Chapter 4 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:

CODED CLASSIC HORROR THEORY “The Uncanny & The Other”

“Scenes of excessive brutality and gruesomeness must be cut to an absolute minimum.”

“As a cultural index, the pre-Code horror film gave a freer rein to psychic turmoil and social disorientation because it possessed a unique freedom from censorship… the Hays Office admits that under the Code it is powerless to take a stand on the subject of ‘gruesomeness.‘(Thomas Doherty)

Horror films in particular have made for a fascinating case study in the evolving perceptions of queer presence; queer-horror filmmakers and actors were often forced to lean into the trope of the “predatory queer” or the “monstrous queer” to claim some sense of power through visibility and blatant expressions of sexuality.- Essential Queer Horror Films by Jordan Crucciola-2018

Though Hollywood execs refused to show explicit queerness, they were willing to pay for scripts that dealt with characters that were social outcasts and sexually non-normative. The horror genre is perhaps the most iconic coded queer playground, which seems to have an affinity with homosexuality because of its apparatus of ‘otherizing’ and the inherent representation of difference. The horror genre crosses over boundaries that include transgressions between heterosexuality and queerness. The villain, fiend, or monster plays around with a variety of elements that, while usually separate, might merge male and female gender traits.

The horror film, in particular, found its place asserting a queer presence on screen. The narratives often embraced tropes of the “˜predatory queer’ or the “˜monstrous queer’ in order to declare themselves visible while cinematic queers were elbowed out of the way. Filmmakers had to maneuver their vision in imaginative ways to subvert the structure laid out for them by the Code.

As Harry M. Benshoff explains in his book Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality in the Horror Film, “Immediately before and during the years of World War II, Universal Studio’s horror films began to employ a more humanistic depiction of their monsters,” and the films of Val Lewton, like Cat People, reflected “a growing awareness of homosexuality, homosexual communities, and the dynamics of homosexual oppression as it was played out in society and the military.” So even though Hollywood execs refused to show explicit queerness, during the first true horror boom in American cinema, they were willing to pay for stories about social outcasts and sexually nonnormative figures. Horror fans thus found themselves awash in some of the genre’s most iconic queer-coded characters of all time.

On a Greek Island, Boris Karloff plays Gen. Nikolas Pherides in Val Lewton/Mark Robsin’s Isle of the Dead 1945. Driven insane by the belief that Thea (Ellen Drew), who suffers from catalepsy, is the embodiment of an evil vampiric force, is a demon called a vorvolaka. Lewton drew on collective fears, and all his work had an undercurrent of queer panic and a decipherable sign of homophobia.

The Vorvolaka has beset the island with plague. Thea- “Laws can be wrong, and laws can be cruel, and the people who live only by the law are both wrong and cruel.”

The Pre-Code era was exploding with American horror films, that reflected the angst, social unrest, and emotional distress that audiences were feeling. Personified in films that used graphic metaphors to act as catharsis, the images were often filled with rage, as Thomas Doherty calls it ‘the quality of gruesomeness, cruelty and vengefulness’. Think of the angry mobs with their flaming torches who hunt down Frankenstein’s monster, eventually crucifying him like a sacrificial embodiment of their fury. James Whale’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1931 was a smash hit for Universal. Other studios were trying to ride the wave of the awakening genre of the horror picture. Paramount released director Rouben Mamoulian’s adaption of the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1886. The film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was released in 1931, stars Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins. During the Pre-Code period, many horror films proposed grisly subject matter that would shock and mesmerize the audience. For example, actor/director Irving Pichel’s The Most Dangerous Game (1932) starring Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks, and Fay Wray.

In 1932 Michael Curtiz directed Doctor X starring Lionel Atwill who would become one of the leading mad scientists of the genre.

Michael Curtiz’s macabre horror/fantasy experiment of homosocial ‘men doing science’, crossing over into profane territories and embracing dreadful taboos!

All scenes below from Dr. X (1932).

Fay Wray is Atwill’s daughter who is the only woman surrounded by a group of scientific nonconformists.

The adaptation of Bram Stoker’s story of the Eastern European incubus was interpreted by Tod Browning in Dracula 1931, immortalized by Hungarian stage actor Bela Lugosi with his iconic cape and mesmerizing stare. While his nightly visitations were blood-driven and cinematically sexual in nature, there is a very homoerotic element to his influence over Renfield (Dwight Frye) and his gaze of gorgeous David Manners as John Harker.

Bela Lugosi looks down upon David Manners in a scene from the film ‘Dracula’, 1931. (Photo by Universal/Getty Images)

Robert Florey directed the macabre Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. And a film that has no connection to Poe’s story but in the name is one of the most transgressive, disturbing horror films rampant with vile taboos, such as necrophilia, incest, sadism, satanism, and flaying a man alive, is the unorthodox The Black Cat (1934). The film stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, one of four pictures they would do together. A pair of enemies who have a score to settle, ghosts of a past war, and stolen love all take place with the backdrop of a stylish Bauhaus set design and high-contrast lighting.

Paramount released Murders in the Zoo (1933) with Lionel Atwill, a sadistic owner of a zoo who uses wild animals to ravage and kill off any of his wife’s (Kathleen Burke) suitors. Kathleen Burke is well known as the panther girl in Erle C. Kenton’s horrifically disturbing Island of Lost Souls 1932, an adaptation of master fantasy writer H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. Incidentally, Welles, Laughton, and wife Elsa Lanchester had been good friends earlier on, before the filming of Lost Souls. The film stars Charles Laughton as the unorthodox, depraved scientist who meddles with genetics and nature. He creates gruesome human/animals, torturing them with vivisection in his ‘house of pain.’ The film also stars Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, and Bela Lugosi as The Sayer of the Law.

In 1933, King Kong showed a giant ape grasping the half-naked object of his affection, with unmentionable connotations of bestiality between the ape and Fay Wray. With scenes of Wray writhing in his gigantic paws, he lusts after her until his desire kills him. It’s almost like fantasy noir: the object of your desire will ultimately kill you!

The 1930s and 1940s Fear the Queer Monsters:

Re-assessing the Hitchcock Touch; by Wieland Schwanebeck -As Rhona Berenstein asserts, the horror genre “provides a primary arena for sexualities and practices that fall outside the purview of patriarchal culture, and the subgeneric tropes of the unseen, the host and the haunted house.”

By the same token, Kendra Bean concludes that Mrs. Danvers is portrayed as “a wraith; a sexual predator who is out to make Mrs. de Winter her next victim.”

Queer characters in horror films during the early period, reveal similarities between Mrs. Danvers and the staging of earlier sapphic characters, such as Gloria Holdens’s well-known portrayal of Countess Marya Zaleska in Dracula’s Daughter 1936. Yet, similar to the self-discipline of Mrs. Danvers, Dracula’s Daughter remains a figure of primacy and pity Ellis Hanson argues Dracula’s Daughter presents “the possibilities of a queer Gothic” early on in Hollywood history, “rich in all the paradox and sexual indeterminacy the word queer and the word Gothic imply.

There was a revival of the horror craze during the period of WWII. The Hollywood studios, both major and ‘Poverty Row” like Monogram and Republic, realized that horror movies were a lucrative business. The studios began to revisit the genre, looking for not only fresh formulas but they resurrected the classic monsters, dropping them into new plots. They also envisioned uniting gangster films with horror films, and this homogenizing led to a ‘queering’ of the two styles that demonstrated phallocentric ( guns, scientific penetration) and homoerotic themes and images into a sub-genre.

Public awareness of homosexuality reached a new height during these years, primarily due to the new set of social conditions wrought by war. Slowly , the love that dare not speak its name was being spoken, albeit in ways almost always obscurantist, punitive and homophobic. The linkage of homosexuality with violence and disease remained strong. Monsters in the Closet -Harry Benshoff

Rhona Berenstein, in her insightful book Attack of the Leading Ladies points out that films featuring the mad scientist trope operate with the homosocial principle, which speaks of the homoeroticism of males working together in consort subverting science together as a group of men who hide behind their objectification -the female object of their gaze, are in fact, figures of objectification themselves. They are simultaneously homosocial, homoerotic, and homophobic in aspect; … potentially possessing an extra-normative commitment between the two men.

