Frankensteinian: Justin Fox' Bionic

For your viewing pleasure, a beautiful and powerful image that evokes a Bionic Bride for the 21st Century, decked out in sizzling circuit boards and robotic body augmentations.

Justin Fox is a powerhouse. A graphic artist, online designer, a teacher and an illustrator working in digital and mixed media, he is also the founder and the passionate mover behind Australia INfront, a collective promoting home-grown design and art. INfront’s manifesto proudly states: “Our work is Australian and of international standard. We seek GLOBAL RESPECT.”

No problem. Justin Fox deserves respect, and admiration. Check out his website, scroll down for a generous gallery of his dazzling digital illustrations. The page also has links to INfront and other Fox-driven projects. 

Carry On Screaming

Oddbod gets a recharge. That’s Tom Clegg as the refrigerator-size, pointy-eared Frankenstein-like henchman rising from the slab in the 1966 horror send up, Carry On Screaming.

Billy Cornelius plays Oddbod Junior — seen here cavorting in the altogether — clone-grown from his twin’s severed finger. Surprisingly, the finger was not the middle one, a rare case of restraint for the Carry On gang, masters of the silly, saucy, nudge-nudge, wink-wink school of British comedy.

Made when the venerable series was at it’s creative height, Screaming comes roughly halfway through the list of thirty Carry On pictures released between 1958 and 1978, all of them produced by Peter Rogers, all directed by Gerald Thomas and reliably starring a familiar cast of regulars. The earlier films seem archaic today, the latter ones desperate and tired, but the middle ones — among them Carry On Doctor, Carry On Cleopatra and Carry On Screaming — are inspired and often inventive, while still firmly rooted in old school British Music Hall slapstick and double-entendre dialog.

The film benefits from a lively script by Talbot Rothwell and excellent performances. Its gorgeous photography is a pitch perfect spoof of Hammer Films esthetics.

Oh, how I hate these honest, law-abiding people! Why can’t everyone be thoroughly horrid? Like US!

— Dr. Orlando Watt

The ever-delirious Kenneth Williams plays Dr. Orlando Watt, a zombie mad scientist animated by regular juicings of electricity, as a cross between Peter Cushing and Ernest Thesiger. Aided by the Oddbod Twins, Dr. Watt kidnaps young women — virgins, for some reason — and "vitrifies" them, to be sold as store dummies. Detectives Bung and Slobotham investigate. Traditional Carry On humor includes a victim drowned in a toilet, bedroom gags and, inescapably, a burly cop in hideous drag. Horror elements, besides the Frankensteinian Oddbods (actually Neanderthals of some sort), include a Victorian, Hammer-style laboratory, a Jekyll-Hyde potion, an Invisible Man reference, and a reanimated Mummy.

Among other notable performances, Jon Pertwee (of Dr. Who fame) is delightful in a short bit as Doctor Fettle, and the towering, 6’7” Bernard Bresslaw appears as a Lurch-type butler named Socket. Interestingly, Bresslaw had been considered for the part of The Monster in Hammer’s Curse of Frankenstein (1957). The role, and a career in horror films, went to Christopher Lee instead and Bresslaw found his own fame in a completely different register. Although he was also a serious actor, a Shakespearian and a published poet, Bresslaw became a household name in Great Britain as a comic.

The standout performance in the film, however, belongs to willowy Fenella Fielding as the voluptuous Valeria, a worthy companion to Vampira, Elvira and Morticia Addams, with a striking difference: The pneumatic Valeria wears a blindingly scarlet dress instead of the traditional vamp black. Fielding, as Dr. Watt’s sinister sister, can’t keep her hands off the men, dead or alive, and delivers innuendos in what can only be described as an amused deadpan. When she asks, “Do you mind if I smoke?”, she then proceeds to do just that. Literally.

Carry On Screaming is genuinely funny, especially if you’re partial to Benny Hill-style eye rolling and dumber is funnier gags. It’s also a silly, gently mocking valentine to Hammer movies.

The Carry On Screaming page on Carry On Line.

Carry On Wiki page.

Happy Birthday Boris and The Daughters of Frankenstein

On this day, November 23, in 1887, William Henry Pratt was born in Camberwell, England. In 1909, an athletic and adventurous young man of 22, Billy Pratt set sail for Canada, chosen over Australia by a lucky coin toss. He arrived at Montreal on May 17 and headed west, working odd jobs as he traveled across the Prairies, over the Rockies and into British Columbia. Somewhere along the way, he fell in with a theatrical troupe and found his true calling.

