Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: Hey friends. If I sound a little bit unusual today,
Speaker 3: I am recording in a different place than usual. My
Speaker 3: audio setup's a little different, So if if you hear
Speaker 3: anything different, that's the reason why. In fact, I'm recording
Speaker 3: from my secret laboratory. Because I'm so excited today we're
Speaker 3: going to be talking about the nineteen thirty nine Universal
Speaker 3: monster film Son of Frankenstein. This was a great pick.
Speaker 2: Rob, Yeah, this is a lot. This film is a
Speaker 2: lot of fun and for Weird House Cinema, it's our
Speaker 2: return to the nineteen thirties. This is only the fourth
Speaker 2: film from the nineteen thirties that we've talked about on
Speaker 2: the show. We previously talked about nineteen thirty five's Mad Love,
Speaker 2: then nineteen thirty two's Doctor X, and then most recently
Speaker 2: last year, I believe, nineteen thirty five's Bride of Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: Today's film is the sequel to that motion picture.
Speaker 3: The treequel, if you will, And this is really exciting
Speaker 3: because Bride of Frankenstein is one of my favorite horror movies.
Speaker 3: If you've heard the episode we did on that, a
Speaker 3: lot of it was just gushing about how much I
Speaker 3: love the film. And I had always read that the
Speaker 3: Universal follow up, Son of Frankenstein was a lot better
Speaker 3: than you might expect from a third movie in the series.
Speaker 3: Until this week, I had never seen it, and Wow,
Speaker 3: I was blown away. I love Son of Frankenstein. Not
Speaker 3: only is it great, not only is it worthy of
Speaker 3: the Frankenstein line. I think I probably like it better
Speaker 3: than the original Frankenstein as well. I think it's not
Speaker 3: quite at the level of Bride, but it's like the
Speaker 3: very next tier down. It might be now my third
Speaker 3: or perhaps even second favorite Universal monster movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really quite a testament to how good it is,
Speaker 2: you know, because we've talked about the problem with sequels,
Speaker 2: the challenge of sequels in the past, like how do
Speaker 2: you capture that man? And like most most films don't
Speaker 2: work the first time around, but then to actually strike
Speaker 2: gold and then come back and equal or exceed the
Speaker 2: previous film, like that's quite an accomplishment. And then to
Speaker 2: have the gall to come back and do a third one,
Speaker 2: you know, the odds are not with you. So I
Speaker 2: have heard from a lot of people that have said, yeah,
Speaker 2: this one is better than the original Frankenstein. It's more
Speaker 2: fun or whatever, you know, caveats you want to put
Speaker 2: on it, But yeah, I would agree. It doesn't. It
Speaker 2: doesn't really top the glory of Bride but you and
Speaker 2: then at the same time, it also you know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really do much in the way of digging back
Speaker 2: through unused morsels from Mary Shelley's novel. It doesn't dive
Speaker 2: too deep into the themes of the original work, but
Speaker 2: we do end up with a very entertaining, at times
Speaker 2: very comedic, but also weird, fresh film that is still
Speaker 2: a logical continuation of the series, full of great sets,
Speaker 2: great cinematography, and a lot of fun performances.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree. I think it probably doesn't have
Speaker 3: as much in the way of profound themes as the
Speaker 3: first two movies do because they interact more with the
Speaker 3: original source material. Like you were saying, there's not much
Speaker 3: of Mary Shelley in Son of Frankenstein, and yet it's
Speaker 3: just fantastic. It's just a wild, fun ride full of
Speaker 3: zany characters and great scenes, great dialogue, and Bella Lagosi
Speaker 3: in a performance I can't believe I've never seen before. Like,
Speaker 3: having been a Bella Lagosi fan, I don't know how
Speaker 3: I was without his igor in this movie. It's one
Speaker 3: of his best ever.
Speaker 2: Absolutely just terrific performance, and it's not the only scene
Speaker 2: stealing performance in this picture.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 2: My only complaint, and it's a small one, concerning Son
Speaker 2: of Frankenstein, is that it maybe feels a bit long
Speaker 2: for a nineteen thirties monster film. It clocks in at
Speaker 2: an hour and thirty nine minutes, whereas the original Frankenstein
Speaker 2: was an hour in ten and Bride was an hour
Speaker 2: and fifteen. As my wife observed she watched it with me,
Speaker 2: as did my son. They could have maybe done with
Speaker 2: a few cuts to the many hatch and door opening
Speaker 2: scenes and maybe maybe got that runtime down just a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 3: I agree that it's a little bit longer than you
Speaker 3: might expect, but at the same time, it feels pretty
Speaker 3: tight to me. I agree. Yeah, there are a few
Speaker 3: like hatch opening scenes, I guess, but it is not
Speaker 3: padded out. I mean, this is not it conquered the
Speaker 3: world with driving scenes and so forth. We're not spending
Speaker 3: time parking the car.
Speaker 2: Right and it is a great hatch, is what this?
Speaker 3: Guess?
Speaker 2: Yeah, quick schedule change. Note you might be some of
Speaker 2: you might be wondering, why are y'all talking about this
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties horror movie. Aren't you supposed to be talking
Speaker 2: about a nineteen nineties Cthulhu movie. Well, we had to
Speaker 2: switch up in the schedule, but don't worry, and we'll
Speaker 2: come back in the future with some other Cthulhu mythos
Speaker 2: movie to make up for it. All right, so let's
Speaker 2: get back into Son of Frankenstein, and my elevator pitch
Speaker 2: for this one is just Frankenstein the next generation.
Speaker 3: Wait, in that analogy, is Basil Rathbone the Picard or
Speaker 3: is he more the riker?
Speaker 2: Hmm, that's a great question. We'll have to chew on
Speaker 2: that one as we received. All right, let's hear just
Speaker 2: a little bit of that classic trailer audio. I think
Speaker 2: we have some fun narration in this.
Speaker 4: Twenty years ago in the barony of Frankenstein, a monster
Speaker 4: created by man stalk through the country, being and killing.
Speaker 4: In time, Frankenstein, maker of the monster, died, the monster disappeared.
Speaker 4: Now after twenty years, the Son of Frankenstein returns and
Speaker 4: fear grips the village an a man tainted by the
Speaker 4: blood of his father can forget his human soul and
Speaker 4: carry on the diabolical work of the Frankenstein. As a man,
Speaker 4: I should destroy.
Speaker 5: Him, but as a scientist, I should do everything in
Speaker 5: my power to bring him back to conscious life and
Speaker 5: some ton on the generator.
Speaker 2: All right, So if you're excited for this one, now,
Speaker 2: if you've never seen Son of Frankenstein and you want
Speaker 2: to watch it, or you want to rewatch it before
Speaker 2: getting into the rest of this episode, well we encourage
Speaker 2: you to do so. This is a universal monster movie,
Speaker 2: so it is widely available in physical and digital formats
Speaker 2: of all kinds, including universals Frankenstein Complete Legacy Collection box
Speaker 2: set that's eight movies plus extras. For folks looking to
Speaker 2: stream it in the States, I believe it's currently on Peacock,
Speaker 2: but you know, check that out for yourself and see.
Speaker 2: I see if you can find it somewhere that you like.
Speaker 3: I streamed it on the Big River and the quality
Speaker 3: was good.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I watched this one on the big screen,
Speaker 2: which is pretty exciting. I don't think I've actually done
Speaker 2: that for a weird house cinema before I saw it
Speaker 2: with friends and family at Atlanta's historic Plaza Theater, presented
Speaker 2: as part of the Silver Screens Spook Show series. It's
Speaker 2: pretty great in two major ways. So first of all,
Speaker 2: Professor Morte and company come out and they do this
Speaker 2: fun pre show full of gags and puppets and terrible jokes,
Speaker 2: a whole lot of fun. And we caught them the matinee,
Speaker 2: so it was all kid friendly, very halloweeny. And secondly,
Speaker 2: it's a real I thought it was just a real
Speaker 2: treat to see a nineteen thirty nine film in a
Speaker 2: movie theater that opened in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure if Son of Frankenstein ever played
Speaker 2: at the Plaza back in thirty nine. I looked around.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find any really good resources for this kind
Speaker 2: of research. But I'll tell you in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: it looked just tremendous on the big screen, like it's
Speaker 2: just such a well shot picture and the film quality,
Speaker 2: and know it's been so beautifully restored. It's just just pristine.
Speaker 3: The Plaza really is one of the treasures of Atlanta,
Speaker 3: so it is so wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so Yeah. If you're visiting Atlanta or you
Speaker 2: live here, go check out the Plaza. Check them out
Speaker 2: at Plaza Atlanta dot com. They have lots of fun programming,
Speaker 2: including Silver Scream spook shows. There's also Plaza Drome that's
Speaker 2: a partnership that they have with Videodrome. And next week alone,
Speaker 2: the week following the original publication of this episode, they're
Speaker 2: playing a Ramsey Brothers Bollywood horror film and Beyond the
Speaker 2: Black Rainbow. So it's you know, if you like our
Speaker 2: show and you have access to this theater, there are
Speaker 2: plenty of reasons to go there.
Speaker 3: They are really operating on your frequency, Rob.
Speaker 2: I know, they just they won't They really won't be
Speaker 2: back in. I'm going to get back in, all right.
Speaker 2: Shall we get into the people behind this picture?