Mad Doctor movies are homosocial in nature. The Mad Doctor movie is a subgenre that, below the surface, glorifies intimate male camaraderie and male homosexuality, and by the close of the picture, society, the prevailing culture, must, in turn, annihilate that which is repressed. However, it is not exclusively a vehicle to express homosexuality through homosocial interactions. There is a component not only of male bonding, a world without women; the thrust is a synthesis of misogyny and patriarchal tyranny and oppression of women. Homosocial relationships between men in these science horrors show the man’s desire for connection to other men, even one created by his own hand.

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According to (Twitchell) in his Dreadful Pleasures, and Attack of the Leading Ladies (Rona Berenstein) Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein in all three Universal pictures, was at least performing bisexuality. Whale’s 1933 Frankenstein might give way to the homosocial realm of the mad scientist trope of ‘homoerotic indulgence’ as these men exclude women from the pursuit of their fulfillment. Twitchell views the scientist’s fluid sexuality in order to examine the concept of a man controlling women’s primacy of giving birth. This might explain Dr. Frankenstein’s venture into unnatural reproduction. A process he wants to divert to himself without women’s exclusive right to motherhood. In the scene where he is as close to giving birth to a full-grown man, he seems to display sexual arousal when his creation comes to life. Henry Frankenstein provokes nature and defies his heterosexuality. As Whale was an openly gay director in Hollywood, it can be pondered whether he knew exactly what he was suggesting. Thesiger’s sexually ambiguous, or okay, not so ambiguous Dr. Pretorius, the mad scientist who pressures Henry Frankenstein to revitalize his experiments and create a mate for the monster. Pretorius is the scientist who insists Henry continue his creative efforts in Bride of Frankenstein. Vitto Russo called Thesiger, a “man who played the effete sissy”¦ with much verve and wit.”

George Zucco, like Lionel Atwill, often portrayed the unorthodox scientist who flirted with taboos. He plays mad scientist Dr. Alfred Morris in The Mad Ghoul (1943) As a university chemistry professor, he exploits medical student Ted Allison (David Bruce) with his experimental gas that transforms Ted into a malleable, yielding macabre ghoul, whom Morris directs to kill and remove the victim’s hearts using the serum to temporarily bring Ted back from his trance like death state. David Bruce’s character is represented as a ‘queer’ sort of young man. He is not quite masculine and is unable to get his girlfriend, Evelyn Ankers, to fall in love with him. As the Mad Ghoul, he becomes a monstrous queer.

In 1932, director Tod Browning’s Dracula based on Bram Stoker’s story of a fiendish vampire who in a sexually implicit way, violates his victims by penetrating them with his fangs. The story pushed the boundaries of storytelling, and there was an inherent subtext of ‘queer’ ravishment when he sucks the blood of Dwight Frye to make him his loyal servant.

In Jonathan Harker’s Journal, the protagonist recounts his impressions of his interaction with the vampire, Dracula “As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which do what I would, I could not conceal.” For (Noël Carroll) the entry in his diary conveys revulsion by the Count’s closeness and offensive presence, which causes him to become sickened.

But it also could be read that Harker’s ‘shudder’ is not about his revulsion, but rather, an uncontrolled sexual response to the vampire’s looming over him, which could be interpreted not just as hunger for his ‘blood’ but an expression of repressed sexual desire and the fear it causes.

Horror movies have always pushed the boundaries of normalcy, by virtue of the fact that these films are inhabited by ‘monsters’, something ‘queerly’ different. And it is natural to observe two diverging responses to the impact of the horror genre and often, its persecution of what is ‘different’ and the source of what causes our anxiety.

Dracula may appear as the image of a man, but the count is far from human. While monsters in classical horror films are based on systems of maleness, they are split from being actual men. Although there are physical interactions and suggestive contact with the heroine, there isn’t the foundation of heterosexuality, but something quite deviant within their aggressively erotic encounters and/or assaults. The understanding of sexuality and the most narrow identifications that are assigned to varying orientations in a large sense is not translatable for the deeper layers of the monster and their relationship to their victims. In Hollywood, horror films can be seen as heterosexuality being invaded by an abhorrent outside force; inherent in the underlying message could be racism, classism, sexism, and gay panic. Though it can be interpreted as a landscape of heterosexuality that is in the full power of its universal presence, horror films are perfect platforms that can illustrate the collapse of heterosexuality and the subversion of sexuality.

The horror genre is a breeding ground for portrayals of the shattering of heterosexual power. This can be seen in Lambert Hillyer’s Dracula’s Daughter (1936) starring Gloria Holden as the sapphic vampire who lives in a New Village-type artist’s den, it signals her outsider status from domesticity and normalcy.

In White Zombie (1932), Bela Lugosi plays the eerily menacing Legendre. He turns men into lifeless workers who run the sugar mill. Legendre also begins to turn the plantation owner, Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer), into one of his zombies. His motivation for his control over people is ambiguous, though there seems to be sexual reasoning for both the beautiful Madeline (Madge Bellamy) and Beaumont. In the scene where Beaumont is nearly paralyzed, Legendre’s control over his male victim parallels the sexual entrapment of the movie’s heroine.

MAD LOVE (1935) I have conquered science! Why can’t I conquer love?

Karl Freund’s Grand Guignol Mad Love (1935) shifts from gazing at the female to gazing at the male. Here the focus is on Peter Lorre in his American screen debut as Dr. Gogol, who has an obsession with Frances Drake as Yvonne Orlac an actress who works at Grand Guignol Theatre. To Gogol, she is the typified defenseless heroine whom he tries to lure away from her husband, Stephen (Colin Clive), using his knowledge of scientific alchemy.

Though Gogol tries to become Yvonne’s master, his Galatea, there are critics who read the struggle between the two men as not just a rivalry for Yvonne’s love but Gogol’s desire for Stephen as well. Gogol is responsible for grafting new hands onto Stephen’s mangled body after a train crash. Mad Love could fit the criteria for the subgenre of science/horror films where the male gaze is diverted from the female object toward other men, in this case, what connected the two was the preservation of Stephen’s hands. Why, then, is it not possible that the focus could shift from Gogol’s attraction to Yvonne to the homosocial dynamics between Gogol as a doctor and his subject, Stephen?

Mad Love possesses some of the horror genre’s most tenacious performances of gender play. (Carol Clover) asks us to take a closer look at Freund’s film. It is less about the “suffering experienced by women, but at a deeper, more sustained level, it is dedicated to the unspeakable terrors endured by men.”

In a similar fashion to Waldo Lydecker’s (Laura) and Hardy Cathcart’s (The Dark Corner) pathology of objectifying Laura and Mari, Gogol worships Yvonne – his Galatea, with a measure of scopophilia that lies within his gaze upon the perfection of female beauty. To control and possess it. The pleasure is aroused by the mere indulgence of looking at her.

Gogol pays 75 francs to purchase the wax statue of Galatea. The seller remarks, “There’s queer people on the streets of Montmartre tonight.”

Gogol’s maid Francoise talks to the statue, “Whatever made him bring you here. There’s never been any woman in this house except maybe me… “I prefer live ones to dead ones.”

A Time Magazine review of Mad Love in 1933 notes this queer appeal directly, even comparing Lorre’s acting skills to those of another homosexual coded actor: I find the comment about their faces rude and insulting to both Lorre and Laughton, both of whom I am a tremendous fan.

