Sites to See: The Drunken Severed Head

If there was an award for friendliest place on the Net… well, I guess SOMEONE would win it, but I’m reasonably sure I’d vote for The Drunken Severed Head.

This week, Max Cheney celebrates his first anniversary as a blogger, a stupendous achievement in dedication, endurance, and silliness. Clicking through The Drunken Severed Head is like visiting with a old friend, just sitting around having a beer, talking about monster movies, having a few laughs, and knowing that if you nod off on the sofa, Max will surely stick your hand in a bucket of warm water.

If I had to be highbrow about it, I’d say that Max Cheney’s blog is a celebration of monster-related pop culture ephemera, but that fails to convey the sheer fun of Max’ discoveries. Max takes you on neighborhood car rides, checking for over the top Halloween decorations, or out to the burbs to play a game of DayGlo Monster Mini-Golf. He takes you along to old amusement parks, monster memorabilia conventions, zombie walks, and he introduces you to his talented friends, of which he has far too many.

What I like most about The Drunken Severed Head is how honest, heartfelt and obviously unhinged it is. The blog is relaxed, it feels unplanned, and there’s a real cheerfulness there. Check out one of Max’ typical posts, this one about Frankenstein masks and toys. See what I mean? Max is having a ball, and it’s infectious.

Max Cheney, it must be said, is a respected and beloved member of the Monster Kid community, posting reliably and knowledgeably on the Classic Horror Film Board and serving as a moderator on the Universal Monster Army Message Board. When I started Frankensteinia last August, Max was one of the very first people to communicate with me and show his support for my efforts.

Thank you for your frienship, Max, my certifiable friend, and Happy Blogging Anniversary! And here’s an extra special salute to Max’ much, much better half, Jane The Voodoo Queen, for everything she does, especially making sure that Max takes his medication.

The Drunken Severed Head is nominated for a Rondo Award in the Best Website or Blog category. Click the Rondo
graphic on the menu at right, and cast your vote... for ME, Frankensteinia!

Pictures: Max Cheney’s Drunken Severed Head with legendary Famous Monsters editor Forry Ackerman and cover artist extraordinaire Basil Gogos. As for the other picture, sorry, I don’t know what the hell is going on there.

La Fiancée de Frankenstein

Here are some more foreign release ads for James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

These ads mats, in stark scratchboard black and white, advertised La Fiancée de Frankenstein in French newspapers. The Monster is prominently featured here, he’s obviously the bankable star of the picture, but The Bride also appears and was used on most of the film’s promotional material, in America and elsewhere.

There seemed to be no attempt to tantalize patrons and keep them guessing as to The Bride’s appearance. Mind you, even after seventy-three years of exposure, as celebrated and iconic as The Bride’s exploding hair profile has become, we still get a shudder and a thrill when she first steps out of her mummy bandages and cranks her Nefertiti head around in staccato poses.

The ads for La Scala read: “The Monster is alive! He talks! He demands a mate!”, and warn that “Children are strictly forbidden”.

The banner ad for the Saint Severin, of more recent vintage, pronounces the film as “The Masterpiece of the Fantastic!”.

I previously posted a 1946 French movie poster for the film here.

With thanks, encore et toujours, to Jean-Claude Michel for the images.

Rare Poster Auction

Heads up, collectors! Especially the well-healed ones…

Christie’s auction house of London is offering this rare and beautiful Swedish poster by Fuchs for Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Expect this one to fetch a high price. Christie’s estimate is 2,000 to 3,000 British pounds, making it far and away the most expensive among a selection of movie posters on offer, from the impeccable collection of Shinobu Toyoda. Hurry up, sale closes March 5.

Here is the Frankenstein poster auction page. You can click through to see a larger image. And check out the selection of wonderfully jazzy science-fiction titles from the 50’s, including outstanding posters from Not of This Earth, The She Creature, and a set of Belgian posters for all three Creature From The Black Lagoon pictures.

Thanks Matt J.

The Ghosts of Frankenstein's Castle

I noticed a significant bump in readership this week. Some of it is traceable to my new MySpace Frankensteinia presence (if you’re on MySpace, add me!) and some of it is due to interest generated by the broadcast on the Sci-Fi network of a Ghost Hunters International episode on Frankenstein’s Castle.

The show focuses on purported ghostly happenings at the Castle ruins in Darmstadt, Germany, with only a passing reference to Mary Shelley having supposedly been inspired by a visit there. Mary’s famous novel is described as being “about a mad scientist who created this monster out of body parts”. No kidding, that’s a direct quote. And this, by the way, seems to be the standard level of research expended for the entire program, which turns out to be something halfway between Scooby-Doo and Reality TV.

Legends, folklore and rumors are the hard facts upon which our intrepid reporters base their investigation. We are treated to lots of quick-edit fisheye shots of the rather nondescript castle (nothing at all like the one in the photograph above), accompanied by a mournful Halloween soundtrack. Most of the program is shot in spooky night-vision black and white, the player’s eyes glowing eerily as they stalk the castle overnight with their handheld digital ghostbuster equipment. “Entities” we are told, “communicate with sound that is beyond human hearing”.

