that the actual character named
Speaker 2: Egor was played by Bella Lagosi, So you would think
Speaker 2: you would really remember that casting, you would associate Bella
Speaker 2: with the character. But I very much think of Dwight
Speaker 2: Fry when I think of Igor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's good in this role. He's got some
Speaker 1: good Hinchman energy. He'd go on to have small roles
Speaker 1: in other Frankenstein films, various other pictures. He also pops
Speaker 1: up in nineteen thirty one's The Maltese Falcon. All right,
Speaker 1: real quick. The Burgo Master, who we mentioned is very fun,
Speaker 1: a very very fun mustachio of performance. This character is
Speaker 1: played by the actor E. E. Clive, who lived eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty three through nineteen forty. He was also in thirty
Speaker 1: three's The Invisible Man. Another one I'm going to point
Speaker 1: out real quick in passing. Again, we don't have time
Speaker 1: to go into all of these characters. Opi Hedge plays
Speaker 1: the Blind Hermit, an Australian born actor. This is one
Speaker 1: of his final roles. He lived eighteen seventy seven through
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 2: Oh he brings a lot of humanity to the story
Speaker 2: he does.
Speaker 1: It is a really it's a shame not to spend
Speaker 1: more time on him, because it is. He gets a
Speaker 1: lot of screen time, brings humanity to the role and
Speaker 1: brings humanity out of the monster. But let us not
Speaker 1: forget Lord Byron. He's fairly in the film, just in
Speaker 1: that opening bit that I believe was rather cut down.
Speaker 1: But Gavin Gordon plays Lord Byron. He lived nineteen oh
Speaker 1: one through nineteen eighty three. He was a Mississippi born
Speaker 1: American actor whose credits include nineteen thirty three's Mystery of
Speaker 1: the Wax Museum, fifty four's White Christmas, fifty six is
Speaker 1: the Ten Commandments, the Eldest film from fifty eight Keen Creole,
Speaker 1: and also the nineteen fifty nine movie The Bat opposite
Speaker 1: Vincent Price.
Speaker 2: I love him in this role, but I have no
Speaker 2: idea what he's trying to do with this accent. It
Speaker 2: is so over.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a wonderful campy way to start off
Speaker 1: this film. It kind of sets the tone. Once you've
Speaker 1: seen Gavin Gordon's Lord Byron, I mean, where can you go?
Speaker 1: You know you're already in the clouds it's.
Speaker 2: Like part really like rolling the rs on the Irish accent,
Speaker 2: but then also part English accent, part Southern accent. It
Speaker 2: is is it's something, it's something else.
Speaker 1: Yes, now, a very small role, but one is a
Speaker 1: lot of fun for film film fans and you know,
Speaker 1: and horror fans certainly. There's a scene, of course, where
Speaker 1: we're talking about the We have the hermit who's blind.
Speaker 1: He forges this relationship with the monster, but then sighted
Speaker 1: people show up and ruin it. The two sided people
Speaker 1: that show up are a couple of lost hunters, one
Speaker 1: of whom is played by John Carodine. Oh yeah, who's
Speaker 1: literally in everything, it seems.
Speaker 2: In every movie ever made. So of course he would
Speaker 2: be in this one too. But yeah, you wouldn't have known.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's an uncredited role, but it's also unmistakable
Speaker 1: because he does have some lines. And also, I mean
Speaker 1: it's just clearly John Carrodine, you know he has he
Speaker 1: has that lean and hungry look even though he's very
Speaker 1: young here he lived nineteen oh six through nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: We've we've discussed him on the show before. Very long career,
Speaker 1: all manner of films he was in, he had. He
Speaker 1: had already had uncredited roles in thirty three Is in
Speaker 1: the Visible Man and thirty four's The Black Cat. He'd
Speaker 1: go on to be a horror staple and would play
Speaker 1: Dracula in nineteen forty four's House of Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: I don't really know exactly why he should be lost.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't he just know to get on the night train
Speaker 2: to Mundo fie.
Speaker 1: I you'd think you would, You'd think you would. All right,
Speaker 1: just a few quick behind the scenes references. They're just
Speaker 1: because I'm not going to go into them in depth,
Speaker 1: but just got to mention them, just because they're part
Speaker 1: of the alchemy here. Franz Waxman did the score. He
Speaker 1: lived nineteen oh six through nineteen sixty seven. Two time
Speaker 1: Oscar winner for nineteen fifty one Sunset Boulevard in fifty
Speaker 1: two Is A Place in the Sun. He also scored
Speaker 1: nineteen forties Rebecca in nineteen forty one Suspicion It is.
Speaker 1: It is a very classic Hollywood score, but it is
Speaker 1: also a very good score. A lot has been written
Speaker 1: about this. It's not necessarily the kind of music I
Speaker 1: listened to an isolation or anything, but it is.
Speaker 2: It is not a.
Speaker 1: This is no sloppy score here. This is one of
Speaker 1: those scores where there's a lot of thought that goes
Speaker 1: into what different musical themes match up with the characters
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 2: Agreed. Now, this is also an amazing looking film and
Speaker 2: one with a superb makeup effects, so I think we
Speaker 2: should call out those credits. That's right.
Speaker 1: On the makeup front, we have Jack p. Pierce credited
Speaker 1: for the monster makeup. He lived eighteen eighty nine through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight. He also did the makeup on nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one's The Wolfman And Yeah, the cinematographer on this
Speaker 1: was John J. Mescal who lived eighteen ninety nine through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, also known for thirty four as the
Speaker 1: Black Cat.
Speaker 2: I've watched some interviews with people talking about what it
Speaker 2: was like to work with Jack Pierce supplying makeup. There's
Speaker 2: a story of Elsa Lanchester talking about the painstaking, delicate
Speaker 2: procedure that he would use to apply the makeup for
Speaker 2: the scar running underneath the bride's jaw, which she was like,
Speaker 2: ultimately was only on screen for about a second that
Speaker 2: you could actually see, but that you know, he really
Speaker 2: was taking a kind of religious care to make it perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean in that level of craftsmanship just matches
Speaker 1: up with everything else we see on the film. All right, well,
Speaker 1: shall we get into the plot of this baby a
Speaker 1: bit more?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, we start on a dark and stormy night.