Adopting the ominous sounding stage name of Boris Karloff, the young actor barnstormed all over America with two-bit stock companies, learning his trade. In 1919, he landed in Los Angeles where the new business of making motion pictures was underway. Karloff’s gaunt profile and dark complexion landed him the usual villainous parts of the day, playing Hurons, Arabs, French-Canadian trappers, Mexican outlaws, evil princes and assorted henchmen. In 1926’s The Bells, Karloff memorably plays a Mesmerist copied off Werner Krauss’ Dr. Caligari.

In 1931, director James Whale picked Karloff to play The Monster in Frankenstein. To Karloff, it was just another job, one of 18 films he made that year. 

Frankenstein, of course, was a sensation and Boris Karloff was not only propelled to movie stardom, but his version of the Monster attained mythic status.

We celebrate another Karloff family birthday, today. On this day, November 23, 1938, Karloff donned his Frankenstein gear and reported to the set at Universal to film the mirror scene with Basil Rathbone in Son of Frankenstein. The crew surprised Boris with a birthday cake. That very same day, there were more celebrations on the set when word came that Boris’ wife, Dorothy, had given birth to a baby girl, Sara Jane.

Today, Sara Karloff keeps the memory of her father alive, appearing at conventions and operating the official Boris Karloff website. In 1996, with the complicity of fellow monster-star offspring Bela Lugosi Jr. and Ron Chaney, Sara Karloff successfully petitioned the US Post Office into issuing stamps honoring their famous fathers.

And yet another happy coincidence: Christopher Lee’s daughter, Christina, was born on this date, in 1963. Lee, of course, is another actor whose career was launched playing Frankenstein’s Monster.

From all of us Frankenstein fans, here’s a heartfelt happy birthday to dear Boris — the most famous Frankenstein of them all — and to the Daughters of Frankenstein, Sara Jane Karloff and Christina Lee.

The photo of Karloff with Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi comes from the Basil Rathbone website where you can see more pictures from the Son of Frankenstein set.

The photo of Christopher Lee and daughter appears in Lee's autobiography "Tall, Dark and Gruesome".

Frankensteinian : The Robot King

Lucy screamed as the attic burst with light. The Robot King’s electric body threw off golden sparks that filled the air like fireworks.

“Oh!” cried Lucy. “He’s alive, Ezra! He’s alive!”

Brian Selznick’s The Robot King (1995) is a story — at once melancholic and magic — about two Victorian-era children and how they cope with loss. The boy is mute since their mother died. His older sister busies herself building weird mechanical toys combining the discarded objects her brother collects and the forgotten odds and ends found in an old attic. One day, she builds a man-sized doll using wire, china, spoons, a hairbrush, a mirror, keys, twigs, any old thing, including a wooden manikin’s head. She dresses it up in an old red velvet coat and blue bow tie.

When she gives it a heart — her mother’s music box — the Robot King comes alive and the magic begins. Soon, the children are swept up in the Robot King’s adventures. Iron stoves, bicycles and every day objects are made to fly, an old abandoned amusement park revives itself, carousel horses break free and gallop away, and the children ride a Ferris wheel to the Moon and beyond.

Author Brian Selznick illustrates this intoxicating tale with fifteen sumptuous pencil drawings, meticulously detailed. The children are shown sitting in a moonlit cemetery, an abandoned roller coaster and a skeletal Ferris wheel sticking up in the distance, beyond the tombstones. A “wild herd of bicycles” tumble through the clouds. The Robot King takes flight on a “shimmering road of fireflies”.

The complex story and the occasionally somber tone, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's Dark Carnival stories, may be a bit overwhelming for some of the book’s intended audience. This is the kind of children’s book that connects best with older readers who celebrate childhood and are willing to surrender to the simple but strong emotions expressed in the adventures of Lucy, Ezra and their extraordinary manufactured friend. I know I did, but then again, I’m crazy about writer and illustrator Brian Selznick’s work.