The team’s Ludicrous Meter must have gone off the scale when they stood around asking questions out loud, trying to raise a medieval German knight and his ghost fiancée. I’m guessing that the “entities” present *have picked up some colloquial American over the 400 years they’ve spent haunting the premises and that they understand the concept of speaking up “so we can tape you”, and the meaning of the command to “rock the pews”. Best laugh in the show comes when one of the investigators shouts, “Yo, hey! Come on out! Let’s go!”.

Nothing much happens, except for host Donna Lacroix being “freaked out” by moving shadows. We visit a bare room billed as “Frankenstein’s Secret Laboratory” and a tiny chapel occupied by a statue of a bad luck knight who broke his neck and is said to have hung around forlornly ever since. He puts in an appearance of sorts, rattling a doorknob.

The Ghost Hunter team interview “Frankenstein expert” Walter Scheele, a charming man who’s excellent, slightly accented English is inexplicably subtitled. Mr. Scheele, by the way, is the historian who floated the disputed theory that Mary Shelley knew about the experiments of alchemist Konrad Dippel and used this as a springboard for her tale.

At the end of the program, Mr. Scheele identifies some recorded noise as a voice saying, “Arbo ist hier!”, and that’s the clincher. Ol’ Arbogast von Frankenstein himself checked in, so it’s case closed.

The team auto-pronounce their rather uneventful evening “a complete success!”. Mr. Scheele’s restrained, polite satisfaction is interpreted as “over the moon” and he is said to have been “totally taken aback and dumbfounded!”. The hosts are shamelessly self-congratulatory throughout the program and completely bowled over by their own “methodology and protocol”. In the end, your reaction to the program will depend on whether you judge it by what you’ve seen, or what the enthusiastic hosts tell you you’ve seen.

The program is viewable online on the Sci-Fi network’s Ghost Hunters International website. Streaming will not work if you’re outside the U.S., but you can see it in five chunks on YouTube, starting here.

I blogged previously about Castle Frankenstein here and here, and you can see the Castle itself live on the Burg Frankenstein webcam.

The Bride of Scapa Flow

When Frankenstein acquiesced to his Creature’s demand for a mate, more like blackmail than a request, he sought to work in total seclusion, as far from civilization as possible...

“I traversed the northern highlands and fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene of my labours. It was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves.”

Frankenstein chose well. His destination, off the northern tip of Scotland, is so far off the beaten track that even today, the all-seeing Google Earth can’t provide a complete picture of it.

The Isles of Orkney, over seventy in number, are sparsely populated, but have sustained inhabitants continuously for over five and half thousand years, going back to the late Stone Age. The name “Orkney” is derived from the Old Norse word for “Seal Island”. The main body of water within the island group is called Scapa Flow, and it has played an important role in wartime history.

Frankenstein’s laboratories were humble affairs, nothing like the electrical cathedrals of the movies. The original Monster was created in a small student’s garret in Ingolstadt. The Bride To Be would be shaped in a tiny, “miserable hut” on a windswept, stony beach. Again, there are no clues as to the methods of creation, save for the mention of “chemical instruments”.

Frankenstein labors by day and walks the beach at night, brooding. His work is almost done when, one evening, the potential for catastrophe finally dawns on him. The female Creature “might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness.” Frankenstein realizes that “They might even hate each other…” and the Bride could “turn in disgust” from the Creature “to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species.” These lines would serve as inspiration for James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein.

Worse still, Frankenstein fears that “a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror.”

The Monster watches, horrified, as Frankenstein, “trembling with passion” destroys his work, tearing the unfinished Bride to pieces. He packs the gruesome remains in a basket, weighs it down with stones and sets off for the mainland in a skiff, but not before The Monster delivers his terrible promise…

“You, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery… I shall be with you on your wedding-night."

Out at sea, at night, Frankenstein tosses he basket overboard… “I listened to the gurgling sound as it sank and then sailed away from the spot.”

Frankenstein flees, an implacable, vengeful Monster in murderous pursuit.

The lost Bride, the dismembered mermaid of Scapa Flow, sleeps beneath the cold waves, dreaming of a life that never came.

Orkney’s Official Tourism website.

Orkney Islands of Westray and Papa Westray.

Orkneyjar, the Heritage of the Orkneys.

Scapa Flow, including Wartime Maritime History.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Airmont Classic

A bit battered, cover dulled and scratched, this was my first copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, an Airmont Classic paperback from 1963.

The novel had been available in popularly priced editions throughout the twentieth century, usually part of a collection of famous titles conveniently in the public domain.

Airmont’s titles included Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and so on, the usual predictable list, all offered “Complete and Unabridged, With Introductions”. Frankenstein was the 19th title in the series.

