Part 2: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
“Your pants are
talking,” said Wally the Bat.
“What...oh.” I
reached into my pocket for the two-way radio.
“Zoc? Zoc? Where
are you?” It was Zombos’ voice. He sounded frantic.
“Yes, what is it?
I'm still…” I looked at Wally. “…I’m still in the attic.”
“It is your—”
A bolt of
lightning flashed close to the mansion, quickly followed by a thunderous boom.
It shook the dormer window open again.
“What’s that? I
didn’t hear you,” I said through the static.
The door to the
attic flew open. A tall, slim silhouette glided ominously through the door
frame and headed toward me.
“It is your
sister!" said Zombos. "I tried to warn you. She is—”
“Iloz! Where the
hell are you?” she loudly asked. "This place is a mess. What the hell is
taking you sooooo long. Ouch!" She tripped in the gloom. "Where the
hell are the lights? I can't see a thing."
Wally the Bat,
startled, squeaked as he rapidly unfurled his wings. “Time to go! It's been a
real pleasure.”
He flew out the
dormer window. I closed it behind him, wishing I could do the same. My sister
Trixie was coming closer.
"You're all wet! Well,
don't stand there like a cow," said Trixie. "Everybody's waiting for
the birthday boy." She took me by the arm and alternately pushed and
pulled me downstairs.
"Here he
is!" announced Trixie as she pushed me into the drawing room. Everyone was
gathered around Chef Machiavelli and his serving cart. He held a large cake
knife poised at the ready. My birthday cake shimmered beneath the flames of
numerous red candles. Ace of Cakes would have been jealous. 1313
Mockingbird Lane was represented right down to the crooked bat weather vane.
"I don't
recall the Grim Reaper appearing in any Munsters
episode," I said, noticing the hooded scion of death standing, scythe
poised at the ready, on the little dilapidated porch.
"The Grim
Reaper is my idea," said Trixie. "I thought you would adore it. Well,
go on. Hurry up and blow out the candles."
"Marilyn
Munster I adore, Grim Reaper not so much. Don't rush me. I'm savoring the
moment. You don't turn fifty-two more than once, you know." I sucked in a
long breadth, took aim at the little plastic Grim Reaper, and blew out the
candles. He held fast. Damn.
"How does it
feel being fifty-two?" asked Zimba, pulling a candle out to lick the
icing.
"A lot like
fifty-one, only older," I replied.
The number fifty-two: it's
the atomic number of tellurium. It's one of the tombstones in Goth: The Game of Horror Trivia. The Mayan Calendar moves through a
complete cycle every fifty-two years. At age fifty-two, Alfred Hitchcock
directed Strangers on a Train. At fifty-two, Boris
Karloff played the Frankenstein monster, in earnest, for the third and last
time in Son of Frankenstein.
"What were
you doing stumbling around up there?" asked Trixie as she helped remove
the candles.
"Zombos
thought he left his--"
"Oh, let us
not start this again," said Zombos. "I clearly remember I did put it—"
"Hush,"
said Zimba. "You'd forget where your own head was if it wasn't bolted
on." She pulled out the last candle. "Let's cut the cake!"
"I can help
with that," volunteered Trixie. Before I could stop her she snapped her
fingers. Instinct took over and I ducked just in time. The cake split open down
the middle, sending the Grim Reaper high into the air along with most of the
cake's hazelnut icing. Zombos was standing closest to the calamity. Zimba
handed him a napkin to wipe the icing off his glasses as he removed the Grim
Reaper, now stuck in his hair.
"Oops. Sorry.
I thought I had that spell down pat." My sister's witchery skills always
did leave much to be desired.
"So. How are those lessons coming along at
the Witch Finders School of Cauldronic Arts? asked Zombos.
"Never mind,
dear," said Zimba. "No harm done." She gave Zombos her always
persuasive stare-of-Medusa and he kept quiet. "Let's get comfortable by
the fire while Rudolpho puts more frosting on the cake."
Only Zimba called
Chef Machiavelli by his first name. Mostly because only she could keep a
straight face while doing so. Rudolpho wheeled the cake back to the kitchen as
we made ourselves comfortable by the fire.
Lightning still
flashed now and then across the large windowpanes, and streams of water ran
pell-mell across the glass. The roaring flame on the grate lulled me with
thoughts of torches held high by beleaguered villagers chasing down the
Frankenstein Monster, again and again...