Speaker 4: Ah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess we should. Now. One thing that you
Speaker 3: might assume if you haven't seen the movie yet and
Speaker 3: you just look at the creative names behind it, you
Speaker 3: might assume a big problem would be where's James Whylee? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think that that is one of the things that's
Speaker 2: often pointed out in at least reviews, if not criticism
Speaker 2: of the film is we have to move on from
Speaker 2: James Whale at this point, and it's another director taking
Speaker 2: the film. It is Roland V. Lee, who lived eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety one through nineteen seventy five, an American director and producer,
Speaker 2: an established name at this point, having directed since I
Speaker 2: believe nineteen twenty and written, produced nearly and produced nearly
Speaker 2: as long. This was his only horror film, however, coming
Speaker 2: off of a number of historical adventures and comedies, including
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty fours The Count of Money Cristo, nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: seven's Love from a Stranger that would starred Basil Rathbone
Speaker 2: as well nineteen thirty nine's Tower of London, which had
Speaker 2: both Rathbone and Carloff in it, and his last directorial
Speaker 2: credit was nineteen forty five's Captain Kidd, after which he
Speaker 2: retired to run a ranch. But I believe he returned
Speaker 2: at one point in nineteen fifty nine to produce and
Speaker 2: do some writing on a film called The Big Fisherman. Also,
Speaker 2: he was a founding member of the Screen Directors Guild.
Speaker 3: Incredibly big shoes to Phil coming in after James, Well,
Speaker 3: but I don't know. To me, this movie feels directed
Speaker 3: with extreme confidence. There is just such a strong, steady
Speaker 3: storytelling hand at the helm with a great sense of humor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's all the more amazing when you read
Speaker 2: a little bit about the problems with the screenplay and
Speaker 2: the challenges with the screenplay running into this. So the
Speaker 2: screenplay is credited to Willis Cooper, who lived eighteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine through nineteen fifty five. This is a guy who
Speaker 2: created an old time radio horror show called lights Out
Speaker 2: that ran from thirty four through forty seven. His other story,
Speaker 2: screenwriting and dialogue credits include a few Mister Moto movies
Speaker 2: and the nineteen thirty nine serial The Phantom Creeps Now Again,
Speaker 2: Son of Frankenstein. Apparently had a lot of script problems.
Speaker 2: Cooper's initial script was rejected, and Lee had numerous issues
Speaker 2: with the script as production proceeded. Apparently even as they
Speaker 2: were shooting it. They were apparently still writing pages minutes
Speaker 2: before the film rolled, and Lee himself was in there
Speaker 2: doing some of the writing uncredited. So I mean that
Speaker 2: in some pictures that would be a recipe for chaos
Speaker 2: and disaster, but it works here, and we'll get into
Speaker 2: some of the ways that it works really well as
Speaker 2: we proceed.
Speaker 3: That's wild. It doesn't feel like that. It feels tight.
Speaker 3: It feels tight and well considered, and all the scenes
Speaker 3: feel constructed with the overall arc of the story in mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it could be based on what I was reading,
Speaker 2: it could be that, like, it wasn't a situation where
Speaker 2: they necessarily threw everything out. They kind of kept to
Speaker 2: the basic bones. They'd shift characters, they'd change characters, but
Speaker 2: you know they maybe they were making just very deliberate
Speaker 2: choices every time they changed something and made sure that
Speaker 2: they weren't just completely jackknifing the vehicle.
Speaker 3: I'm seriously impressed.
Speaker 2: We'll mention in passing here that, of course, this is
Speaker 2: ultimately based on the work of Mary Shelley, who lived
Speaker 2: seventeen ninety seven through eighteen fifty one, the English writer
Speaker 2: responsible for a good seven novels and multiple short stories,
Speaker 2: but her first eighteen eighteen's Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus,
Speaker 2: this is the one that made her a legend. This
Speaker 2: is the book that kind of gave birth to so
Speaker 2: much in gothic horror and certainly science fiction. It's almost
Speaker 2: impossible to overstate the importance of this book in general,
Speaker 2: and of course without this book we wouldn't have this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we talk at length about the importance of
Speaker 3: Mary Shelley in the history of science fiction and horror
Speaker 3: in the episode we did on Bride of Frankenstein, so
Speaker 3: check that one out too. In fact, I think that's
Speaker 3: going to be rerunning soon, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is rerunning this October. I'm not sure where
Speaker 2: it's going to fall on either side of this publication,
Speaker 2: but look out for it. You don't have to do
Speaker 2: too much of digging in order to listen to our
Speaker 2: Bride episode again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but big, big Mary Shelley fan here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a tremendous book. If you haven't read it,
Speaker 2: you don't be afraid of that publication date. It stands
Speaker 2: the test of time, all right. There are a number
Speaker 2: of other names that we have discussed on the show before,
Speaker 2: some in right of Frankenstein, and of course the big
Speaker 2: one literally is the monster himself, played by Boris Karloff,
Speaker 2: who lived eighteen eighty seven through nineteen sixty nine. I
Speaker 2: won't go into as much detail here since we have
Speaker 2: covered Karloff multiple times for different films that he's appeared in,
Speaker 2: but British actor born William Henry Pratt. Boris Karloff was
Speaker 2: his stage name. His credits go all the way back
Speaker 2: to nineteen nineteen, and he already had a long filmography
Speaker 2: by the time of nineteen thirty One's Frankenstein came around,
Speaker 2: which of course really put him on the map in
Speaker 2: the horror genre and helped make him a legend. And
Speaker 2: he appeared in various other horror films as well, which
Speaker 2: is nineteen thirty four is the Black Cat, Do's The Mummy. This,
Speaker 2: of course is the last time that he appears as
Speaker 2: Frankenstein's monster in a feature film. I think he would
Speaker 2: do like a little one offs here for TV, you know,
Speaker 2: a handful, but this is the last time he truly
Speaker 2: played the monster.
Speaker 3: Now, I will have almost exclusively positive things to say
Speaker 3: about this movie, but I think one fair criticism you
Speaker 3: could make about Son of Frankenstein is that it signals,
Speaker 3: in a way, a retreat from the complexity and the
Speaker 3: pathos that were imbued on the monster in both of
Speaker 3: the two previous films, in the original and then especially
Speaker 3: in Bride, where the monster becomes so interesting and pitiable,
Speaker 3: and you know, you get that section in the middle
Speaker 3: of the movie where he lives with the old man
Speaker 3: in the cottage, and then you get his conclusion at
Speaker 3: the end when he decides that we belong dead. The
Speaker 3: version of Karloff's Monster that appears in Son of Frankenstein
Speaker 3: is very psychologically stripped down compared to that. I mean,
Speaker 3: he has some interesting moments, and you can see Karloff
Speaker 3: really giving the character probably more than is even on
Speaker 3: the page. Like there is a scene where he confronts
Speaker 3: Basil Rathbone for the first time and he reaches up
Speaker 3: as if he's deciding whether to kill him or to
Speaker 3: embrace him, and he doesn't know which he should do,
Speaker 3: and so Karloff is, i think, bringing his own stuff.
Speaker 3: It almost feels like to what's there. I think maybe
Speaker 3: one of the weakest things about the movie though, is
Speaker 3: that they did away with a lot of the complexity
Speaker 3: that the monster earned already in this series.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I absolutely agree. So we don't see any of
Speaker 2: these moments. Aside from the scene you highlighted, there aren't
Speaker 2: really any scenes of like real transcendence with the creature.
Speaker 2: Both of the previous films had some really haunting moments
Speaker 2: that he might forget. If you haven't seen the film
Speaker 2: in a while, I'll also note that the other big
Speaker 2: difference with the monster this time around still looks great.
Speaker 2: Makeup still is tremendous, Karloff still shines through. But the
Speaker 2: monster also has this big furry coat on which, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a different looks he's winnerized.
Speaker 3: He's dressed like Trumpy from Pod People. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: he's got that furry coat.
Speaker 2: All right. Next up we have barn Wolf von Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: This is the titular son of Frankenstein played by Basil Rathlone.
Speaker 3: You know, there are multiple sons of Frankenstein in the
Speaker 3: movie though, because Basil Rathbune plays the son of Henry Frankenstein,
Speaker 3: Henry being the movies version of Victor Frankenstein from the novel,
Speaker 3: and then also Wolf Frankenstein. Basil Rathbone has a son
Speaker 3: in the movie, Peter Frankenstein, who is his son. And
Speaker 3: then there's also discussion of whether or not the monster
Speaker 3: should be thought of as Henry Frankenstein's other sons. Is
Speaker 3: the monster Basil Rathbone's brother, So it's just a SunFest
Speaker 3: Sons abound.
Speaker 2: They could have called it Sons of Frankenstein and that
Speaker 2: would that would have been a great title. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so anyway, this is this is the biological sun of
Speaker 2: the original Frankenstein again, Baron Wolf von Frankenstein Uh played
Speaker 2: by Basil Rathbone. Basil Rathbone lived eighteen ninety two through
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven. Famed British actor who we've previously discussed
Speaker 2: on the show for his roles in nineteen sixty Two's
Speaker 2: The Magic Sword in nineteen sixty six is Queen of Blood.
Speaker 2: But that's a that's a much older Basil Rathbone that
Speaker 2: we were talking about there. Here we get to see
Speaker 2: him in his prime, you know, coming off of a
Speaker 2: lot of like swashbuckling stuff. You know, he's even got
Speaker 2: that nice pencil thin mustache going on. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 2: he gets to buckle some swash late in the picture,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: He does he swings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it you know, it's it's impossible not to
Speaker 2: compare his performance to, of course, that of Colin Clive
Speaker 2: in the previous two films who played the original Victor Frankenstein. Clive,
Speaker 2: of course was Henry in the movies. Yes, sorry, Colin
Speaker 2: Clive was tremendous. He had just such amazing frantic energy.
Speaker 2: But Basil Rathbone I think that's a pretty great job
Speaker 2: getting somewhere near that level without because he's also not
Speaker 2: supposed to completely embrace the madness of his father, or
Speaker 2: at least not immediately, Like that's part of the substance
Speaker 2: of the film. It's like, to what extent are you
Speaker 2: going to step into your father's shoes and be the
Speaker 2: man he was for you know, good or for bad.