Speaker 2: We see a retigenous castle perched up on a rocky
Speaker 2: mountaintop in the dark, with light pouring out from one
Speaker 2: of the windows and thundercracks, rain battering the stonework towers.
Speaker 2: It's perfect Gothic setting. And inside the castle we get
Speaker 2: some poets. There are three writers sitting around a roaring fireplace.
Speaker 2: There's also a quick shot of a lady who looks
Speaker 2: almost like she's being pulled by it, like sled dogs indoors.
Speaker 2: I think she's actually just walking dogs on a leash,
Speaker 2: and she has a you know, one of those large
Speaker 2: wide skirts, so you don't see her legs moving much.
Speaker 2: But yeah, she's like walking dogs indoors. For some reason,
Speaker 2: she's quickly out of frame. And then we get to
Speaker 2: this prologue, this framing idea, with the characters of Percy Biss,
Speaker 2: Shelley Lord Byron, and Mary Wolstoncraft. Shelley, who again is
Speaker 2: the author of the novel Frankenstein. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 2: if you don't know the backstory Frankenstein, the novel began
Speaker 2: as a spooky story that Mary Shelley dreamed up for
Speaker 2: a sort of contest. I think when these three and
Speaker 2: at least one other writers, you know, some group of them,
Speaker 2: were staying at a mansion near Lake Geneva one year. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This would go on to be sort of the germ
Speaker 1: for the nineteen eighty six film Gothic, in which Gabriel
Speaker 1: Byrne plays Byron, Julian Sands plays Shelley, and Natasha Richardson
Speaker 1: plays Mary as a kin Russell film.
Speaker 2: By the way, Oh really, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1: It's been a while. I don't remember much about it.
Speaker 2: Is there somebody playing John Pauladorian?
Speaker 3: Know?
Speaker 2: That was the at least one other there was John Paulodori,
Speaker 2: who ended up turning a story from this summer get
Speaker 2: together into a novel or novella called The Vampire.
Speaker 1: Yes, and he is played by the always excellent Timothy Spall.
Speaker 2: Oh. Okay, now, as we mentioned, the guy playing Lord
Speaker 2: Byron really gets into his part. In fact, I decided
Speaker 2: to type out his opening monologue here because he's he's
Speaker 2: looking out the window at the storm, and he says,
Speaker 2: how beautifully dramatic, the crudest, savage exhibition of nature at
Speaker 2: her worst without and we three, we elegant three within.
Speaker 2: I should like to think that an irated Jehovah was
Speaker 2: pointing those arrows of lightning directly at my head, the
Speaker 2: unbowed head of George Gordon, Lord Byron, England's greatest sinner.
Speaker 2: But then he says, but I cannot flatter myself to
Speaker 2: that extent. Possibly those thunders are for our dear Shelley,
Speaker 2: referring to Percy Heaven's applause for England's greatest poet. But
Speaker 2: then Percy says, well, what about my Mary? And Byron says, oh,
Speaker 2: she is an angel? And Mary looks up from her
Speaker 2: embroidery with this flashing smile and says, you think so ooh,
Speaker 2: And I love that because her smile is a little
Speaker 2: bit creepy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because as they're about to allude to here,
Speaker 1: you know, they're talking about how great they are, these
Speaker 1: two male poets. But they have to acknowledge that Mary,
Speaker 1: even though they're kind of treating her like this very
Speaker 1: fragile thing that she has already created something that is
Speaker 1: terrifying to everyone there, and then they're already at least
Speaker 1: a bit in awe of her creative powers.
Speaker 2: That's right. I've read that at some point James Whale
Speaker 2: said to someone that with this opening scene and in
Speaker 2: the movie in general, he wanted to emphasize that quote,
Speaker 2: pretty people can harbor the most twisted imaginations. So we
Speaker 2: have Byron here chattering somewhat condescendingly about how, oh Mary
Speaker 2: you are, this delicate, beautiful, angelic creature, and yet she
Speaker 2: has written a story so dreadful it curdled my blood. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: she's just blasting out this creepy smile with gleaming eyes
Speaker 2: and giggling, and she says, why shouldn't I write monsters?
Speaker 2: And there's something in this that suggests, buddy, you ain't
Speaker 2: seen nothing yet.
Speaker 1: They're also kind of toying with the prestige of Lord
Speaker 1: Byron and Percy Shelley here, his famous and influential writers,
Speaker 1: while of course Mary's work I think ultimately casts a
Speaker 1: far greater shadow over the following centuries, you know, far
Speaker 1: greater than both of them combined. I don't know, my
Speaker 1: fellow English majors may respectfully disagree on the matter.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I would totally agree, and I think it'd
Speaker 2: be kind of hard to argue with that. So not
Speaker 2: to knock either Percy Shelley or Lord Byron. I enjoy
Speaker 2: them both. I think they're both necessary reading if you
Speaker 2: want to understand the Romantic movement in English literature, and
Speaker 2: that each wrote some poetry that's still wonderful to read today,
Speaker 2: I think especially. But it could be argued that Mary
Speaker 2: essentially is the founder of modern science fiction, and I
Speaker 2: think that's like hugely more significant in the long run,
Speaker 2: and especially in the way that she established themes like
Speaker 2: the themes of Frankenstein are themes that are still explored
Speaker 2: in science fiction and science fiction horror to this day,
Speaker 2: especially ideas about the dark side of the power unleashed
Speaker 2: by advances in science and technology. You know, Frankenstein. It
Speaker 2: was a story about how not all increase of human
Speaker 2: power is good, and sometimes in blithely plowing ahead with
Speaker 2: newly acquired scientific and technological powers, if you don't think
Speaker 2: through the consequences, you make monsters, or you make a
Speaker 2: monster out of yourself. It's one of the most enduring
Speaker 2: themes of modern storytelling and it still finds new ways
Speaker 2: of being entertaining, frightening, and socially insightful. You'll encounter hundreds
Speaker 2: of novels and movies and all kinds of interesting stories
Speaker 2: coming out this year that are still hashing through themes
Speaker 2: that Mary Shelley raised in Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and each time it's retold, you can do
Speaker 1: it in a way that reflects modern anxieties and modern s.