While earlier editions were often given upscale packaging, with artists like Lynd Ward and Nino Carbe providing illustrations, the paperback formula — ubiquitous today — consisted of the so-called “definitive” 1831 edition wrapped in simple covers and augmented by an original introduction of the literary persuasion. Typically, the Airmont paperback carries a short essay by Mary M. Threapleton that skims through Mary’s difficult life, the extraordinary circumstances of the ghost story contest at Villa Diodati, the theme of rejection by society, and the book as a forerunner of modern science-fiction. Ms. Threapleton edited and introduced numerous classic novels in the sixties and her name is associated with the Memorial University of Newfoundland, so I’m guessing English Lit teacher/expert.

The cover, uncredited, is at odds with the scholarly introduction and a back cover blurb stating that readers “familiar with the Hollywood movies of Frankenstein… may be surprised not to find themselves transported at once to a remote castle, complete with galvanic flashes and the inarticulate grunts of Boris Karloff”. The image of a pensive Frankenstein with books and retorts may be correct, book-wise, but he is presented against a background featuring a movie-inspired ramshackle cemetery and foreboding tower laboratory on a rocky hill. The Creature’s face, appearing menacingly in the darkened sky behind the title, sports the unmistakable tall forehead of Hollywood’s iconic Monster.

It’s now an established recipe for Frankenstein books: Look, it’s a work of literature, it has nothing to do with movie castles, bolt heads and grunting Karloffs… and here’s Boris on the cover anyway, just so you know you’re getting Frankenstein.

CGI Frankenstein

Here’s an fascinating curio, a short but oh so tantalizing film clip of a Frankenstein film that might have been.

The project, known as CGI Frankenstein, caused a brief but intense buzz on the Net in 1998. The film, incredibly, would have been a straight, serious throwback to the classic Universal Frankenstein — in fact, a direct sequel picking up right where the original 1931 film left off — and done entirely in realistic computer animation. In October 1998, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Universal head Casey Silver had greenlighted the film for release in 2000.

The project, budgeted at 80 million dollars, was to be ILM’s first full-length animated feature, under the direction of Brett Maddock and Dave Carson, with a script by Maddock and S.S.Wilson, who had previously collaborated on Tremors (1990).

The project seems to have fizzled almost as soon as the word broke. The movie gossip site Ain’t It Cool News posted a fannish but comprehensive post-mortem here. Be sure you click through to see the actual, eye-popping 17-second animation test for the Frankenstein Monster. The circa 1930's tower set and the Monster’s Karloffian walk are pitch perfect.

Ain’t It Cool News also posted pictures of maquettes for the Frankenstein Monster and a redesigned Wolfman here.

The project was canned, but Universal didn’t quite give up on the concept, eventually rebooting its stable of classic monsters with the addle-brained, overblown Van Helsing of 2004, a critical and box-office failure.

Related:

Frankenstein's Laboratory

Frankensteinian : The Patchwork People of Oz by Marc Berezin

Guest Blogger Marc Berezin discusses the decidedly Frankensteinian themes and the startling jigsaw characters who inhabit Frank L. Baum’s Oz universe.

As we all know, Victor Frankenstein’s creation assumed his anti-social disposition when (almost) all of his society rejected him for looking “different”. Had he lived in the fantasy world of author L. Frank Baum, things might have been different. In various works about the wonderful Land of Oz (and a few other magical nations), the author introduces us to assorted man-made ‘patchwork’ grotesqueries, none of whom are cast out or persecuted by their peers.

The best known individual is the Tin Woodman (aka Nick Chopper) who is introduced along with his patchwork comrade the Scarecrow in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). An early cyborg, Nick became a man of tin gradually, when his enchanted ax dismembered him limb by limb, which he then replaced with tin parts. Similarly, a general in the non-Oz fantasy John Dough and the Cherub (1906) is completely made of artificial parts, the originals having been lost in various battles. Other animated assembled characters include Jack Pumpkinhead and the flying Gump (made from two sofas, palm leaves, a broom and an elk-like creature’s head) from The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904).

Another popular celebrity is Scraps, the eponymous heroine of The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913). A rag doll sewn together from a patchwork quilt, stuffed with cotton and brought to life with magic, Scraps was intended to be the servant of a magician’s wife, but instead was given a very unservantlike disposition. Unlike some cinematic Frankenstein Monsters, whose brains are criminal or damaged, Scraps is lucky enough to be given brains with a lot more cleverness than intended. Wild and independent, she exclaims:

“Why, I'm thoroughly delightful. I'm an Original, if you please, and therefore incomparable. Of all the comic, absurd, rare and amusing creatures the world contains, I must be the supreme freak. … But I'm glad--I'm awfully glad!—that I'm just what I am, and nothing else."

