"For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it." "• Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, ‘Carmilla’
The Light in the Window … The Lock on the Door … The Sounds in the Night! A Possession is Taking Place!
A while ago I double featured Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) and The Night God Screamed (1971). I made it clear that I felt Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was the superior film but somehow they made good companion pieces. And since I’m a child of the 70s, those days of the double bill, musty theaters, milk duds, and groovy posters, I’ve decided to pair these particular films. And once again, I’ll emphasize now that I believe Lemorato be by far not only the superior film but one of the MOST uniquely beautiful horror/fantasy films I’ve ever seen.
Because the film hit a very bumpy road on its release, it wound up being passed around like an orphan from one distributor to another. Thus is the reason for several titles over the years. It has been called The Legendary Curse of Lemora and Lemora, Lady Dracula, the latter hoping to ride the wave of low-budget vampire films that have now also attained cult status such as Bob Kelljan’s authentically potent Count Yorga Vampire 1970 starring Robert Quarry, and the equally stylish Blacula 1972 and of course the Gothic vampire pageantry of Hammer Studios churning out stylish costume melodramas with a lesbian vampire sub-text like The Vampire Lovers 1970 and Lust For a Vampire 1971, Stephanie Rothman’s The Velvet Vampire 1971, and Vicente Aranda’s The Blood Spattered Bride 1972. The liner notes written by Richard Harland Smith of Video Watchdog & Chris Poggiali of Fangoria and Shock Cinema interviewed Richard Blackburn and Byrd Holland and point out that Blackburn’s film is “less exploitative” yet “not unerotic” while using the “fragility of innocence.”
From the Journal of Horror and Erotic Cinema-Edited Andy Black
Bev Zalock’s- Girl Power From The Crypt
“In a sense, horror more than any of the other exploitation genres, with its monsters of the imagination, feeds fantasy and configures fear in a very direct way. With its linking of sex and death, horror taps into the unconscious and is associated with surrealism and the fantastic in both literature and cinema. Desire becomes the primary mise-en-scene within the realm of the supernatural and, as David Pirie observes in his excellent book The Vampire Cinema’ there is a strong cultural connection between our perception of sex and the supernatural. Pirie cites an article by Susan Sontag written in 1967 entitled “The Pornographic Imagination” in which she locates the fantastical realm of the human imagination as the site in which the two are classically connected.” – from Susan Sontag’s piece–Styles of Radical Will 1966
Celeste Yarnall is the dark lady vampire in Stephanie Rothman’s -The Velvet Vampire-co-starring Sherriy Miles.
In addition to these lesbian vampire narratives, you have Jess Franco’sVampyros Lesbos 1970 and auteur Jean Rollin’s distinctive style who like Hammer connected suggestions of the ‘pornographic imagination’ that Susan Sontag describes. Films that use the spectrum of surrealist imagery from the Gothic to the gory. What they share is a ferocious appetite for power and the desire for sexual freedom.
Directed and written by Richard Blackburn (Eating Raoul 1982 with cult idol Mary Woronov and co-written with director Paul Bartel) fresh out of UCLA film school, with his pal Robert Fern. Blackburn has said in interviews that there are things he would have done differently with a better budget and more time. He shot Lemora in a month. I think the crudely macabre tonality of Lemora is what makes films like these from the good old ’70s oneiric, quintessential, haunting, and flawless as is.
There is a discrepancy as to whether the running time of the film is either 85 minutes or 113 minutes (uncut). The remastered DVD through Synapse Films took the original 35mm negatives and brought this film back to its ‘never before seen clarity.’ The prints were presumed lost for over 30 years.
The hauntingly macabre and somber music is by Dan Neufeld who crafted electronica and claviers and what I think might be a Melatron to evoke the eerie essence of the story is absolutely brilliant. With crying strings that fortify distorted wails and moans. With music box tinkling, poignant yet eerie flutes, and piano, muted horns-noises that shimmer and reverberate on cue with the dialogue or surreal set piece- I wish Dan Neufeld had done more movie scores. The sound design, the dysmorphic groans-unearthly wails- they’re the sounds you’d imagine the ‘old ones’ make in a Lovecraftian tale. Even the crickets and chorus frogs of the swamp sound metamorphosized into frightening aberrations.
Directed by Robert Allen Schnitzer and written by Anthony Mahon, Schnitzer, and Louis Pastore? Okay… While I’ve never seen anything else by Schnitzer, this moody, surreal, haunting, and often frenetically disturbing reverie has remained with me all these years. Some people think it’s a weak film, not even a horror movie. I’m not saying it’s a masterpiece, but I think it’s a genre gem!
What’s really strange about this hidden terror film is cinematographer/director Victor Milt ( Run Stinky Run, Sex Wish) has done some weird really obscure stuff after working on The Premonition and director-writer Schnitzer hasn’t done anything I can talk about here either. So how did this remarkably creepy film become what it is??? I wish I knew the answer, but there have been memorable films created by one-time feature film directors like Herk Harvey who usually did shorts or documentaries that envision the gorgeous dreamlike Carnival of Souls 1962. At least writer-actor Richard Blackburn did Eating Raoul in 1982 after his unbelievable Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural 1973. (Coming to the Last Drive In soon!)
Great character actor Jeff Corey plays the investigating Police Det. Lt. Mark Denver. There’s even a gypsy woman, played by Wilmuth Cooper.Â
Jeff Corey plays the investigating Police Det. Lt. Mark Denver.
I saw The Premonition when it first arrived in theaters in 1976. It frightened the bejesus out of me then, with its nightmarish segments in particular Jude’s (Richard Lynch) and Andrea’s (Ellen Barber) uncontrollable fits of rage. Their joint psychosis was a very powerful elixir as part of the carnival set piece. Their relationship alone could have made for an interesting story of madness, obsession, and self-destruction.
This film was my introduction to the interesting actor that is, Richard Lynch. The film has stayed with me. I’ve read other people’s reviews who think the script is ridiculous, muddled and the pacing is choppy. Still, it has a haunting quality to it, especially Lynch and Ellen Barber’s performances. The music by Henry Mollicone is fantastical for the vibe of the film and fascinates me, now I have to see his musical performance in the fascinating documentary The Face on the Barroom Floor 2013.
The lens has a ghostly haze over it. with a low drab subdued tonality. The music brings you in like a soft wailing of an otherworldly siren. An eerie Glossolalia, the fluid vocalizing of the tormented Andrea. Reminding me of the amazing Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance.
The institutional green bus pulls over and Andrea grips herself looking toward something. The clear pale blue sky hovering over Andrea feels chilly. She is beautiful yet strange, walking slowly toward the carnival grounds. A flutter of birds let out into the air, the vocalizing continues and Ferris Wheel comes into focus with another stomach-turning carnival ride. These daydreaming machines add color to the midway landscape. It is desolate here.
It somewhat creates a colorful version of Carnival of Souls the haunting set pieces of desolation, and otherness that play on our deepest thoughts. The impressions effervesce in fairgrounds and we construct fantasies.