Speaker 1: It's abilities all right. But the other part of this
Speaker 1: whole intro is that basically we get a previously on Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love that. So the framing narrative with Mary
Speaker 2: Shelley serves as a way to remind us what happened
Speaker 2: in the previous movie. It's sort of narrated by Byron's
Speaker 2: like he's basically like a kid explaining the plot of
Speaker 2: his favorite movie, except he's explaining the plot of the
Speaker 2: movie Frankenstein to the author of Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: Perfect though, it's perfect for what they're putting together here. Yes,
Speaker 1: this was before man'splaining was the thing. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: obviously it was a thing already, but before it was
Speaker 1: a term. It's what we have here.
Speaker 2: So the broad strokes go like this Frankenstein. The man
Speaker 2: Henry in the movie, even though he's named Victor in
Speaker 2: the book, creates a monster out of corpses. He uses
Speaker 2: science to bring this dead man to life. There is
Speaker 2: an unfortunate series of events. The monster escapes the laboratory
Speaker 2: and roams the country. He is at first a gentle
Speaker 2: and childlike, but he accidentally kills a young girl without
Speaker 2: realizing what he is doing, and this raises an angry mob,
Speaker 2: which pursues the creature. The creature flees to a windmill
Speaker 2: with the unconscious Henry, carrying Henry with him, and then
Speaker 2: the creature is seemingly killed in the blaze after the
Speaker 2: angry mob sets the windmill on fire. So like Byron
Speaker 2: goes back through all that, and then Elsa Ancester is like,
Speaker 2: oh for real, though that's not the end of the story.
Speaker 2: Would you like to know what happened next? And yes, yes, Elsa,
Speaker 2: we would.
Speaker 1: And so it's time to Halloween too. This baby right
Speaker 1: to just go pick up right where the last one
Speaker 1: left off and start the new journey.
Speaker 2: I love that no time passes in between. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: just right there. The mill is still burning. So the
Speaker 2: action begins with the mill burning down, presumably having killed
Speaker 2: the monster. Henry Frankenstein lies unconscious at the foot of
Speaker 2: the Flaming Tower, having been thrown nearly to his death
Speaker 2: by his own creation. Henry's friends and servants load him
Speaker 2: into a wagon to be taken back to his family estate.
Speaker 2: I think they believe he is dead at this point,
Speaker 2: but he's not. Meanwhile, the angry villagers cheer and they
Speaker 2: shake their torches and pitchforks at the demise of the
Speaker 2: hated Boris Karloff, and we get zoom ins on several
Speaker 2: characters in the crowd. Here. There is, as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: Henry's talkative housekeeper Mini, wearing this what would you call
Speaker 2: this piece of headwear that she has on?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: Is it like some sort of a cultural thing that
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to pick up on or it's something historic?
Speaker 1: But yeah, it threw me for a curve trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, like what it's supposed to tell us the
Speaker 1: viewer about her role.
Speaker 2: I do not know what it is that makes her
Speaker 2: head look like a venus fly trap. H She is
Speaker 2: discussing how happy she is to know the monster is
Speaker 2: roasting in the inferno there as she also explains with
Speaker 2: apparent glee, how the insides of a body are the
Speaker 2: last part to burn in a fire. That's just science.
Speaker 2: There's also this old, blustery guy with a big mustache,
Speaker 2: the Burgomaster. He's wandering around telling everyone that it's time
Speaker 2: for them to go to bed now, and I'll just
Speaker 2: love for this guy to do a buddy cop team
Speaker 2: up with Christopher Lee from the Devil rides out and
Speaker 2: they can tell everyone to go to bed. He's like,
Speaker 2: go home, go to bed also. Though, then amidst these
Speaker 2: funny characters, we have tragic characters, the parents of the
Speaker 2: girl who was killed accidentally by the monster in the
Speaker 2: previous movie. As the crowd gets bored wanders away from
Speaker 2: the wreckage of the mill, the girl's father, Hans, decides
Speaker 2: that he will not be satisfied until he's the creature's
Speaker 2: charred bones, so he starts picking his way down. He
Speaker 2: climbs into the rubble, but then slips and tumbles down
Speaker 2: into the cellar of the burning mill, which is now
Speaker 2: flooded with water and oh, in a beautifully unsettling series
Speaker 2: of shots, we see in the dark with water falling
Speaker 2: all around. A pale hand reach out across the stone
Speaker 2: work of the wall, and then from behind a corner
Speaker 2: emerges carl Off. The creature is burned but still alive,
Speaker 2: and then the light of the fire reflects off of
Speaker 2: the flowing water and projects shimmering patterns on the monster's face.
Speaker 2: All over this great makeup and the creature you can
Speaker 2: see it. He no longer has the innocent and childlike
Speaker 2: nature that he had in the movie before. Now the
Speaker 2: creature just immediately descends on Hans and murders him. He
Speaker 2: pushes his head under the waters of the flood. He's
Speaker 2: full of rage. And then Hans's wife comes to help her,
Speaker 2: but the hand that reaches up from the cellar is
Speaker 2: not the hand she expects. It's the monster coming out,
Speaker 2: and the monster throws her down to her death in
Speaker 2: the rubble below.
Speaker 1: This is a great way to re establish the monster,
Speaker 1: because again we all know what everyone going into this
Speaker 1: film knew what the monster would look like. Retroactively watching
Speaker 1: this film, you know, decades later, we know what the
Speaker 1: monster looks like. But the monster is so perfectly reintroduced
Speaker 1: here in this dark, shadowy, submerged world, and then proceeds
Speaker 1: to just brutally murder these two sympathetic characters, Like when
Speaker 1: he throws the old woman back down, like it was
Speaker 1: obviously one of these you know stunts where they have
Speaker 1: a dummy that is standing in for the body of
Speaker 1: the woman, but she like lands head first on the
Speaker 1: water wheel and the mill and then tumbles down. It's brutal.