Among his other books, Selznick illustrated The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins (written by Barbara Kerley), the true story of a visionary Victorian artist who sculpted dinosaur statues and how his monumental creations ended up broken and buried under New York’s Central Park. The book won a prestigious Caldecott Award in 2002. The Houdini Box is about a young boy who meets his idol, the famous magician, and learns the secret of his greatest escape. And anyone who grew up loving Monsters will embrace Selznick’s The Boy of a Thousand Faces, about a boy who loves Lon Chaney, a TV horror host in a Phantom of the Opera mask named Mr. Shadows, and a mysterious beast that haunts the neighborhood ‘round Halloween time.

I haven’t picked up Selznick’s new book yet, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a mystery set in Paris at the turn of the last century. I plan to surprise myself with it at Christmas. Word is that Martin Scorsese has purchased the film rights. Selznick describes the 550-page tome as “not a exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things.” It promises eccentric characters, an automaton, hidden messages, and an appearance by Georges Méliès!

The reviews are unanimous, Publisher’s Weekly calls it “a true masterpiece”. Now there’s a word someone could apply to most of Brian Selznick's work.

Books by Brian Selznick currently in print are: The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, The Boy of a Thousand Faces, and The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Here’s a short bio and a video of Brian Selznick on the Library of Congress National Book Festival site.

Here’s an interview with Selznick on Booksense.

Selznick writes about The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins and the creative process on The Children’s Book Council site.

Here’s the official website for The Invention of Hugo Cabret — lots of fun links posted there — and a review of the book on TimesOnline.

The Cobbler's Monster

I posted, previously, about a gruesome reverse-Pinocchio story by Ausonia, a Frankensteinian take on the famous children’s classic. Here, the Frankenstein/Pinocchio connection is more conventionally explored.

Written by Jeff Amano and illustrated by Craig Rousseau, The Cobbler’s Monster: A Tale of Gepetto’s Frankenstein fuses elements from Mary Shelley’s novel and Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, with a bit of Golem lore thrown in. In this story, set in America of the late 1800s, Gepetto saves the life of his dying son through DNA manipulation and an ancient Kaballah ritual. The result is a rampaging monster and the father, a la Frankenstein, must hunt down his transformed son.

You can sample some of the artwork, fourteen pages worth, on Newsarama. Detailed reviews appear on Read About Comics and Independent Propaganda.

The full-color, 128-page graphic novel was produced by Beckett Entertainment and published by Image Comics in 2006. It is available through The Frankenstore.

The Maltese Frankenstein

I believe one could travel all over the world and see a new Frankenstein play, somewhere, every week. In the last month, in North America alone, beside the two highly publicized Frankenstein musicals competing in New York, there were several productions peppered all over the map, including a puppet version, two different ballets, and countless small-scale, amateur stagings cobbled together in time for Halloween.

The themes in Frankenstein allow for infinite interpretations, and one of the most original recent takes on the story is the Maltese language version staged in April this year by Lemonhead Productions at the MITP theater in Valletta.

Writer Noel Tanti, who also plays the Creature, created a wholly original script in two parallel parts. Mary Shelley’s tale of rejection bounces off a contemporary story about a wheelchair-bound woman in a difficult relationship with her daughter. Tanti riffed on the original novel’s themes of love, parenthood and the need for acceptance. The play’s director and Lemonhead co-founder, Bryan Muscat, played the part of Victor Frankenstein.

Tanti keeps a fascinating blog where he discusses his version, and the Lemonhead site offers a wonderful and instructive selection of articles about every aspect of creating the play, step by step, including thoughts on adapting Mary Shelley’s book, going through rehearsals, costuming and makeup, up to the premiere and a post-show evaluation. All in all, a rare, intimate and precious insight into the creation of this Frankenstein from the ground up, a process that required some 10 months of very dedicated work.

Here’s an enthusiastic review. This is one play I would have loved to see. I need to brush up on my Maltese!

The play’s striking poster is by production designer Derek Fenech.

The Art of Frankenstein : Christian Cailleaux

       “I, his creature, existed. And I was nothing… I never had a name.”

From January 2006, a heavily condensed children’s adaptation of Frankenstein (“The terrifying story of the most famous of all monsters!”) by Michel Piquemal, illustrated by Christian Cailleaux, published by Albin-Michel.

Piquemal is a novelist, songwriter, and a very prolific children’s book writer. One of his books, A Wolf In My Room, deals with intelligently with children’s fear of the dark. The wolf comes out of the wallpaper at night and... eats your nightmares. The book comes with a penlight so you can check for monsters under your bed!