Dulcimer and glistening piano bring forth Jude, a cigarette hanging out of his oddly angular face and lion-like blonde mane, he’s almost sexy ugly. The film is still lensed in cold aqua greens and pale blue. He steps out of his trailer, we see he’s wearing white ballet slippers like a mime. The piano rolls magnificently. Henry Mollicone is a virtuoso. With electronic music by Pril Smiley.
Jude steps out onto the pavement, wearing suspenders he begins a series of theatrical movements. Moving dramatically with his scarf.
Jude expresses with his body more fervently as if he hears the grand piano playing. He reaches up to the blue sky so vivid so crystalline blue. As Jude, it is a lonely dance for a sad solitary clown. As he bends downward he sees Andrea standing there. It is a portent, life is about to be turned truly upside down.
The story is a simple and unreserved one, gripping and nightmarish for all the players and us who witness a small girl being hunted psychically by her dangerously unstable biological mother who is traveling with a carnival.
The scene cuts to them sitting in his trailer she’s looking at photographs through a spyglass. He says “Look at those eyes, Andrea, and the mouth… see that. I saw her yesterday when I took the photograph. This time I’m positive I know it’s her” “You sure her name is Janie” “Yeah I’m sure, here look”He flips the photo over and the name and age are on the back.“Janie Bennett the age is right… it all figures… it’s gotta be her” Andrea asks, “Where does she live?” Jude tells her, ” Dover is about 5 miles from here.”
Jude begins to put on his heavy white grease paint. Andrea goes to the board and touches the photo of Janie…
She turns to him…Â ” I thought you’d forgotten about me Jude” ” I told you I’d call you as soon as I found something didn’t I?” “Jude what if it’s not her, what if it’s like all the other times… what if we come out with nothing what then?” Then we wait and we keep on waiting until we find her”
When Andrea shows up at Janie’s school, the music becomes a flutter of wings with flute as the children run free from their inside captivity. Andrea fingers the metal holes in the fence moving slowly, waiting for her little girl to appear. Finally, Janie is standing before her she calls to her, then Janie runs to her adoptive mother Sherrie who is waiting in the car.
Back in Jude’s trailer-Jude says, “We were lucky it couldn’t of taken years to find her” “It did take years… five stinkin’ years in that rotten pit” Jude answers, “Oh it wasn’t all that bad, I mean we wouldn’t have met otherwise.”Â
Andrea’s horrible beer-drinking tv junkie landlady in Curlers.
The use of ‘red’ in this movie is distinct. It is the characteristic color that symbolizes Andrea’s passion, madness, and self-destruction. Red is Andrea’s COLOR… down to her lipstick.
The window impresses me as a Mark Rothko painting. The color red is very impressionistic and so vital to the film’s narrative.
Jude tells Andrea that he has found a house. A small house in the woods, a nice place to settle down with the kid.
Andrea glows and a weird smile emerges at first “Settling down!” Then clenching her teeth as she drags the comb through wet raven tresses. “What are you talking about settling down for… what are you talking about. Sometimes I just don’t understand you Jude. Settling down for what…?this comes first! “
But Jude explains that they can hide out in that house til things blow over. She walks away towel drying her hair.
He remains on the topic “Nobody’s lived there for years. they’ll never find us”
Jude lays on the bed smoking a cigarette while Andrea in a red bathrobe, plays a beautiful piece of music on the piano.
The scene switches to Miles talking to Dr Kingsly his associate about parapsychology as she instructs a small class.
“The Clairvoyant reality is totally rejected by science and finds expression only in our art, music religion.”
At the same time, the film is juxtaposing images of Andrea having a primordial psychic meltdown. Not even a maternal scream, just a core anaphylactic roar from deep within.
Sherrie begins to see visions of a volatile confrontation between Jude and Andrea. On the spectral plane, it comes across in distorted yowls and negative film images. It’s quite a frightening effect. I remember being terrified by these scenes in the darkness of the theater. Like little shock treatments to a burgeoning MonsterGirl mind…
For people who think there isn’t enough explanation to the narrative Sherrie’s friend hints at the idea when spending the night telling Sherrie that she had heard of two minors who had been trapped for several days, they began sharing the same hallucinations. In this way, her question about Sherry’s disturbing visions somehow being linked to Janie’s bad dreams is true.
A psychic storm is brewing from the rage and unrequited desires of both Jude and Andrea. Janie and Sherrie naturally begin to form a single wavelength that tunes into this frequency. At least this is the premise of the film. The one link is Janie the child… and who will be the conquering mother?
While Miles is not working late with the attractive Professor Kingsly, he’s eating cotton candy and riding the merry-go-round with her.. hhm… at the carnival-definitely research related… as she suddenly looks down at Mile’s wedding band her happy expression fades away.
Meanwhile, Andrea and Jude pull up in that fabulous green pickup. The crickets and chorus frogs are singing their night song. Jude shuts the motor off. In her red dress, nails, and oz slippers like the Witch of the West Andrea creeps or slithers into the house to take Janie.
the frame appears to give an almost fun house effect with the striped wallpaper that disorients us.Andrea’s presence on the stairs casts a dark menacing shadow along the wall, reminiscent of Nosferatu.
The use of electronic sounds is excellent.
Andrea’s casting darkness, shadowing the wall is reminiscent of Nosferatu. Andrea is almost as icy as a dead thing herself… wanting to lure the child back, it looks and feels vampiric. Yet this is Janie’s biological mother, which creates some ambivalence for me as she deserves to have at least guided contact with her daughter, otherwise, why let her out of the mental hospital?
It creates the effect of psychic static the use of sound used whenever the camera focuses on Andrea’s movements.
And the framing of Andrea looking back into the den while Sherri sleeps utilizes the striped walls as they also become as distorted as a fun house room. Very disorienting.
The last remnant of shadow left from Andrea creeping up the steps is eerie as Sherri sleeps as if under a spell. Once again… a notion of Nosferatu. Andrea even has a dark complexion that could even be considered Eastern European gypsy, like Bela Lugosi.
The use of electronic static, noise represents Andrea’s state of mind at the moment. The use of low lighting and color is well-placed and creates a surreal atmosphere of worlds colliding.
The electronic noises that represent Andrea’s madness and presence are like a metallic insect. As if she hisses and slithers into Janie’s room. Everything is backlit. Andrea’s color is hot reds, and Janie’s is a cool blue.
Sherrie wakes up to the sound of the rocking chair in Janie’s room.
Nobody can tell me that this film isn’t an eerie, haunting little story, that stays with you… If it doesn’t deliver on the kinds of gruesome gory chills you’d expect from a 70s horror story then you’re watching the wrong film. But this film is highly underrated and often shot down by critics who feel it falls short. Oh well… The rest of us who know its strength will continue to advocate for it…Back to the film….-MonsterGirl ♥
Andrea runs down the stairs taking one of Janie’s dolls after fighting with Sherrie who is clinging to Janie on the bed. Andrea screams up to Sherrie… “She is Mine… she will always be mine-!!!!!!” Her voice is strained, powerful, almost magnetic.
Back at Jude’s little house in the woods, Andrea is holding Janie’s doll as if it were her.
