Frankenstein's Mixed-Up Mexican Lobby Cards

Here are two Mexican lobby cards, both from 1958, found on the always entertaining Monster Movie Music, a daily blog stop for me. Hosts Eegah! and Tabonga! — two names certainly deserving their exclamation marks — post music clips and screen caps, accompanied by brief and respectfully wacky commentary, to some of the best schlocky horror and discount science fiction movies ever committed to celluloid.

What’s interesting in these ads are the Karloff Frankenstein faces prominently displayed, even though the character as pictured doesn’t actually appear in these films.

Karloff does headline El castillo di Frankenstein, a dubbed version of Frankenstein 1970, but he plays the elderly scientist who builds an atomic Monster, seen in heavy bandages. The greenish Frankenstein face at left is a much younger Karloff in burn makeup from Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

The second card, from La hija di Frankenstein (Frankenstein’s Daughter) must have been even more baffling for moviegoers…

For starters, Boris Karloff had nothing to do with this one, but there he is, upper left, in his Son of Frankenstein (1939) getup. Then there’s the bizarre image of the movie’s Monster, also used on American posters, which is just as misleading. The bandaged head is somewhat similar — with added neck bolts — to that of the film’s creature, but the rest, from the neck down, is all wrong. The Monster in this movie is, in fact, the “daughter” of the title, seen wearing a rubber suit, and not the bare-chested muscle man depicted here. The ad writer only compounds the confusion with a line suggesting that the title character is the scientist: “Perverse and bloodthirsty, her cruelty surpasses that of her own father!”

Mind you, the filmmakers themselves were confused about this one. The script called for The Monster to be assembled from female body parts, but that seemingly important detail was not communicated to the makeup man who delivered tough-guy actor Harry Wilson to the set in a gruesome split-faced mask. The mistake was fixed on the spot, quick and dirty, with a padded bra and smeared lipstick.

Today’s movie posters certainly aren’t anywhere nearer to truth in advertising, but these lobby cards hail from a time when the ballyhoo was as bold as circus advertising and somehow — and perhaps only in retrospect —charming. The unapologetic use of the Karloff images attests to their power as a Frankenstein label, and unmistakable shorthand symbols for horror films.

Related:
Frankenstein’s Daughter Reviewed
Frankenstein 1970

Branding Frankenstein 1970

Made in 1958, Frankenstein 1970 projected into the future in name only. The producers apparently toyed with Frankenstein 1960 and Frankenstein 1975 before settling on a moderate twelve-year leap.

Though it is better known under its original title, the French-dubbed version was also released under a curious, alternate title, “Frankenstein contre l’homme invisible”, Frankenstein versus The Invisible Man, no doubt suggested by The Monster’s head-to-toe bandages.

In Sweden, the film was released as “Frankenstein hämnas”, Frankenstein’s Revenge. The similarly titled Hammer film, The Revenge of Frankenstein, also made in 1958 but delayed in Sweden until 1967, was called “Frankensteins blodiga hämnd”, Frankenstein’s Bloody Revenge.

Best title by far belongs to the West German release, where the film was shown under the alchemistic title of “Die Hexenküche des Dr. Rambow”, The Witch-Kitchen of Dr. Rambow.

Related:
Frankenstein 1970
The Hand of Frankenstein
rhsmith on Karloff and Frankenstein 1970

rhsmith on Karloff and Frankenstein 1970

“FRANKENSTEIN 1970 (1958) wasn’t the first recursive horror film - that is to say, the first horror movie to employ an awareness of the genre’s standard tropes, gimmicks and guidelines within its plot to both inform and satirize the conventions of the genre (AIP’s HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER beat it to the streets by three weeks) but it certainly does deserve a modicum of credit for bringing onboard one of the greatest (and quite possibly the greatest) horror icons of all time…”

Thus writes rhsmith this week on Movie Morlocks, the TCM blog, in Like a Rembrandt!, a smart review of Frankenstein 1970, and an appreciation of the aging Boris Karloff.

Smith is a sharp, perceptive and funny writer. Check out his contributions to Movie Morlocks, scroll around, see for yourself. I blogged, previously, about his ode to Monster Kids. That one is a classic.

Related:
Frankenstein 1970
The Hand of Frankenstein

Frankenstein 1970

It’s the fiftieth anniversary of Frankenstein 1970, first released on this date, July 20, in 1958.