Speaker 2: I totally agree. And I've always found something so profoundly
Speaker 2: dark about this opening. The set design is a about
Speaker 2: as dank and heavy as one could possibly achieve. Like
Speaker 2: we begin in this flooded basement underneath the ruins of
Speaker 2: a burning building. It is as close as it could
Speaker 2: be to meeting the creature again in hell. And the
Speaker 2: creature was supposed to be the ugliest thing imaginable before,
Speaker 2: a monster just scrabbled together out of dead flesh. And
Speaker 2: now somehow he is even worse. His hair is singed
Speaker 2: off by the fire, his skin has been melted and
Speaker 2: torn open, He's got all these scars. He murders the
Speaker 2: grieving parents of the child that he never meant to
Speaker 2: harm in the first place, and then he staggers out
Speaker 2: under a sky that is so gray and dismal it's
Speaker 2: like the sun has never existed. This is such a
Speaker 2: strong opening, absolutely, but then in a reversal that will
Speaker 2: presage that the tone of the film going forward, and
Speaker 2: a lot of whales other works as well. It goes
Speaker 2: straight from the sorest gloom ever committed to film to
Speaker 2: a comedy bit. So, the monster staggers up to Minnie,
Speaker 2: who is still wandering around on the hillside, apparently looking
Speaker 2: for somebody whose business she can get up into, and
Speaker 2: she sees the monster and she starts making Looney Tunes
Speaker 2: noises for what feels like a solid minute before running away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does just goes so Looney Tunes. It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: And yet again everything feels balanced, it doesn't feel jarring somehow,
Speaker 1: And part of that may be that we started out
Speaker 1: so campy, we started out so broad, and we're already
Speaker 1: weaving in and out smoothly between the comedy and the horror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you said the word camp. I think that's important.
Speaker 2: A lot of critics and film historians have pointed to
Speaker 2: the importance of the camp sensibility within the rich Tonal
Speaker 2: architecture of Bride Frankenstein. Camp is core to what this
Speaker 2: movie is. I think, especially once Ernest Thesiger arrives and
Speaker 2: in the role of doctor Preetorious. But anyway, so to
Speaker 2: come back to the plot, Henry Frankenstein is carried unconscious
Speaker 2: and apparently dead back to his family estate, where he
Speaker 2: is greeted by his good hearted fiance Elizabeth. And I
Speaker 2: should add also that this is true for pretty much
Speaker 2: the whole movie. But the sets here are tremendous. The
Speaker 2: Frankenstein home is full of arches and firelight and all
Speaker 2: kinds of gothic flare. It's photographed beautifully, so you can
Speaker 2: just see in every moment that Universal like really opened
Speaker 2: up the purse to allow Whale to make the best
Speaker 2: movie he could. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, just beautiful, beautiful sets.
Speaker 2: Somewhere in the sequence, Many comes back and reports that
Speaker 2: the monster is still alive, that she saw him, and
Speaker 2: of course she is ignored. I think it's the head
Speaker 2: butler who tells her to shut up and then says,
Speaker 2: we don't believe in ghosts around here. So they initially
Speaker 2: think that Henry is dead, but then he moves suddenly
Speaker 2: in the presence of Elizabeth, and so she's like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's still alive, and she nursed Henry back to health.
Speaker 2: All the casting is good, but I wanted to call
Speaker 2: out the casting of Elizabeth as also quite good. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a little bit more thankless of a
Speaker 2: role than a lot of the other roles in the film,
Speaker 2: where actors really get to ham it up. Elizabeth doesn't
Speaker 2: quite get to do that. But I think Hobson is
Speaker 2: selected because she comes off as a beacon of undiluted
Speaker 2: love and kindness in the middle of this wretched setting.
Speaker 2: I mentioned this earlier, but I think she represents the
Speaker 2: other life, the life of virtue and bliss that Henry
Speaker 2: could have had if he had just been content rather
Speaker 2: than questing into these domains of unknown knowledge and power.
Speaker 2: Like Elizabeth is as good as gold, and they could
Speaker 2: have been happy and had that golden life together. But
Speaker 2: he wanted more. He had that faustian temptation. He wanted,
Speaker 2: He wanted more than it is healthy for a person
Speaker 2: to want.
Speaker 1: She's like the girlfriend on the second season of The
Speaker 1: Bear For you TV viewers, I don't know the Bear well,
Speaker 1: same role, like saying you don't maybe you could. We
Speaker 1: could have a life together and you don't have to
Speaker 1: go through this painful experience of opening this restaurant or
Speaker 1: reopening it, which is kind of the same thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: we have a reopening of a destructive project in this
Speaker 1: in this personally destructive project in this film, just like
Speaker 1: in that show.
Speaker 2: And we yeah, and we see some remorse. Like while recovering,
Speaker 2: Henry wonders if he is being punished for his experiments
Speaker 2: in creating the monster. He says, perhaps death is sacred
Speaker 2: and I've profaned it. But his remorse is only half
Speaker 2: the picture. It's kind of fleeting because he also still thinks,
Speaker 2: you know, in piecing together a superhuman strangling machine out
Speaker 2: of the mangled odds and ends of dead bodies, I
Speaker 2: might have really been onto something. He says, quote, I
Speaker 2: dreamed of giving to the world the secret that God
Speaker 2: is so jealous of, the formula for life. So Henry
Speaker 2: has not completely abandoned his ambitions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's at least there's some embers still hot in there.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's left for us to wonder, well, does
Speaker 1: he actually have the wherewithal to do this again? Is
Speaker 1: he just sort of idly dreaming? And maybe that's the case.
Speaker 1: Maybe he wouldn't have the courage and the strength to
Speaker 1: go through with that nightmare again. As long as nobody
Speaker 1: comes along and encourages him to pick it up again.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right, And here things really start cooking. Into
Speaker 2: the picture comes Doctor Septimus Pretorious. What can we say
Speaker 2: of Doctor Septimus Pretorious, The look, the attitude, the scowl,
Speaker 2: he's so ernest Messager is this tall, gaunt man with
Speaker 2: light colored, frizzy, curly hair, and he he puts on
Speaker 2: this amazing scowl, this resting stink face that throughout pretty
Speaker 2: much the whole movie. And from his very first line,
Speaker 2: he is committed to being a lot.
Speaker 1: Yes he is.
Speaker 2: He is a lot.
Speaker 1: He is so much the I mean the most, the
Speaker 1: most entertaining character in this film. Among so many other
Speaker 1: entertaining characters, he has to stand out as one of
Speaker 1: the most the most entertaining characters in just cinema in general. Like,
Speaker 1: it's everything we see from him is golden here, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's almost a shame that we don't get to
Speaker 1: experience this same actor in this same role in other pictures.
Speaker 1: But and again that's kind of what makes it special.