“You are such a pretty baby,” Andrea says to the doll. Jude staring out the bleak window of the little house looks on with a worried stare. He rips the head off the doll as it squeaks Andrea screams and cries. Jude has become more unhinged himself. It has been brewing in him since the beginning. But it is not working out the way he had envisioned. He can’t control Andrea, and she obviously doesn’t care for him the same way. Two mentally ill people fighting over their own neurosis.
“What’d you do to my baby?”“Your baby, your baby is back in the goddam house with its mother.”
“What’s it to you? You’re not her father!! You are nobody’s father. And you’re never gonna be anyone’s father… You aren’t even a goddam MAN!!!!
Andrea destroys Jude’s manhood as if she took a knife and thrust it in.
Jude loses it… we hear screams.
At the same time…Sherrie gets cold in the bathroom, and the mirror freezes over. She cannot see herself. It’s a supernatural event that begins to connect the events surrounding the players involved.
Jeff Corey the investigating cop shows up at Janie’s biological father’s house to ask some questions about Andrea.
I’ve noticed the narrative uses a lot of frames where people are either looking out windows or doors or standing in the doorframe looking in. It’s that tout to parapsychologies’ introspective plane of existence…the within powers that surround all of us on a personal level. The character look inward, we’re watching them look inward and we wind up looking inward with them…
Danielle Briseboismakes her debut playing Janie Bennett the wee one who is being visited by her psychic/psychotic mother through horrifying visions like a vampiric wraith filtering through the ether reaching outward to contact her little girl who was given away to foster parents while she was in the mental ward. But Janie is terrified and wants to remain with her foster parents Prof. Miles and Sherri Bennett played bySharon Farrell  (Larry Cohen’sIt’s Alive 1974) and Edward Bell. Farrell is always good at playing adorable cheap, neurotic, and a little over the edge. Brisebois was still really cute at this stage before she became Archie Bunker’s annoying niece until she grew up into a sexy rock singer.
I have to admit that seeing this film in the theater when I was an impressionable teenager really freaked me out a bit. The images were quite startling, and in retrospect, anything Carnival-related is wonderfully creepy and wonderfully eerie, as it attains its own self-contained world. The vision of the crazy Andrea Fletcher is quite stunning as well, so as far as the pacing being muddled or uninteresting, I suppose those people who hated this film were looking for more 70s bloody, axes, psycho-sexual mind games, animals attacking or devil children. This story is a bit of a childlike nightmare amidst, Folie à deux insanity, loss, possession, motherhood, and longing. The narrative slips between a mordant sense of all these themes, as it expands beyond the literal world and works on our unconscious participation in moral ideals of motherhood, rights, and the boundaries that separate us all by a psychic thread.
Andrea (Ellen Barber who plays Mickey Roarke’s secretary in Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986) comes to Janie’s school to try and grab her, but Janie’s new mommy Sherri has a premonition and manages to arrive just in time to save Janie. Andrea lives with her wildly menacing boyfriend, a clown named Jude. Yikes, as if Lynch wasn’t frightening on a good day, wearing white face paint and painted on tears… it still gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Andrea is obsessed with getting Janie back, and Jude will do anything for his nutty girlfriend. The pair manage to kidnap Janie leaving the Bennetts in a panic who then seek out the help of a parapsychologist Dr. Jeena Kingsly (Chitra Neogy) a colleague of Miles. They hope that she can decipher Sherrie’s terrifying visions, as she also has a psychic link to Janie she must try and track her down before the unstable Andrea loses it completely and harms her daughter.
The story makes it hard for us to sympathize with Andrea as a protagonist longing to be reunited with her daughter because she herself is such a threatening figure. She’s been recently released from an institution and is still emotionally volatile. She met Jude while she was hospitalized. Jude keeps a watchful eye out for Janie, working for the carnival he’s in the position to see a lot of children pass through. One day he spots Andrea’s daughter with Sherri.
He tells Andrea that he’s seen Janie which is the catalyst for a wave of psychic visions that beset Sherri. Dr. Kingsly tries to guide Sherri to use her powers of ESP to find Janie and connect with her to track her down and bring her back.
Jeff Corey is on the scene talking to the landlady and helping to locate the kidnapped Janie.
Filmed in Mississippi the look has a haunting rustic and starkly Gothic feel to it. There’s an untouchable sense of a dreamy, trance-like aura that surrounds the frames. It disconnects us from all things being easily explained, but dreams are like that and the atmosphere of the eerie and urgent narrative compensates for the lack of cohesive and sensible plot design.
In the 70s not all things were explained coherently. Sometimes the figures floated upon landscapes that were nightmarish and made no sense. As in Let’s Scare Jessica to Death 1971, and yet it was this ambiguity that created the mystique, the mystery, and the mood.
What makes a story a thing that is haunting are visions not clearly defined, nor affirmations said aloud. The outstanding theme that jolts you into a sense of agony is the pull between two mothers, one who is emotionally destructive yearning for her child, and the other, desperately trying to protect the child she believes is hers now.
Caught in between is Janie who can only feel the thrust of possession surrounding her, the vivid nightmares and fears of innocence and unknown. Also tangled in the web of possession is Jude who is merely being used as a means to procure Janie for Andrea. His frustration turns outward like the rage of a tornado. Lynch’s face reveals his turbulence well. Andrea taunts him until he is so wounded that he keeps the child even when he doesn’t have to. If I say more I will give away part of the story…
There are some truly shocking moments-The painting crying blood when Dr. Kingsly tells Sherri just to let it flow when trying to teach her to hone in on her psychic insights. -Andrea wearing a ruby red evening gown soaked in blood appears in Janie’s bedroom with a rocking chair (turtle lovers look away) it is extremely eerie and somber. Her hands seem like talons, once again The Monstrous Feminine arrives on cue.
There are a few visions or apparitions of Andrea drenched in blood and the recurring forming of ice on those iconographic mirrors. Mirrors, the pathway to see ourselves is clouded by ice in order to obscure Sherri’s view into the psychic world.
The climax is a mesmerizing sequence, one that will either have you laughing and dismissing this film completely as others have done, or it will stay with you as it has with me, a beautiful little nightmare.
This is your EverLovin’ Joey sayin’ I have a premonition you’ll be back to The Last Drive In!
The poster for The Baby alone is disturbing in it’s ability to create an instant queasy feeling and queer flutter that hits your senses due to the inappropriate visual environment. A crib with a large pair of legs hanging over the edge. The hands holding an axe and a sexualized young female holding a teddy bear. So let’s just get these words out of the way for starters…
Touching on so many taboos and cultural deviance is director Ted Post’s shocker The Baby 1973. starring the mighty Ruth Roman.
Look at that sensual face… what a beauty Ruth RomanStill of Ruth Roman and Robert Walker in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951)
Day of the Animals 1977, Look in Any Window 1961, Bitter Victory 1957, Strangers on a Train noir thriller Down Three Dark Streets 1954, The Window 1949, various television performances The Naked City’s ‘The Human Trap’ Climax!, Dr. Kildare, The Outer Limits, Burke’s Law, The Name of the Game, I Spy, Marcus Welby M.D, Mannix, Ironside, Gunsmoke, The Sixth Sense, Mod Squad and more!