Speaker 3: Bazil Rathbone does well with this role because it's written
Speaker 3: in a way that you might say contains contradictions, Like,
Speaker 3: ultimately he's a quite sympathetic character, and yet he behaves
Speaker 3: in ways that are really not I don't know if
Speaker 3: you like just described his scene to scene behavior. A
Speaker 3: lot of it is not very sympathy, earning the way
Speaker 3: he is just so defensive about his father's legacy, and
Speaker 3: he's dismissive of you know, oh, all these peasants afraid
Speaker 3: of monsters. Bah. He is defensive and shows insufficient concern
Speaker 3: for others at many times, and you could argue as
Speaker 3: even vainglorious to some extent, and yet in the end
Speaker 3: you don't think of him as one of those protagonist villains.
Speaker 3: Ultimately you're on his side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And he You know, there's a nice lead
Speaker 2: up to him doing any mad science. You know, it
Speaker 2: starts off more as a gentlemanly curiosity about these things,
Speaker 2: and then it becomes increasingly personal and obsessive.
Speaker 3: Yeah all, but oh.
Speaker 2: As we previously alluded to, this film also features the
Speaker 2: legendary Bela Lagosi, who lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty six. This, of course, is the Hungarian American actor
Speaker 2: and classic horror icon best known for his portray of
Speaker 2: Dracula in the nineteen thirty one Universal Horror Film, which
Speaker 2: of course came on the heels of a Broadway play
Speaker 2: based on the novel Dracula from I Believe twenty seven,
Speaker 2: and his success as Draka led to a number of
Speaker 2: additional horror films. This is interesting though. One of the
Speaker 2: things about Legosi's career, though, of course, is there's often
Speaker 2: an uneven and even downward trajectory. There are a number
Speaker 2: of issues that kind of derailed his career, especially late
Speaker 2: in life, and in fact, this film apparently occurs at
Speaker 2: a point of decline as well. His part in this
Speaker 2: apparently wasn't even in the original screenplay, and when the
Speaker 2: character of Igor that's with a why was initially added
Speaker 2: It was a very small part for apparently little pay,
Speaker 2: almost an insulting level of pay, many thought for someone
Speaker 2: of Lagosi's stature and his talent. And so the director
Speaker 2: of the story goes Lee here stood up for Lago
Speaker 2: and as much of the shooting script was again being
Speaker 2: written and prepared last minute, he was able to continually
Speaker 2: beef up Legosi's role, giving him more and more dialogue,
Speaker 2: making his character more and more important. Because ultimately, instead
Speaker 2: of getting like just a Toady or a Hinchman here,
Speaker 2: or just a you know, sort of like the crazy
Speaker 2: old hermit character, instead we end up positioning Bella Lagosi's
Speaker 2: igor as really the central antagonist of the picture.
Speaker 3: Oh. I can't believe this movie was ever envisioned without him.
Speaker 3: He's the star of the show. It is a scene
Speaker 3: stealer every time. Every time he comes on screen, I
Speaker 3: would just light up, like, oh, here he is again.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited. And his scenes are great again. It
Speaker 3: does not have the feeling of something thrown together at
Speaker 3: the last minute. His scenes feel like the core texture
Speaker 3: of this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and I mean it even brings up some
Speaker 2: deeper concepts about the overarching themes of Frankenstein, which'll get
Speaker 2: into Yeah, he's yeah, so he has some of the
Speaker 2: trappings of henchman, but he's also like a satanic antagonist,
Speaker 2: a tempter that is luring bearn Wolf von Frankenstein into
Speaker 2: deeper experimentation with his father's legacy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there are just so many moments where it's
Speaker 3: the perfect pairing of an ominously understated line in terms
Speaker 3: of the words with Legosi's predatory delivery, like that part
Speaker 3: where he's talking about how the monster is his friend
Speaker 3: and then he just says he does things for me.
Speaker 2: Those things are murder, as we will learn.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, if Legosi was actually feeling i
Speaker 3: don't know, demeaned or depressed about this role, it does
Speaker 3: not come through in the movie. He seems like he
Speaker 3: is having a ball.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's my understanding is that he was greatly appreciative
Speaker 2: of everything that Lee did for him here and giving
Speaker 2: him more to work with and letting him go beyond
Speaker 2: just mere you know, villain stuff getting into comedy. Like
Speaker 2: there's there's some really funny moments from this character and
Speaker 2: virous other characters in this picture.
Speaker 3: When he coughs on the guy in the testimony scene
Speaker 3: that was laughing so hard. Sorry, I cough.
Speaker 2: Apparently in earlier versions of the script, the Inspector was
Speaker 2: the primary antagonist.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, that's funny because the Inspector comes off quite honorable
Speaker 3: in the final telling.
Speaker 2: Yes, and is also just a tremendous scene stealing performance
Speaker 2: as well. This is Inspector Krogue, played by the Great
Speaker 2: Lionel Atwell, who lived eighteen eighty five through nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2: This is an English and American actor of stage and
Speaker 2: screen who is perhaps best remembered today for his roles
Speaker 2: in various horror films, because he was some in some
Speaker 2: pretty notable ones, including nineteen thirty two's Doctor X, which
Speaker 2: we talked about on the show, Oh, the Original, nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty three, The History of the Wax Museum, as well
Speaker 2: as assorted Frankenstein, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes movies of the era.
Speaker 2: He even got to play Professor Moriarty at one point.
Speaker 2: He was active in universal horror for quite a bit there.
Speaker 2: Personal scandal ended up relegating him to mostly smaller roles
Speaker 2: in smaller pictures for the last several years of his
Speaker 2: life and career, but he's great here portraying this proud
Speaker 2: and proper inspector who lost an arm to the monster
Speaker 2: as a child. And this is one of those performances
Speaker 2: where every scene involving the character is worth watching for
Speaker 2: all sorts of just little performance details, like little momentary
Speaker 2: shifts in his facial expression, as well as all of
Speaker 2: these grandiose manipulations of his prosthetic arm. So between this
Speaker 2: performance and Legosi's igor performance, oh man, it's just this
Speaker 2: is such a feast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, packing in the oddball characters, because again, you might
Speaker 3: get the wrong impression about this guy from the role
Speaker 3: he plays in the plot that he's like the you know,
Speaker 3: the arm of the law. He's the police investigator, and
Speaker 3: he's portrayed as mostly honorable and upright, and yet he
Speaker 3: is eccentric to the max. Like every scene he does
Speaker 3: something really weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there are a lot of gags with the
Speaker 2: prosthetic arm, but but they're not they're not like super
Speaker 2: goofy gags, Like they're all very much in character for
Speaker 2: this very prim and proper man who believes that if
Speaker 2: not for this accident, not an accident, if not for
Speaker 2: this attack that he suffered as a child. He would
Speaker 2: be a general, he would be he would be a
Speaker 2: man of far more importance in the world. But he
Speaker 2: still holds himself up as if he does have this,
Speaker 2: this this true purpose in life.
Speaker 3: You know, if not for Boris Karloff, I would be Napoleon.
Speaker 3: Yeah and uh. And there are these these little moments,
Speaker 3: like the scene where he does the little heel click
Speaker 3: at Basil Rathbone, or Rathbone tries to do it back
Speaker 3: at him, but he just stares at him because like
Speaker 3: Rathbone didn't do it right, so he has to click
Speaker 3: his heels again.
Speaker 2: So good, all right, let's see Son of Frankenstein also
Speaker 2: has a wife, and this is an American wife, Elsa
Speaker 2: von Frankenstein, played by Josephine Hutchinson.
Speaker 3: Elsa von Frankenstein doesn't sound like a character written as
Speaker 3: an American.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might have. This is one of those things
Speaker 2: that might have changed as they were moving through the
Speaker 2: production process. So she's played by American actress Josephine Hutchinson,
Speaker 2: perhaps best known for supporting roles in nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 2: is North By Northwest, and she'd previously co starred in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirty four musical Happiness Ahead. That was her
Speaker 2: first feature film. Coming off of stage work. She worked
Speaker 2: a lot on TV up until nineteen seventy four, I believe,
Speaker 2: appearing on such shows as the original Twilight Zone.
Speaker 3: In several scenes throughout the movie, she's sort of the
Speaker 3: presence that is helping to pull Basil Rathbone back from
Speaker 3: the brink, you know, from going too far with his experiments.
Speaker 3: She's sort of a voice of goodness and reason and
Speaker 3: interest for their family at least, though it's interesting also
Speaker 3: that she's portrayed as like not personally being very excited
Speaker 3: about moving to wherever this is Transylvania, or it's not Transylvania,
Speaker 3: you know, wherever this is supposed to take place, the
Speaker 3: village of Frankenstein, which is just surrounded by this barren,
Speaker 3: horrible landscape of dead trees. And she clearly is not
Speaker 3: excited about that. But she's game, you know, She's like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna give it a try. We're gonna see if
Speaker 3: this works.
Speaker 2: Dead trees and intense lightning storms. Yes, And they've of
Speaker 2: course brought their son, this is son of Frankenstein or
Speaker 2: grandson of Frankenstein's, anyhow you want to describe him.
Speaker 3: This is the son of Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is Peter von Frankenstein, played by Donnie Dunnaghan
Speaker 2: born nineteen thirty four and as of this recording still
Speaker 2: still still very much out there retired now. He was
Speaker 2: a child actor of the late thirties and forties who
Speaker 2: also appeared in Tower of London. He also most famously
Speaker 2: was the voice of young Bambie in the nineteen forty
Speaker 2: two Walt Disney animated film Uh Yeah, Yeah, Okay Yeah.