Mad Love’s insane doctor is feminized throughout the film… In fact, the same reporter who noted Gogol’s sadism argues for his feminine demeanor: “Lorre, perfectly cast, uses the technique popularized by Charles Laughton of suggesting the most unspeakable obsessions by the roll of a protuberant eyeball, an almost feminine mildness of tone, an occasional quiver of thick lips set flat in his cretinous ellipsoidal face. This reviewer came closer than any other to articulate the subtext of mad doctor movies. He seems on the verge of noting that Lorre, Like Laughton is an effeminate madman obsessed by unspeakable homosocial desire. Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender Sexuality and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema by Rhona Berenstein

Frances Drake’s heroine masquerades as a wife who deludes herself into believing that her husband is more masculine than he really is. Gogol has a curious empathy with Stephen, whom he touches frequently and prolonged. Although Gogol pursues the heroine, Yvonne, at the theater, forcing a kiss on her, his focus is primarily manipulating Stephen’s body, rejoining his hands and massaging them to stimulate life back into them. When he realizes that Stephen’s hands cannot be grafted back successfully to his wrists, he turns to another man, the hands of a knife thrower who was executed as a notorious murderer. Once Stephen recovers from the surgery, he can no longer continue as a concert pianist but does develop the desire to throw sharp knives.

On the surface the plot of Mad Love appears to be a heterosexual obsession, the most unspoken context is the connection between Gogol and Stephen. As is true of Frankenstein’s labor of love in Whale’s first film, Gogol sews men’s body parts together and the result is a monster of sorts. (Berenstein)

In the film’s climax, Yvonne hides in Gogol’s bedroom and pretends to be the wax statue of Galatea. When Gogol touches the statue, she lets out a scream. In a euphoric daze (as in the original story), he believes that he has the power to bring Galatea’s statue to life. Yvonne begs him to let her go as he tries to strangle her.

Stephen then rushes to his wife and holds her in his arms. With his eyes fixed on the offscreen space in which Gogol’s body lies, he croons: “My darling.” The homosocial desire is destroyed when Stephen murders Gogol who intones, “Each man kills the thing he loves”“” echoing on the soundtrack.

In the film’s closing moments, the secret desire is finally spoken out loud…Has Stephen killed the man he loves? Given that the phrase that Gogol mutters was written originally by Oscar Wilde, whose homosexuality scandalized the British social and legal system in 1895, reading the homosocial desire into Mad Love within the very last moments, we are left to decipher the suspended cues. We are left with Stephen’s gazing at Gogol’s face and his knifed body as he lay dying, he speaks the words, “˜My darling” while the camera frames the two men sharing that moment in the closing scene.

The mad doctor narrative is particularly predisposed to homosocial impulses. “intense male homosocial desire as at once the most compulsory and the most prohibited of social bonds” – Epistemology of the Closet (Sedgwick)

Sedgwick investigated early fantasy/horror novels, Shelley’s Frankenstein 1818, Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1886, and Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau 1895. At the beginning of the 1930s, these stories centered around mad doctors who delved into unorthodox, profane explorations and were all adapted to the screen. All of these nefarious or scientific, inquisitive men cultivated secret experiments, challenging the laws of nature. What Sedgwick found was that the Gothic literary representations of men performing homosocial collaborations were ‘not socially sanctioned and shunned.’

It was considered a necessary narrative element as well as a monstrous possibility that threatened to subvert the status quo. The combination of these two attitudes is expressed in homosocial narratives- male bonding is both horrifying and guaranteed, entailing the simultaneous introjection and expulsion of femininity. (Sedgwick)

“My darling”…

James Whale was a gay auteur who often imbued his work intentionally or with the ‘intentional fallacy’ of a ‘queer’ sense of dark humor. This comical, campy absurdity was always on the edge of his vision of horror and subtle profanity. His picture The Invisible Man (1933), adapted from H.G. Wells’s story and starring Claude Rains, was classified as a horror film by the Code.

Dr. Jack Griffin (Rains), the antihero, is a frenzied scientist addicted to his formula as he seeks the ability to make himself invisible. His sanity begins to ‘vanish’ as his hunger for power, delusions of grandeur, and bursts of megalomania grow out of control. He plans on assassinating government officials, and he becomes more belligerent the longer he turns invisible. The idea that he displays radical ideas and runs around in the nude didn’t seem to arouse the censors; in 1933, a letter from James Wingate to Hays states, “highly fantastic and exotic [sic] vein, and presents no particular censorship difficulties.”

What’s interesting about the presentation of the story is that the coded gay leitmotifs were paraded out, right under the Code’s noses, and didn’t stir any indignation for its ‘queer’ humor.

Gloria Stuart and Claude Rains in James Whale’s The Invisible Man 1933

The Invisible Man perpetrates campy assaults on all the ‘normal’ people in his way, with intervals of sardonic cackles and golden wit and, at the same time, a menacing reflection of light and shadow. Claude Rains is a concealed jester who makes folly of his victims.

“An invisible man can rule the world. Nobody will see him come, nobody will see him go. He can hear every secret. He can rob, and wreck, and kill.” –Dr. Jack Griffin (The Invisible Man)

Claude Rains plays Dr. Jack Griffin, an outsider (a favorite of James Whale’s characters) who discovers the secret of invisibility, which changes him from a mild yet arrogant scientist into a maniacal killer. The film bears much of Whale’s campy sense of humor, with Griffin’s comic shenanigans abound until things turn dark and he becomes uncontrollably violent. “We’ll begin with a reign of terror, a few murders here and there, Murders of great men, Murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction. I might even wreck a train or two… just these fingers around a signalman’s throat, that’s all.”

According to Gary Morris (Bright Lights Film Journal), ‘The film demands crypto-faggot reading in poignant scenes such as the one where he reassures his ex-girlfriend, who begs him to hide from the authorities: “the whole worlds my hiding place. I can stand out there amongst them in the day or night and laugh at them.”

Though Griffin’s (Claude Rains) character is unseen at times, there are potent moments, when he is animated as he skips to the tune, “Here we go gathering nuts in May” flitting around like a fairy.

It is suggested that The Invisible Man is a metaphor for the way homosexuals are seen/not seen by society – as “effeminate, dangerous when naked, seeking a male partner in “crime,” tending to idolize his fiance rather than love her, and becoming ‘visible’ only when shot by the police…monitored by doctors, and heard regretting his sin against God (i.e., made into a statistic by the three primary forces oppressing queers: the law, the medical establishment, and religious orthodoxy” (Sedgwick)

The Invisble Man [undressing] “They’ve asked for it, the country bumpkins. This will give them a bit of a shock, something to write home about. A nice bedtime story for the kids, too, if they want it”

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Continue reading “Chapter 4 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:”

Feature Guest Post: Aurora from Once Upon a Screen…

It is my honor to host this guest post from friend and blogger Aurora from the prestigious Once Upon a Screen… always known for her thorough, thoughtful, and witty reviews of diverse selections of classic film, television, and radio. For this month of Halloween Aurora shares with us a piece about one of my favorite figures of classic horror!

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954)

Three score and five years ago the Gill-man stepped out from the murky waters of the Black Lagoon located in the Amazon’s Northern region. Defending his territory against human intrusion, the Gill-man, named Creature on marquis across the country, became legend spawning two subsequent feature movies and numerous appearances in media. The Creature, with tall sleek, humanoid frame, was Universal's classic horror swan song, and he presented a fabled studio a lasting monster with unique elegance.

The adventure in Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon begins as geologist Dr. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno) discovers a fossilized webbed hand in the Amazon. Realizing the find is an important one, Maia leaves two locals to watch over the camp as he asks for support from the team at the marine biology institute in Brazil. The team is made up of Maia's colleagues all of whom possess an impressive knowledge of the Devonian Period, which is commonly referred to as the age of fishes and occurred approximately 400 million years ago. Significant evolutionary changes is believed to have happened during the Devonian Period so it’s no surprise the group quickly decides to accompany Maia into the Amazon.