And I’ve got to mention that Anjanette Comer is an excellent rival to play the ‘outsider’ antagonist against Ruth Roman in this battle of wills.
Anjanette Comer stars in the ABC movie of the week’s Women-in-Peril feature film FIVE DESPERATE WOMEN 1971…
Directed byTed Postwho gave us Beneath the Planet of the Apes 1970, perhaps my favorite of the ‘ape’ films after the original. Saw each of the series during their theatrical release. Sadly Ted Post passed away just this past August 2013.
James Franciscus in Ted Post’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes 1970 Clint Eastwood & Ted Post collaborating on the set of Magnum Force
He directed television for years beginning in the 50s. I love the TV movie also starring Beneath the Planet of the Apes blond hunk James Franciscus… who co-starred with the fabulous Lee Grant in Night Slaves (1970) and Dr. Cook’s Garden 1971 with a murderous Bing Crosby. And hey while I”m touting made-for-TV movies how bout Five Desperate Women1971 where he most likely met Anjanette Comer? He’s also responsible for several episodes of Rod Serling’sThe Twilight Zone (1959-1964), including “Mr. Garrity and the Graves” and “The Fear.”  Post also directed two episodes of the Boris Karloff horror anthology show you know I truly love, Thriller (1961-1962), The Specialists & Papa Benjamin. And geez Columbo ’75-’76, A Matter of Honor and A Case of Immunity. Most people probably cite him for Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry vehicle Magnum Force 1973 or Good Guys Wear Black 1978. Ted Post knows how to put together a thriller!
The Baby’s screenplay was penned by Abe Polsky (The Rebel Rousers 1970, The Gay Deceivers 1969)According to IMDb trivia, it took almost a year for Polsky to convince Post to direct the film because Post found the topic too ‘dark.’ While in retrospect the film must have ruffled many feathers, and the themes are truly disturbing, there isn’t anything in there that hasn’t been done in a contemporary film in some way, and ideas that force us to think are a good thing. Especially when it’s wearing 70s clothes, and showcasing groovy genre character actors.
The seventies were rife with psycho-sexual theatre that showcased really uncomfortable themes, but somehow managed to create an atmosphere of low-budget art. Consider this, haven’t you seen episodes of Law & Order SVU, Criminal Minds, & CSI where some of the most brutal acts of inhumanity and grotesque forms of torture and abuse are highlighted in graphic detail? In the 70s it was more nuanced, bathed in muted lighting gels amidst experimental cinematic framing and absolutely moving musical scores.
So on one level refer to the litany of words above and assign your favorite one to The Baby, yet on another level, let’s look at this film and ‘react’ to it and recognize its power.
Baby’s photograph is lensed in an ‘anthropological’ way as it shows him in captivity-the bars of his crib symbolically like the bars of a prison
From Dreams of Darkness-Fantasy and the films of Val Lewton by J.P. Telotte: “{The audience} will populate the darkness with more horrors than all the horror writers in Hollywood could think of… if you make the screen dark enough, the mind’s eye will read anything into it you want. We’re great ones for dark patches.” –Val Lewton
Jane Randolph as Alice Moore in Val Lewton’s Cat People 1942 directed by Jacques Tourneur.A scene from Bedlam (1946) directed by Mark Robson.
During the 1940s Val Lewton and his ‘Lewton Unit’ used the essential vision of fantastic darkness to recreate a very unique style of horror/fantasy genre, one which challenged Hollywood’s notion of the tangible monsters Universal studios had been manufacturing. Lewton, while working at RKO Studios, produced an exquisite, remarkable and limited collection of films that came face to face with a ‘nightworld.’ Lewton used our most deepest darkest psychological and innate fears that dwell within the lattice of shadows of our dreams and secret wish-fulfillment.
“Our formula is simple. A love story, three scenes of suggested horror and one of actual violence. Fade out” -Val Lewton
Lewton worked at MGM between 1926 and 1932 and then served eight years under David Selznick. He had published nine novels and a number of short stories. In addition he produced regular radio show versions of MGM films. He also had ties in the industry as his aunt was the very influential silent actress Alla Nazimova.
the great stage and silent screen actress Alla Nazimova-Val Lewton’s very influential aunt…
But Lewton had left his mark with Selznick and in 1940 rival company RKO was interested in hiring him..It was actually Selznick who negotiated Lewton’s contract.
“My task is to initiate a programme of horror pictures to be made at the comparatively low cost of 125,000 each. Which should compete successfully with Universal horror films. Which cost anywhere from 300,000 to a million dollars. I feel I can do this quite easily and the Universal people spend a lot of money on their horror product. But not much on brains or imagination.”-Val Lewton
Lewton put together a team of collaborators with whom he would work closely. He chose Mark Robson to edit. Robert Wise and Lewton worked together on Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. DeWitt Bodeen had worked with him during his time with David O’ Selznick was to write the first screenplay for Cat People. His old friend Jacques Tourneur whom he became friends with while working on A Tale of Two Cities. was brought on board to direct. He chose Nicholas Musuraca as his director of photography and Roy Webb to compose the musical scores. They all worked on countless RKO films. It was Lewton’s intention to create quality pictures though he was constrained by a low budget. Jacques Tourneur had said that Lewton was an idealist who had his head up in the clouds and would come up with impossible ideas. However for Tourneur, his feet were planted firmly on the ground, yet somehow they complemented each other perfectly, Tourneur claims it was a very happy time in his life, and that Lewton’s gift to him was the filmic poetry that he was able to carry with him forever.
Jacques Tourneur is perhaps one of my favorite directors, with his use of shadow and all together dreamy lens of the world, he’s responsible for one of THE best classic horror films Curse of the Demon & film noir tour de force Out of the Past.
Jacques Tourneur directs Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past 1947.Jacques Tourneur’s moody horror with Niall MacGinnis and cat Curse of the Demon 1957.Part of the Lewton Unit- image from the documentary The Man in the Shadows from top left Roy Webb composer, Val Lewton, Nicholas Musuraca Cinematographer, Mark Robson editing/directing, DeWitt Bodeen writing, and Robert Wise-director.
“Horror is created in the mind of the spectator. It’s necessary to suggest things. In all my films you never saw what caused the horror. I saw people screaming in the theater when there was a young girl in a swimming pool, but you never saw the black leopard. The lights blaze up at the end. And there’s Simone Simon. Something has definitely happened. -Jacques Tourneur
Jacques Tourneur looking over the film sketches.Jacques Tourneur on location for Berlin Express 1948.
“Lewton gave us something quite different than what’s known as Hollywood craftsmanship you can say that he presented us with a parallel world in which everything feels both real and a little unreal-familiar but strange. The characters and the viewer slip into a mysterious, troubling gray zone. Where real life and dream life come face to face. And where beauty and destruction merge. Lewton and Tourneur really created a new kind of cinematic beauty”-from The Man in the Shadows Val Lewton documentary
the golden boy from Bedlam
Learning from his last employer Selznick he made sure to supervise absolutely every aspect of the film’s production, from casting, set design, costumes, direction, and editing. He even rewrote every script himself without taking credit or under a pseudonym. In this way he developed his own visual style of storytelling, having prepared each detail before shooting.