Setting the film (or, at least, it’s title) a dozen years into the future allowed advertisers to proclaim “The Demon of the Atomic Era! Terror of Years to Come! Fearsome Spawn of the Cyclotron!” and admonish, “Why Fear the Horror of the Future? You Can Only Die Once!” Plotwise, there’s no real reason for the then futuristic allusion except, perhaps, to suggest that private nuclear reactors would be available within the decade. The big selling point, however, was the movie’s famous star. Producer Aubrey Schenck (who also gets a writing credit), with friend and frequent collaborator Howard W. Koch directing, certainly scored a coup by reuniting Boris Karloff (“The King of Monsters!”) with the Frankenstein name.

The film also boasts a terrific, atmospheric opening sequence as a foot-dragging and gnarly-clawed Monster stalks a screaming woman through the night. Just as the scene reaches its climax, someone yells, “Cut!”, and we find ourselves watching a film crew making a monster movie. It’s a great hook but, unfortunately, the rest of the movie fails to keep pace with the pulse-pounding intro.

Karloff, sporting a forbidding buzz cut and Nazi torture scars, always the trooper, delivers his lines with portentous aplomb, but there’s little else to celebrate here. The towering Mike Lane plays Frankenstein’s atomic monster — handed down through generations of Frankensteins — wrapped in puffy bandages, looking like a cross between the Michelin Man and the boiler robot of the classic Republic serials. The posters for the film wisely, if deceptively, featured the scarier opening sequence Monster. Lane would return to the part in 1976, playing a cartoonish version of the classic flathead Frankenstein in a short-lived TV series called The Monster Squad (no relation to the film of the same name).

In the end, when The Monster is defeated, the bandages are peeled back to reveal… Karloff’s face.

The concept of the creator and his monster as doppelgangers has been explored a number of times. The very first filmed Frankenstein, in 1910, had the Monster’s mirror reflection dissolve into that of his creator. In the same year as Frankenstein 1970 was released, Hammer Films’ The Revenge of Frankenstein had Peter Cushing’s doctor set upon by the patients he farmed for body parts only to reappear, in the final scene, fixed and stitched up anew.

Frankenstein, we find, often becomes his own Monster.

Frankenstein 1970 plods, but the trailer is fairly entertaining. You’ll see the opening sequence’s “movie” Monster, the bandaged “real” Monster appearing, Thing-like behind a door, Karloff doing his earnest best to inject some class into the proceedings, and a Fritz-like dropped jar episode substituting eyeballs for brains.

That’s the problem with this Frankenstein. No brains in sight.

Related posts: Frankenstein 1958, and The Hand of Frankenstein.

With thanks to Don Glut for the Karloff-as-Monster picture.

The Hand of Frankenstein

One of the best things about blogging is reading the comments that you, the readers, add to the posts. Reacting to my recent Frankenstein of 1958 posts, Tim Lucas of Video Watchblog reflected on the use of the menacing claw imagery in advertising campaigns, the same year, for both The Revenge of Frankenstein and Frankenstein 1970. Here’s the evidence.

The claw pointing at a victim was a striking element of the Revenge poster (at right, and another one here).

As for the twisted claw on the Frankenstein 1970 poster (seen above, augmented with stitches, clamps and bolts!), it was suggested by the film’s opening sequence, a real pulse-pounding attention grabber, where a hulking Frankenstein Monster stalks a panicked woman. It turns out to be a trick sequence, a scene for a horror movie being shot on the grounds of Frankenstein’s estate.

I think many viewers came away from the film wishing the “real” monster in this one had been half as cool as the “fake” monster in the opening sequence.

The French poster for Frankenstein 1970 reads, "A Monster For Tomorrow... The New Demon of the Atomic Age!"

Posters courtesy Jean-Claude Michel.

Frankenstein, 1958

1958 was a good year for monsters, with Frankenstein front and center.

TV stations across North America were cashing in on the popularity of the Shock Theater package of Universal horrors, bringing the classic monsters to a new generation of fans. Philadelphia-based publisher, James Warren, picked up on the monster buzz and launched a monster movie magazine. That's him posing on the first issue’s cover in a rubber Frankenstein mask.

Edited by Forrest Ackerman, Famous Monster of Filmland hit the streets 50 years ago, on February 27, to be exact, even as blizzards hammered the East Coast. Success was instantaneous. FM was the right magazine at the right time, and it became the keystone of the Monster Kid era.

Anyone who ever read an issue back then is bound to wax nostalgic, and nobody does it better than VideoWatchdog editor and blogger Tim Lucas in this recent post, an homage to Famous Monsters that is both loving and level-headed. A great read.