Her fellow Ozites love her for it and make her one the most popular celebrities of the Emerald City. Scraps may have inspired the character of Sally in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

The most positively Frankensteinian tale of Baum’s is The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918). In this story, the titular hero goes in search of Nimee Amee, the sweetheart whom he abandoned years ago, when he lost his heart. He meets up with Captain Fyter, the Tin Soldier (who became tin the same way as he did) who is also looking for the same girl. It turns out that Ku-Klip, the tinsmith who pieced together both tin men had used their dismembered limbs to construct a new patchwork creation named “Chopfyt”. In the end it is revealed that the Nimee has been contentedly married to Chopfyt and no longer cares for either of her former suitors (bride of Frankenstein indeed!).

In conclusion, one can hope that in his wanderings from the Arctic, Frankenstein’s “monster” might have found himself transported to the Land of Oz. For surely there would he have found himself among patchwork peers who would hold him in esteem, and not fear him for differences with humanity.

The picture of the Tin Woodman is from the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and drawn by W.W. Denslow. The other pictures are by John R. Neill.

All of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books are in print and available as online texts. More Oz information may be found at The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Website, and the International Wizard of Oz Club website.

Guest Blogger Marc Berezin is a public librarian who likes classic horror films and classic Oz. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Frankenstein's Feast of St. Valentine

Truly a monster for all seasons, Frankenstein was conjugated with Valentine’s Day back in 1966, when a mere nickel spent at the corner store would get you a pack of Frankenstein Valentine Stickers, a cheap wax-paper wrapper containing five full-color peel and stick cartoons, and a flat wad of pink, petrified bubble gum.

The cards in bubble-gum card packs were originally designed as premiums to help sell gum, a trick copied from tobacco companies that had long used baseball or movie star pictures as sales incentives in cigarette packs. The success of the Bazooka Joe miniature comics in the late 40s, and the colorful sports and adventure themed pasteboards produced by the Topps Company of Brooklyn, New York, quickly evolved into a collecting and trading hobby.

The Frankenstein Valentine Stickers are typical of the Monster Boom era merchandizing that combined monster movies and humor in equal dozes. Monster trading cards were very popular, and all featured either black and white movie stills or gaudily painted monsters with funny captions and jokes on the backside.

The artist on the Frankenstein series was Norm Saunders who had joined Topps in 1958, coming off a career painting pulp magazine covers. Saunders illustrated a rousing and bloody Civil War trading card series, and the legendary Mars Attacks! cards that remain a favorite with collectors to this day. Saunders would go on to be one of the leading artists on Topps’ Wacky Packages, a pop culture phenomenon of the 70’s.

The Frankenstein Valentine Stickers were done in a crude, effective, lowbrow style, and eye-blasting primary colors. It appears Jack Davis may have penciled some of these. All the classic monsters are represented, including Dracula (“I Vant You!"), Wolfman, Mummy, Mr. Hyde, Lon Chaney’s Opera Phantom and vampire from London After Midnight, and the Metaluna Mutant (“I Admire Your Brains!”). The display boxes and the wax wrappers were illustrated by Wally Wood.

The entire 44-card set of Frankenstein Valentine Stickers is posted online, complete with several sketches and original art. 

Explore the Official Norm Saunders website and admire a wide range of his extraordinary art.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Mad Monsters No. 5

By 1961, the Monster Boom was in full swing, with all sorts of monster merchandizing flying off five and dime shelves. That year, Aurora released its now legendary Frankenstein model kit, and Charlton Publications jumped into the monster movie magazine sweepstakes with its twin titles, Horror Monsters and Mad Monsters, essentially the same magazine under two different logos.

Charlton was a model of strict vertical integration, with editorial, layout, film, printing and distribution all under one roof at it’s sprawling, seven and a half acre plant in Connecticut. The company was able to churn out its magazines and comic books more cheaply than most any of its competitors.

Further cost cutting was evidenced by the barest minimum of production values expended on the monster magazines. Monster Kids will remember the thin covers that scuffed easily and registered fingerprints, and the yellowish pulp interiors with typically dark and muddy photo reproduction. Nevertheless, Horror Monsters and Mad Monsters often were fun reads, straying into territory rarely visited by the reigning Famous Monsters of Filmland. For example, the issue at hand — Mad Monsters No. 5, from 1963 — carries articles on Face of Fire (1959), and the Mexican El Infierno de Frankenstein (aka: Orlak, The Hell of Frankenstein, 1960).

Exactly who edited or wrote for these titles remains a mystery. Articles were never signed, and the editorial staff was anonymized with supposedly funny pen names (Abernathy Farquad, Editor, and Farquad Abernathy, Associate Editor). Today, Ed Konick is credited as editor, though his contribution was probably just putting the mags through the Charlton assembly line. Konick first joined Charlton in 1952 and served as General Manager from 1975 until the end, when the company folded in 1991.

With the exception of a jazzy, buzzcut werewolf signed Steve Ditko on the cover of Mad Monsters number one, cover artists were never credited. Issue number 5 (1963), pictured here, features a bold design and a cool, colorful painting inspired by a promotional photo for Universal’s 1943 Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman.