Besides his highly original work, Piquemal has adapted several literary classics into carefully crafted, simplified version for young readers. Of interest to monster fans, Piquemal did a young reader’s version of King Kong in 2004, with art by Christophe Blain.

Frankenstein illustrator Christian Cailleaux’ work includes evocative covers for a jazz record collection, travel sketch diaries and graphic novels, notably the Impostors series published by Casterman. Cailleaux’ website features several tantalizing examples of his work.

Click here to see six of Cailleaux’ moody and impressionistic Frankenstein illustrations.

The book is available in North America through Amazon Canada.

Frankenstein Meets The Beatles

Myths are infinitely malleable. They mix and merge easily. The Monster Kid generation, by and large, was also The British Invasion generation, and it was absolutely inevitable that someone would jam together such powerful icons as the Frankenstein Monster and The Beatles.

The combination was exploited by novelty artist Dickie Goodman, in 1965. In the manner of, but never attaining the phenomenal success of Bobby Pickett’s Monster Mash, Goodman created a number of monster themed tunes with titles like The Ghoul From Ipanema, My Baby Loves Monster Movies and, ultimately, Frankenstein Meets The Beatles. Listen to it on the net here. Read about Dickie Goodman’s Monster Album here.

For anyone who grew up on Frankensteins and Beatles, there’s a Wow! moment in George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine (1968) when John Lennon is introduced, morphing out of a garish, psychedelicized Frankenstein Monster. The cartoon Ringo quips, “I used to go out with his sister… Phyllis”.

Ringo Starr admits a love for science fiction and fantasy, witness his posing with Gort, the robot from The Day The Earth Stood Still on the cover of his solo album Goodnight Vienna.

He was also instrumental in getting an unfortunate musical comedy called Son of Dracula (1974) off the ground, but redeemed himself with his engaging participation in the delightfully dopey dinosaur romp Caveman (1981).

Of more specific interest to us, Ringo embraced the Frankenstein Monster as a kindred soul in connection with a very successful single called Back Off Boogaloo, in 1972. The record's cover features a dour Frankenstein Monster, smoking a large and perhaps “funny” cigarette.

A much more agreeable, flower-power version of the Creature co-stars with Ringo in the song's video. See them cavorting together on YouTube.

Should anyone compile a list of Frankenstein appearances in popular music or collect Frankenstein and monster novelty records into a single package, I’d recommend using John Bertges’ amazing illustration (at the top of this post) for its cover. The picture masterfully monster-mashes a gallery of movie Frankensteins with the Fab Four’s most famous album image. It was originally posted on The Universal Monster Army’s Yahoo Group website.

Update: There are many more of Jim Bertges’ ingenious and hilarious Frankenstein/Beatles album cover parodies posted by our friend Max over at The Drunken Severed Head.

(Big Thanks to Stuart Gardner and Jim Bertges!)

Mary's Son

On this day, November 12, in 1819, Percy Florence Shelley was born. He was the last of Mary Shelley's four children, and the only one to survive into adulthood.

Birth and death inextricably twined, Mary Shelley’s life reads like a catalog of tears. Her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died of complications ten days after Mary was born, in 1797. In 1815, Mary’s first child, Clara, born prematurely, died after fourteen days. A son, William, was born in 1816. He appears in portraits as a cherubic curly-haired boy. He succumbed to malaria in 1819. A girl, Clara Evarina, born in 1817, died a year later from dysentery. In 1822, Mary miscarried and almost died from the hemorrhage.

Death shadowed the Shelleys. In 1816, as Mary was busy writing Frankenstein, her half-sister, Fannie Imlay, committed suicide, as did Percy Bysshe’s abandoned wife, Harriet Shelley. A child Mary had cared for, Allegra, born to her stepsister Claire Claremont and Lord Byron, died at five years old, in 1822. And, of course, Mary’s ultimate tragedy, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned on July 1, 1822.

Mary devoted herself to Percy Florence. He was all that she had left. The moneyed Shelley family elder, Sir Timothy, refused to support his son's family, even making an impossible demand of Mary that she relinquish the child. Eventually, an allowance was paid but contingent on Mary not publishing Percy Bysshe’s poem. Upon Sir Timothy’s death in 1844, Percy Florence inherited the estate and a baronetcy.