Speaker 2: That's right. So he arrives at the door of the
Speaker 2: Frankenstein estate. He says he must see Henry tonight. On
Speaker 2: a secret matter of grave importance, and I guess it's
Speaker 2: many who lets him in, Like, okay, grave importance. So
Speaker 2: we learned. Doctor Pretorius is a professor, a former mentor
Speaker 2: of Henry's, but has recently been ejected from the academy
Speaker 2: for reasons that are only vaguely alluded to with summaries,
Speaker 2: such as for knowing too much. But once doctor Pretorius
Speaker 2: has gotten Elizabeth out of Henry's bedroom, he goes to
Speaker 2: Henry's bedside and says that he knows of Henry's experiments,
Speaker 2: he knows about the monster, and he says, we've got
Speaker 2: to work together. He wants their experimentation to go on,
Speaker 2: no longer as master and pupil, but as fellow scientists.
Speaker 2: In fact, he says, in Henry's absence, he has continued
Speaker 2: his own forbidden studies in secret and managed to create
Speaker 2: life of a sort on his own. So Henry initially
Speaker 2: tries to resist doctor Pretorius's recruitment. He's like, no, no,
Speaker 2: I have to get married to Elizabeth. But when he
Speaker 2: hears that his former teacher has also found the formula
Speaker 2: for life, he says he must see what he has accomplished.
Speaker 1: And you know you might expect that doctor Pretorius has
Speaker 1: created something more or less like the monster, but maybe
Speaker 1: not as good, you know, like it's it's it's less
Speaker 1: powerful thing imperfect about it. And I think this is
Speaker 1: a this is a this would be a good guess,
Speaker 1: but this film is not going to align with the
Speaker 1: easy guesswork you might have in Blaze here like this, Well,
Speaker 1: what he has been working on is tremendous.
Speaker 2: That's right. So they go back to Pretorius's lab to
Speaker 2: see what he has done, and here we come to
Speaker 2: the famous homuncular scene. First at his lab, Pretorious, this
Speaker 2: is the part where he offers a toast to a
Speaker 2: new world of gods and monsters, and then he gets
Speaker 2: out this huge black box to show Henry what's inside,
Speaker 2: talking the whole time about how enthralling it is to
Speaker 2: create life. He says, my experiments went in a different
Speaker 2: direction than yours, But science, like love, is always full
Speaker 2: of surprises. Why does he say that? Like love? There
Speaker 2: seems to be something really inherently sensual about doctor Pretorius's
Speaker 2: idea of science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it is all consuming, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: So he unveiled Pretorious unveils these glass jars with tiny
Speaker 2: living people inside them, and I should just say that
Speaker 2: the effects here are spectacular. He has created homunculi, and
Speaker 2: he explains that he first created a woman who was
Speaker 2: so lovely that he had to make her a queen.
Speaker 2: So she's here in this regal gown on a throne.
Speaker 2: And he says next, since he had a queen, he
Speaker 2: had to make a king, and the king is apparently
Speaker 2: obsessed with getting out of his jar and getting to
Speaker 2: the queen. Then he says he made another tiny man
Speaker 2: quote who looked so disapprovingly at the other two that
Speaker 2: they made him an archbishop. Now I guess this somehow
Speaker 2: got past the Hayes Code prohibition and gets making fun
Speaker 2: of the clergy or I don't know, to be fair,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly how the Hayes Code affected this movie,
Speaker 2: but this was left in for some reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's like, likewise, there are some other
Speaker 1: lines we've already touched on that feel like if you
Speaker 1: were gonna be picky about blasphemous statements, it might have
Speaker 1: been picked on.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm not sure offhand what they cut compared
Speaker 1: to what they kept, And maybe they let this slide too,
Speaker 1: because it's like, it's not as much about the clergy
Speaker 1: being dumb as it is about like, just look how
Speaker 1: awful this king is. He's like, this clergy member is
Speaker 1: just done with them. But to be clear, these are
Speaker 1: little people wearing full costumes. They're like a miniature king
Speaker 1: and queen, a miniature archbishop or whatever it's it is.
Speaker 1: This is so comedically weird.
Speaker 2: Yes. Oh and the fourth homunculus, by the way, is
Speaker 2: a devil. It's the devil. Messenger says, there's a resemblance
Speaker 2: to me, don't you think. And Doctor Pretorius then muses
Speaker 2: that wouldn't life be simpler if we were all devils?
Speaker 2: No nonsense about angels and being good.
Speaker 1: He's really laying it out out there. He's like, look,
Speaker 1: there's no good, there's no bad. There's just the work
Speaker 1: at hand. And we've got a team up again, because
Speaker 1: I've got my ideas, you've got your ideas. Together, we
Speaker 1: can really make the perfect being.
Speaker 2: Oh. Also he made a ballerina and a mermaid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd forgotten that there were so many additional creature
Speaker 1: being some unculi that he had made. Because this scene
Speaker 1: goes on a while and a lot of effort went
Speaker 1: into into making each of these Homunculi tubes. It's very impressive.
Speaker 2: So Henry is appalled by this. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 2: exactly why Henry is so appalled by the Homunculi compared
Speaker 2: to the monster he made. But he says, this isn't science,
Speaker 2: it's more like black magic. And doctor Pretorius says, you
Speaker 2: think I'm mad. Perhaps I am, but listen to Henry Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: While you were digging in your graves piecing together dead tissues, I,
Speaker 2: my dear pupil, went for my materials to the source
Speaker 2: of life. I grew my creatures like cultures, grew them
Speaker 2: as nature does from seed. Yeah, and I think that
Speaker 2: means exactly what it sounds like. I think Pretorius here
Speaker 2: is operating on the basis of the ideology of spermist preformationism.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I believe we discussed in some past episodes of Stuff.
Speaker 2: To Blow your Mind, the idea that, like the human body,
Speaker 2: it's sort of an alternative to cell theory, is that,
Speaker 2: like the human body is fully formed, just very tiny
Speaker 2: in the sex cells, and the spermists thought that they
Speaker 2: were that the human bodies were in the sperm, not
Speaker 2: in the eggs.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, I mean already they're laying out a really cool
Speaker 1: idea and one that the film will will fulfill. The
Speaker 1: idea that on one hand, doctor Pretorius is all about
Speaker 1: growing new life, Frankenstein is about assembling new life and
Speaker 1: instilling energy in it. And if you bring these two
Speaker 1: disciplines together, well then there's no there's no limit to
Speaker 1: what you can create.