The group includes ichthyologist David Reed (Richard Carlson), a former student of Dr. Maia's and an expert in the study of fish as is his colleague and love interest Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams as Julia). The money man is Mark Williams (Richard Denning), David's boss and the one who green lights funding further study of the area where the hand was found. There’s a Dr. Edwin Thompson whose expertise is unclear, but who immediately recognizes the fossilized hand is that of an amphibian creature who spends a lot of time in the water. Thompson is a peripheral character, but he plays an important role later in our story as he is the only person attacked by Gill-man who survives.

Examining the fossilized hand at the Maritime Biology Institute: Dr. Reed, Kay Lawrence, Dr. Williams, and Dr. Thompson

On the small ship Rita, captained by Lucas (Nestor Paiva), the group is drawn to the Black Lagoon about which all sorts of scary stories have been told through the years, including ones about a half-man half-fish creature. Unbeknownst to the group the Creature, who is in fact half-man half-fish, has been watching them closely with eyes on Kay in particular. Once in the Black Lagoon, they are in the Creature’s territory and he's calling the shots as we see when Mark and David dive for rocks. The Creature doesn't hurt them, instead he lurks nearby watching the intruders.

Things are different, however, when Kay decides to go for a swim. The Gill-man, fascinated by the woman who likely looks unlike anything he's ever seen, approaches her from below to create a dance in the water reminiscent of Tarzan and Jane's decades before. Julie Adams called it a love dance during which you can feel the Creature’s heart. This one though makes one’s hairs stand on end with danger at hand as his fascination compounds. We are out of our depth and this fan cannot help the palpitations that increase in intensity as the swim advances. This is all thanks to James C. Havens who directed the underwater sequences, among the most memorable in the movies.

Gill-man covets Kay and she becomes his sole interest while he defends his territory against the others. Slowly, as we get to know him, our allegiances switch sides in support of the unique creature, as Marilyn Monroe’s does after she and Tom Ewell watch the picture in The Seven Year Itch. “All he wants,” she says, “is to be loved and needed and wanted.” Several messages in Creature from the Black Lagoon support an audience’s support for Gill-man and his environment. He is misunderstood as Marilyn states, because we are not the sole inhabitants of this planet, but somehow we are always intent on causing harm. The embodiment of that idea in the picture is Mark Williams who sees the Gill-man as a ticket to fame and fortune while automatically ascribing to the creature no feeling. Mark's determination to capture Gill-man against David's protestations causes Mark's death and we are not sorry. This scientist's intent is selfish, against the broader good.

The battle between Gill-man and the group on the Rita intensifies as the creature proves himself a worthy opponent by trapping the interlopers in the Black Lagoon. Efforts to free the boat are fruitless until David manages to render the Gill-man helpless with some kind of gas. By this point, however, the creature has escaped captivity, killed members of Lucas' crew, severely injured Dr. Thompson, and eventually kills Mark who thought himself a match for Gill-man under water. It’s difficult to understand why anyone would deem himself a worthy opponent of a creature that took two actors to bring to life: Ben Chapman plays the creature on land and Ricou Browning and his impressive swimming skills portray him under water. Legend of horror Glenn Strange was considered for the underwater shots as the Creature, but he couldn’t swim.

As the remaining scientists struggle to free the Rita, Gill-man abducts Kay taking her to his lair resulting in an exciting climax, but which results in his demise. One cannot help but be saddened by the vision of the elegant man-fish sinking into the depths of the Black Lagoon, the end of an ancient creature that reminds us of the importance of our past. We are not alone and we are not better. Why do we always forget the first and think the last?

"It makes for solid horror-thrill entertainment," the Hollywood reporter reviewer wrote of Creature from the Black Lagoon upon its original release. That is certainly true on several levels as the beauty and beast trope is as satisfying here as is the fiction in the science presented with screenplay by Harry Essex and Arthur Ross, from a story by Maurice Simms. As is the case for many others, this fan thinks the Gill-man himself is the main reason to watch even though the story is well-adapted and entertaining. For kids who grew up in the 1950s, as David Skal states in his 2002 documentary Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle, the Creature from the Black Lagoon was the only monster that counted. Previous Universal monster heavyweights like Dracula, the Monster, and the Wolf Man had yet to appear on television, which is how the rest of us fell in love with them.

Audiences across the country first laid eyes on Gill-man on television when Abbott and Costello met him on an episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour. On February 21, 1954 in a parody of their many meetings with Universal monsters, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are in the Universal props department for the big Creature reveal. As expected, Costello is left alone with monsters appearing only to him when Ben Chapman as the Creature pops out of the chest to end the skit. No doubt audiences were impressed with this new monster, but that cannot compare to the thrills children must have felt when they watched Gill-man in 3-D in the local theaters that offered the new, if short-lived, gimmick along with the unforgettable score and high-pitched screeches every time Gill-man appears.

Bud Westmore, head of Universal’s make-up department took the credit for the creature’s look, but all historians credit actor, special effects designer and animator Milicent Patrick for truly discovering Gill-man’s legendary look. Patrick sketched the Creature and was referred to as “The Beauty Who Lives with Beasts.” Patrick took part in Creature from the Black Lagoon‘s World premiere in Detroit, Michigan on February 12, 1954 where special 3-D screenings were scheduled the following night at midnight. Audiences went crazy for Gill-man and the movie far exceeded studio expectations. On its wide U.S. release that March, Creature was offered in theaters across the country in 3-D and 2-D (flat) versions and it did so well that it remains the only 3-D movie to warrant a 3-D sequel, Revenge of the Creature, which began production in late June 1954. That one was followed by the flat The Creature Walks Among Us in 1956. (3-D Film Archive) It should be noted that as a classic Universal monster, Gill-man has (perhaps) the most interesting character arc in his trilogy of films than any of the other monsters.

From the day he stepped out beyond the Black Lagoon, Gill-man had the weight of four decades of Universal monster legacy on his shoulders and he nurtured that with gilled expertise. The future would honor him with great respect offering him everything from familial bonds as Uncle Gilbert on The Munsters to an Oscar for Guillermo del Toro’s homage in The Shape of Water. 

Narrator: In infinite variety, living things appear, and change, and reach the land, leaving a record of their coming, of their struggle to survive, and of their eventual end.

Except the Creature never ends.

Aurora

@CitizenScreen
Once Upon a Screen (aurorasginjoint.com)

🚀 Keep Watching the Skies! Science Fiction Cinema of the 1950s: The Year is 1954

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Find previous editions of Keep Watching the Skies! Science Fiction Cinema of the 1950s here: 1950, 1951, 1952,1953

A GILL MAN , A DEVIL GIRL , ROCKET MEN , KILLERS FROM SPACE and JULES VERNE…!

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

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A visual masterpiece directed by Richard Fleischer (Soylent Green 1971) and a screenplay by Earl Felton, who chose to weed out the extremely detailed and descriptive novel by Jules Verne and create a fast-paced visual fantasy that became this fabulous adventure. The film is scored by Paul J. Smith (The Parent Trap 1961) whose splendid music creates a world of majesty surrounding the sets with wonderfully colorful and inventive art direction by John Meehan, (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers 1946, The Heiress 1949, Sunset Blvd 1950, Studio 57 1955-58, M Squad 1957 -58 Boris Karloff’s THRILLER-ep.A Wig for Miss Devore 1962), production design & un-credited art direction by Harper Goff (Fantastic Voyage 1966, Willy Wonker & The Chocolate Factory 1971 also un-credited set design on A Midsummer’s Night Dream 1935,The Life of Emile Zola 1937, Sergeant York 1941, Casablanca 1942) and set direction by Emile Kuri (It’s a Wonderful Life 1946, The Paradine Case 1947, Rope 1948, The Heiress 1949, Dark City 1950, A Place in the Sun 1951, Detective Story 1951, War of the Worlds 1953, The Actress 1953, Shane 1953) brought the enigmatic ship to life as almost creature-like, flaunting interiors that are lavish with gadgets that flirt with scientific-industrious designs of the future!