Speaker 2: Texas born and I believe at the time based out
Speaker 2: of Memphis, Tennessee. Something that becomes very obvious with this
Speaker 2: performance because his father is British his mother is American,
Speaker 2: but with kind of like what a transatlantic kind of
Speaker 2: accent going on. Little Peter, though, has a very loud
Speaker 2: and at times difficult to understand thick Southern accent, Like what.
Speaker 3: Is going on with his accent? There is one part
Speaker 3: where he's saying his prayers before bed and he says
Speaker 3: the word aim and I don't know how many syllables
Speaker 3: are in the word amen when he says it. It's
Speaker 3: a lot. He is The accent is is nuts, but
Speaker 3: it but also I love this kid's presence. It's like
Speaker 3: it doesn't really fit realistically, but it's so much fun
Speaker 3: every time he starts talking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to be clear, if we're not shaming Southern accents,
Speaker 2: Lord knows, we don't sound pretty plenty Southern to many
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 3: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it just feels wildly out of place. And
Speaker 2: I've read that the actor here, looking back on his time,
Speaker 2: he says like a part of it was that the
Speaker 2: director kept telling him to speak his lines louder and
Speaker 2: these big cavernous sets that they were using, and that
Speaker 2: just ended up enhancing his Southern accent, like you just
Speaker 2: having to act act louder, and that just made him
Speaker 2: more Southern sounding. Yeah, but it's yeah, it is a
Speaker 2: wild performance. It's like that thick Southern accent going along
Speaker 2: with the sort of I guess surely temp as precociousness
Speaker 2: of the actor and the character.
Speaker 3: With the super curly hair. So yeah, but yes, so
Speaker 3: you get these exchanges where it's like Basil Rathbone being like, yes, son,
Speaker 3: what do you what have you been doing? And then
Speaker 3: it's like I've been out hunting there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it is alarming. The the the audience in
Speaker 2: the theater didn't didn't know what to make of this
Speaker 2: at times. But but yeah, Donnie.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't change it for the world. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: But Donnie done again. He apparently had a kind of
Speaker 2: a challenging time after this picture, but ultimately, as an adult,
Speaker 2: ended up joining the Marine Corps served in Vietnam uh
Speaker 2: and has since his his his time as a as
Speaker 2: a marine, has done a lot of interviews about Bambie,
Speaker 2: about this film, about his time as a child actor,
Speaker 2: and and you know, answered a lot of questions about it,
Speaker 2: and also mentioned that he was terrified of letting anybody
Speaker 2: know that he was the voice of Bambi when he
Speaker 2: was in the Marines, because he's like, if they find out,
Speaker 2: that will be nickname and I just can't have that.
Speaker 3: Oh no, yeah, all.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, we mentioned the look of this film being
Speaker 2: so spectacular, so I want to briefly call out the
Speaker 2: director of photography, George Robinson, who lived eighteen ninety through
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty eight. Yeah, he also worked on Tower of London,
Speaker 2: forty two's The Mummy's Tomb, various Frankenstein and Dracula sequels,
Speaker 2: and even nineteen fifty five's Tarantula. And likewise, we have
Speaker 2: set decoration by Russell A. Gossman who lived eighteen ninety
Speaker 2: two through nineteen sixty three, who won Oscars for his
Speaker 2: work on nineteen forty four's Phantom of the Opera in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty one Spartacus. He also worked on a number
Speaker 2: of other major and minor universal horror films.
Speaker 3: Was Tarantula, the spider movie we covered that had a
Speaker 3: spider getting really big and attacking a town, and they
Speaker 3: discovered that the secret to defeating it was explosives.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yeah, via Eastwood showing up at the
Speaker 2: end in a jet.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right, Clint Eastwood flying a jet fighter.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, let's see. The makeup is once more by A.
Speaker 2: Jack P. Pierce who lived eighteen eighty nine through nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight. Monster makeup legend who worked on all so
Speaker 2: many great films of this era. Twenty eight's The Man
Speaker 2: Who Laughs, thirty one's Dracula, thirty twos, The Mummy, thirty
Speaker 2: three is The Invisible Man, nineteen forty one's The Wolf Man,
Speaker 2: and so much more so again legend and master of
Speaker 2: the craft. His credits run really deep. And then finally,
Speaker 2: the music is by Frank Skinner who lived eighteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven through nineteen sixty eight, five time OSCAR nominated composer.
Speaker 2: His genre scores include The Wolfman, Various Mummy, and Invisible Movies,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty five is Revenge of the Creature and more.
Speaker 2: I have to admit, like when I was watching the film,
Speaker 2: I really didn't think much about the music. The music
Speaker 2: just kind of felt like what I expected of a
Speaker 2: picture like this. But we were chatting with my son afterwards,
Speaker 2: who had never seen a Frankenstein movie before and hasn't
Speaker 2: really seen much in the way of I don't think
Speaker 2: he may have never seen a black and white film before,
Speaker 2: so it was a first in many ways. He said
Speaker 2: that he thought the music made it scarier, So kudos
Speaker 2: to Frank Skinner. It is an effective score.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, there are actually some parts with some
Speaker 3: important diegetic music in the plot, because we see Bella
Speaker 3: Lagosi standing in the window playing his whatever instrument this is.
Speaker 3: It looks like a cross between like a clarinet and
Speaker 3: a horn of some kind. I don't know what that is,
Speaker 3: but I think he's standing there playing creepy music as
Speaker 3: an alibi. So he's like always doing that while the
Speaker 3: monster is out killing somebody, so he can't be blamed.
Speaker 2: Oh god, these scenes of what is it he's playing
Speaker 2: like clarinet or some.
Speaker 3: Sort of Yeah, I don't know, that's what I was saying.
Speaker 2: Some weird mountain flute. But you we get those great
Speaker 2: scenes of Igor playing it.
Speaker 3: Love it. By the way, you mentioned Jack P. Pierce
Speaker 3: doing the makeup effects. I guess it must have been him.
Speaker 3: But whoever did Bela Legosi's teeth in this movie needed
Speaker 3: an oscar? These are some good He almost has fangs
Speaker 3: they or maybe they are fangs, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean's he is almost a monster in
Speaker 2: and on himself. He's just like as close to like
Speaker 2: he almost looks like a wolf man like. I think
Speaker 2: they realize there's a line. We can only go so
Speaker 2: far here, and then we're in a two monster film
Speaker 2: and we can only have one monster in this picture.
Speaker 2: But they bring it right up to the line with
Speaker 2: this character design.
Speaker 3: All right, well, do you want to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 3: The very first thing we see is an exterior shot
Speaker 3: of a town square with mountains in the background holding
Speaker 3: a dark castle on top, and then in the foreground
Speaker 3: we see this winding wall topped with spires gate of
Speaker 3: you know, these vertical posts like a palisade gate and
Speaker 3: then a gatehouse with a roof that just curves like calligraphy,
Speaker 3: And the columns and the archway surrounding the gate are
Speaker 3: not straight up and down or horizontal. They're tapered and tilted,
Speaker 3: as if the set designer were like a Peter Watts
Speaker 3: vampire allergic to right angles. And this seems to be
Speaker 3: laid out in the style of lightly reminiscent of German
Speaker 3: expressionist horror films like The Cabinet of Doctor Kaligari, which
Speaker 3: strives not for strict realism and set decoration, but for
Speaker 3: these kind of warped geometries that express feelings and ideas
Speaker 3: rather than the natural forms of real objects. Now, the
Speaker 3: geometric weirdness in Son of Frank is nowhere near as
Speaker 3: extreme as it is in Caligari and other real German
Speaker 3: expressionist films, but we are in for some unusual angles
Speaker 3: and slopes in this bleak world. So I think you
Speaker 3: might call the visual style of this movie somewhere in
Speaker 3: between your classic universal Gothic horror cinema cinema style and
Speaker 3: half expressionist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's it's really interesting because the sets are gorgeous,
Speaker 2: you could almost never mistake them for an actual interior space,
Speaker 2: you know, like this doesn't you know, this is not
Speaker 2: a location, this is a set. But they also don't
Speaker 2: feel surreal like they can. You can look at them
Speaker 2: and be like, Okay, you know, I'm buying this as
Speaker 2: a physical space. But again, it's if you start thinking
Speaker 2: too hard about like what kind of room is this,
Speaker 2: Like what are these twin balconies, like eagle shaped balconies
Speaker 2: over the dinner table and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the breakfast room with the turrets in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's amazing. It's highly effective, very dramatic.
Speaker 3: And some of this all, some of this weird architecture
Speaker 3: is also done with shadows where you would place So
Speaker 3: you might have a room with a fairly normal logical
Speaker 3: staircase in it, but the placement of lights in the
Speaker 3: room causes the shadow of that staircase to to like
Speaker 3: fall crazily up the side of the wall in a
Speaker 3: way that it never would in a real dwelling. But
Speaker 3: just because you've got the light source in such an
Speaker 3: odd place, the shadows are are extremely unusual and create
Speaker 3: that expression this feeling again. But anyway, so we open
Speaker 3: on this locale and we zoom in on the gate
Speaker 3: here and it reads engong ver boat and entry pit,
Speaker 3: and above that in wraught iron letters, it says Frankenstein.
Speaker 3: And then we pan over to a broken window nearby
Speaker 3: and see somebody looming in the window. Who is that?
Speaker 3: Is that bela Lugosi staring out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's Igor creeping. He does a lot of creeping.
Speaker 2: He's a great creep.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. So a gaggle of cringing, benighted villagers come
Speaker 3: up the hill. They're like literally kind of like hunched
Speaker 3: over and looking up in terror, as if like, you know,
Speaker 3: dragon's gonna come out of the sky at any moment.