“My feelings are generated, however by more than my gratitude for that first opportunity. They come from the warm and highly stimulating creative experience I had working with Val. He taught me so much about directing and filmmaking in general…Val Lewton was one of that fairly rare species, a truly creative producer. As such, he was able to achieve an outstanding reputation for the high quality, unusual and interesting “B” pictures he produced at RKO Studios starting in the early 1940s”Robert Wise, March 1994
Robert Wise behind the cameraRobert Wise, Mark Robson & Val Lewton
“I remember him staying up until all hours of the night working on screenplays. He enjoyed having his hand in the writing. I used to that that he went out of his way to pick inept writers so that he’d have to redo their work. He used to write on a Royal typewriter;he used only two fingers but he was very fast. He’d talk out the different parts as he wrote them and, since my bed was just on the other side of the wall, I’d fall asleep listening.”–Nina Lewton Druckman from the Reality of Terror by Joel Siegel
Robert Wise was part of the Lewton Unit, one of my favorite directors who would go on to direct some of the most outstanding films in a variety of genres, from musicals like West Side Story 1961, and Sound of Music 1965, to Lewton’sCurse of The Cat People 1944 and The Body Snatcher 1945, noir masterpieces, Born To Kill 1947,The Set Up 1949 and The House of Telegraph Hill 1950, I Want to Live! 1958, Odds Against Tomorrow 1959, to sci-fi and Gothic ghost story masterpieces Day the Earth Stood Still 1951, The Haunting 1963, and The Andromeda Strain 1971.
Michael Rennie and Gort in Robert Wise’s Sci-Fi masterpiece The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)Robert Wise’s boxing noir The Set-Up 1949
Lewton drove himself very hard trying to achieve something beautiful and of high quality. He and his team were given a very small budget, a cast of veritable unknowns, and evocative titles that were sensationalist and lurid in nature and did not truly represent an accurate account of the narrative. There were no gruesome fiends nor even evidence of malevolent forces at work in his ordinary everyday environments. Yet RKO’s studio head Charles Koerner dictated such titles as Cat People 1942, Curse of the Cat People 1944, Bedlam 1946, Isle of the Dead 1946, The Body Snatcher 1945, I Walked With A Zombie, The Ghost Ship, and The Leopard Man in 1943 and The Seventh Victim.
“If you want to get out now, Lewton told Bodeen, I won’t hold it against you.”
Metropolis 1927Earth vs the Flying Saucers 1956The Uninvited 1944Bedlam 1946The Mad Monster 1942Black Sunday 1960The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920Tales from the Crypt 1972The Wolf Man 1941Night Monster 1942 Island of Lost Souls 1932Carnival of Souls 1962 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man 1943 The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1939 London After Midnight 1927 Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein 1948West of Zanzibar 1928The Invisible Man1933Daleks’ Invasion Earth -2150 A.D. (1966) The Man from Planet X (1951) The Bride of Frankenstein 1935The Unknown 1927The Amityville Horror 1979The Man They Could Not Hang 1939Corridors of Blood 1958The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920 The Ape Man 1943Chandu the Magician 1932The Time of Their Lives 1946 The Ghost of Frankenstein 1942The Invisible Man 1933The Raven 1935Dracula’s Daughter 1936 Bloody Mama 1970 Son of Frankenstein 1939 White Zombie 1932 The Cat and the Canary 1927 Dr. Renault’s Secret 1942 Black Sunday 1960Kill Baby Kill 1966 The Abominable Dr. Phibes 1971 Dracula 1931 Dragonwyck 1946 House of Wax 1953 The Raven 1963 Dracula’s Daughter 1936The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1939 the Bride of Frankenstein 1935 Beauty and the Beast 1946 The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957 Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956 Tarantula 1955 Village of the Damned 1960 Cat and the Canary 1927
Silent Night, Bloody Night 1972Freaks 1932 West of ZanzibarHe Who Gets Slapped 1924 Family Plot 1976Â (rip Karen Black) Curse of the Demon 1957 Devil Girl From Mars 1954 Dr Cyclops 1940 Double Door 1934 Rosemary’s Baby 1968Pit and the Pendulum 1961 Experiment in Terror 1962 Eyes Without a Face 1960 Curse of the Demon 1957 The Giant Behemoth 1959 The Bride of Frankenstein 1935 The Ghost of Frankenstein 1942 The Haunted Palace 1963 Curse of the Demon 1957 He Who Gets Slapped 1924 Blackmail 1929 House on Haunted Hill 1959 House of Frankenstein 1944 The Haunting 1963 Night of the Living Dead 1968 Island of Lost Souls 1932MetroÌpolis 1927 It Came From Beneath the Sea 1955 The Crawling Eye 1958 It Came from Outer Space 1953 It Came from Outer Space 1953Lifeboat 1944 Man Made Monster 1941 The Monster 1925 Faust 1926 Curse of the Demon 1957 Night Monster 1942 The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951 The Thing from Another World 1951 The Devil Commands 1941 The Stepford Wives 1975The Screaming Skull 1958 the Bride of Frankenstein 1935 The Creature from the Black Lagoon 1954 The Black Cat 1934 The Black Cat 1934 The Fly 1958 The Ghost Ship 1943 The Invisible Ray 1936 The Leopard Man 1943 Freaks 1932The Man They Could Not Hang 1939 The Man They Could Not Hang 1939 The Mummy 1932 Psycho 1960 The Thing from Another World 1951 The Mummy’s’ Ghost 1944 The Undying Monster 1942 Jane Eyre 1943The Woman Who Came Back 1945 the Amazing Colossal Man 1957 The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957 The Seventh Seal 1957 The Haunting 1963 The Devil CommandsThe Thing From Another World 1951 The Undying Monster 1942 The Unholy 3 (1925) Vampyr 1932 I Walked with a Zombie 1943The Exorcist 1973 Carnival of Souls 1962White Zombie 1932 Island of Lost Souls 1932 Munster, Go Home! 1966
Special appreciation for several of the fabulous images courtesy of Dr. Macros High Quality photos!
HAVE A VERY SAFE & HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM YOUR EVERLOVIN’ MONSTERGIRL!!!!!!
You could say that Evelyn Ankers is still the reigning queen of classical 1940s horror fare turned out by studios like RKO, Universal, and Monogram. But there was a host of femme scream tales that populated the silver screen with their unique beauty, quirky style, and/or set of lungs ready to wail, faint, or generally add some great tone and tinge to the eerie atmosphere whenever the mad scientist or monster was afoot. Some were even monstrous themselves…
For this upcoming Halloween, I thought I’d show just a little love to those fabulous ladies who forged a little niche for themselves as the earliest scream queens & screen icons.