...Lightning,
dreary, near endless, drizzle, and beleaguered people play their important parts
in all the Frankenstein movies. It took
four years after Frankenstein to make the lonely Monster a reluctant mate
in Bride of Frankenstein, and another four years for Wolf Von
Frankenstein to take on his father's less than stellar work habits in Son
of Frankenstein to restore
the Monster's health.
Boris Karloff
returns as the Monster, but he is a ghost of his former self, playing a lesser
role as foil to Bela Lugosi's
indelible performance as another equally undying monster, Ygor. Finally, the
Monster has found a friend, although a homicidal miscreant one with a penchant
for black humor.
With Basil Rathbone as the effusive Wolf Von Frankenstein and Lionel Atwill as the studious Inspector Krogh playing to
the rafters, Lugosi's Ygor takes center stage this time around. Karloff
realized his beloved creation had become just another fixture in the mad
scientist's lab, like the glassware and electrical apparatus, providing the means
but no longer the method to an end: Frankenstein's Monster, truly given life by
Karloff the Uncanny's emotive portrayal, had been reduced to mere appliances
and neck bolts anyone willing to undergo the grueling makeup process could
wear.
The humanity and
soul-stirrings of Frankenstein's creation were not the only things left out in
subsequent movies. Any dichotomy of nature versus nurture, dialectic regarding
the balance between responsibility and determinism, and all displays of
sympathy gave way to a plot gimmick that begins in Son
of Frankenstein and
continues through Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein:
since the monster's brain is bad, he is bad; replace his brain with a good one
and he becomes good. But first, like a drained rechargeable battery, he must be
powered up to full strength through his bolt-like electrodes before the operation
can take place.
The role of the
Monster was not the only thing that changed.
Son of Frankenstein stands as the bridge spanning the
ambivalent melancholia and mania of James Whale's and Todd Browning's Gothic
night sweats to the slick-slacks, neatly cleaned-and-pressed, B budget trimmed
finery of Universal's front-office controlled monster package for a new decade
of movie-goers versed in the realities and hardships of World War II. But it’s
an impressive bridge, nonetheless, thanks in large part to four consummate
actors playing horror for all it was worth and then some.
The placeless-ness of Universal Studios' Grimm's fairy
tale-like world of monsters and madmen is strongest here. The train that Baron
Wolf Von Frankenstein and his family travel on to the cursed village of his
father—which, oddly enough, is now named after the man who brought so much
misery to it—seems modern enough; until it passes through a particularly dark
and dreary landscape of withered, gnarled trees and the Baron and his family
arrive at their destination. Mel Brooks in Young Frankenstein plays off
this stark change from present day to not-quite-sure-when-or-where for laughs,
but it is this blurring of past and present, an abstract recognizability, which
makes Universal's horror canon so appealing, even though it was probably driven
more by script and budget and global market necessities than artful construct.
In these first few
minutes we've crossed into a distorted, unhealthy landscape and unpleasant
climate, where technological and agrarian artifice mingles with the arcane;
where people dress in both contemporary and quaintly antiquated, but
nondescript, clothing, and where mundane laws of continuity from movie to movie
no longer need apply. Here be villains, heroes, and those caught between the
two, walking through shadows, strutting and fretting their fears, triumphs, and
downfalls on a timeless stage that leers at the face of convention.
Only in this
peculiar environment can art director Jack Otterson's team compose an
architectural chiaroscuro of overgrown, expressionistic buildings more suited
to a Max Fleischer cartoon than a sane town, and fill them with dark cavernous
rooms containing overbearing archways, oddly intersecting angles, and
recklessly sprawling wooden staircases without handrails. Austere furnishings
accentuate the cheerless emptiness of Castle Frankenstein, in contrast to the
extravagant furniture and dressings in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.
Outrageously large commonplace artifacts, like the metal knocker that Inspector
Krogh pounds against the front door to announce his arrival, complement the
surreal dreamscape of this isolated fiefdom.
The villagers meet
the train, huddling under a sea of oversized black umbrellas, in the pouring
rain, waiting to see—not greet—the new face of their fear. They quickly
dissolve away as the Baron stumbles across ill-chosen words of praise for his
father. Receiving a brusque welcome by the town council, his father's chest of
papers is quickly dumped into his hands. Only Inspector Krogh is somewhat
cordial. He realizes the danger Wolf
Von Frankenstein is in: the intoxicating allure of power that comes from
dabbling in forbidden science; a devastating family trait. Driving up to the
estate, a skulking Ygor is briefly seen in a flash of headlights as the motor
car pulls up to the front door; a portent of bad things to come.