Percy Florence Shelley married Jane St-John in 1848. Jane became Mary’s friend and companion to the end. After Mary Shelley died in 1851, Lady Jane Shelley preserved and promoted Mary’s and Percy Bysshe’s oeuvre.

Percy and Jane lived in a grand manor in Boscombe, near Bournemouth. Robert Louis Stevenson was a friend and frequent visitor. Today, the Shelley Manor is undergoing renovations. Areas including a theater built there by Percy Florence will be available to the public. There is also a Percy Florence Shelley Pub in town.

Percy Florence Shelley passed away in 1889. He had no children of his own.

The Shelley Manor Website. Shelley Park developer’s site.

Bag Head Frankenstein, And Other Fun Links

The plastic fangs have been put away and the countdown is on: Only 354 days to Halloween! Until then, let’s lurch back a bit and see if we can extend the chills from the last one.

Countless blogs celebrated the spooky holiday (here’s a list of the most dedicated ones) with numerous mentions of Frankenstein along the way. Here are some of the standouts…

Erick, over at Wonderful Wonderblog, posted excerpts from Movie Monsters, a kid’s activity book by actor, director and makeup man Alan Ormsby, published by Scholastic in 1975. The Brown Bag Frankenstein Head looks fun enough to try, though I can’t help thinking the whole thing might collapse before you’re done.

Erick also posted the entire booklet from View-Master’s 1976 Classic Tales Frankenstein. The uncredited writer did a fair job condensing the whole story into 12 short-short pages, even throwing in some puzzles, too! What I’d like to see now are the actual puppet scenes from the reel itself.

Comic book writer John Rozum turned his blog into Halloween Central all through October. Scroll around, it’s loaded with goodies, including a terrific “How to make a ghost” post. Frankenstein got a whole week’s worth of attention (look for posts dated October 21 to 27) with Frankenstein movie reviews, lots of Frankenstein paperback covers, Frankenstein games and toys including Ben Cooper Wigglers and a beautiful Frankenstein Push Toy (pictured at right) trick or treating with his little skull-shaped pail.

John’s blog is fun any time of year, and you should check out his unique cutout art, too, which also includes Frankenstein images.

Shawn at Branded in the 80s posted some sweet Halloween stuff, notably a look at the Crestwood House Monster Series for young readers. The Crestwood books, with their distinctive orange accented covers, infiltrated school and public libraries in the late 70s, introducing a whole new generation of kids to the classic monsters. Shawn reproduces several pages from the Frankenstein book, surprisingly well-written and complete, given its short length, with shots of the Edison Frankenstein, Boris Karloff in spiffy street gear, The Munsters, and a rare, candid picture of Christopher Lee in his post-brain trauma stitched-up skull makeup.

Hey, Shawn, now can we get a peek inside Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman?

Finally, a few more recent links, not posted at Halloween, but Frankenstein related...

Trailers From Hell has the Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein trailer up with commentary by director John Landis.

On Vitaphone Varieties, a superlative blog devoted to film and music of bygone days, Jeff Cohen looks at the first horror talkie, The Terror (1928), the early SF musical Just Imagine (1930), complete with mp3 excerpts, and the 1931 Frankenstein, reproducing a contemporary ad disguised as newspaper article, “Miracle Performed by Dr. Frankenstein”.

And on the indispensable Video WatchBlog, Tim Lucas, who has developed a brilliant perspective on Peter Cushing’s interpretation of The Baron through the Hammer Frankenstein series, writes a vivid appreciation of a new HD version of Terence Fisher’s Frankenstein Created Woman (1967). This one is a Must Read.

Now, click away!

Frankenstein Puts On The Ritz

The New Mel Brook Musical Young Frankenstein opened officially on Thursday evening, November 8, at the cavernous Hilton Theater in New York.

I’ll let you Google the reviews if you’re interested. Expect a lot of complaints about how it falls short of the original (surprise!), how the songs are less than memorable, and whether the whole thing is worth those “premium” $450 seats. On the plus side, everyone agrees that Sutton Foster (Inga) and Andrea Martin (Frau Blucher) are splendid, and it’s very nice to see that Shuler Hensley, no stranger to the part of The Monster, stomps away with the show.