I’m including Elsa Lanchester because any time I can talk about this deliriously delightful actress I’m gonna do it. Now I know she was the screaming hissing undead bride in the 30s but consider this… in the 40s she co-starred in two seminal thrillers that bordered on shear horror as Mrs. Oates in The Spiral Staircase1945 and a favorite of mine as one of Ida Lupino’s batty sisters Emily Creed in Ladies in Retirement 1941
I plan on venturing back to the pre-code thirties soon, so I’ll talk about The Bride of Frankenstein, as well as Gloria Holden (Dracula’s Daughter, Frances Dade (Dracula) and Kathleen Burke (Island of Lost Souls) Gloria Stuart and Fay Wray and so many more wonderful actresses of that golden era…
Elsa Lanchester as Mrs.Oates in director Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase 1945The Sister Creed in Ladies in Retirement 1941 starring Elsa Lanchester, Ida Lupino, and the wonderful Edith Barrett (right)
the playfully pretty Anne Nagel.Anne Nagel & Lon Chaney Jr in a promo shot for Man Made MonsterAnne Nagel was strapped to the slab and at the mercy of the ever-mad Lionel Atwill. Here comes the glowing Lon Chaney Jr! in his electric rubber suit in Man Made Monster!
The depraved mad scientist Lionel Atwill working with electro biology pins gorgeous red-headed Anne Nagel playing June Lawrence, to his operating slab in Man Made Monster 1941. Lon Chaney Jr. comes hulking in all aglow as the ‘Electrical Man’ which was his debut for Universal. He carries Anne Nagel through the countryside all lit up like a lightning bug in rubber armor. Man Made Monsterisn’t the only horror shocker that she displayed her tresses & distresses. She also played a night club singer named Sunny Rogers also co-starring our other 40’s horror heroine icon Anne Gwynne in the Karloff/Lugosi pairing Black Friday in 1940.
She played the weeping Mrs.William Saunders, the wife of Lionel Atwill’s first victim in Mad Doctor of Market Street 1942. And then of course she played mad scientist Dr Lorenzo Cameron’s (George Zucco’s) daughter Lenora in The Mad Monster 1942. Dr. Cameron has succeeded with his serum in turning men into hairy wolf-like Neanderthal monsters whom he unleashes on the men who ruined his career.
Anne Nagel and Lionel Atwill Mad Doctor of Market Street.
Poor Anne had a very tragic life… Considered that sad girl who was always hysterical. Once Universal dropped her she fell into the Poverty Row limbo of bit parts. Her brief marriage to Ross Alexander ended when he shot himself in the barn in 1937, and Anne became a quiet alcoholic until her death from cancer in 1966.
Dr. Cameron’s daughter Lenora (Anne Nagel) discovers the wolf-like man in his laboratory in The Mad Monster.Glenn Strange as Petro the Hairy man in The Mad Monster 1942.
the sultry Anne Nagel and Bela Lugosi in Black Friday 1940 photo courtesy Dr. Macro.
Martha was in noir favorites The Big Sleep 1946 & Alimony1949. This beauty played an uncredited Margareta ‘Vazec’s Daughter’along side Ilona Massey as Baroness Elsa Frankenstein and the marvelous older beauty Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva the gypsy! in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man 1943.Then she played heroine Dorothy Coleman in Captive Wild Woman 1943 and Miss McLean in The Mummy’s Ghost 1944.
Originally Martha MacVickar she started modeling for photographer William Mortenson. David O Selznick contracted the starlet but Universal took over and put in her bit parts as the victim in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and in other ‘B’ guilty pleasures like Captive Wild Woman &The Mummy’s Ghost. She was also the pin-up girl for WWII magazines.
Martha also starred in other noir features such as Ruthless 1948 and The Big Bluff 1955. She was Mickey Rooney’s third wife.
Martha Vickers and Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep photo courtesy of Dr. Macro.Martha Vickers and Lon Chaney in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.Martha Vickers and John Carradine in Captive Wild WomanI just can’t resist Vicker’s sex appeal here she is again… Wow!
Though Logan made very few films including Opened By Mistake 1940, her contribution to women who kick-ass in horror films and don’t shrink like violets when there’s a big bald baddie coming after you with a net and a bottle of chloroform, makes you a pretty fierce contender even if you are only 7 inches tall! As Dr. Mary Robinson (Janice Logan), Logan held it all together while the men were scattering like mice from the menacing google eyed Dr. Cyclops played superbly by Albert Dekker.
Fay Helm as Nurse Strand with John Carradine in Captive Wild Woman.
Fay Helm played Ann Terry in one of my favorite unsung noir/thriller gems Phantom Lady1944 where it was all about the ‘hat’ and she co-starred as Nurse Strand alongside John Carradine in Captive Wild Woman. Fay played Mrs. Duval in the Inner Sanctum mystery Calling Dr. Death with Lon Chaney Jr. 1943
Ella Raines and Fay Helm in Phantom Lady.
Fay Helm plays Jenny Williams in Curt Siodmak’s timeless story directed by George Waggner for Universal and starring son of a thousand faces Lon Chaney Jr in his most iconic role Larry Talbot as The Wolf Man 1941
Fay as Jenny Williams: “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”
Fay was in Night Monster 1942. Directed by Ford Beebe the film starred Bela Lugosi as a butler to Lionel Atwill a pompous doctor who falls prey to frightening nocturnal visitations. I particularly love the atmosphere of this little chiller with its swampy surroundings and its metaphysical storyline.
Dr. Lynn Harper (Irene Hervey- Play Misty For Me 1971) a psychologist is called to the mysterious Ingston Mansion, to evaluate the sanity of Margaret Ingston, played by our horror heroine Fay Helm daughter of Kurt Ingston (Ralph Morgan) a recluse who invites the doctors to his eerie mansion who left him in a wheelchair.
Fay gives a terrific performance surrounded by all the ghoulish goings on! She went on to co-star with Bela Lugosi and Jack Haley in the screwball scary comedy One Body Too Many (1944).
Irene Hervey as Dr. Lynn Harper –Night Monster 1942.
Fay Helm in Night Monster.Fay Helm with Bela the gypsy in The Wolf Man.
Bela Lugosi as half ape half man really needed a shave badly in The Ape Man 1943, and Louise Currie and her wonder whip might have been the gorgeous blonde dish to make him go for the Barbasol. One of the most delicious parts of the film was its racy climax as Emil Van Horn in a spectacle of a gorilla suit rankles the cage bars longing for Currie’s character, Billie Mason the tall blonde beauty. As Bela skulks around the laboratory and Currie snaps her whip in those high heels. The film’s heroine was a classy dame referred to as Monogram’s own Katharine Hepburn! She had a great affection for fellow actor Bela Lugosi and said that she enjoyed making Poverty Row films more than her bit part in Citizen Kane! And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that she appeared in several serials, from both Universal & Republic like The Green Hornetand Captain Marvel.
Tom Weaver in his book Poverty Row HORRORS! described The Ape Man as “a Golden Turkey of the most beloved kind.”
Louise Currie followed up with another sensational title for Monogram as Stella Saunders in Voodoo Man 1944 which again features Lugosi as Dr. Richard Marlowe who blends voodoo with hypnosis in an attempt to bring back his dead wife. The film also co-stars George Zucco as a voodoo high priest and the ubiquitous John Carradine as Toby a bongo-playing half-wit “Don’t hurt her Grego, she’s a pretty one!”