Speaker 3: They're they're bringing a wooden cart piled with sticks with
Speaker 3: them up the hill. And two of the villagers are
Speaker 3: young boys. They're full of mischief and bravado, and one
Speaker 3: of them is like, are you afraid? And the other
Speaker 3: one says, of old Igor nah, And then they're gonna
Speaker 3: chuck a rock through the window, But as soon as
Speaker 3: they look up and see Igor peering down at them,
Speaker 3: they just scream and run away. Soon after, on a
Speaker 3: dark night with rain pouring down. We join the proceedings
Speaker 3: of a town council of some kind. There is a
Speaker 3: guy who looks like a judge at a raised bench.
Speaker 3: I think this guy might be the character called the
Speaker 3: Burgomeister sort of. I think that means basically like the mayor,
Speaker 3: you know, the master of the Burg. Then you've got
Speaker 3: several old men wearing ceremonial hats, a police inspector with
Speaker 3: a monocle, this is Lionel atwell, and a handful of
Speaker 3: assorted Hrumphy codgers puffing on pipes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of these guys were in previous Frankenstein films.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the number of great, great looking character actors
Speaker 2: in here, a lot of big heads and elongated heads.
Speaker 2: It's a fun crowd, a.
Speaker 3: Lot of I never yeah. Yes. So the situation of
Speaker 3: this meeting is that the old Baron Henry Frankenstein has
Speaker 3: died of natural causes, it seems, and left everything to
Speaker 3: his adult son, the now Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, who
Speaker 3: is abroad in America. So Wolf has inherited the dank
Speaker 3: and miserable castle looming over the Burg. But also so
Speaker 3: it seems a lot of paperwork and the Burgomeister says
Speaker 3: there's a chest of documents that he has to deliver
Speaker 3: to the surviving Frankenstein upon his arrival, and the fen
Speaker 3: so wolf On Frankenstein and his family are currently bound
Speaker 3: for this little hamlet by train. He's traveling with his wife,
Speaker 3: Elsa and his son Peter. Now, quick, quick background check.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. But they are
Speaker 3: supposed to be originally coming from America, right, did you
Speaker 3: get that?
Speaker 2: That was my impression?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah. So let's see what else do we learn
Speaker 3: from this town meeting scene. Well, we learned that a
Speaker 3: lot of these old guys are not happy to have
Speaker 3: another Frankenstein coming to town. They blame the elder Frankenstein
Speaker 3: for the ruin of their village, which I think is
Speaker 3: called Frankenstein by the way, So I think it's the
Speaker 3: Baron Frankenstein, the Frankenstein Castle, and the Frankenstein village or town.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And so they say that his family is the reason
Speaker 3: that a traveler never wants to stop. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe they tried and failed to get a little tourism
Speaker 3: industry going, but this place is just considered cursed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was spelled the end of the Frankenstein Frankfest.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants to come here.
Speaker 3: Now, and this is all because, of course, Henry Frankenstein
Speaker 3: created a monster in the devil's own image, which is
Speaker 3: not what you want. So they all subscribe to the
Speaker 3: idea that like the sins of the father, should be
Speaker 3: held against the son. And we also learned that the
Speaker 3: Frankenstein Castle is a blight. They believe it to be
Speaker 3: cursed as well. And the only person in the village
Speaker 3: who will stay there is quote that crazy Egor with
Speaker 3: his broken neck, and this is bel Legosi. There's also
Speaker 3: some acknowledgment that they've had this conversation a million times before,
Speaker 3: so it seems like they just sit around every Saturday
Speaker 3: night with a pipe and some cordials complaining about the
Speaker 3: Frankenstein family. Recreational complaining not an uncommon activity. Yes, Anyway,
Speaker 3: they resolve they're going to deliver the younger Frankenstein his
Speaker 3: inheritance as prescribed by law, but they will show him
Speaker 3: no hospitality. The family is going to get no warm
Speaker 3: reception from them. So then we cut to a train
Speaker 3: where we meet the Frankenstein family in the flesh. Here
Speaker 3: again we've got Basil Rathbone as wolf Josephine Hutchinson as
Speaker 3: Elsa and Donnie Dunnaghan as their young son Peter. Now
Speaker 3: from Wolf, here we cut right into frankenstein apologetics. Elsa
Speaker 3: tucks Peter into bed, comes into the next train compartment,
Speaker 3: and Wolf is like, you know, it wasn't my father's
Speaker 3: fault that his half witted assistant Fritz retrieved a criminal's
Speaker 3: brain when he was supposed to just get a normal brain,
Speaker 3: so we can kind of see where his head's at. Immediately,
Speaker 3: also in the scene, Elsa looks out the window and comments.
Speaker 3: She says, what a strange looking country, which I thought
Speaker 3: was funny because the scene that is passing outside the
Speaker 3: train window looks more than strange. It looks like an
Speaker 3: illustration from Scary Stories to tell in the dark. It's
Speaker 3: just gloom and gnarl to infinity, dead black, leafless trees
Speaker 3: that look like giant witch fingers curling out of the ground.
Speaker 3: It's not nice, no, But then Wolf is like, it's
Speaker 3: so exciting, isn't it. I guess he likes this kind
Speaker 3: of thing. He's clearly thrilled to have quit his university job.
Speaker 3: He's gloating about, you know, no more students, no more
Speaker 3: faculty meetings, Hurrah, and together they fantasize about the cliches
Speaker 3: of Gothic horror. They're excited about the castle. Will the
Speaker 3: castle have a moat? Will it have a haunted room?
Speaker 3: Elsa is into this idea. I think she's she's a
Speaker 3: little bit ghost curious. And anyway, this year segues into
Speaker 3: Wolf ranting about how his father did nothing wrong and
Speaker 3: he's been unfairly blamed for the tragedy that unfolded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a tremendously funny bit of dialogue here from
Speaker 2: Baron Wolf that I have to have to to read
Speaker 2: because it's like, it's kind of a metajoke, and it's
Speaker 2: also just a nice bit of comedy. So he's saying,
Speaker 2: he's continuing to Rand. He says, his name has become
Speaker 2: synonymous with horror and monsters. Why nine out of ten
Speaker 2: people call that misshapen creature of my father's experiments. And
Speaker 2: then he's interrupted by the train conductor, who says Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: And so you know, this is of course obviously alluding
Speaker 2: to the fact that many people call the monster Frankenstein,
Speaker 2: as if that is the monster's name, and then this
Speaker 2: leads other people to correct these folks and say, actually,
Speaker 2: Frankenstein is the name of the doctor and not the monster,
Speaker 2: and so forth and so forth. But I honestly had
Speaker 2: never looked into when this exactly took hold, And clearly
Speaker 2: the answer is, I guess during the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, Well, to be clear, just speaking for myself,
Speaker 3: I'm aware of the distinction. I've read the book. I
Speaker 3: know that the creature is not literally named Frankenstein, but
Speaker 3: I just call it a Frankenstein. When you see a Frankenstein,
Speaker 3: you could just call it a Frankenstein. That's okay, shorthand,
Speaker 3: it's okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But clearly there were there there were nerd battles
Speaker 2: over this back in the day as well. I guess
Speaker 2: maybe nerd a little bit hard nerds, a little bit
Speaker 2: literary nerds that were saying, no, you're referring to the
Speaker 2: monster incorrect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So there's a scene where the Frankenstein family
Speaker 3: arrives at the train station. Once again, it is pouring rain,
Speaker 3: and they receive a very cold welcome from the Bergomeister
Speaker 3: and the leaders of the town. The Bergomeister hands Wolf
Speaker 3: his things and the keys to the castle, and then
Speaker 3: they tell him that they are not going to be friends.
Speaker 3: Wolf tries to make a speech to the assembled crowd,
Speaker 3: but it does not go over very well. They give
Speaker 3: him the cold shoulder. Also. The speech again, it's defensive.
Speaker 3: It's very I'm sorry that my father, through no fault
Speaker 3: of his own, came to be hated by all of you,
Speaker 3: which is funny. It's one of those non apology apologies,
Speaker 3: except he's not apologizing for anything he did. It's about
Speaker 3: his dad anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like the lack of quality labor in this area,
Speaker 2: he's like yes, he's like, I really, we're mad at you, Like,
Speaker 2: couldn't you have have produced some labor that could have
Speaker 2: gotten him a proper brain for his creation.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the family gets into a car they are transported
Speaker 3: to the castle. There's a happy reunion between little Peter
Speaker 3: and one of the castle servants, a woman named Amelia.
Speaker 3: Peter was asking about her earlier on the train. They're
Speaker 3: apparently close, which is kind of strange because I understood
Speaker 3: that understood the story to be that they'd never been
Speaker 3: to this castle before, So maybe these are servants they
Speaker 3: already knew already from somewhere, and they traveled ahead to
Speaker 3: the castle or something.
Speaker 2: I guess such. These must be servants they brought with them.
Speaker 3: But once we go inside the castle again we get
Speaker 3: these bizarre counterintuitive angles on the shadows, activating the expressionist
Speaker 3: geometry motif one of my favorite things. This big central
Speaker 3: room in the castle, with the staircase and the shadow
Speaker 3: of the stairs is just wild. And we meet all
Speaker 3: the servants. Wolf is ecstatic about the castle. He finds
Speaker 3: the dankness exhilarating, and Elsa is trying to put on
Speaker 3: a happy face, but obviously she is not a fan.
Speaker 3: And everybody goes about settling in in their various ways.
Speaker 3: Wolf has a brandy in the library and grouses some
Speaker 3: more about how his father made a miraculous discovery and
Speaker 3: now everybody's being so unfair to him. And then he
Speaker 3: goes on to read a letter left to him by
Speaker 3: his father, the late Baron. And this letter has some
Speaker 3: nice phrasings in it, so I wanted to read it.