The Charlton titles were among the longest-lived of the Famous Monsters coattail riders, with 10 issues apiece between 1961 and 1965.

The Monster : Lon Chaney, Jr.

On this date, February 10, in 1906, was born Creighton Tull Chaney. He would be known to the world as Lon Chaney, Jr.

Creighton’s parents were vaudevillians. His mother, Cleva Creighton, was described in contemporary newspapers as a “dainty singing soubrette” and a “ragtime singer”. His father, Lon Chaney, was then a struggling actor. When Creighton was born, Lon was also moonlighting as a rug salesman. Times were hard, and the worst was to come.

In April of 1913, following an argument, Cleva made a botched suicide attempt in a theater where Lon worked as stage manager. The event was over-dramatized in the Lon Chaney biopic of 1957, Man of a Thousand Faces, placing James Cagney as Chaney onstage, in a clown costume, with Cleva swigging poison while standing a few feet away in the wings.

Cleva survived but her singing voice was destroyed, and her career with it. The Chaneys divorced and young Creighton was shipped off to a foster home. He returned to his father’s side in 1915 after Lon remarried. Cleva was never mentioned again and it wasn’t until Lon’s death in 1930 that Creighton learned that his mother was still alive.

Lon Chaney raised his son on the straight and narrow. His grim experiences on the road to stardom made him adamantly opposed to Creighton’s natural inclination to follow his footsteps into show business and motion pictures. In the 30s, now on his own, Creighton attempted to forge a film career for himself under his given name. He would be relegated mostly to small parts, often uncredited. Genre fans note his appearance as a burly guard in a futuristic gladiator skirt in the energetic 1936 serial Undersea Kingdom. Creighton would always claim that it was the studios that insisted he call himself Lon Junior, after his celebrated father.

In 1939, Chaney Jr. gave a searing performance as Lennie in Lewis Milestone’s film of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, but all the acclaim failed to translate into a high profile film career. His real break came in 1941 with the sleeper hit Man Made Monster, a Universal B-movie in which mad scientist Lionel Atwill transforms Chaney’s good guy character into a reluctant electrical-powered killer, his head lit up like a lightbulb.

At the time, Universal’s second wave of horror films was just getting underway. The monsters of the golden age were being set up for sequelization. The missing ingredient for box office stability was a genre star, a name to associate with the new chillers. Veterans Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi had moved on, Karloff to new challenges and increasing diversification, Lugosi to discount stardom in Hollywood Poverty Row potboilers. With Man Made Monster, Universal found its new herald, an eager young actor with a loaded name: Lon Chaney, Jr.

Chaney would essay all the key characters of Universal’s horror stable, including Dracula and The Mummy, whether they suited his All-American bulk or not. He was the first actor to step into Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster boots, marking a transition of the creature into a towering robot in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). Universal also cast him in the Twilight Zone-type series of Inner Sanctum mysteries. Chaney made one original part his own: The Wolf Man, first in an elegantly mounted feature that was a box office hit even as America headed into World War Two.

As an immediate sequel to The Wolf Man, Universal announced that Chaney would play both monsters in a momentous clash entitled Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, but cooler heads prevailed — there was no reason or advantage to make expensive split-screen effects for an actor playing two parts under heavy makeup disguise — and the Monster’s role fell to a frail Bela Lugosi, with Chaney carrying the picture as the cursed werewolf, Larry Talbot.

In real life, Chaney was a boisterous, outdoors type, much like the unsophisticated heroes he played. His good-humored if outrageous practical jokes, fueled by heavy drinking, led to constant tension with his frequent leading leady, scream queen Evelyn Ankers, and probably marked him as an unreliable commodity. After the Universal horror cycle ended in the late 40’s, Chaney stayed busy, but only in secondary roles, where he often excelled. He was very funny as a Lennie-type to Bob Hope in My Favorite Brunette (1947), and he played small but striking parts in High Noon (1952) and The Defiant Ones (1958). He also turned in some significant work as a guest on a number of early TV dramas.

Chaney’s relationship with the Frankenstein Monster continued beyond his performance as the title creature in Ghost of Frankenstein and battling Bela Lugosi’s Monster in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. As the lycanthropic Larry Talbot, Chaney shared the screen with The Monster in House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), and the excellent Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). In that last one, Chaney gamely donned the flattop Universal Frankenstein Monster makeup for a brief, uncredited scene, stepping in for Glenn Strange who had cracked an ankle with a stunt gone bad.

Chaney also slipped on a Frankenstein rubber mask and danced along with Abbott and Costello for a skit on their TV show in the early 50’s.

In 1952, Chaney played a bald-headed Frankenstein Monster in the notorious live broadcast adaptation for TV’s Tales of Tomorrow. I posted a detailed review of that one here.

Ten years later, Chaney played himself on a celebrated episode of Route 66, appearing as both Mummy and Wolfman opposite fellow fright stars Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff in Frankenstein makeup.