The New York Time’s Ben Brantley — besides calling the spectacle an ear-splitting, overblown burlesque — says, “Shuler Hensley is terrific, turning Frankenstein’s monster into the most human character onstage” and singles out his Puttin’ On The Ritz as the show’s “one truly exhilarating number”. Newsday’s Linda Winer says Hensley “makes a splendidly human creature”. By the way, the Newsday page has a video sampler of musical numbers.

Mel Brook’s previous film-turned-into-a-Broadway-musical, The Producers, was then turned back into a new film. Assuming the Young Frankenstein musical is successful, should we brace ourselves for a new musical film version?

We’ll see, but if Young Frankenstein circles back to the movies, let’s hope they lock Shuler Hensley into The Monster’s role.

Shuler Hensley’s website has tons of photos and articles from the musical, and from Van Helsing as well.

Silent Frankensteins

Here’s a trivia question I’ve stumped film buff friends with: Who was the fourth actor to play the Frankenstein Monster in the movies?

The answer is: Boris Karloff. The most famous of all Frankenstein Monsters was preceded by 3 silent era actors.

The first was Charles Ogle, the scarecrow-like Monster in the so-called “Edison” Frankenstein of 1910. The film was lost and forgotten for over 50 years, only to miraculously surface in a private collection. Today, you can watch or download the sixteen-minute silent on Archive.org.

The second Frankenstein Monster of the movies was played by English-born Percy Darrell Standing in the 1915 feature-length Life Without Soul. The film is lost but a publicity sheet clearly shows the Monster as a dimwitted brute in a torn shirt, without disfiguring makeup. The whole drama, as it often turned out in films of the era, is revealed in the end to have been a dream.

The third interpretation is infinitely more mysterious. Its existence was largely unknown through most of the 20th century and, still today, very little is known about it.

The 1920 Il Mostro di Frankenstein was produced in Italy, with German investment, by Luciano Albertini, who also portrayed Dr. Frankenstein. It co-stars his frequent film collaborators: Wife Linda Albertini and the imposing Umberto Guarracino as The Monster. Of the plot, all we know is that the Doctor confronts his creation in a dark cave. The whole thing clocked in at some 39 minutes of screen time. The film was reputedly censored by Italian authorities, compelling Albertini and company to pursue their film careers in Germany.

The following year, 1921, Guarracino played “the product of the secret workshop” in Die Insel der Verschollenen (Island of the Lost), an unauthorized adaptation of H.G.Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. Trivia question #2: Can you name the only other actor to ever play both the Frankenstein Monster and a creation of Dr. Moreau?

Guarracino is perhaps best remembered as Pluto, the fuzzy-bearded King of Hell to “strong man” genre superstar Bartolomeo Pagano’s Maciste in the classic Maciste all'inferno of 1926, the film that is said to have inspired a young Federico Fellini to become a filmmaker. By the way, Maciste in Hell is a special effect knockout with very elaborate sets and all manner of beast men, alluring she-devils, and a giant fire-breathing dragon identified as “Hell’s Aeroplane”!

Of Frankenstein’s Mostro, nothing survives save an illustration on a Belgian promotion flyer. It shows the monster surrounded by smoke or flames, menacingly brandishing a stick. In the background, an urgent figure appears on a staircase. A “mysterious vision”, the caption reads, “from the novel by Mrs. Shelley”.

I found the small picture on the net years ago, but the source seems to have disappeared. If anyone has access to a better, larger copy, please share!

Out of curiosity, I scanned the image at high resolution, enlarged and photoshopped it a bit to see if any detail could be brought out. I humbly submit the result of this experiment. The Monster appears as a bald-headed, muscular man. The face remains a cipher. A tantalizing image that’ll have to do, at least until a better one is found.

Frankenstein's Stage Fright

New York theater’s “other” Frankenstein musical, the serious one, started its official run at 37 Arts on November 1st. After months of preparation and a long run in preview, now it’s official and the critics can speak, and it looks the show is in for a rough ride.

The New York Times’ Charles Isherwood plays on a Mary Shelley line about “a night of unmingled wretchedness” and calls the production a “drably earnest two hours of throaty sturm und drang”. The Daily News’ Joe Dziemianowicz calls it a boring, “bombastic and mind-boggling… misfire”. Newsday’s Linda Winer writes: “This one is not even a horror show. It is, however, horrible.” The New York Post’s Frank Scheck says it all with his title: “Monstrously bad.”