Speaker 3: It says, my son, herein lies my faiths, my beliefs,
Speaker 3: and my unfoldments, a complete diary of my experiments, charts
Speaker 3: and secret formulas. In short, the sum total of my knowledge,
Speaker 3: such as it is. Perhaps you will regard my work
Speaker 3: with ridicule, or even with a distaste. If so, destroy
Speaker 3: these records. But if you like me, burn with the
Speaker 3: irresistible desire to penetrate the unknown. Carry on the path
Speaker 3: is cruel and torturous. Carry on, I put secret after truth.
Speaker 3: You will be hated, blasphemed, and condemned. You have inherited
Speaker 3: the fortune of the Frankensteins. I trust you will not
Speaker 3: inherit their fate. So he's leaving all of the apparatus
Speaker 3: of his work to his son, and it is up
Speaker 3: to him if he wants to continue that work or not. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: we see Igor outside the window in the rain, just
Speaker 3: looking in with this devilish grin. Now here's the scene
Speaker 3: where we had Peter saying his prayers before bed. This
Speaker 3: is one where he's like amen, he says in the
Speaker 3: one part of the prayers is like help me be
Speaker 3: a good little boy. Oh, I love it. Oh. And
Speaker 3: Peter also says, I think they're trying to close the curtains,
Speaker 3: and he's like, please don't close the curtains. I like lightning.
Speaker 3: So let's see. Later that night, they get a visit
Speaker 3: at the castle from the police inspector Krogue. This is
Speaker 3: again Lionel Atwill. He comes out of the rain to
Speaker 3: meet with Wolf, and this is where we learn about
Speaker 3: one of his arms being mechanical. He sort of uses
Speaker 3: his remaining arm to manipulate the mechanical arm, so holding
Speaker 3: it up into a salute, for instance. And he's very
Speaker 3: he's very proper and observant of decorum. He's very mannered,
Speaker 3: and he explains his business by saying that he wants
Speaker 3: to protect Frankenstein from the fear and wrath of the
Speaker 3: villagers in the town below. But then he begins to
Speaker 3: ask about the monster. He's also sort of doing a
Speaker 3: bit of fact finding here. He's asking about whether the
Speaker 3: monster possibly still lives because there has been a there's
Speaker 3: been a string of murders, sort of unexplained murders in
Speaker 3: the years since the monster was supposedly destroyed, and Krogue
Speaker 3: says that there that in every case the murder had
Speaker 3: the same weird features, a bruise at the base of
Speaker 3: the skull and an exploded heart inside the chest. Could
Speaker 3: the creature be alive and still dangerous? Hmm, good question. Now,
Speaker 3: I thought this was an interesting detail because I may
Speaker 3: have missed it but I don't recall him ever explaining
Speaker 3: how exactly this exploding heart murder method works. The best
Speaker 3: I could make of it is that, like the appearance
Speaker 3: of the creature is so terrifying that when people see him,
Speaker 3: their hearts explode.
Speaker 2: I was thinking that maybe it was like some sort
Speaker 2: of weird heart punch where Punch Frankenstein punches you in
Speaker 2: the base of the skull so hard to your heart explodes.
Speaker 3: That's the best thing I can come up with. It's
Speaker 3: like a special kung.
Speaker 2: Fu move Bodha thinker.
Speaker 3: Yes. Anyway, after this, Wolf goes on a rant about how, yes,
Speaker 3: my father did manage to create life from death, but
Speaker 3: surely those stories of the monstrousness of the monster must
Speaker 3: be greatly exaggerated. At one point, he says, do you
Speaker 3: honestly know of one truly committed by this creature? And
Speaker 3: Krog is like, well, yeah, when I was a kid,
Speaker 3: he ripped my arm off. Oh okay. I like the
Speaker 3: way the scene is just a very blunt check on
Speaker 3: Basil Rathbones sort of defensive delusions about his family legacy.
Speaker 3: But anyway, Krog still he Krog really does not seem
Speaker 3: to be holding this against the Frankensteins. He's not out
Speaker 3: for revenge. He's offering them help. He says, when you
Speaker 3: need help, you have but to ring the alarm bell
Speaker 3: in the tower, and wherever I shall be, I shall
Speaker 3: hasten to your assistance.
Speaker 2: He is so lawful. Good. Yeah, to a fault.
Speaker 3: And then there's a very nice moment I thought between
Speaker 3: Wolf and Elsa where they're looking out the window into
Speaker 3: the stark landscape and the thunder and Elsa says, what
Speaker 3: a dreadful storm and awful lightning, and Wolf says, it's magnificent.
Speaker 3: Nothing in nature is terrifying when one understands it. Darling,
Speaker 3: my father drew that very lightning from heaven and forced
Speaker 3: it for his own will to bring life to a
Speaker 3: being he created with his own hands. Why should we
Speaker 3: fear anything?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, some more of that Frankensteinian optimism.
Speaker 3: There, and a lot of affinity for lightning, Like multiple
Speaker 3: members of the family, the Sun and Wolf, they're looking
Speaker 3: at the lightning and they're like, just makes me feel good.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of build up with the lightning here.
Speaker 2: I'll come back to this more as we touch on
Speaker 2: more examples.
Speaker 3: All Right, the next morning, we see Peter again. This
Speaker 3: is the scene where they're having breakfast, and then Peter
Speaker 3: comes up on this ledge overlooking the breakfast table. He's
Speaker 3: got a toy shotgun with him and he's like, well hello,
Speaker 3: and there's some general goofy dialogue about how oh. He
Speaker 3: like points to a scary head mounted on the wall
Speaker 3: and he's like, what's that and they say that's a
Speaker 3: bore and he goes like ant Fanny and they say, no, Darling, no,
Speaker 3: not like aunt Fanny. That's a wild boar. I think
Speaker 3: they're joking about bore. And then he's I hope I
Speaker 3: don't have teeth like that. It would be too hard
Speaker 3: to clean them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this film is intentionally comedic. There are a number
Speaker 2: of gags. They don't all work, but a number of
Speaker 2: them work very well.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So later that day, Wolf goes investigating the ruins
Speaker 3: of his father's laboratory, and here's where things really start
Speaker 3: to cook. So as he's looking around, he runs into Egor.
Speaker 3: Igor Is creeping on him from above, like in a skylight,
Speaker 3: peeking through a hole in the roof, and Wolf at
Speaker 3: one point he finds a big hole in the floor,
Speaker 3: looks down inside it far below, and there is a boiling,
Speaker 3: bubbling pit of some horrible liquid. Wolf sniffs and concludes
Speaker 3: that it is sulfur. You know, so your new house
Speaker 3: has a boiling sulfur pit. No big deal. And then
Speaker 3: Igor from the roof tries to kill Wolf by dropping
Speaker 3: a boulder on him, but Wolf dodges out of the way,
Speaker 3: and then they have a confrontation. Frankstein trains a gun
Speaker 3: on Igor and starts to interrogate him. He's like, why
Speaker 3: did you try to kill me? And Igor says, I
Speaker 3: thought you came here to kill me, and Rathbone says, well,
Speaker 3: it's all well and good for you people to hate me,
Speaker 3: but attempted murder is another matter. So this is the
Speaker 3: first scene where we really get any dialogue with Igor,
Speaker 3: and again Bella Lugosi's energy is just off the charts.
Speaker 3: He is wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's worth noting that Igor in like just
Speaker 2: sort of like very loose terms, becomes this kind of
Speaker 2: horror staple often depicted as kind of like a hunchback,
Speaker 2: even though Igor in this film is not a hunchback.
Speaker 2: He has a a broken neck because he was, as
Speaker 2: we'll find out, he was previously hanged for Robin Graves
Speaker 2: allegedly survive, but I think is still considered lee. He's
Speaker 2: on the books, he's legally dead. So even though Igor
Speaker 2: would become this kind of like Staple Hinchman in sort
Speaker 2: of like the Scooby dooification of universal horror at the time,
Speaker 2: this character is a new creation based on nothing from
Speaker 2: the Frankenstein novel. But I guess kind of an evolution
Speaker 2: of the concept we see with the character Fritz who
Speaker 2: alluded to earlier, played by Dwight Frye in the first
Speaker 2: Frankenstein film.
Speaker 3: Who's also not in the novel. I mean, in fact,
Speaker 3: the victor Frankenstein's work in the novel is specifically portrayed
Speaker 3: as very lonely and solitary work. He is working by
Speaker 3: himself and consulting with no one. I think that's almost
Speaker 3: sort of the point of that part of the story
Speaker 3: is that he's just in his own head. He has
Speaker 3: nobody else to relate to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's lonesome work that is tearing apart is sanity,
Speaker 2: and he's having to dig all those graves and scoop
Speaker 2: all those brains himself. But again, as I alluded to earlier,
Speaker 2: Igor is no mirror. Hinchman in this no mere cookie
Speaker 2: character like he is, as we'll see, essentially the primary
Speaker 2: and antagonist of the picture, a satanic tempter and manipulator.
Speaker 2: And he's tremendous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this introduction scene is so good. There's this moment
Speaker 3: where he like he knocks on the bones sticking out
Speaker 3: of his neck and he's like, oh, it's all right,
Speaker 3: it's okay, and he reveals a secret passage in the
Speaker 3: wall and takes Wolf down. This leads to a crypt
Speaker 3: with two sarcopha guy it's got his grandfather there, but
Speaker 3: also his father, Henry Frankenstein, where someone has vandalized his
Speaker 3: epitaph on his sarcophagus. I think it says Henry Frankenstein
Speaker 3: carved in and someone has written in chalk Maker of Monsters.
