Now you might be thinking, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hold up there blog boy! Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein are horror movies, not science fiction films."
Well, aesthetically and thematically, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein do look and feel like horror movies. A mad scientist engaged in a danse macabre of grave robbing to fuel the fires of his unwavering quest to challenge God himself to create life where there was only death, the corpse construction who comes to horrible life to spread fear and bring doom to all caught in the grip of his cold deadly hands.
Yeah, looks and feels like a horror movie.
But consider that this horror is not unleashed by the supernatural or dark magic but by advanced science run amuck, it might be argued that Mary Shelly's novel is a work of rudimentary science fiction.
Anyway, I happen to catch this pair of films on TCM a month or so back and wanted to write about them here.
Frankenstein begins with a LOT of exposition. Henry Frankenstein is up to sketchy shit and we know this because we're told so by Henry's fiancée Elizabeth, his friend Victor and Henry's former teacher Dr. Waldman. Henry's all holed up in a Bavarian castle doing something.... Strange? Weird? Peculiar? Well, they talk and talk and talk about this until finally Elizabeth's all "fuck this" and sets out on road trip with Victor and Dr. Waldman in tow.
Henry Frankenstein is NOT happy to see them! He has so much shit to do! There's a stitched together corpse body he needs to shoot electricity into and bring it to life! Yes, LIFE!!!!!!
All he has to do is bolt the brain his henchman Fritz brought him into the creature's skull.
Uh.... yeah, about that. Seems Fritz dropped the good brain he was supposed to get and had to settle for a (let me check my notes here) damaged brain.
Anyway, Henry Frankenstein snatches the very lightning from the storm tossed skies and I'll be damned if the creature doesn't come to life!!!
Henry Frankenstein: "Suckers!!!!"
Frankenstein's Monster is rather childlike in it's demeanor.
Then Fritz shows up with a flaming torch which upsets the creature. Henry and Dr. Waldman interpret the creature's enraged and fearful response as an attack so they chain him up in the dungeon. Where Fritz keep bullying and tormenting the creature with his torch. Until the monster has had enough, breaks his chains and kills the fucker.
Oh no! Henry Frankenstein realizes he's made a grievous error in bringing this monstrosity to life. OK, yeah maybe he should've given the whole "let's shoot electricity through corpse parts and see what happens" a think or two before doing it but c'mon! The real mistake was leaving the creature chained in a dungeon with a torch wielding psychopathic bully.
Henry Frankenstein's new goal in life is just get married to Elizabeth and impregnate her with many, many babies. So he goes off to do that, leaving it to Dr. Waldman to get control of the creature and find it's off switch.
That's a "no go" as Frankenstein's Monster kills Dr. Waldman.
The creature also accidentally kills a little girl he was playing with. OK, the monster really did not want to hurt the girl and seems really distressed about what happens. It doesn't change that this is a particularly hard scene to watch.
And the good folks in the village are in a hissy of a snit of an outrage over this rampaging monster of death and set out with torches and pitchforks to vowing that "we're not coming home, 'till he's dead, good and dead. Kill the beast!"
Whoops! That's from Beauty and the Beast.
And the villagers fan out over the darkened countryside, their torches flickering with a vengeful light as they chant, "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!"
Sorry. That's from "What's Opera, Doc?"
The villagers pursue the monster to a windmill where Henry Frankenstein confronts his creation who in a moment of dawning awareness forgives his creator and gives him a big ol' hug.
Oh hell no. The creature hurls his creator out the top of the windmill. But the villagers put their torches to use and set fire to the windmill which shudders and crashes down on the monster on a paroxysm of hellfire and holocaust killing the creature dead, dead, deader than dead, most definitively dead.
Movie studio exec: "Hey, make us another one of them there Frankenstein picture shows."
So... maybe not so dead?
Which brings us to Bride of Frankenstein from 1935.
The sequel kicks off with a weird prologue. It's a dark and stormy night where Mary Shelly has been regaling her friends with a frightening tale of the creature made from corpses and brought to life by science advanced and arcane. The men listening to this tale are doubtful she can't top what she's relayed so far.
Challenge accepted and our attention turns to the smoldering ruins of the windmill and the monster bursts forth. Killing a few lingering town folks just to kick things off, Frankenstein's Monster is once more on the loose!
The creature befriends a blind hermit and it's here where we see the first glimmers of the intelligence the creature displays in the book. At first he merely parrots key words said to him. Slowly, he learns to speak without repeating what he's just heard.
By the end of the movie he's downright philosophical.
The erstwhile Bride of Bride of Frankenstein factors very little for most of the movie. But the seeds of her beginning are planted with the arrival of Dr. Pretorius, an old mentor of Henry Frankenstein. Henry's doing is level damnedest to sex up Elizabeth on a fairly regular schedule and put behind him this whole corpse reanimating shit he used to be into.
Dr. Pretorious has other plans and with a combination of blackmail, coercion and threats convinces Henry it's time to fire up the old mad scientist laboratory one more time and build another creature.
This time... a woman!
The twist is instead of putting someone's dead brain into the newly constructed body, Pretorius can grow an artificial brain.
The Monster encounters Pretorius and shares a snack with him.
The creature has learned in his wanderings that he is feared by other people because he is ugly and thus he is alone. Pretorius is building a woman who maybe won't care he's ugly.
A bride for the Frankenstein Monster. Ah, so sweet!
Er, no!
The electricity flies and the Bride is alive! ALIVE!! ALIIIIVE!!!!
The Bride takes a good look at Frankenstein's Monster and screeches in horror.
Oh hell! She can tell he's ugly. And the creature is seriously bummed out, noting that "She hate me! Like others". With that , the monster flies into a rage, wrecking the laboratory.
The Monster takes a moment to consider things and tells Henry and Elizabeth: "Go! You live! Go!"
To Pretorius and the Bride, he says: "You stay. We belong dead". The Monster looks at the Bride who hisses at him, then shedding a tear, he pulls a lever to trigger the laboratory's destruction.
It blows up real good!
Get a load of Frankenstein's Monster getting all eloquent and emotional and dramatic.
Elsa Lancaster as the iconic Bride of Frankenstein is in the movie twice; she also plays Mary Shelly in the prologue.
If you think these films are just ripping off Mel Brooks, do remember these two movies came out about 40 years before Young Frankenstein. Brooks used a lot of the same laboratory equipment built for these two original films.
I suppose the big takeaway from Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein is the cautionary lesson about the arrogance of mankind and the perils of science unleashed without regard to the limits of our morality and our understanding of what we have set loose.
But the thing that gets overlooked in that big magilla of a moral quandry is the price we pay for reacting with fear and hate. Consider that Henry Frankenstein's creation does not kill one person until after he's regarded with fear by his creator and treated with contempt and cruelty.
Yes, it may be a given that Dr. Frankenstein is wrong to call down the lightning to give life to the dead. But his real sin is his failure to treat that life he created with compassion.
Perhaps if the doctor fails his creature thusly, perhaps we can wonder how God regards his children of this world.
Whew! Got heavy there. Sorry 'bout that.
Starting in February, Cinema Sunday will turn its focus to some movies with the intent to affect social change.
Next week, Gregory Peck takes on anti-semitism. For the next Cinema Sunday, we take a look at Gentleman's Agreement.
No comments:
Post a Comment