Pat McKee as Grego, Louise Currie, John Carradine, and Bela Lugosi in Monogram’s Voodoo Man 1944.the outrageous Voodoo Man 1944
Steve Hasbrat (Theater Management) over at Anti-Film School has graciously given me the opportunity to join their 3rd Annual Horror Movie Spooktacular in time for Halloween. And I get to chat about five movie monsters that I consider to be my favorites. If you know me by now, you’ll understand that asking me to narrow down anything to a mere 5 is quite a challenge. But I venture to say that if I cheat and mention a few who would have made the list, angry villagers won’t be hurling flaming torches at my porch if I do…
A little bit about Anti-Film School’s blogging philosophy from their About page!
“Founded in July of 2011, Anti-Film School is a film website that reviews both new and old films while also heavily focusing on grindhouse cinema, exploitation flicks, cult cinema, B-movies, and classic horror. Since its launch, it has gone on to receive 100,000 views, become a member of the Large Association of Movie Blogs, and be featured on Total Film online under “3 Cool Film Blogs to Visit,” GuysNation, Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights, Furious Cinema, and the Grindhouse Cinema Database. It is all tied together by a retro drive-in aesthetic. We apologize in advance for any missing reels, the sticky floors, shady audience members, stale popcorn, and broken seats.”
Oh, those woebegone days of broken velvet-covered creaky seats, your feet sticking to the floor from spilled Coke and milk duds… the smell of popcorn, salty sweat, and the tallest person in the theater sitting directly in front of you when there are loads of empty seats left…! I wonder why that always happens to me all the time…?
When you think of existentialism, well, when I am the MonsterGirl nerd of all time, I think of EXISTENTIALISM, Camus, Sartre & Kierkegaard, which immediately come to mind. When Steve asked me to think of 5 movie monsters that endeared themselves to me, I started to think of what it was, that essence of the thing, that impressed upon me so much about each monster’s character. It’s that they are Monsters in Search of an Existential Crisis.
Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” Existentialists say, “I am, therefore I think.”
This philosophy emphasizes radical skepticism and the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience, an individual who is inhabiting an indifferent universe. Existentialism regards human existence as unexplainable and completely free. In this universe, there is no guiding Dogma that can help us. We’re all faced with equally unfortunate choices, leading to doom and despair. All human endeavors are meaningless and virtually insignificant, so when faced with the fact of existence, humans feel despair. Existential angst is when we are aware of the awful pointlessness of our existence. So life is an unknowable concept with strange forces that spring from this mysterious existence, with nothing that has any meaning, and fighting it is futile. Cheerful stuff…
Without further ado, here are our 5 monsters stuck in an existential landscape of despair, angst & searching for an identity in a cruel cruel universe.
What is it about monsters that we love? What truly remains with ‘us’ classic horror fans is something deeper and eternally soldered into our collective psyches.Something about ‘the monster’ has either caused us to ‘identify’ with them or has triggered a profound fear response that lasts a lifetime.
All monsters, you could say, are inherently existential figures because they come from a place of alienation, the unknown, and live outside the realm of perceived normalcy. ‘5 Monsters in Search of an Existential Crisis’seeks to understand how these particular characters are either the epitome of the existential ‘deviant’ (not to suggest deviancy in the context of being perverse but in the sense that they deviate from the norm of ‘accepted’ human nature, like a freak or a sword swallower or a drag queen), or have been placed in the middle of an existential environment.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956 Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy.Luce Potter as the Martian Intelligence in William Cameron Menzies’s fantastical Invaders from Mars 1953.Jack Arnold’s quintessential journey of the existential transcendent man Grant Williams in The Incredible Shrinking Man.
However, poor Grant Williams was not a monster; he was only a transcendental man on a journey, projected into a monstrous world where the ordinary becomes a nightmare landscape for him. Films are based on stories where the alien, be it from space or here on earth, is a figure used to criticize rationality, conformity, tolerance, and lack of empathy, and often create discord between science and the military. They raise the question of fear of losing one’s identity amidst the cold war environment, or just to show that there are sinister threats from without & within!
Writers like Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, and Ray Bradbury were great at conjuring these “Outsider’ themes. I’d love to have included It Came From Outer Space (1953) with the amorphous Eye creatures that happened to be friendly aliens who crash-land in a desert cave.
It Came From Outer Space 1953 Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush.
I love these existential fellas, scary as they may be. Like Grendel who is the consummate existential literary figure and he was hideous, yet he’s one of my favorite characters in literature. Grendel struggles with the eternal question, am I a monster or a hero?
While these movie monsters may be hideous to some, I find them compelling and heroic in their journey to claim their place in a hostile world. Except for those nasty soul-eating land crabs whom I love just because they’re so cheeky, cheesy, and entertaining as hell!
For me, the quintessential existential man/monster (and that’s not a pants monster ) is Mary Shelley’sliterary Prometheus re-imagined by James Whale’s flagrant masterpiece. A man-made from the scraps of robbed corpses and brought to life by the electrical secrets of heaven. Yes, Frankenstein’s Monster, portrayed by the great Boris Karloff, manifested a truly complex enigma of conception, creation, and existential angst that’s both fearsome yet sympathetic.
We can sympathize with the monster, as with Frankenstein & The Gill Man from Creature From the Black Lagoon. We can find our involvement (at least I can) as one viewed with empathy toward the monster’s predicament. Depending on how much the film constructs its viewpoint, it leans toward creating pathos in the narrative. Usually, this means permitting these monsters to express human desires and then making sure that those desires are thwarted and frustrated and ultimately destroyed. The Outsider Narrative can be seen so clearly in the horror/sci-fi hybrid Creature From The Black Lagoon. Film monsters like The Gill Man form vivid memories for us, becoming icons and laying the groundwork for the classical experience of good horror.
I think Creature From The Black Lagoonis quite a perfect film, as it works on so many different levels. The most obvious is that scientists have invaded a unique creature’s habitat only to force their domination and belligerence on him. In the midst of this, a sort of skewed romance between Romeo and Juliet evolves. The Gill Man never intends to threaten Julie Adam’s character, Kay Lawrence. Quite the contrary, it’s the two opportunistic men who tote phallic harpoons around like extra penises on hand to fight each other about questions of ethics, how to conduct scientific research, and over Kay like spoiled children.
1) FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER: As portrayed by the great BORIS KARLOFF
“Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!”- Henry Frankenstein.
Thanks to the great make-up artist Jack Pierce, Boris Karloff’s poignant yet terrifying transformation into Frankenstein’s monster is the most memorable, indelible ‘classic monster’ for me. Boris Karloff said in 1957, “Jack’s words still echo in my mind: ‘This is going to be a big thing!'”