Speaker 2: That's right. Soretorius beckons Henry to join him. He says,
Speaker 2: together they can discover all all the secrets of creating life.
Speaker 2: He says, leave your Charnel house and follow the lead
Speaker 2: of nature or of God if you like your Bible stories.
Speaker 2: So doctor Pretorius wants to not only create life from
Speaker 2: non life, but together with Henry, he thinks that they
Speaker 2: can make two living beings that can join in sexual
Speaker 2: union and reproduce with one another, giving rise to a
Speaker 2: whole new line of created creatures. Henry is horrified. He
Speaker 2: claims he won't do it, but Pretorius is mighty persuasive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't even really have to get heavy handed
Speaker 1: at this point. He's just like like, do it, do it,
Speaker 1: You're doing it. Come on, you're doing it.
Speaker 2: And he's like, okay, now meanwhile, so we leave that
Speaker 2: scene for a while and we revisit the creature. So
Speaker 2: the creature, having escaped to the burning mill, wanders through
Speaker 2: a forest, which is an absolutely gorgeous bucolic indoor forest set,
Speaker 2: you know, I love those. It's got a canopy of
Speaker 2: slanted pine trees and a rushing waterfall, and the creature
Speaker 2: drinks from a stream, but he sees his face reflected
Speaker 2: in the water and then strikes out at it in anger.
Speaker 2: He hates his own image.
Speaker 1: And again, I just want to drive home that while
Speaker 1: there's so much about Carlos Frankenstein's Monster that has become
Speaker 1: a stereotype of the horror genre, that has become kind
Speaker 1: of cliche, when you see the actual performance, there is
Speaker 1: so much more nuance to it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's easy to think of it as just you know,
Speaker 1: like firebag, you know, and sort of think of the
Speaker 1: like the Phil Hartman Saturday Night Live version of the thing,
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's just so many additional levels to it,
Speaker 1: Like there is this real authentic feeling of this being
Speaker 1: that cannot communicate properly about the world around him, but
Speaker 1: has like intense emotions and trauma and even a little
Speaker 1: bit of hope still remain about how he connects to
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 2: I totally agree that the Frankenstein creature is so much
Speaker 2: more complex than the impression you would get from the parodies.
Speaker 2: And as I said earlier, that does go straight back
Speaker 2: to the novel. The creature is an extremely complex and
Speaker 2: thoughtful and emotional being in the novel. So in the
Speaker 2: scene there's a shepherdess leading some lambs through the forest.
Speaker 2: The shepherdess sees the creature and she screams in terror
Speaker 2: and falls into the water, and the creature actually goes
Speaker 2: and saves her from drowning. And you know, I think
Speaker 2: something interesting is going on here where Just in the
Speaker 2: scene before, a character fell into the water with the creature,
Speaker 2: and the creature drowned that character on purpose. He was
Speaker 2: so filled with rage. Here somebody falls into the water
Speaker 2: and he tries to save their life. So I think
Speaker 2: this is also supposed to communicate something about the creature
Speaker 2: just being so filled with churning emotions and contradictions. It
Speaker 2: doesn't know what it is. The creature doesn't know if
Speaker 2: he is if he is good or evil, and doesn't
Speaker 2: know which path to embrace. He's just sort of flying
Speaker 2: back and forth from one to the other. Yeah, but anyway,
Speaker 2: so the woman falls in the water. He saves her,
Speaker 2: but then she is of course terrified of him. She
Speaker 2: starts to scream, and the creature is frightened by this.
Speaker 2: He tries to stop her screaming by covering her mouth,
Speaker 2: which just makes it worse. And then men with guns
Speaker 2: come and start shooting at the creature. They wound him,
Speaker 2: but he escapes into the wild and the townspeople raise
Speaker 2: a mob to chase the monster once again. This is
Speaker 2: another chased by the crowd scene. And one thing I
Speaker 2: wanted to point out is how the forest set changes
Speaker 2: from the previous scene to this one. So when the
Speaker 2: monster is wandering alone before the mob attacks him, before
Speaker 2: he has been seen and hated again by humanity, the
Speaker 2: forest is lush and lovely and alive, and now that
Speaker 2: he is again being hunted and despised, the trees are
Speaker 2: all these straight, bare trunks without leaves or branches, and
Speaker 2: it's set against a dark sky and these crooked rocks.
Speaker 2: And I think the film uses set and setting to
Speaker 2: infuse the scenes with emotion.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned this because this is something that
Speaker 1: I don't think I actually I didn't think about it
Speaker 1: as I was watching. I was so caught up in
Speaker 1: the action of it all. But I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: Like they're they're manipulating their their tightly controlled set world
Speaker 1: here to uh to imbue the scene with just the
Speaker 1: right amount of just the right emotion and just the
Speaker 1: right energy.
Speaker 2: So this all has a momentum of its own that
Speaker 2: the creature is caught by the mob, bound up like
Speaker 2: tied to a pole, taken to town, thrown into a dungeon,
Speaker 2: chained up to this heavy wooden chair that looks like
Speaker 2: some kind of torture device. All throughout the creature is
Speaker 2: groaning in pain and misery. This is the scene where
Speaker 2: Many is looking down the window at the dungeon and
Speaker 2: is like, ooh ooh, she's just getting too excited about this.
Speaker 2: But of course, first chance he gets Karloff, snaps the chains,
Speaker 2: breaks out of prison, kicks down the heavy wooden doors. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: that mustachioed character, the Burgomaster from the guy from earlier
Speaker 2: who was telling everybody to go to bed, there's a
Speaker 2: really funny part where he's trying to clear the crowd.
Speaker 2: He's saying, nothing to worry about just an escaped lunatic,
Speaker 2: quite harmless, while the monster is kicking down the door
Speaker 2: of the prison in the background.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this is great because, yeah, this part is funny,
Speaker 1: and yet at the same time, the daytime rampage is
Speaker 1: still terrifying, and I think it's more terrifying because it
Speaker 1: is in the daylight.
Speaker 2: I agree. So there's this rampage. The monster harms people
Speaker 2: in the process of escaping the town, but eventually gets
Speaker 2: out into the woods. And so eventually this leads up
Speaker 2: to the part where the monster is drawn to the cabin.