Speaker 3: And then beyond that, Igor leads Wolf to a shocking surprise,
Speaker 3: which is the comatose body of the monster. This reveal
Speaker 3: is great in terms of its cinematic effect, except I
Speaker 3: don't want to be too critical, but it's just lying
Speaker 3: out in the open in the middle of the room
Speaker 3: where Wolf already was, and it's revealed to the audience
Speaker 3: simply by the camera pulling back to bring it into frame.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of difficult to believe that Wolf was
Speaker 3: already in the room but didn't see Boris Karloff lying
Speaker 3: there in full makeup until just now. But that's okay,
Speaker 3: let it slide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, still a great moment.
Speaker 3: Igor reveals that the creature has been there for quite
Speaker 3: some time now. Igor says he's my friend. He does
Speaker 3: things for me, and then he says this place is
Speaker 3: a place of the dead. We are all dead here,
Speaker 3: again referring to himself having been unsuccessfully hanged and somehow
Speaker 3: having this legal death status even though he is obviously
Speaker 3: still alive. So the question is why was the monster comatose?
Speaker 3: Igor says that he was injured by lightning while out
Speaker 3: in a storm, and Igor brought him back here and
Speaker 3: he's been asleep ever since. And from this point Igor
Speaker 3: basically hectors Wolf into helping revive him. Maybe Wolf doesn't
Speaker 3: need all that much encouragement, like he's curious about this himself,
Speaker 3: but Igor is putting the pressure.
Speaker 2: On, that's right, He's laying it on pretty thick.
Speaker 3: And this is the scene where Egor starts to introduce
Speaker 3: this framework that you know, really in a way, this
Speaker 3: creature was your father's other son. And Wolf says, you
Speaker 3: mean to imply that this this is my brother and
Speaker 3: Igor is like, yes, but his mother was lightning. Ooh,
Speaker 3: good line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great line. Again, more building up of
Speaker 2: the lightning and treatment of the lightning here.
Speaker 3: So Wolf commits to making his father's creation walk again again.
Speaker 3: So at this point he doesn't have to make life
Speaker 3: from death. The creature is already a but he's going
Speaker 3: to use his medical knowledge to resuscitate him from his
Speaker 3: coma and make him walk again. And he goes and
Speaker 3: he amends the graffiti, he amends the vandalism of his
Speaker 3: father's epitaph and changes it from maker of Monsters to
Speaker 3: Maker of men. And here's a very clean Act one break.
Speaker 3: And this is clearly like, here's where we are now
Speaker 3: the action really starts. Yeah, So Act two we get
Speaker 3: the town council and the Bergemeister getting antsy about all
Speaker 3: of the activity they're noticing around Frankenstein's lab. People are
Speaker 3: coming and going bringing big crates, and so they decide
Speaker 3: they're going to get Igor to come in and testify
Speaker 3: to them about what's going on. Now, there's some really
Speaker 3: funny moments here that one is like Basil Rathbone working
Speaker 3: in the laboratory. He's hauling chains and pulleys around and
Speaker 3: doing this heavy work and this bus room and he's
Speaker 3: still wearing his three piece suit and tiem hm. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: all the work is going on in the lab Egor
Speaker 3: is trying hard to keep it a secret from the
Speaker 3: other servants. So the only other servant I think who
Speaker 3: really unders who knows what's going on, is Wolfe's right
Speaker 3: hand man, Benson. So Benson is there like making notes
Speaker 3: while they're making observations about the monster, saying things like, wow,
Speaker 3: look at his blood pressure. It's three times the normal
Speaker 3: blood pressure. Wow, he's got two bullets in his heart,
Speaker 3: and yet it still pumps blood. I've never seen blood
Speaker 3: like that before. They say that his blood cells seem
Speaker 3: to be battling one another, as if they had a
Speaker 3: conscious life of their own.
Speaker 2: Second week in a row, where we have some very
Speaker 2: puzzling anatomical details from analysis of the monster.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, interesting. But oh from here we go onto
Speaker 3: the scene where the Bergomeister and associates get Igor on
Speaker 3: the stand to testify about what's going on on. So
Speaker 3: this interrogation scene is supposed to be about what Frankenstein
Speaker 3: is up to in his lab. But it's so funny
Speaker 3: how it ends up being mostly about the legal loophole
Speaker 3: that makes Igor immune to the death sentence. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: then also just going around the room reconfirming the identities
Speaker 3: of all the jurors who voted to hang him the
Speaker 3: first time. Yes, this scene is so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he has him dead to rights here, like,
Speaker 2: you can't hang me by the neck until dead a
Speaker 2: second time, I'm already officially dead. And yeah, there's just
Speaker 2: a lot of fun back and forth. Bell Lugosi gets
Speaker 2: really hammered up as Igor here number of number of
Speaker 2: funny lines and hilarious mannerisms, while also staying true to
Speaker 2: the character being devilish and intimidating as well.
Speaker 3: There's a really funny moment where he coughs in one
Speaker 3: of their faces and the guy's like, oh, he spit
Speaker 3: on me, and Lekosi's like, I'm sorry, cough, phone stuck
Speaker 3: in my throat. Great saint, great saint, amazing. It's so good. Then,
Speaker 3: also in other scenes around this time, we see Wolf,
Speaker 3: Igor and Benson trying to get the creature revived in
Speaker 3: the lab with electricity, but it fails. At one point,
Speaker 3: Wolf loses hope. He thinks he will never succeed in
Speaker 3: waking him from his coma. Also, somewhere around here they
Speaker 3: discovered that the secret of life is cosmic rays. Okay,
Speaker 3: now it seems that Inspector Krogue just keeps visiting the
Speaker 3: castle at various times, Like there's a scene of him
Speaker 3: having tea with Elsa and Wolf joins them, and Krogue
Speaker 3: here learns that Wolf has been up to his ears
Speaker 3: and experiments in the old laboratory, which the villagers call
Speaker 3: the monster's home. And they say, oh, don't the sulfur
Speaker 3: fumes bother you? And Rathbones like, no, no, no, not
Speaker 3: at all. They say that this place to be used
Speaker 3: to be an ancient Roman health spa. But then the
Speaker 3: ulfer got more intense, and I believe the inspector says,
Speaker 3: even the stoutest Roman couldn't venture into that today without
Speaker 3: being par boiled to the bones. And then Rathbone says
Speaker 3: to the inspector, I'll have you come there sometime and
Speaker 3: par boil you.
Speaker 2: Not very good, not very good.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: No, here we get some more wonderful Peter comments where
Speaker 3: he comes in he's like saying, I'm a soldier, I'm
Speaker 3: a hunting all day long. And then Peter goes into
Speaker 3: a story about how in the middle of his nap
Speaker 3: a giant woke him up, but Peter gave the giant
Speaker 3: a picture book and he went away, bum bum bum.
Speaker 3: This clearly is significant to Wolf, He's like, oh, what's
Speaker 3: going on. But it's also significant to Krogue. So Wolf
Speaker 3: is trying to hide this from Krogue, but he becomes
Speaker 3: convinced that the creature has awakened and actually went into
Speaker 3: Peter's room, so he rushes off to his lab and
Speaker 3: he finds Igor in the creature both missing. So he
Speaker 3: is in the middle of arming himself with a knife
Speaker 3: and mixing up some concoction. I don't know if he's
Speaker 3: trying to make a drug or something. But then the
Speaker 3: creature comes up behind him. This is the first time
Speaker 3: we see the creature walking in the film, and they
Speaker 3: meet face to face, and so there's this is the
Speaker 3: scene we were talking about earlier where we at least
Speaker 3: I feel like Karloff is trying to add something here.
Speaker 3: The creature doesn't speak, doesn't say anything. I don't think
Speaker 3: he ever speaks in this film, does he ever say anything?
Speaker 2: If he does, it's so little, Like at one point,
Speaker 2: I think a previous version of the script had considerable
Speaker 2: well I don't know abo considerable, but it certainly had
Speaker 2: dialogue from the monster, and at some point they cut
Speaker 2: all or most of it out, So yeah, we don't
Speaker 2: really get anything from the monster here. At one point
Speaker 2: they also considered doing this in color, but apparently they
Speaker 2: didn't really like the way that the monster makeup looked
Speaker 2: when shot in color, and I think, yeah, you don't
Speaker 2: want to see this film in color, like it's so
Speaker 2: beautiful and black and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this seems in keeping with the sort of
Speaker 3: reduction of the monster's consciousness and humanity from where he
Speaker 3: was in Bride, because in Bride he learns to speak.
Speaker 3: Remember that's like a big part of the story. He
Speaker 3: doesn't speak a lot, but he says some things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a way, it's like the monster in this
Speaker 2: film is here to serve purely as the metaphor for technology,
Speaker 2: which is valid. I mean that's a key part of
Speaker 2: the original novel as well. But it's kind of like
Speaker 2: once technology is created, once there's been some advancement, you
Speaker 2: can't abandon it. You can abandon it, but then other
Speaker 2: people are going to take that technology up, and do
Speaker 2: you trust them because the people who take up that
Speaker 2: technology may be the likes of Igor here, and he
Speaker 2: is not going to use it for the betterment of man.
Speaker 2: He's going to use this technology to get revenge on
Speaker 2: his enemies, to murder his way through his enemies list,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what Igor has been doing and plans
Speaker 2: to do again if he gets this monster up in running,
Speaker 2: which now he has.
Speaker 3: That's right. So when Basil Rathbone and the monster first
Speaker 3: meet face to face, the monster seems to maybe be
Speaker 3: used to reacting with violence when it meets people, so
Speaker 3: he reaches his hands up as if maybe he's going
Speaker 3: to choke him, but then sort of decides against it,
Speaker 3: and so it's an interesting psychological little moment. But then
Speaker 3: Igor returns and Igor seems to have control over the monster.
Speaker 3: It obeys his commands, I think because they've been together
Speaker 3: for so long they are friends. So who you know
Speaker 3: they talk now a Basil Rathbone and Bella Legosi talk.