Mary Shelley created a transfixed symbol of existential angst. The gentleness that Boris Karloff imbued his character with will always touch my heart so deeply. Most memorable for me is the scene with the blind priest who breaks bread and shares his humble shack with his new ‘friend’ in Bride of Frankenstein, which is my favorite of the three films where Karloff portrayed the monster.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by Mary Shelley about an eccentric scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Just a brief mention in regards to the literary source, Victor Frankenstein, is told by the monster that he refers to himself as “the Adam of your labors”, and elsewhere as someone who “would have” been “your Adam”, but is instead “your fallen angel.”
The film’s opening narrative goes like this: “We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation.; life and death”
“Beware; for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”
“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.” “• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” “• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein possessed great hubris. As many a mad scientist seeking the secrets of life tends to be. I suppose you must have that kind of insane drive to push back against the boundaries of the knowable to discover what lies beyond. BUT, when a man tries to act as God himself, one who creates life from the dead, challenging the biological fact that it is ‘women’ who give birth, who produce that life in the end. Ultimately, Victor Frankenstein’s monster is an existential failure. He justifies his work to Dr. Waldman: “Where should we be if nobody tried to find out what lies beyond? Have you never wanted to look beyond the clouds and stars, to know what causes trees to bud and what changes darkness to light? But if you talk like that people call you crazy…! Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn’t care if they did think I was crazy.”
The imposing first sight of the monster shatters that scene. Jack Pierce’s, extraordinary make-up on Boris Karloff combined with the actor’s facial expressions and gestures are sheer brilliance.
Boris Karloff conveys a dead man’s angst who’s brought to life by a heretical scientist, inhabits his new world with such wonder, conflict, and rage, so exquisitely it’s actually painful to watch as he is scorned and tormented as a ‘thing.’ who never asked to be created in the first place.
For the sake of brevity, I’ll call him Frankenstein although he is ‘the monster.’Frankenstein has become an accepted name for Victor’s/Henry’s film version of a scientific yet unorthodox achievement.
And like that of Grendel, Frankenstein is the ultimate existential monster and Karloff gives him a child-like quality that wrenches at your heart with pathos. Born into an unknown world, unaware of his purpose in life, why he was created, and essentially who he is.
Karloff recalled, “I don’t think the main screenwriter Bob Florey really intended there to be much pathos inside the character.But Whale and I thought that there should be. We didn’t want the kind of rampaging monstrosity that Universal seemed to think we should go in for. We had to have pathos; Whale wanted to leave an impact.” They certainly achieved that with Karloff’s performance and Whale’s vision.
And I say this because he was born a blank slate, tabula rasa. Only to have men of science and the surrounding community, some inherently belligerent, some like Henry’s assistant Fritz, who is abusive and brutal and tortures the monster, defining who he is because of his ‘difference’. It’s after Frankenstein’s first rampage that the monster evokes our sympathy.
At first, the monster is like a newborn infant. Henry tells him to sit down, but he doesn’t understand the word yet. He follows the doctor’s gestures and hand signals.
Again Karloff,“Whale and I saw the character as an innocent one {…} Within the heavy restrictions of my make-up I tried to play it that way. This was a pathetic creature like us all, had neither wish nor say in our creation and certainly didn’t wish upon itself, the hideous image which automatically terrified humans whom it tried to befriend. The most heart rending aspect of the creature’s life, for us was his ultimate desertion of his creator-it was though a man in his blundering searching attempts to improve himself was to find himself deserted by God.”- from Karloff More Than a Monster- Stephen Jacobs
This sentiment is the essence of why Frankenstein is such a profoundly existential character, his crisis of alienation and detachment from his creator. In Cynthia Freeland’s book The Naked and The Undead, she cites Gregory Mank: “From the beginning Karloff’s approach to his ‘dear old monster’ was one of love and compassion. To discover and convey such sympathy was an outstanding insight, considering that rarely has an actor suffered so hideously by bringing to life a character.”
The hours of make-up and constructing the heavy suit Karloff had to endure, wearing it on the set during long days of shooting eventually crippled his legs and left him extremely bow-legged and in immense pain.
Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) go to a graveyard and steal a body. The fanatical Dr. Frankenstein believes that life can be created from death. He challenges the systems of morality for an ambiguous crack at being God-like. We, therefore, shift our allegiance and empathy toward the monster, who becomes the central figure of the story. And now that he’s been forced into existence, he wants Henry to create a mate for him, and why not! All god’s children got a girl…
Again if I could have had a few more choices The Bride would have been on my list in a flash of lighting! I adore Elsa Lanchester andFranz Waxman’sscore is perhaps one of the most evocative themes I just can resist becoming ebullient when ever I hear it!
With his bizarre experiments, Henry defies the laws of nature and the mortal contract with the universe, daring to try to give birth to his own creation. When he sends his assistant to steal a brain, the cruel knucklehead mistakenly takes a criminally insane brain without the doctor realizing it. Shutting himself off from the outside world and his fiance Elizabeth (The gorgeous Mae Clarke) she arrives at the castle to see what’s going on. Meanwhile, the constructed body from scraps, sewn together from various bodies of several dead men, is strapped to the slab and raised up into the violent electrical storm. Lightening surges into the body of the monster and soon… “Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!” – Henry Frankenstein.
Frankenstein emerges from his electrifying awakening into a dire world he did not ask to come into. To be shunned and controlled and reviled within only a few moments of his awareness. He has no chance to make his own choices or choose his own journey; He’s automatically an outsider who threatens those who perceive him as different and thus dangerous.
Frankenstein is an ‘object of the grotesque’ in this typified mad scientist /monstrous creation movie. A scientist is obsessed with the ‘secrets of life itself’, and his creation turns out to be a monster. The assistant is deformed in some way and often antagonistic to the monster, setting off a provoked rampage. The lab is fabulous, with scientific regalia and various apparatus in an isolated setting.
Ken Strickfaden’sdesigns or ‘special electrical properties’ buzzing light shows knobs and bottles and tubes in Henry Frankenstein’s lab are astounding. Charles D Hall’sart direction & set aides in the creation of an ambivalent scenery where science and morality conflict. The outside world is lensed as an ordered world, stylistically counter-posed to Henry’s laboratory’s clandestine dark and unorthodoxy. James Whale injected a lot of camp into the Gothic sensibilities.
Frankenstein is labeled a ‘monster.’ Therefore, he causes suffering to others and perpetuates the idea that he is, in fact, ‘a monster’. But most of us can see him as an existential anti-hero. It is the law of the existential philosophy that says HE must be responsible for his actions. These are actions that have justification but still have no bearing on the violent things he does. We are conflicted because we sympathize with his dilemma. Like a confused child who asks where I come from. Why am I here? Who is my creator? Why have they abandoned me, and what is friendship? Watching Frankenstein journey through a hostile landscape is painful for me as he’s chased by angry villagers with flaming torches. He only wanted to see the little girl float like a flower… He’s strung up on a cross like an obvious Christ figure, beaten, chained, drugged, and sought after to be deconstructed; he is a figure in an eternal existential crisis. A monster who doesn’t understand if he’s a man or truly a monster.
Interesting note: Bela Lugositurned the part of the monster down because he didn’t want to grunt and John Carradinerefused to play monsters at all, and also rejected the offer to play Frankenstein.