The film stars Kirk Douglas as Ned Land and James Mason as Captain Nemo. Co-stars Paul Lukas as Prof. Pierre Aronnax, Peter Lorre as Conseil, Robert J. Wilke as first Mate of the Nautilus, Ted de Corsia as Capt. Farragut, Carlton Young as John Howard, J.M Kerrigan as Old Billy, and Percy Helton as the coach driver. 20,000 Leagues helped Peter Lorre step out of his sinister-mystery roles and add great comedic versatility as a character actor to his full career.

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Walt Disney began to depart from the expensive endeavor of producing animated features and started to experiment with live-action films. Disney became aware of George Pal’s desire to persuade Paramount to allow him to produce Verne’s beloved novel initially utilizing a screenplay by Kurt Neumann. Disney got George Pal to relinquish the rights and took over the project, hiring Richard Fleischer (Follow Me Quietly 1949, The Narrow Margin 1952, Compulsion 1959, Fantastic Voyage 1966, The Boston Strangler 1968, Tora! Tora! Tora! 1970, 10 Rillington Place 1971, See No Evil 1971, The New Centurions 1972, Soylent Green 1973), to direct, and Neumann’s script was out.  It’s no wonder Fleischer was tapped to do more fantasy science fiction films, though his psychological thrillers/documentary-style crime films are outstanding contributions.

Adapted from Jules Verne’s fabulous adventure the action takes place in the 19th century – where sailors told tall tales of giant sea creatures that wrecked and devoured sailing ships and the oceans held deep unknowing secrets as unfathomable as the heavens above. The legend of a strange horned sea monster has been wreaking havoc with sailing vessels in the South Pacific. Professor Pierre Arronax (Paul Lukas) and his sidekick Conseil (Peter Lorre) join an American expedition that includes crooning whale hunter Ned Land (Kirk Douglas) in search of this calamitous sea creature. The trio is confronted by the beast and is swept overboard then taken prisoner by the mysterious Captain Nemo (James Mason) whose drill-ornamented submarine ‘the Nautilus’ turns out to be the sea monster of legend.

Nemo turns out to be a fanatic who’s dark mission is total destruction of all the warships responsible for the evils of mankind. There’s a memorable underwater hand-to-tentacle fight with a giant squid!

Capt. Nemo: Think of it. On the surface there is hunger and fear. Men still exercise unjust laws. They fight, tear one another to pieces. A mere few feet beneath the waves their reign ceases, their evil drowns. Here on the ocean floor is the only independence. Here I am free! Imagine what would happen if they controlled machines such as this submarine boat. Far better that they think there’s a monster and hunt me with harpoons.

Captain Nemo: “The natives over there are cannibals. They eat liars with the same enthusiasm as they eat honest men.”

Ned Land: There’s one thing you ought to know, Professor: Nemo’s cracked. I’ve yet to see the day you can make a deal with a mad dog. So while you’re feeding him sugar, I’ll be figuring a plan to muzzle him.

IMDb Trivia: Actors portraying the cannibals chasing Ned Land painted humorous messages on their foreheads (not legible on-screen). In particular, one actor wrote “Eat at Joe’s” while another actor behind him wrote “I ate Joe”.

The climactic squid battle on the Nautilus was originally shot with a serene sunset and a calm sea. Director Richard Fleischer was troubled by the look of it because the cams and gears that operated the squid could easily be seen, making it look obviously fake. Walt Disney visited the set one day and Fleischer told him about the problem. Disney came up with the idea of having the squid battle take place during a fierce storm (another story is that it was actually screenwriter Earl Felton who came up with the idea). The scene was reshot that way and is considered by many to be the highlight of the film.

One of the models of the Nautilus created by Harper Goff was a “squeezed” version which could be filmed with a standard lens and still look normal when projected in Cinemascope.

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Creature from the Black Lagoon

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Clawing Monster From A Lost Age strikes from the Amazon’s forbidden depths!–Creature from a million years ago!… every man his mortal enemy… and a woman’s beauty his prey!–From the Amazon’s forbidden depths came the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Julia and the Gill Man

Creature From the Black Lagoon showcases Universal’s iconic Gill Man directed by science fiction & noir icon Jack Arnold. (The Glass Web 1953, It Came from Outer Space 1953, Tarantula 1955, The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957, Man in the Shadow 1957, The Tattered Dress 1957) Stars Richard Carlson as Dr. David Reed, Julie Adams as Kay Lawrence, Richard Denning as Mark Williams, Antonio Moreno as Carl Maia, Nestor Paiva as Lucas, and Whit Bissell as Dr. Edwin Thompson.

The Creature or Gill Man is one of the most famous monsters that has endured, and perhaps one of the most emblematic figures of 1950s science fiction. His suit was designed by Bud Westmore and a team of uncredited designers. As Tom Weaver points out the creature suit “is so logical in design that designers of other underwater monsters have to be very careful not too obviously to imitate the monster they are imitating”  Visionary Master Guillermo del Toro’s team of designers and special effects artists did an outrageous job of paying homage to the Gil Man while still maintaining an original, and arresting modern edge to the Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water (2017) The Gill Man still remains the most iconic monster of the 1950s

Creature From The Black Lagoon was also adapted to be shown in 3D! It was after Universal had a hit with Jack Arnold’s It Came From Outer Space in 1953 that they saw the potential for box office success with a science fiction film especially one they could easily adapt to 3D format.

Producer William Alland –(according to writer/historian Tom Weaver)– had heard of a legendary half -man half-fish creature who lived in the upper regions of the Amazon. The Creature suit was extremely form-fitting, too tight to be worn over aquatic breathing equipment. The swimmer would have to hold his breath for extended periods of time. Ben Chapman played the part out of the water wearing ‘the land suit’ modeled with paint (a dark silvery green and red highlights) by Millicent Patrick– Chapman not being a good enough swimmer. Ricou Browning wore the underwater suit which was lighter is color in order to make it stand out in the darker underwater scenes. Because he was able to hold his breath for five minutes, Browning was responsible for the stunning underwater scenes.

“Jack Arnold, started adding fins and gills to a sketch of the Motion Picture Academy’s Oscar statuette, and arrived at the basic look of the new monster. Arnold and Alland did play their originating the design , but actress and artist Millicent Patrick was chiefly responsible for the look of the Gill-Man. At the make up shop, Chris Mueller developed a bust of the Creature using one of Ann Sheridan as the basis. Also contributing to the design were Jack Kevan and Westmore himself, head of the make up division.”

Both Browning and Chapman had full body molds made, so that suit would fit their bodies perfectly. “The result is a remarkably convincing monster, which looks like a suit almost solely because it has to be a suit (…) a tendency fir the suits to look a little rubbery around the joints, The Gill Man is life-like, enough so as to engender a happy suspension of disbelief by most viewers, as the film proved enormously popular.”

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Lucas:-There are many strange legends in the Amazon. Even I, Lucas, have heard the legend of a man-fish.”

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We can sympathize with monsters, like Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s undead creation, & 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. Embedded in the narrative is a simultaneous pathos, that permits these monsters to express human desires, and then make sure that those desires are thwarted, frustrated, and ultimately destroyed.

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Richard Carlson Julie Adams Richard Denning and Whit Bissell and Dr. Edward Thompson study the fossil of an amphibian man found near the Amazon.
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The crew catches something in their net… and whatever it was… has ripped a giant Gill Man size hole in it leaving behind a claw!

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Mr. ‘It’s mine all mine” and Kay and Mr. “But think of the contribution to science!” looking at the poor trapped Gill Man-a lonely prisoner of scientific hubris and egocentric men.
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The creature trapped in a bamboo cage… floats, quietly thinking deep thoughts–while the three look on pondering what to do with him.