Speaker 3: Who knows the monster is awake? Igor says, only you
Speaker 3: and Benson Man, and Wrathbone's like, well, Benson will never tell,
Speaker 3: and Igor says, no, he will never tell. Now Here,
Speaker 3: Wolf says, well, we may have made the creature physically well,
Speaker 3: but he's not in the mind yet. We need to
Speaker 3: keep working on him to heal him up, to make
Speaker 3: him well in the mind. And Igor says he's well
Speaker 3: enough for me. So, of course, here the monster murder
Speaker 3: missions resume. I was gonna say begin, but it seems
Speaker 3: they've been ongoing for some time before the film started. Now,
Speaker 3: there's a scene of revenge against a character named Neimula,
Speaker 3: one of the jurors who convicted Igor. There's like a
Speaker 3: murder shown on a He's out on a horse drawn
Speaker 3: wagon out going out along the cliffs. He's riding between
Speaker 3: the rocks, and then the monster reaches out from behind
Speaker 3: a rock and grabs him, and then stages the murder
Speaker 3: to look like a wagon accident.
Speaker 2: This is the true crime portion of the picture here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So after this, we're at the castle. The Frankenstein's
Speaker 3: are having dinner with an incredibly suspicious looking krogue, and
Speaker 3: they are interrupted by news of the death of Neimula. Also,
Speaker 3: Benson disappears somewhere around here. Everybody's asking where he is,
Speaker 3: but he knows there are more monster revenge murders on
Speaker 3: Igor's command. We see Igor going around like marking doors
Speaker 3: in town with an ex to show the monster who
Speaker 3: to get. There's also the recurring scene we get here
Speaker 3: of Igor playing his instrument in the gatehouse window. At
Speaker 3: first I thought it was maybe to summon the monster home,
Speaker 3: but I later interpreted this as he's like playing music
Speaker 3: out in public view so that he can never be
Speaker 3: blamed for the murders.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And then also there's a sense too that
Speaker 2: it's almost like he's like you the Pied Piper or something.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like he's pulling the strings if you will.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. So you know, you can't have a Frankenstein
Speaker 3: movie without a Pitchfork mob. So Pitchfork mo mob gathers
Speaker 3: in the town square. Because of the murders, they lay
Speaker 3: siege to the castle. It isn't safe to leave. Inspector
Speaker 3: Krogue is in the castle with the family, claiming that
Speaker 3: he's there to guarantee their protection, and at one point,
Speaker 3: Peter the Sun he shows Inspector Kroge a gift that
Speaker 3: his friend the Giant gave him. It's a watch, and
Speaker 3: krog looks at it. It's a pocket watch with an
Speaker 3: engraving that says like two benson. Yeah, so obviously something
Speaker 3: is going wrong here. Later, there's a confrontation in the
Speaker 3: lab between Wolf and Egor over the monster. Wolf tries
Speaker 3: to banish Egor from his lab, and Igor confesses to
Speaker 3: ordering all the murders of the jurors who convicted him.
Speaker 3: When he says he will not leave, he says, the
Speaker 3: monster belongs to me, not to you. Now in between here,
Speaker 3: it's funny that, like the stakes are coming up, you know,
Speaker 3: we have the mob who are ready to attack the castle.
Speaker 3: We have Egor and the monster doing murderers, we have
Speaker 3: the inspector on the case, and yet we get these
Speaker 3: little scenes where Wolf and the inspector are just like
Speaker 3: playing darts and having brandy while they're I don't know,
Speaker 3: biding their time.
Speaker 2: Oh man, So there's so much brandy drinking in this picture,
Speaker 2: to the point that on the i am dB parental
Speaker 2: page someone decided to put a warning in there. It's
Speaker 2: like warning adults drink brandy. This characters. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of reaching for the brandy here
Speaker 2: and then a lot of dart throwing, and it gets
Speaker 2: it gets pretty furious the dart throwing here, Frankenstein's really
Speaker 2: working out some issues regarding his legacy and the legacy
Speaker 2: of his father here via darts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, historical brandy use. Yeah. But in these scenes it
Speaker 3: comes out that Krogue suspects the monster is once again
Speaker 3: alive and afoot and he wants to know the truth,
Speaker 3: and of course Frankenstein is you know, he's very offended
Speaker 3: by this. He's like, so, I suppose I whipped him
Speaker 3: up as a cook whips up an omelet. And Wolf
Speaker 3: tries to put suspicion onto Egor instead of himself, but
Speaker 3: krog says it can't be Igor who did the monster
Speaker 3: is because he was being watched during all the murders.
Speaker 3: This is what I was talking about with the window.
Speaker 3: So eventually there is a confrontation between Igor and Wolf
Speaker 3: in the laboratory. Igor he had that bloody hammer. He
Speaker 3: tries to get Wolf with a hammer, but Wolf shoots him,
Speaker 3: and there is the discovery by the inspector of a
Speaker 3: secret passageway in the wall where he finds Benson's body. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: in the lab the monster finds Igor's body and Igor
Speaker 3: remember was his only friend, so This leads to monster rage,
Speaker 3: and we get a number of scenes of monster rage
Speaker 3: where he's just smashing things, busting everything up, throwing it
Speaker 3: all into the sulfur pit. Now, eventually the monster, in
Speaker 3: his rage, decides to kidnap Peter, and so he takes
Speaker 3: Peter away to the laboratory and all of the good
Speaker 3: characters give Chase, Elsa, Amelia, Wolf and Krogue. They all
Speaker 3: pursue the monster into the laboratory for the final showdown.
Speaker 3: And here we do get to the swashbuckling. Finally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's of course the expected payoff with the prosthetic arm.
Speaker 2: It gets ripped off in a fight there between the
Speaker 2: inspector and the monster, and then the inspector's shooting at
Speaker 2: the monster, and I think the monster is kind of
Speaker 2: deflecting the shots with the prosthetic by accident. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: here comes Basil rathbone buckling some swash swinging on that
Speaker 2: rope and doing a rope assisted kick to the monster.
Speaker 2: Since the monster flying off the edge down into that
Speaker 2: boiling sulfur pit. That boiling sulfur pit that we knew
Speaker 2: from the very moment it was introduced was going to
Speaker 2: eat up a monster or some other characters. You know,
Speaker 2: somebody's going into that sulfur pit.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so there's payoff there. But you know what
Speaker 3: there's never payoff on is a wolf's threat to par
Speaker 3: boil the inspector and nothing happens there. Yeah, they're friends
Speaker 3: at the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just like a terrible joke. I guess
Speaker 2: it's like we wouldn't get enough sleep. They're not all
Speaker 2: going to be zingers, especially if you don't have enough sleep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now we get a actually quite happy ending. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's really earned this happy of an ending,
Speaker 3: but it's like it's all going to be okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the baron and family signed the castle and the
Speaker 2: lab over to the locals and take the first train
Speaker 2: out of town, so all is forgiven. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe all of the townspeople that were killed off by
Speaker 2: the monster recently were all crooked and corrupt. I don't know,
Speaker 2: Like maybe essentially Igor cleansed the town of corruption. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure.
Speaker 3: Also, the last time we see Igor's body, after he
Speaker 3: has supposedly been shot and killed, he is obviously breathing.
Speaker 3: You can see his chest like rising and falling up
Speaker 3: and down, and I don't know if that's a goof
Speaker 3: or if that's to lay the groundwork that Igor could
Speaker 3: come back in another sequel.
Speaker 2: Igor will return, and he does he.
Speaker 3: Does, to be clear. So are we gonna do House
Speaker 3: of Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: I think we may have to. That one is very
Speaker 2: interesting as well, has an interesting cast, so.
Speaker 3: I think not supposed to be quite as good as
Speaker 3: The Son of frank But amusing i've read.
Speaker 2: I would continue the journey. Oh, one more comment on this.
Speaker 2: We had, we have so much great stuff with the lightning.
Speaker 2: You know, his mother was lightning the fierce lightning storms
Speaker 2: in the region, you know, as if Zeus is just
Speaker 2: constantly lashing out against the countryside. And then this is
Speaker 2: something my wife pointed out. When the monsters actually revived,
Speaker 2: are they they're using some sort of generator or something.
Speaker 2: They're not doing what you think they're going to do,
Speaker 2: which is, let's capture the lightning like Frankenstein Senior did.
Speaker 2: Instead it's some other means, And I don't know if
Speaker 2: that's intentional, if that's supposed to be. You know, some
Speaker 2: commentary on like the mode of interaction with the technology
Speaker 2: that is taking place in this next generation. It's less
Speaker 2: Heaven sent and more technology. Speaking to technology, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a good point. Yeah, I might be overthinking it there,
Speaker 2: but that's what I love about a film like this,
Speaker 2: you know, you get to enjoy it on so many
Speaker 2: different level.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So once again I had a fantastic time with
Speaker 3: Son of Frankenstein. This movie greatly exceeded my expectations. Highly entertaining.
Speaker 3: So yeah, great pick. And I couldn't recommend this one enough.
Speaker 3: Really really fun.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, this one. This one was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, we're gonna go ahead and close out
Speaker 2: this episode of Weird House Cinema. As always, we would
Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there. If you have,
Speaker 2: you know, experiences with this film, thoughts on this film,
Speaker 2: on other Frankenstein pictures, write in and you know we
Speaker 2: will try and include some of those on a future
Speaker 2: installment of Listener Mail, which comes out do you know
Speaker 2: me about once a month these days. Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird Film here on Weird House Cinema. If you want
Speaker 2: to see a complete list of all the movies we've
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Speaker 2: to letterbox dot com. That's L E T T E
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Speaker 2: the films we've covered. Sometimes there's a hint at what's
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Speaker 2: It's got some good links as well, including links to
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Speaker 2: sticker or T shirt with the stuff to Blow your
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Speaker 2: design that drops and that's what you're looking for.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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