Speaker 2: The cabin in the woods where the old hermit lives.
Speaker 2: He's drawn by the sound of music. So this old
Speaker 2: blind man lives alone in a cottage and he's playing
Speaker 2: ave Maria on the violin. The creature likes the music,
Speaker 2: and so he comes to the door of the cabin,
Speaker 2: and unlike everyone else who fears and rejects the monster,
Speaker 2: the blind man welcomes the creature into his house. He
Speaker 2: offers him hospitality, and he offers him friendship, gives the
Speaker 2: creature food, he cares for his wounds, and he shows
Speaker 2: him kindness. When the creature is unable to speak, the
Speaker 2: old man says, perhaps you are afflicted too. I cannot
Speaker 2: see and you cannot speak. But he says, I've prayed
Speaker 2: many times for God to send me a friend. God
Speaker 2: has taken pity on my loneliness, and we can be
Speaker 2: friends to each other. And so this turns into a
Speaker 2: really beautiful short story in the middle of the movie. Here,
Speaker 2: you know, the blind man does not even understand how
Speaker 2: uncommon the friendship he's offering is to the person he's
Speaker 2: offering it to, and so the creature seems he accepts
Speaker 2: the hospitality, and the creature goes on to live with
Speaker 2: this blind man for some unspecified length of time, during
Speaker 2: which he learns to speak. The old man teaches him words,
Speaker 2: teaches him about bread, wine, and cigars, and oh boy,
Speaker 2: when you know what he's learning about cigars, at first
Speaker 2: fire bad. So the creature doesn't like that, but he
Speaker 2: figures out pretty soon that he likes smoking cigars.
Speaker 1: Yes, these things are hilarious, but also very poignant as well.
Speaker 1: He's because the monster is learning to enjoy life for
Speaker 1: the first time, and the blind man is sharing the
Speaker 1: enjoyments of life with him.
Speaker 2: After gaining a vocabulary, the creature learns to express his
Speaker 2: feelings in words, and he says things like alone, bad, friend, good.
Speaker 2: But this happy interlude is broken when two hunters, including
Speaker 2: John Kerroty and come to the cabin asking for directions,
Speaker 2: and uh oh, they see the monster, you know exactly what.
Speaker 2: A fight breaks out, the cabin catches fire, and everyone
Speaker 2: runs off in their separate directions. So the creature's chance
Speaker 2: here and having a good life is thwarted. And the
Speaker 2: creature wanders at night through a desolate cemetery in a rage.
Speaker 2: And this graveyard set is fantastic. It's like the graveyard
Speaker 2: at the end of the world. High contrasts, dead trees
Speaker 2: reaching like ghostly fingers. There's mist rising from the consecrated earth.
Speaker 2: And then in his anger and despair, the creature is
Speaker 2: literally toppling monuments and grave markers. He hates every work
Speaker 2: of man, but he decides to hide out. The creature
Speaker 2: tries to hide from the angry mob by climbing down
Speaker 2: into a subterranean crypt. And what's this. Down in the
Speaker 2: crypt he sees three figures coming carrying lanterns, descending into
Speaker 2: the catacomb, and one of them is our old friend,
Speaker 2: doctor Septimus Pretorious.
Speaker 1: Yes, now, before even encountering him. Though this is already
Speaker 1: so perfect because the monster earlier in the film emerges
Speaker 1: from the underworld, has all these encounters, seems to find
Speaker 1: a new a new way to look at life, and
Speaker 1: now he is forced to descend back into the underworld.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's like all his attempts have failed.
Speaker 1: But sometimes in the underworld you do run into the
Speaker 1: devil and enter yet doctor Pretorius and his guns.
Speaker 2: Two Oh my god, she's accompanied by these two cursed
Speaker 2: waxen goons, one of them played by Dwight Fry. The
Speaker 2: characters are named Karl and Ludwig. They're here to do
Speaker 2: the heavy lifting for this midnight grave robbing mission. They're
Speaker 2: supposed to be criminals of some sort of Pretorious threatens
Speaker 2: to send them back to the gallows where they belong
Speaker 2: if they don't get on with the body removal, so
Speaker 2: they select a grave. They steal the woman's body from
Speaker 2: the grave. Looking on, Pretorius says, I hope her bones
Speaker 2: are firm, but eventually so they get the body. The
Speaker 2: grave robbers leave, but Pretorius stays and then this is
Speaker 2: probably my favorite scene in the movie, where he Pretorious
Speaker 2: is just like I rather like this place I shall
Speaker 2: stay here for a bit, and just has himself a
Speaker 2: cackling picnic in the middle of the catacomb, wine cheese, skeletons.
Speaker 2: He won't stop laughing. He's having a great time.
Speaker 1: I think he has her bones, that the woman's bones
Speaker 1: like piled up there in the middle of his little
Speaker 1: pic neck.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, is that what it is? Okay?
Speaker 1: If not her bones, someone else's bones. Either way, it's
Speaker 1: a gothic delight. I should I should also point out
Speaker 1: like he's already like he's shown that he's such a
Speaker 1: you can't trust anything, he says, because this whole thing
Speaker 1: to Frankenstein was like, we're done with with dead bodies,
Speaker 1: old boy. Yes, the next thing we see from him
Speaker 1: is he's down there grave robbin with a couple of goods.
Speaker 2: That's right, Okay, I think you're right. Actually, I was
Speaker 2: thinking about the that the goons still took the body
Speaker 2: with them, but I think they got these bones out
Speaker 2: and he's like just hanging out with the bones. I
Speaker 2: think that's right.
Speaker 1: But yes, tremendous saint just cackling in the crypt.
Speaker 2: But the monster comes out of hiding and meets doctor Pretorius.
Speaker 2: Pretorius says oh, I thought I was a And then
Speaker 2: he shares his food, wine, and cigars. But the creature
Speaker 2: much like the old man did in the Cottage in
Speaker 2: the Woods, except whereas that was wholesome and friendly, there's
Speaker 2: a different subtext here. Instead, it feels more like he's
Speaker 2: being enticed into a deal with the devil here. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: So they sort of get to know each other, and
Speaker 2: then Pretorius explains his plans to the monster. He says
Speaker 2: that he promises that he will make the monster a friend,
Speaker 2: a woman like him to be his wife. So this
Speaker 2: takes us into the last act of the movie. Henry
Speaker 2: and Elizabeth are married again by the time we meet them,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to skip more lightly over the plot now,
Speaker 2: but basically, Pretorius comes to Henry and Elizabeth's home and
Speaker 2: he confronts Henry for help about making the bride. He's like,
Speaker 2: I've got to make this undead woman. You're gonna help me.