"˜The Outsider Narrative" of 1950s science fiction can be seen so clearly in Jack Arnold’s horror/sci-fi hybrid Creature From The Black Lagoon. Film monsters like The Gill Man form vivid memories for us, as they become icons laying the groundwork for the classic experience of good horror, sci-fi, and fantasy with memorable storytelling and anti-heroes that we ‘outliers’ grew to identify with and feel a fondness for.

As David Skal points out in The Monster Show, he poses that films like Creature From the Black Lagoon …are the “most vivid formative memories of a large section of the {American} population…{…} and that for so many of these narratives they seem to function as “mass cultural rituals.”

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Continue reading “🚀 Keep Watching the Skies! Science Fiction Cinema of the 1950s: The Year is 1954”

THE BEACH PARTY BLOGATHON- CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) & Night Tide (1961) : Gills-A LOVE STORY!!!

THE BEACH PARTY BLOGATHON hosted by the fabulous Speakeasy & Silver Screenings

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CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) directed by Jack Arnold

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There have been sympathetic monsters that elicit our understanding, who cause you to care about them and their ordeal whether they’re the focus of a rampaging mob of villagers with flaming torches and pick axes or scientists armed with spear guns at the ready as surrogate penises –okay maybe I didn’t think about that surrogate penis thing when I was 9, but I see it so clearly now!

Back in the day of the musty cool matinee theatre’s air smelling of buttered popcorn and old leather shoes, you could slink down in your good ‘n plenty and Milk Dud encrusted red velvet seat and wish that the monster would not only get away… but that just maybe he’d get the girl– instead of the self righteous hyper-science macho hero who objectifies everything! After all, the creature is not the one invading their territory, he’s prevailed in that environment for ions, before these macho nerds came along!

As a little monstergirl I used to think, and still do… just leave the ‘Gill Man’ alone!

We can sympathize with monsters, like Victor Frankenstein’s creation, & 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. embedded in the narrative is a simultaneous pathos, that permits these monsters to express human desires, and then make sure that those desires are thwarted, frustrated and ultimately destroyed.

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Richard Carlson Julie Adams Richard Denning and Whit Bissell as Dr. Edward Thompson study the fossil of an amphibian man found near the Amazon.
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The crew catches something in their net… and whatever it was… has ripped a giant Gill Man size hole in it leaving behind a claw!

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?” -Friedrich Nietzsche

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Mr. ‘It’s mine all mine” and Kay and Mr. “But think of the contribution to science!” looking at the poor trapped Gill Man-a lonely prisoner of scientific hubris and egocentric men.
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The creature trapped in a bamboo cage… floats, quietly thinking deep thoughts–while the three look on pondering what to do with him..

"˜The Outsider Narrative" can be seen so clearly in Jack Arnold’s horror/sci-fi hybrid Creature From The Black Lagoon. Film monsters like The Gill Man form vivid memories for us, as they become icons laying the groundwork for the classic experience of good horror, sci-fi, and fantasy with memorable storytelling and anti-heroes that we ‘outliers’ grew to identify with and feel a fondness for.

As David Skal points out in The Monster Show, he poses that films like Creature From the Black Lagoon …are the “most vivid formative memories of a large section of the {American} population…{…} and that for so many of these narratives they seem to function as “mass cultural rituals.”

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Creature From The Black Lagoon is quite a perfect film, as it works on so many different levels of examining human nature and nature as human.

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When belligerent scientists and their relentless pursuit of expanding control over the natural world invade a unique creature's habitat, forcing their domination of him- naturally he’s compelled to fight back.

In the midst of this evolves a sort of skewed Romeo and Juliet. The Gill Man never intends to threaten Julie Adam's character Kay Lawrence, he seemingly wants to make her his love object and maybe just maybe (idealizing of course while I imbue the ‘creature’ with a higher consciousness) the Gill Man seeks to free Kay from the dangerous men she is surrounded by. An amphibious knight in scaly armor, a rugged green scaly Adonis with limpid eyes and full lips.

The arrival of the expedition creates chaos and swampy mayhem due to the intrusion of the two opportunistic men who tote phallic harpoons around and fight with each other over questions of ethics, how to conduct scientific research, and naturally who will conquer Kay– acting like spoiled children-the both. Only the Gill Man sees her beauty from a place of primal hunger and desires her above all else, perhaps with an innate sense of possessing her, but without all the cocky male posturing.

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THE LOVABLE HUGGABLE GILL MAN!! 
“I promise to keep my claws trimmed and never come to bed with cold clammy feet!”

"Yes, yes,” said the Beast, “my heart is good, but still I am a monster.” –Among mankind,” says Beauty, “there are many that deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those, who, under a human form, hide a treacherous, corrupt, and ungrateful heart."
"• Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont

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"What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster."
"• John Steinbeck, East of Eden

"When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it."
"• Caitlyn Siehl, Literary Sexts: A Collection of Short & Sexy Love Poems

In trying to capture the amphibian man he is driven out of his home in the mysterious upper Amazon by these otherizing anthropologists. And so the Gill Man–being shot at by spears and besieged by sweaty men in bourgeois khakis and unfashionable swim trunks blech! –must defend his realm.

He who is just lazing around, dreaming through the sun’s rays which sparkle upon the surface of the water amongst the little fishes and coral… bothering no one. Suddenly surrounded by intruders with weapons and nets, poison, and cages.

But wait, one of them is leggy and soft and looks divine in her one-piece bathing suit designed by Rosemary Odell... (Brute Force 1947, It Came from Outer Space 1953, This Island Earth 1955, To Kill a Mockingbird 1962) and what a pair of eyes!

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The Gill Man goes on a mission to get the girl and so endures his attackers because he has fallen for the simple beauty of Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams.)

Though his world has become disordered, the presence of the beautiful Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams) it has awakened his sexual desire.

The film stars Richard Carlson as David Reed and Richard Denning as Mark Williams. The two men invade The Gill Man's quiet life and argue about what should be done with the subject of their research findings, to exploit, study, or bring back to the states to gain notoriety and get paid lots of clams! without an ethical thought in their curly scientific brains, forcing themselves on the creature and making him an object of entrapment & exhibition.

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“I think I love you so what am I so afraid of? I’m afraid that I’m not sure of a love there is no cure for I think I love you isn’t that what life is made of? Though it worries me to say that I’ve never felt this way”— Insert music from The Partridge Family –
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“There’s just something about an Aqua Velva Gill Man!”

The Gill Man watches from below the surface, as Kay Lawrence casually smokes a cigarette, taking long sensual puffs and throwing the butts upon the lagoon like trinkets for him to worship. He feels compelled to reach out to her but decides to be a voyeur for a bit longer.

Later the Gill Man sees Kay on the beach, the camera catches a notable deep sigh when he lays those deep green eyes on her. He moves closer. She lets out the obligatory monster movie scream queen shriek, that siren squeal, you know the kind, with the carefully place hands cupping her face in shock.

One of the men from the expedition takes a machete and tries to attack the creature, and he gets killed for his efforts. Dave and Mark hear Kay scream and approach just in time for the knock-out powder they’ve placed in the lagoon to finally take effect and subdue the creature who is now out cold. He falls flat on his green gilled face down in the sand.

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Kay passes out. the Gill Man places her down gently on the sand...
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Mark (Richard Denning) can’t wait to beat the fish guts out of the creature!

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David (Carlson) has to intervene before Mark (Denning) bashes the creature’s head in “Stop you’ll kill him!…”

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Once Williams (Denning) sees that the Gill Man has fallen down, he says “Got him!” then begins brutally smashing at him with his rifle, until David (Carlson) tells him to stop before he kills him. They throw a net over the unconscious creature. The scene shows the level of ferocity that man is capable of, and with this violent over-kill we on the other side of the evolutionary scale become monsters as well. It is a not-so-subtle contrast with the main character who is considered the ‘creature.’