Lon Chaney, Jr. is remembered fondly by movie fans. He dominated the 40’s horror cycle, an unlikely leading man, better suited to playing rugged character parts. He always gave an honest performance, and he was genuinely proud of his signature role as the movies’ pre-eminent Wolfman.

Lon Chaney, Jr. died in 1973 after a long illness. He donated his body to medical research.

Biographical information gleaned from Michael F. Blake’s Lon Chaney: The Man Behind the Thousand Faces (Vestal Press, 1990). Posters courtesy of Jean-Claude Michel.

Universal Frankenstein films available through the Frankenstore.

Lon Chaney, Jr.’s IMDB page.

Frankenstuff

Frankenboots

Your Frankenstein Monster getup isn’t complete until you slide into a pair of 4-3/4 inch platform shoes. Don’t forget to duck through doorways, and watch out for snapped ankles. Now priced to move, from Buycostumes.com.

Frankenflate

This nylon, four-foot tall, inflatable Frankenstein Halloween porch decoration comes with dangling spiders and its own self-contained fan. Display year-round to confuse the neighbors.

From Brands on Sale.

Frankenpuppy

And finally — GAAAAH!

Transform Poochy into an amusing creature made of reanimated dead body parts with this lightweight velcro-strap headpiece and elastic cuffs.

Do NOT attempt this with a large, ill-tempered cat.

From Costume Craze.

Through the Tempests Dark and Wild

Though it is meant for young readers, 8 to 12 years old, Sharon Darrow’s Through the Tempests Dark and Wild: A Story of Mary Shelley, Creator of Frankenstein is a deeply moving story that will captivate reader of all ages. It is also one of the most beautifully illustrated books I’ve ever seen.

The story fictionalizes the last days of Mary Shelley’s idyllic, two-year stay in Scotland with the Baxters, friends of her father. Mary had been sent away because of tensions between her and her stepmother, fueled by heartache and rebellion over how her father had come to abandon the progressive ideas of her lost mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.

Writer Sharon Darrow impeccable research allows her to weave a plausible narrative of Mary’s friendship with the Baxter children, Robert and Isabel. The story includes fireside tales attributed to Mary, suggesting the young woman’s nascent storytelling abilities. One is a wonderful ghost story about a drowned lover, the other is a short but heart-wrenching account of her own birth as a comet “streaked across the rooftops of London”, leading to her mother’s death eleven days later.

Darrow’s writing is sublime, and Angela Barrett’s artwork is astounding, a perfect conjuncture. Barrett illuminates the story with large, atmospheric watercolors. The reproductions here do not do them justice. The cover, for instance, wraps around the book. The lightning-struck Juras continue to unroll across the back, and you’d have to hold the book in your hands to fully appreciate the soulful expressions of the characters, or the astounding detail of the rain — every drop seemingly rendered by Barrett — falling across the scene.

The image of Mary writing, cropped here, is larger in the book. Note the famous portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft, not only perfectly recognizable, but shown in foreshortened perspective, a piece of virtuoso drawing.

Many of the illustrations, Rembrandt-like, feature windows or opened doors offering intimate glimpses of things beyond. One of the most striking picture in the book shows William Godwin holding baby Mary, standing at the foot of Mary Wollstonecraft’s deathbed. We see only a shape under the covers, tall curtains like silent guards around the stilled bed. Godwin’s unimaginable loss is palpable as he kisses the baby’s head. Barrett told The Guardian that she posed herself, holding a doll, to capture the moment.

Another wonderful illustration shows Mary entertaining Isabel and Robert with her stories. They huddle by the weak light of a fireplace on one side of the illustration while, far across the darkened room, we can barely make out ghostly faces hidden in the folds of thick drapes.

Barrett also renders large, dramatic spaces, showing tiny, windswept characters on vast coastlines. We see Mary dwarfed by giant, ancient pines, looking at a castle, distant and small, across the bay. Mary’s sadness is perfectly captured as she sails, gazing back at Scotland across the endless ocean spread before her. Close inspection of the art reveals a distant sailboat and a microscopic flock of seagulls.

Frankenstein is not mentioned in the main story, yet we know that the book will be Mary’s ultimate achievement, as witnessed by the cover, a momentous, thunder and lightning-attended, yet incredibly tender meeting of Mary and her creation.

Mary’s later life, and the importance of her most famous book, is covered in an Afterword. Here, Barrett illustrates Frankenstein with a handful of small drawings in a narrow strip running across the bottom of four pages. It is an astounding summary of the novel. The first two images are reproduced here: Frankenstein hovering over the creature in his bare-bones garret, and The Monster — His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath — appearing at Frankenstein’s bed curtains. Among the other images, all key scenes, there is a wrenching image of The Monster gazing at himself in a pond, the oft-illustrated moment made unique and memorable here for a large weeping willow bending, as if in sympathy, over The Creature.