The problem, it seems, is in the telling. The cast is mostly commiserated with for doing their best with poor material. The score gets thumbs down all around. Steve Blanchard, the play’s Creature, is never panned but he does get a ribbing for his bare-chested, rock star posture. The bare bones staircase set and slide-show projections fail to impress.

Michael Dale, on Broadway World, has a fair bit of fun with the show, calling it “Jung Frankenstein”, adding that “The valiant stars do give praiseworthy performances under trying circumstances”, being “made to bellow out hollow emotions to over-amplified anthematic melodies”.

A couple of positive but hardly influential reviews have cropped up. Diane Barth at Epoch Times reports “excellent performances” and writes, “Overall, the production conveys a sense of anticipation, uncertainty, and romance, very much in line with Mary Shelley's concept.”

Julie Reed of The Associated Press says Steve Blanchard commands the stage and concludes: “This "Frankenstein" brings the classic story thrillingly to life. No green giant, but you won't miss him.”

Speaking of the green giant, the other Broadway Frankenstein, the Young and funny one, officially opens on Thursday, November 8. We’ll soon see what the critics think of that one, but sky-high anticipation levels, months of massive publicity and huge ticket pre-sales suggest that Mel Brooks’ multi-million dollar show is bulletproof and would survive even universal (but unlikely) lambasting. Right off the bat, according to the Broadway World News Desk, the premiere will be accompanied by heavy TV coverage that includes The Today Show and NBC Nightly News.

Interesting footnote: Hunter Foster, the Dr. Frankenstein in the Off-Broadway show, interviewed on AM New York, was asked about the differences between the two Frankenstein musicals. Foster replied: “We’re $400 cheaper”.

Top photo source: New York Times, Sarah Krulwich.

(Thanks to Marc Berezin for linkage!)

Bruce Timm's Frankenstein

Artist Bruce Timm is best known for his superhero animation and comics work, but this cartoon shows his mastery of Good Girl Pinup Art, and the gaggle of Frankenstein Zombies channels 50s Horror Comics and B-Monster Movies. Timm’s art is so dynamic, I don’t think he could draw a straight line without making it look like it was moving at a 100 MPH.

The art is from the great Arglebargle blog. Click over to see a monster montage of Timm’s work, including takes on Vampirella, his cover for The Little Shop of Horrors magazine, and more Frankenstein art, including a straight painting that would have looked good on the classic Famous Monsters magazine, and a stunning Karloff Frankenstein caricature.

Timm is a fan favorite, having served as designer, producer and director on the legendary Batman: The Animated Series of the 90s, the show that raised the bar way high for all the superhero cartoon shows that followed. He has also collected Eisner Awards for his comic book jobs.

By the way, the Bizarro sketch at right reminds us who the character is really based on, doesn’t it?

Here’s Timm’s bio on Wikipedia. Here’s an enormous collection of art, 36 pages worth, on Comic Art Community, and a fan site called The Bruce Timm Gallery.

TwoMorrows published a Bruce Timm collection in their Modern Masters series, available here, or directly from the publisher.

Related:
Bruce Timm’s Teen Bride of Frankenstein
Bruce Timm's Classic Bride

The Monster : Christopher Lee

“It was a case of inventing a being who was neither oneself nor anybody else, but a composite piece of other people, mostly dead.”

— Christopher Lee, from his autobiography, Tall, Dark and Gruesome (1977)

2007 is the 50^th Anniversary year of the release, on May 2, of The Curse of Frankenstein, the film that put Hammer Films of England on the map and rebooted the Frankenstein movie saga.

Christopher Lee played a gangling, spastic Creature, as if every part of him had a mind of its own. The makeup was a mess, but it worked. I saw the film in a second-run house in 1960. When the camera rolled up and Lee ripped the bandages from his face, everyone in the theater jumped a foot out of their seats, the combined effect of the sudden sight of Lee’s leering mashed-potato face and an entire row of teenage girls SHRIEKING on cue. The rest of the movie was watched from one’s seat edge, everyone in the house pumping adrenaline until the final scene unspooled.

It was one of those unique, memorable, communal film experiences. I never experienced anything like it again, with the sole exception of Alien, in 1979, which had everyone in a packed theater on opening night crawling out of their skins.