In the minds
of many horror aficionados, [Lionel] Atwill's greatest performance came in a
supporting part--as the unforgettable, wooden-armed Inspector Krogh in Son of Frankenstein. Constructed with
equal parts bottled rage and gallows humor, Krogh ranks as the most completely
assembled supporting character of Universal's entire Frankenstein series
(unless you count Bela Lugosi's Ygor, who became the de facto star of Son and Ghost of Frankenstein). Krogh also remains the only hero from
the entire canon of Universal horror classics who's as much fun to watch as the
studio's monsters and mad scientists. (Mark Clark, Smirk, Sneer and Scream: Great Acting in Horror Cinema)
Falling under the
black shadows of Frankenstein's legacy, the surrounding, bog-filled
countryside, accentuated by Hans J. Salter's sumptuous music, reflects more
death than life. Through the mist-covered tombstones tilting left and right—much
like Ygor's teeth—the hanged but still kicking shepard prowls, gleefully
playing a dirge on his horn to annoy the already agitated villagers. These
moonlight spookshow tableaus move to the forefront of Universal's later
efforts.
In Philip J. Riley's SON OF FRANKENSTEIN: Universal Moviescripts Series Classic Horror
Movies Volume 3, it’s mentioned director Rowland V. Lee made sure
to use third-billed Bela Lugosi as much as possible after the studio cut the
former Dracula star's contracted
weekly salary in half by insisting all his scenes be shot in one week. Not in
the original shooting script to begin with, the character of Ygor was hastily
crafted by Lee and writer Willis Cooper as production started, but it was
Lugosi's character-acting skills that fleshed out Ygor with wicked panache. Not
much of the finished movie comes from the initial scripting either. Scenes were
written throughout the shooting schedule, resulting in a somewhat uneven flow
in the action. Watching the glee with which Lugosi, Atwill, and Rathbone chew
on the scenery tends to hide this unevenness, however.
Bela Lugosi, originally signed to play a
police inspector in the movie, had the role of a lifetime improvised on the set—the
broken-necked, snaggletoothed, and demented Ygor. Gone completely was any hint
of Dracula; here, for virtually the only time in Hollywood was Lugosi as the
versatile character actor he really was. Unfortunately, Hollywood paid little
attention, and would never extend Lugosi such an opportunity again. (David J,
Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural
History of Horror)
Ygor, who has been
using the monster to do his revengeful dirty work, insists Wolf Von
Frankenstein revive his only friend, made comatose by a lightning bolt strike
(although it is a lightning bolt the monster seeks to innervate
him in Ghost of Frankenstein).
Frankenstein's son can’t resist the challenge. Soon the villagers are throwing
rocks at the large boxes of equipment heading for the watchtower laboratory.
Wait a minute; wasn’t it blown to
smithereens in the last movie?
Yes, it was
reduced to rubble in Bride of Frankenstein, with the
Monster buried deeply under it.
Well, if you are going to break that
continuity, why not go big time and throw in a boiling pit of sulfur, that’s
been around since the Romans, in the middle of it, and how about a split-level
design for the lab? And put it right next to Castle Frankenstein so the Monster
and Ygor can easily prowl around using secret passages running from the lab to
the castle.
Okay. Done.
The Monster is
revived through Kenneth Strickfaden's quintessential electrical
phantasmagorical high amperage light show of pyrogeysers, crackling and arcing
away. Before Wolf can say "why haven't the sulfur fumes knocked me
out?" the Monster is back on his eighteen-pound asphalter boots and
kicking up mayhem at Ygor's bidding.
After trying to
make friends and woo a lab-ordered bride, Karloff's Monster no longer seeks
understanding; he is fed up with people screaming at the sight of him, shooting
at him, and chasing him with flaming torches. Passing in front of a mirror he
pauses to despise his visage (or perhaps it is the woolly vest he despises, a
holdover from the color tests, which now replaces his iconic jacket?). He hates
what he is and not even Dr. Phil can help him now. Misunderstood and feared,
after being treated as a monster for so long, he now acts accordingly.