Through the Tempests Dark and Wild is masterfully written and illustrated, a true treasure for Mary Shelley and Frankenstein fans. It was published by Candlewick Press of Massachusetts in 2003.

Read “Haunting Coincidences”, an informative introduction to the book and the unique circumstances of its writing.

Candlewick Press’s page for the book, and bios for Sharon Darrow and Angela Barrett.

Sharon Darrow’s website.

Angela Barrett has also illustrated a superb Beauty and The Beast, a surprising version of Snow White, and numerous other books. Read an in-depth article about her, Running With Wolves, in The Guardian.

Angela Barrett’s British Council Magic Pencil page.

Heil, Frankenstein! by Thom Ryan

I am honored to have Thom Ryan, writer of the splendid Film of the Year blog, inaugurate the Frankensteinia Guest Blogger series. It was easy getting Thom to come aboard: He offered to contribute before I got around to ask. And here I was, ready to beg.

Thom looks back at The Invaders, issue no. 31 (1978), in which Marvel’s World War Two Superheroes meet The Nazi Frankenstein!

In the late 1970s, some thirty-odd years after the end of World War II, Marvel Comics Group published untold wartime exploits of their earliest characters Captain America, The Submariner and The Human Torch in a comic book titled The Invaders, the brainchild of long time Marvel scribe and editor Roy Thomas with artwork by Frank Robbins.

As a youth I devoured these stories, suffering the seemingly interminable month-long period between issues with extreme anticipation. Re-discovering my back issues in the attic the other day I spotted Frankenstein's Monster lashing out from the cover of issue thirty-one and wondered if the comic had ever been featured on Frankensteinia.

Most of the forty-one issues in the series see our heroes tackling Axis villains and rescuing people like Winston Churchill, King George VI and Stalin with World War II forming a thrilling backdrop. However, the August 1978 issue is the most unusual in the series--and one of my personal favorites--because guest writer Don Glut and guest artist Chic Stone bring our heroes face to face with a Nazified version of Doctor Frankenstein and his wretched monster in a story titled "Heil Frankenstein!"

Though set in 1941, the story is uncomplicated by the major events of the war. Within a restored Castle Frankenstein, Nazi scientist Basil Frankenstein, a descendent of Victor Frankenstein, and Dr. Kitagowa "Japan's finest surgeon" plan to use Basil's family secrets to create an army of undead soldiers with replaceable parts for the Axis war effort.

Investigating rumors of Nazi activity, grave robbing, and murder in the Swiss Alps, The Invaders come face to face with Frankenstein's first hideous creation dressed in some sort of Gestapo uniform. In typical comic book fashion the heroes engage the monster in battle, are defeated, captured, and face becoming material for Frankenstein's next experiment. Luckily, torch-bearing local villagers, fed up with the strange doings in the castle, attack en masse, and the Invaders manage to break free. In the ensuing melee, the Monster's "brain control implant" short circuits and he carries Frankenstein and Dr. Kitagowa off the steep walls of the castle to their doom, sacrificing himself in the process. The issue isn't notable for dramatic storytelling or realistic artwork; it's just straightforward comic book entertainment with a clever twist on the Frankenstein mythos.

I remember reading this issue as a kid and being particularly startled by Chic Stone's rendering of Frankenstein's monsters as uniformed, undead stormtroopers throwing grenades. Looks pretty tame by current comic standards, but this panel (see image below) draws a ghastly parallel with the true horror of the actual Nazi blitzkrieg.

Since Basil Frankenstein and his monster perished in issue thirty-one they weren't seen in the pages of The Invaders again, but a whole legion of Frankensteins have appeared in Marvel comics over the years. I also recall that the Monster starred in his own comic for a time appropriately titled, Monster of Frankenstein. Still, the Nazified version of the Monster seen in the pages of The Invaders has to be one of the more unusual iterations of our favorite tragic figure.

Thom Ryan is a former systems administrator, database developer and video editor who now devotes himself to writing his blog, studying history, playing guitar, writing songs, hiking, camping and, of course, viewing films. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and a puppy.

I urge you to visit Thom’s blog, Film of the Year, a fascinating chronological journey through film history.

Read Thom’s appreciation of James Whale’s Frankenstein here.

Frankenstein Has Escaped!

Early sixties, maybe '61 or '62, on a lazy summer day in Montreal’s East End. The Orleans, a small, neighborhood theatre about 6 blocks from where I lived, ran a horror triple-bill. I remember the posters crowded in the small display window: A cartoon Dracula with phosphorescent eyes and blood dripping from his fangs, a gingerbread man-like Mummy with pursuers shining a flashlight beam through the clean, dinner plate-sized hole in its chest, and a variation of the poster shown here, an intense Dr. Frankenstein and his haphazard-faced Monster with heads together in extreme closeup. Three films, three cool monsters. All starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. All written by Jimmy Sangster, all directed by Terence Fisher. All Hammer Films.