Ricou Browning portrayed the creature in the underwater scenes, and Ben Chapman played the creature on land. There’s wonderfully engaging cinematography by William E. Snyder. (Flying Leathernecks 1951, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt 1956)

The Gill Man has dwelt in the warm existential depths of the water"¦ the lagoon his endless cycle of existence, thriving until he is invaded by scientific hubris. While in the lagoon he is connected to the creator of his world, remaining bound to a body of water that is symbolic of the eternal maternal womb. He is then forced out of his quiet habitual life where he then becomes "˜otherized'. With an "˜Outsider' narrative the familiar then becomes monstrous.

Our perceptions are focused on how this "˜creature' shatters the mold of normalcy. He transforms the ordinary world into something provocative and forces the outside world to define him, once again as with Frankenstein’s monster, he is perceived as a thing… a creature.

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A film like Creature from the Black Lagoon can suggest to us the recognition of our notions of conventional sexuality and gender as well. The Gill Man is similar to a frog yet walks upright and has the stance of a man and possesses that archetypal ogling that shows he has sexual designs on our heroine Kay.

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Kay Lawrence: “And I thought the Mississippi was something.”

While he is placed in a role that sees Kay as the "˜object' of his affection, he's sort of an androgynous amphibian, and yet he suggests that  “alternatives can exist which may be more desirable”-Mark Jancovich Rational Fears American Horror in the 1950s. Jancovich goes on to say that the film is “unremittingly sexual” The film has sexual symbolism throughout, as the outside world intrudes on an ambiguous sexual being living in the womb of the water, now unleashed as a sexual peril to women. The water scenes between the water ballet swimming Kay unaware that the creature is also swimming very near to her–are absolutely visual foreplay.

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Sweaty men baring their chests, wielding shotguns and Phallic harpoons as much as possible.

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Need I say more???

The most significant scene of the film is when The Gill Man swims a slight distance away from Kay, under the murky lagoon while Kay unaware, simultaneously moves through the water embracing its import with pleasure and liberation. She whirls above him, barely hinting at an erotic intimacy between the two.

Under the water the creature is not a threat to Kay, he's almost shy, as he barely touches her leg, he swims away as if he's conflicted with uncertainty about this new experience. William E Snyder is responsible for the striking underwater footage, that creates an erotic spacial world of shimmering light.

It’s almost a type of Eden, that those pesky aggressive scientific males spoil…

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We know that the creature shows a fascination toward Kay, but she sort of shares a kind of bond with him, as both are threatened by the domination of the two male scientists Mark and David. She tells the men to leave the creature alone, that it won't bother them. Mark wants to capture the creature as proof of his discovery, rather than just study him in his own habitat. Mark also wants to possess Kay, both of them are treated as ‘objects’. There are several scenes where Kay and the creature stare at each other as if they see something in common within themselves. Harry Essex wrote the screenplay, but hated the script at first so he added the Beauty and the Beast theme, to give the creature more of a sense of humanity.

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The Creature from the Black Lagoon is relentlessly sexual. Inhabited by mostly male characters, scientists have traveled to the deep Amazon in search of undiscovered animal life. What they find instead of more fossils is the Gill Man who refuses to give up his freedom. And why shouldn’t the creature react violently to their intrusion into his quiet domain? What’s more interesting is how he quickly becomes attracted to the gorgeous Julie Adams and her gutsy character Kay, the only female on the expedition who once again looks smashing in a one-piece white bathing suit and swims like she's in the water follies. Jancovich quotes Biskind from his Seeing is Believing – claiming that the creature is “driven into a frenzy by the proximity of Julie Adams in a one-piece bathing suit.” That sounds about right to me!

The Gill Man evokes our sympathy who has become an "˜object' to be controlled, dominated and assaulted by the outside world. It's the ‘men doing science’ who become the "˜aliens' the bad guys, the human monsters, and the creature another existential anti-hero who we identify with. It’s just a different slant on the theme of unrequited love in the lagoon…

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Continue reading “THE BEACH PARTY BLOGATHON- CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) & Night Tide (1961) : Gills-A LOVE STORY!!!”

Postcards From Shadowland: Huge Halloween Edition! 2013

09_metropolis_workers
Metropolis 1927
earth vs the flying saucers
Earth vs the Flying Saucers 1956
uninvited_610
The Uninvited 1944
Bedlam
Bedlam 1946
103-MadMonster4
The Mad Monster 1942
masque-du-demon-1960-15-g
Black Sunday 1960
Annex - Veidt, Conrad (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)_01
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920
Tales From the Crypt
Tales from the Crypt 1972
1941_Wolfman_img5
The Wolf Man 1941
a NightMonster2
Night Monster 1942
Bela Island of Lost Souls
Island of Lost Souls 1932
carnival-of-souls
Carnival of Souls 1962
Annex - Chaney Jr., Lon (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man)_05
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man 1943
Annex - Chaney Sr., Lon (Hunchback of Notre Dame, The)_01
The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1939
Annex - Chaney Sr., Lon (London After Midnight)_05
London After Midnight  1927
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein 1948
Annex - Chaney Sr., Lon (West of Zanzibar)_02
West of Zanzibar 1928
una O'Connor
The Invisible Man 1933
Annex - Cushing, Peter (Daleks' Invasion Earth - 2150 A.D.)_02
Daleks’ Invasion Earth -2150 A.D. (1966)
The Man from Planet X
The Man from Planet X (1951)
Annex - Karloff, Boris (Bride of Frankenstein, The)_05 2
The Bride of Frankenstein 1935
Chaney in the unknown
The Unknown 1927
amityville_horror
The Amityville Horror 1979
Annex - Karloff, Boris (Man They Could Not Hang, The)_NRFPT_03
The Man They Could Not Hang 1939
Corridors of Blood
Corridors of Blood 1958
Annex - Krauss, Werner (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The)_01
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Ape Man, The)_01
The Ape Man 1943
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Chandu the Magician)_01
Chandu the Magician 1932
time-of-their-lives
The Time of Their Lives 1946
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Ghost of Frankenstein, The)_01
The Ghost of Frankenstein 1942
Invisible-Man
The Invisible Man 1933
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Raven, The)_03
The Raven 1935
Annex - Churchill, Marguerite (Dracula's Daughter)_02
Dracula’s Daughter 1936
bloody-mama
Bloody Mama 1970
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (Son of Frankenstein)_02
Son of Frankenstein 1939
Annex - Lugosi, Bela (White Zombie)_01
White Zombie 1932
Annex - Marshall, Tully (Cat and the Canary, The)_01
The Cat and the Canary 1927
Annex - Naish, J. Carrol (Dr. Renault's Secret)_NRFPT_02
Dr. Renault’s Secret 1942
black sunday
Black Sunday 1960
Kill Baby Kill
Kill Baby Kill 1966
Annex - Price, Vincent (Abominable Dr. Phibes, The)_01
The Abominable Dr. Phibes 1971
Bela-Dracula_04
Dracula 1931
Annex - Price, Vincent (Dragonwyck)_01
Dragonwyck 1946
Annex - Price, Vincent (House of Wax)_01
House of Wax 1953
Annex - Price, Vincent (Raven, The)_01
The Raven 1963
Dracula's+Daughter
Dracula’s Daughter 1936
Annex - Rathbone, Basil (Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The)_01
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1939
annex-karloffborisbrideoffrankensteinthe_03
the Bride of Frankenstein 1935
Beauty and Beast
Beauty and the Beast 1946
shrinking man
The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957
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Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956
tarantula
Tarantula 1955
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Village of the Damned 1960
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Cat and the Canary 1927