Speaker 2: Henry tries to refuse, but he's got an ace up
Speaker 2: his sleeve. He has the monster kidnap Elizabeth as a hostage.
Speaker 2: Henry will have no choice but to help him do
Speaker 2: unholy science. That's right, that's right. So together they work
Speaker 2: on bringing this dead woman to life, and there's one
Speaker 2: hilarious part where they're trying to get a heart that
Speaker 2: will be appropriate, and the heart they have doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Henry says he needs a better one. So Pretorius calls
Speaker 2: up Carl, that's Dwight Fry, and he's like, Carl, go
Speaker 2: to the accident hospital. We need a fresh heart from
Speaker 2: a young woman. And you know where this is going, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So Carl just like goes and murders someone and then
Speaker 2: he shows up with a heart and Henry's like, wow,
Speaker 2: this is a really fresh heart. Good job, and Carl's
Speaker 2: like it was a police case. But anyway, So they
Speaker 2: do all their unholy science and the bride is brought
Speaker 2: to life during an electrical storm, wrapped up like a
Speaker 2: mummy in these bandages, and eventually the bandages are peeled
Speaker 2: back and the reveal this is the bride of Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: It's Elsa Lanchester. Uh what what would you say to
Speaker 2: describe her here?
Speaker 1: Rob oh Well, I already mentioned the Avian energy, and
Speaker 1: certainly everybody knows the look, the hair, but god like,
Speaker 1: initially she's still wrapped in bandages. You don't know what
Speaker 1: you're gonna see. You know, there's there elements of a
Speaker 1: mummy to the way she's wrapped up, and then when
Speaker 1: we start taking them off, yeah, you begin to see
Speaker 1: that she is this one they've they've really managed to
Speaker 1: look for the bride. That is this uncanny place between
Speaker 1: otherworldly beauty and and and and really the grave.
Speaker 2: That's right, and tragically so they so the monster comes
Speaker 2: out after his bride has been created, and the monster
Speaker 2: hopefully approaches her, saying friend, friend. But here's where the
Speaker 2: real tragedy comes in. Even she from beyond the grave
Speaker 2: rejects Karlof rejects the monster. She she screams, she finds
Speaker 2: him to terrifying and ugly.
Speaker 1: And she kind of does this hiss thing eventually too.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's towards the end, but I really like that
Speaker 1: moment as well because it also sort of served to
Speaker 1: underline the fact that like she is, she is monster
Speaker 1: as well, like she's not I mean, in the same
Speaker 1: way that that Karlov's monster is also a victim. Yes,
Speaker 1: she is also a victim. She did not ask to
Speaker 1: be brought into this world, but she is also not
Speaker 1: human in the same way that the monster.
Speaker 2: Is not human. That's right. She immediately seems to recognize
Speaker 2: the wrongness of her own existence, like you know, love dead,
Speaker 2: hate living, and she hisses, and that that hiss signals
Speaker 2: almost that like she doesn't want to exist. The hiss
Speaker 2: apparently was Elsa Lanchester's idea, and she got the idea
Speaker 2: from observing geese. You know, geese hiss. Yeah, so she
Speaker 2: was trying to do like a goose's threatening hiss.
Speaker 1: Oh, very good, excellent addition.
Speaker 2: So in the very end, the cree sure just defeated
Speaker 2: by uh by this rejection. He allows Henry and Elizabeth
Speaker 2: to escape the castle. He tells them to live. But
Speaker 2: as for himself, the bride and doctor Pretorius, he says,
Speaker 2: we belong dead and flips this lever that had been established.
Speaker 2: Would would reduce the h I think Pretorius said it
Speaker 2: would reduce their castle to atoms. It doesn't quite do that,
Speaker 2: but it does cause a great destruction.
Speaker 1: Yes, again, this is the beautiful discruction scene that I
Speaker 1: was talking about at the top of the episode. Just oh,
Speaker 1: it's so beautiful everything I mean in the film, certainly,
Speaker 1: but this this last stretch, this last third of the picture,
Speaker 1: I mean, the the laboratory looks amazing, the lightning effects,
Speaker 1: the kites they send up, the the the resurrection or
Speaker 1: or or energizing of the bride is so wonderful. Everything
Speaker 1: is just pitch perfect.
Speaker 2: I totally agree. And I guess that's got to be
Speaker 2: the end, right, that's Bride of Frankenstein. I will just
Speaker 2: say again, I love this movie. I think it's like
Speaker 2: top tier weird horror, just unbeatable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and solid ending too. We cut to the Frankenstein's
Speaker 1: not the monsters, Henry and Elizabeth, you know, reunited and
Speaker 1: it's a nice little moment. Kind of serves as a
Speaker 1: nice cap, but it doesn't feel kind of like unearned
Speaker 1: and tact on like the happy moment at the end
Speaker 1: of the first Frankenstein film, Like this one feels like it.
Speaker 1: It honestly got to that feel good moment at the
Speaker 1: end where everything's put right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like Joe said, it's a beautiful movie. Go see it
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it, And if you've seen it before,
Speaker 1: even a few times, go watch it again because you
Speaker 1: know you love it. Just a reminder out there that
Speaker 1: Stuffed to Blow your Mind is primarily a science podcast
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema. If you
Speaker 1: want to see a list of all the movies we've
Speaker 1: covered over the years here, you can go to U.
Speaker 1: We can go to letterbox dot com. It's l E
Speaker 1: T T E R B O x D dot com.
Speaker 1: That's a site where people create accounts and review movies
Speaker 1: and make lists of movies. Well, we have a username
Speaker 1: on there, it's weird House, and you can see a
Speaker 1: wonderful visual list of all the movies we've covered thus far,
Speaker 1: and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next.
Speaker 1: I also blog about these films at some mutomusic dot
Speaker 1: com Huge Things.
Speaker 2: As always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
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