I attended with two friends, first showing, first day, at noon. Partway through that afternoon, shrill music cannonading, the swashbuckling Van Helsing sprang to the window, yanked back the drapes, grabbed two candleholders and made a cross of them, pinning the snarling, spitting Dracula in the acid beams of the sun. As Christopher Lee melted and crumbled into dry oatmeal, my friend Serge suddenly sprang up, leapt over me, and ran up the aisle and out of the theater. I saw him again the next day, but he refused to talk about it.

By late afternoon, after the three films had unspooled, my friend Gilbert got up to leave. I asked him to call my Mom and tell her I’d be late. I had to watch this again. With a bag of chips for dinner, I sat through the triple-bill again.

That evening, as I straggled home, head spun with stylish Gothic horrors, I knew everything had changed. I had gotten a thrilling, dizzying crash course in the recent, still young Hammer Films history, and I had been made into a fan forever. I went back that week and sat through the three films again. For years to come, into adulthood, I never missed a new Hammer film. I’d see them as they came out, usually at the Strand downtown, and I’d catch them again in the neighborhood, when they circled back in French.

I always loved the French titles. They often seemed to be more imaginative than the original ones. They sounded better, more exciting. Nowadays, film titles are usually translated straight up, and sometimes they even keep the English title, though the film itself is dubbed. That unforgettable day when I discovered Hammer films — and just plain fell in love with movie going — the triple-bill titles were (re-translated into English): The Nightmare of Dracula, The Curse of the Pharaohs and, my favorite, Frankenstein Has Escaped!, a screaming headline title fraught with urgent menace. It’s Escaped! It’s Out There Right Now! And it’s FRANKENSTEIN!!! Maybe it’s just me, but I think those three titles have more buzz to them than Horror of Dracula, The Mummy, and The Curse of Frankenstein.

I always had fun comparing alternate or translated titles. Curse of the Werewolf played in French as The Night of the Werewolf, the Loup-Garou staking its claim to his full-moon time. The Reptile was presented more accurately as Reptile Woman. Plague of the Zombies became The Invasion of the Living Dead, setting the table for George Romero, due just two years hence. Hands of the Ripper was called The Daughter of Jack The Ripper. Terror of the Tongs sounded even more pulpish as Mark of the Red Dragon. The Rider Haggard epic, She, was called The Goddess of Fire, and The Vengeance of She became The Goddess of the Sands. Evil of Frankenstein was called The Mark (or The Imprint…) of Frankenstein. The Mummy’s Shroud was energized as In the Claws of the Mummy.

Among non-Hammer films, Scream and Scream Again, a pretty decent horror film title in and of itself, played in French with the in-your-face title, Release the Monsters! And for reasons I simply cannot fathom, Frankenstein 1970 (a Boris Karloff b-movie made in 1958) was translated as… Frankenstein Meets The Invisible Man.

Monster Brides were given more suggestive titles. The classic Universal Bride of Frankenstein was called The Fiancée of Frankenstein in French. Franc Roddam’s The Bride was called La promise, i.e. The Promised One, or The Betrothed. Hammer’s Brides of Dracula became the more alluring Mistresses of Dracula, and the Harry Alan Towers Brides of Fu Manchu went to the limit with The Thirteen Fiancées of Fu Manchu!

As time went on and Hammer took to more complex and original titles, there was a curious reverse action in French translations. Taste the Blood of Dracula, a satisfyingly lurid title became the simpler and barely blasphemous A Mass for Dracula. Even worse, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, a vivid, apocalyptic title promising pulse-pounding action was saddled with the exceedingly pedestrian The Return of Frankenstein.

Foreign or alternative titles are interesting, sometimes amusing, but in the end, we must logically revert to the original title, in whatever language that was. Except for The Curse of Frankenstein. That one, in my heart, will always be… Frankenstein Has Escaped!

Images courtesy of Jean-Claude Michel.

Rest in Peace, Mary Shelley

On this date, February first, in 1851, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley passed away at her home in London. Her devoted son, Percy Florence, and his wife, Jane, were at her side.

Mary Shelley was but 51 years old. Ill health had plagued her and, towards the end, she was partially paralyzed. A doctor had diagnosed a brain tumor.

Mary was buried in St.Peter’s churchyard, in Bournemouth. According to Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler’s The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein, Percy Florence arranged for Mary’s parents’ to be re-interred there with her, but the rector of the church would not allow the earthly remains of such radicals as Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin onto consecrated ground. Lady Jane Shelley is said to have boldly led the two hearses to the cemetery’s gates and announced that she would wait there until allowed in.

Mary was thus reunited with her parents. Percy Florence and Lady Jane would, in turn, come to join her, in 1889 and 1893, respectively. The grave also contains the heart Percy Bysshe Shelley, which Mary had kept since his drowning death in 1822.

Mary Shelley on Find a Grave.

A tour of Bournemouth and another view of Mary’s burial place, on Dorset Life.