Bates Motel sign

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Silent Night, Bloody Night 1972
Freaks wedding-feast
Freaks 1932
west-of-zanzibar
West of Zanzibar
Chaney He Who Gets Slapped
He Who Gets Slapped 1924
Family Plot Karen Black RIP
Family Plot 1976  (rip Karen Black)
Curse-of-the-Demon-5
Curse of the Demon 1957
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Devil Girl From Mars 1954
Doctor Cyclops still
Dr Cyclops 1940
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Double Door 1934
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Rosemary’s Baby 1968
barbara-steele-and-vincent-price-pit-and-pendulum
Pit and the Pendulum 1961
experiment-in-terror
Experiment in Terror 1962
eyeswoaface
Eyes Without a Face 1960
demon fireball its in the trees
Curse of the Demon 1957
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The Giant Behemoth 1959
frankenstein bride Mae Clarke
The Bride of Frankenstein 1935
ghost-of-frankenstein
The Ghost of Frankenstein 1942
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The Haunted Palace 1963
night of the demon true believers
Curse of the Demon 1957
he_who_gets_slapped
He Who Gets Slapped 1924
Hitchcock's Blackmail
Blackmail 1929
House on Haunted HIll -Nora-Mrs.Slydes
House on Haunted Hill 1959
house
House of Frankenstein 1944
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The Haunting 1963
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead 1968
Island of Lost Souls
Island of Lost Souls 1932
Metrópolis
Metrópolis 1927
it-came-from-beneath-the-sea
It Came From Beneath the Sea 1955
The-Crawling-Eye
The Crawling Eye 1958
itcamealien2
It Came from Outer Space 1953
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It Came from Outer Space 1953
Lifeboat
Lifeboat 1944
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Man Made Monster 1941
Lon Chaney in The Monster
The Monster 1925
Murnau's Faust 3
Faust 1926
night-demon-macginnis
Curse of the Demon 1957
NightMonster1
Night Monster 1942
Poster - Day the Earth Stood Still, The_30
The Day the Earth Stood Still 1951
r2 d2  4The Thing-0
The Thing from Another World 1951
The Devil Commands
The Devil Commands 1941
stepford wives
The Stepford Wives 1975
screaming-skull2
The Screaming Skull 1958
Smoking Frankenstein friends are good
the Bride of Frankenstein 1935
Swimming with Julie
The Creature from the Black Lagoon 1954
The Black Cat Karloff and dead wife
The Black Cat 1934
The Black Cat Ulmer Karloff & Lugosi
The Black Cat 1934
fly
The Fly 1958
The Ghost Ship Lewton
The Ghost Ship 1943
The Invisible Ray
The Invisible Ray 1936
the leopard man
The Leopard Man 1943
freaks
Freaks 1932
The Man They Could Not Hang Karloff in Lab
The Man They Could Not Hang 1939
The Man They Could Not Hang
The Man They Could Not Hang 1939
The Mummy Karloff
The Mummy 1932
psycho
Psycho 1960
The Thing From Another World
The Thing from Another World 1951
The-Mummys-Ghost
The Mummy’s’ Ghost 1944
the undying monster
The Undying Monster 1942
jane_eyre-
Jane Eyre 1943
The Woman Who Came Back
The Woman Who Came Back 1945
the-amazing-colossal-man-pic-4
the Amazing Colossal Man 1957
the-incredible-shrinking-man
The Incredible Shrinking Man 1957
the-seventh-seal-
The Seventh Seal 1957
The+Haunting
The Haunting 1963
The Devil Commands
The Devil Commands
thing-from-another-world-pic-3
The Thing From Another World 1951
UndyingMonster+%2836%29
The Undying Monster 1942
Unholy 3 Lon Chaney
The Unholy 3 (1925)
Vampyr
Vampyr 1932
I walk with a zombie
I Walked with a Zombie 1943
the exorcist
The Exorcist 1973
carnival-of-souls-
Carnival of Souls 1962
White Zombie
White Zombie 1932
Zita JohannIsland-of-Lost-Souls-3
Island of Lost Souls 1932
Zounds-Herman Munster
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!!!!!!

5 Movie Monsters in Search of an Existential Crisis: AntiFilm School Presents the 3rd Annual Halloween Horror Movie Spooktacular!

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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 the MonsterGirl nerd of all time, think of EXISTENTIALISM, Camus, Sartre & Kierkegaard 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.

EXISTENTIALISM

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 which ultimately lead to doom and despair. All human endeavors are meaningless and virtually insignificant, so when faced with the fact that 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.

Frankestein's Monster an existential man

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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.

When you think of the quintessential films that introduced themes of existential alienation into the narrative I think of Jack Arnold’s masterpiece The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) written by the late Richard Matheson, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and of course William Cameron Menzies’ Invaders from Mars (1953).

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956 Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy
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Luce Potter as the Martian Intelligence in William Cameron Menzies’s fantastical Invaders from Mars 1953.
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Jack Arnold’s quintessential journey of the existential transcendent man Grant Williams in The Incredible Shrinking Man.

But 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 based on stories where the alien, be it from space or here on earth, are 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.

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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’s literary 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.

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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 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 Lagoon is 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. And in the midst of this evolves a sort of skewed Romeo and Juliet romance. 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.

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My favorite five are…! (the Curtain lifts)

1) FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER: As portrayed by the great BORIS KARLOFF

Boris Karloff, Frankenstein

“Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!”- Henry Frankenstein

Boris Karloff’s poignant yet terrifying transformation into Frankenstein’s monster, thanks to the great make-up artist Jack Pierce 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 my favorite of the three films where Karloff portrayed the monster.

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From Wikipedia-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.”

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The opening narrative of the film 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."
"• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change."
"• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."
"• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
"If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!"
"• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
"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
"I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel…"
"• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

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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.”

That scene is shattered by the imposing first sight of the monster. Jack Pierce’s, extraordinary make-up on Boris Karloff combined with the actor’s facial expressions and gestures are sheer brilliance.

The first glance

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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 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.

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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.” And they certainly achieved that with Karloff’s performance and Whale’s vision.

And I say this because he is born a black 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 torture the monster, defining who he is because of his ‘difference’. It’s after Frankenstein’s first rampage that the monster evokes our sympathy.

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Frankenstein still

At first, the monster is like a new born 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

Boris Karloff in

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.

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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 and Franz Waxman’s score is perhaps one of the most evocative themes I just can resist becoming ebullient when ever I hear it!

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With his bizarre experiments, Henry defies the laws of nature, and the mortal contract with the universe and dares 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 Dr. 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.

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Frankenstein emerges from his electrifying awaking 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.

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Frankenstein is an ‘object of the grotesque’ in this typified mad scientist /monstrous creation movie where a scientist is obsessed with the ‘secrets of life itself’, his creation turns out to be a monster, the assistant is deformed in some way, and often is antagonistic to the monster setting off a provoked rampage, and the lab is fabulous with scientific regalia and various apparatus in an isolated setting.

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Ken Strickfaden’s designs or ‘special electrical properties’ buzzing light shows knobs and bottles and tubes in Henry Frankenstein’s lab are astounding. Charles D Hall’s art direction & set aides in the creation of an ambivalent scenery where science and morality conflict. The outside world is lenses as an ordered world, stylistically counter-posed to the clandestine dark and unorthodoxy of Henry’s laboratory. James Whale injected a lot of camp into the Gothic sensibilities.

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Frankenstein is labeled a ‘monster.’ Therefor, 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. 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 do 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 Lugosi turned the part of the monster down because he didn’t want to grunt and John Carradine refused to play monsters at all, and also rejected the offer to play Frankenstein.

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Continue reading “5 Movie Monsters in Search of an Existential Crisis: AntiFilm School Presents the 3rd Annual Halloween Horror Movie Spooktacular!”

Happy Halloween: Trailers to Scream About!

THE TINGLER (1959)

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THE BLOB (1958)

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13 GHOSTS (1960)

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DEMENTIA 13 (1963)

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NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

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House of Frankenstein (1944)

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CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON 1954

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IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953)

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THE DEVIL BAT (1940)

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HORROR HOTEL (1960) aka City of The Dead

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CURSE OF THE DEMON (1957)

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THE BIRDS (1963)

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THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961)

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Trick or Treat!  It’s….MonsterGirl !!!!!!!!!