Simultaneous with Famous Monsters being released in North America, Hammer Films of England was busy wrapping up the immediate sequel to their 1957 worldwide blockbuster, The Curse of Frankenstein. Reuniting writer Jimmy Sangster, director Terence Fisher and star Peter Cushing, The Revenge of Frankenstein would come to be recognized by many as the best of a series that would eventually stretch to seven films. In this perverse tale, Cushing’s cruel Baron runs a charity hospital, culling body parts from his unlucky patients. Michael Gwynn plays Frankenstein’s brain-switched experiment who develops a taste for human flesh.

Hammer was also involved in a second Frankenstein project, an ill-fated television series, produced in partnership with Columbia Pictures’ TV arm, Screen Gems. The pilot for Tales of Frankenstein was entirely shot in America, co-written and directed by Curt Siodmak, screenwriter for Universal’s monster-mix pictures Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (1943), and House of Frankenstein (1944). Don Megowan played a classic, old school Frankenstein Monster to Anton Diffring’s Cushing-like, upturned collar Baron. The two styles mixed uneasily and Hammer producer Michael Carreras was not pleased. Work on the project continued through the year, inevitably to sputter out. Some of the concepts developed by Hammer writers would find their way into the company’s subsequent Frankenstein films.

American-International Pictures, in Hollywood, also rushed to sequelize their own Frankenstein, with Gary Conway returning as the busted-headed Teenage Frankenstein in How To Make a Monster. The story deals with a crazed makeup man (Robert H. Harris) who, when he gets canned by the studio, mixes drugs and greasepaint, turning his monster movie actors into zombies to do his murderous bidding. Gary Clarke played a snaggletooth Teenage Werewolf, a part originated by Michael Landon. In typical AIP hyperbole, the film was advertised as being in “flaming color!”, but it was really in black and white up to the last reel, when it switched to color for the fiery climax.

Also in 1958, Boris Karloff, the actor most identified with Frankenstein, then as now, returned to the fold in a low-budget shocker called Frankenstein 1970. Karloff gamely plays a scar-faced Baron Frankenstein cooking up a new atomic-powered Monster in the castle’s basement. Six-foot eight wrestler Mike Lane played the Gumby-like, mummy-wrapped Monster.

An even cheaper and unabashedly schlocky production was Richard Cunha’s Frankenstein’s Daughter. Actually, the scientist was Frankenstein’s grandson — the Frankenstein film family is large and complex — who produces a singularly homely creature played by acromegalic character actor Harry Wilson. Legend is that makeup man Harry Thomas did not know the Monster’s head was supposed to be female, so he applied lipstick to the creature he had designed, and that did the trick. Wilson’s robot walk is hilarious and the whole film is kooky enough to be weirdly entertaining.

The final Frankenstein of 1958 stalked South of the border. The influence of Universal’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein echoed, ten years on, in El Castillo de los monstruos, in which comic Clavillazo encounters the Frankenstein Monster, a Gillman, a Werewolf, a Mummy, and the great German Robles in a cameo as Dracula. I blogged previously about this and other Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Knockoffs. That post includes a link to a YouTube excerpt from the film.

A couple of Frankenstein-themed films rounded out the year. Colossus of New York is a minor but fascinating science-fiction thriller in which a towering robot is fitted with the brain of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. The experiment fritzes the donor’s humanitarian impulses and culminates in a showdown at the United Nations. Real-life giant Ed Wolff works the bulky, expressionless robot suit. He had previously played the big, clumsy, totem-headed robot in the 1939 Bela Lugosi serial, The Phantom Creeps.

And, finally, Alraune, aka Unnatural, was a German film made in 1952 and released in America in the Frankenstein year of 1958. The story of a soulless, artificially created woman had been filmed a number of times before, notably with Metropolis robot star Brigitte Helm playing the part twice, first in a silent version and then a talking remake. This version featured the striking Hildegard Knef as Alraune to Erich von Stroheim’s Frankensteinian scientist, Ted Brinken.

And so it was, fifty years ago, when the all-purpose Frankenstein Monster launched a legendary magazine… Drove Hammer Films’ sudden, steep, upward curve of success that would establish it as the premier studio of cinema horrors… Tail-ended AIP’s drive-in, teen-monster era, soon to evolve into the Corman-Price-Poe gothic sixties… Provided the venerable Boris Karloff with yet another mad scientist credit… And distinguished a handful of B-movies.

1958 was a good year for Frankenstein.