The hunt for a new
brain begins with little Shirley Temple cute Peter Frankenstein (Donnie
Dunagan), Wolf's son. The monster takes a liking to Peter--the boy reads fairy
tales to him—and eventually figures out that if he had Peter's brain, perhaps
he would be as sweet and innocent and fun to be with; still awfully big and
creepy, but fun to be with. Of course, Donnie Dunagan's grating Southern drawl
should have given the monster pause for concern.
Corny. And I had a Southern accent! With
this dignified European cast, they had this little kid in there with this loud
voice. They kept saying "Speak up!" because I didn't speak that loud
then...And as you speak up, your accent is always accentuated. So here's this
little curly-haired jerk runnin' around there with this very deep Memphis-Texas
accent (laughs)! They had the courage to do that! (Dunagan interview in Universal's Horrors: The Studios Classic
Movies 1931-1946)
Inspector Krogh
begins to suspect foul things are afoot when town council members start turning
up dead while Ygor brazenly plays his horn in public. Wolf becomes increasingly
high-strung—astounding, really, given Rathbone's already energetic delivery—becoming
more ill-tempered each time Krogh pays a visit. Both Rathbone and Atwill,
classically-trained British actors who could intentionally overact, play off each other,
with Atwill slowly simmering and Rathbone rapidly boiling. As the villagers
once again ready their torches, Krogh's impatience with Wolf's supercilious
attitude reaches fever pitch. In answer to Wolf's defiant question to name one
person who the Monster has killed or hurt, Krogh matter-of-factly recollects
his own horrific experience.
Here’s the scene as
written in the movie script:
Wolf: Do you
honestly know of one criminal act that this poor creature committed? Did you
ever even see him?
Krogh: The most
vivid recollection of my life.
[Solemn instrumental
music]
Krogh: I was but a
child at the time, about the age of your own son. The monster had escaped and
was ravaging the countryside...killing, maiming, terrorizing. One night, he
burst into our house. My father took a gun and fired at him...but the savage
brute sent him crashing to a corner. Then he grabbed me by the arm.
[Thud] Inspector
Krogh slams his fake arm against the wall, a vacant look on his face.
[Tense
instrumental music]
Krogh: One doesn't
easily forget, Herr Baron, an arm torn out by the roots.
[Pause] Wolf is
stunned, humbled.
Wolf: No, I...
Krogh: My lifelong
ambition was to have been a soldier. But for this...
Atwill's little
bits of business as he remembers—he pushes his monocle between the wooden
fingers of his prosthetic arm and casually polishes it with a handkerchief—make
this scene a show-stopper. The sudden thump as he slams his useless wooden arm
against the wall in disgust punctuates the intense revelation. Krogh, in spite
of his loss, still has a sense of gallows humor: during a heated game of darts
with the Baron, he uses his wooden arm as a convenient dart holder. If you’ve
seen Young Frankenstein or Dr.
Strangelove you understand
how influential Atwill's Inspector Krogh performance has been.
The dart game is
interrupted by the disappearance of Peter and a search ensues. Inspector Krogh
finds the secret passage that leads from Peter's room to the laboratory, while
Wolf heads to the laboratory by other means.
When Ygor is
gunned down, Karloff has one last moment of glory with the Monster legacy he
created: realizing his only friend is dead (until the next movie, that is), he
vents his sorrow. With Peter now under foot—the monster's left one—Inspector
Krogh has his wooden arm torn off before
Wolf grabs hold of a chain and swings into the Monster, sending him screaming
into the boiling pit of sulfur.
All's right with
the village now.
Wolf deeds over his
castle and estate to the cheering villagers before leaving the Village of
Frankenstein for good. Perhaps they’re happy because the Monster pays a visit
to the next town over, for a change, in
Ghost of Frankenstein.
It was a truly classic performance--the monster was no monster, but a pathetic, confused creature caught in a situation it couldn't comprehend. Karloff portrayed all this with marvelous pantomime, restricted as he was to a series of grunts and despite the handicaps of his heavy costume. "Whale and I both saw the character as an innocent one," he later said, "and I tried to play it that way. The most heart-rending aspect of the creature's life, for us, was his ultimate desertion by his creator. It was as though man, in his blundering, searching attempts to improve himself, was to find himself deserted by his God" (John Brosnan, The Horror People).