By the end of 1957, with The Curse of Frankenstein a stunning, worldwide box-office hit, Christopher Lee, his friend Peter Cushing, and director Terence Fisher reunited at Bray Studios on November 11 and began work on Dracula (aka The Horror of Dracula).

50 years on, Christopher Lee is still busy, and we’re all grateful for it. We’ll see him next in The Golden Compass, come December.

Christopher Lee: Official website. On Wikipedia. IMDB page (258 films listed, plus 107 documentaries!)

Frankensteinian Pinocchio

The disturbing cover image evokes Frankenstein and sets the tone for writer-artist Ausonia’s perverse, line-crossing take on The Monster’s fairy tale cousin, Pinocchio.

This graphic novel turns the classic 1880 Carlo Collodi story upside down and inside out: The wooden puppet butcher Gepetto sows together a meat-bag Pinocchio whose nose grows when he tells the truth. Adrift, despised, the rotting creature is rejected, exploited and subjected to mental, physical and sexual abuse.

The grim, horrific, Pinocchio: The Story of a Child was published by Pavesio in Italy and France to critical consternation. Some have interpreted the story as a warped ode to freedom, others wonder what all the gore and nihilism amount to. G.Colié on BDGest calls it “Daring and cruel to the point of perversion… mutilating a fairy tale from our childhood by forcing adult darkness onto it”. He adds that the underlying message is so relentlessly pessimistic that it is “not to be read if you are depressed”.

Perhaps the best approach to the book is to get over the shock imagery and the distracting inverse-Pinocchio conceit, and read it as a cautionary tale set in an insane, war-torn world where human beings are treated like worthless meat puppets.

Script contentions aside, Ausonia’s art is fabulous. The stunning Pinocchio cover image combines sculpture and painting. The book’s website (in Italian) carries extensive illustrations, including sketches, character development, storyboards and several pages from the graphic novel.

The artist keeps a blog where more artwork is displayed. Click through, scroll down a bit, and see video of Ausonia working on a portrait of the meat-monster.

New TV Frankenstein

Britain’s ITV1 revealed its 2-hour teledrama Frankenstein on October 24. The new version has an updated script by Jed Mercurio and stars Helen McCrory as Dr. Victoria Frankenstein. James Beach plays the vat-grown, stem-cell Monster that looks a bit like a bloodless ET. The makeup required 4 hours of work and CGI tweaking.

Critics were uniformly amused and distracted by another broadcast, on the same evening as Frankenstein, of a documentary about Michael Jackson. The Guardian’s Sam Wollaston opens with, “Two monsters today, man made, experiments gone wrong.” Wollaston’s opinion of Frankenstein is by far the most positive of all the reviews online, though he found Jackson to be “far scarier”.

John Wise in The People.co.uk says, “the story was too wrapped up in Dr Frankenstein's soap opera-esque personal tragedies (lost son, lost husband, lost the plot). Frankenstein is a fantasy and shouldn't be sold as anything else”. Wise adds that The Monster sounded “like an overexcited pig”. Aidan Smith in The Scotsman bounces back and forth between Frankenstein and “Whacko Jacko”, noting that The Monster lacked a proper nose and “looked like Munch’s The Scream with an overbite”. At least, I think that part was about Frankenstein.

There’s more meat in Merle Brown’s review, in The Herald. Brown notes “a spectacularly gruesome scene in which the monster managed to kill a screaming child when he was trying to muffle her cries. It was extremely graphic and perhaps not completely necessary.” In the final analysis, Brown judges the show silly and tedious.

Blogger Dan Owen pans it outright, pronouncing the new Frankenstein “dead on arrival — with no hope of resuscitation”. One quibble with Mr. Owen’s otherwise reasoned review: He dismisses Mary Shelley’s novel as “overrated Victorian fiction”. Opinion aside, Frankenstein was Regency era, predating the earliest Victorian era marker by at least 15 years.

Related links: The plot in detail on 24NewsCentral, “How Helen McCrory turned into Frankenstein” by Daphne Lockyer, Times Online, and “ITV gives Frankenstein a feminine makeover” by Gerald Gilbert, The Independent.

The new Frankenstein was simultaneously released as a “Director’s Cut” DVD and is available on Amazon.co.uk.