Thank You, Jimmy Sangster

Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster passed away on Friday, August 29. He was 83.

I’ve told the story before, about a fateful summer day in ’61 or ’62 when I fell in love with movies at a neighborhood theatre running a triple bill of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Horror of Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959). A few weeks later, they played The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) and I was dazzled again. All these films were made by Hammer Films of England, with the same casts and crews. They all starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, all shared the distinctive production design of Bernard Robinson and the magical photography of Jack Asher. They were all directed with uncommon intelligence by Terence Fisher, and they were all written by Jimmy Sangster. No question, these films were driven by the extraordinary collaboration of all these men, but it was Sangster who provided the raw material, the basic scripts that gave Fisher and company something to chew on.

Sangster was, I think, underappreciated. Sangster’s contributions to the horror genre were monumental, yet he was often tagged as a hack, just batting out his scripts, and he didn’t help the impression with his flippantly titled bio, Do You Want It Good, or Tuesday? It reads like a rough draft and Sangster frustratingly glosses over the Hammer years, dwelling on his later work for American television. Yet, he had done so much more. Over time, having seen waves of horror films, I came to appreciate how profoundly original and perfectly subversive films like, say, The Revenge of Frankenstein or Brides of Dracula (1960) had been.

I often thought of Jimmy Sangster throughout my career. I began as a cartoonist and illustrator, writing comics for myself and others. I remembered and tried to replicate how Sangster had told straightforward stories with something original and new at their core. In the mid-90’s, when the illustration field crashed, I became a mostly full-time writer, contributing countless sketches to TV and fixing movie scripts, and I found myself referencing Sangster again.

A few years ago, I stumbled upon an address for Jimmy Sangster and I sent in the only fan letter I ever wrote. I don’t know if it ever got to him, it was neither acknowledged nor replied to. I’ve come to think of it as a message in a bottle, but I’m glad I wrote it. I did not gush, did not embarrass. I simply said thanks. Jimmy Sangster had taught me that you could take a classic story and tweak it into something new. You could take well-worn characters and make them fresh again. I simply thanked him for entertaining and challenging me with his stories. I said thank you for being a model and lighting my way. Simple as that.

Thank You, Jimmy Sangster.

Tim Lucas has written a wonderful piece about Jimmy Sangster. Read Pass the Marmalade!

A fascinating interview with Jimmy Sangster on Cinema Retro.

Related:
Revenge of Frankenstein Wraps
Frankenstein Has Escaped!

The Posters of Frankenstein : Italian The Revenge of Frankenstein

A wild-eyed, drooling Beast attacks a stunning Beauty on a rousing Italian poster for Hammer Films’ The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958).

The artist, “Sym”, is the extraordinary Sandro Simeoni, who would paint some 3000 movie posters in a career that spanned 50 years. He was equally at ease in all genres, ranging from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) to Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso (1975), with westerns, gangster films, science fiction and romantic comedies in between.

Simeoni — sometimes identified as “Symeoni” — worked from stills, and the Frankenstein poster was likely inspired by posed promotional shots of Michael Gwynn’s twisted, cannibalistic Monster menacing Eunice Gayson.

Simeoni typically showed characters in motion: Running, jumping and lunging at each other, with frequent dimensional effects of hands, guns or blades leaping out at the viewer. Here, in a typically dynamic composition, the artist cranked up the tension with swirling colors, overlapping credits, and the Monster’s claw raised out of frame. The purple in the Monster’s coat is picked up in the title and the woman practically leans out of the image in a bright yellow dress with black trim to emphasize the exposed shoulder and cleavage.

Here is a glimpse at some of Sandro Simeoni’s innumerable posters…

I found the Revenge poster on the superlative Wrong Side of the Art! movie poster site specializing in horror, fantasy, cult and B-movie titles. New additions are blogged daily and the archives are searchable by film title, director, actor, year, genre and a wide range of sub-categories. You’ll want to bookmark this terrific site.

A list of 152 Sandro Simeoni movie posters. Click the highlighted numbers to see the images.

A selection of Simeoni posters at Pulp International.

Revenge Released

Hammer Films’ The Revenge of Frankenstein premiered at the venerable Plaza cinema in Piccadilly Circus on this date, August 27, fifty years ago.

No sooner had The Curse of Frankenstein wrapped, in January 1957, that a script for a sequel was commissioned of writer Jimmy Sangster. Promotional materials appeared in trade papers featuring Christopher Lee’s disembodied head — The Monster from the original film — floating above the working title, The Blood of Frankenstein. Shooting eventually kicked off in January 1958, reuniting Cushing with director Terence Fisher, but sans Lee, whose Dracula (aka The Horror of Dracula) was released in May ’58.

Francis Matthews, sitting in attendance at the Revenge premiere with Peter Cushing, remembers the audience laughing as his character prepared to transplant Dr. Frankenstein’s brains. “My dear boy,” Cushing whispered, “What have we done?”

British critics would lavish odium on the film, as they had for The Curse of Frankenstein. The Observer’s critic called the film “vulgar, stupid, nasty”, adding, “I want to gargle it off with a strong disinfectant, to scrub my memory with carbolic soap.”

Mr. Cushing need not have worried. With an intelligent, provocative script, a superlative cast and outstanding production values that belied the film’s actual budget, The Revenge of Frankenstein was a rare gem of a horror film, an instant classic, and a solid box-office hit.

Nervous laughter and contemptuous critics aside, audiences world-wide would embrace Hammer Film’s brand of gothic gore and Cushing would get to pursue and refine his sardonic Frankenstein in four more films over the next 16 years.

Related Posts:
The Revenge of Frankenstein Wraps
Frankenstein 1958

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.

The Revenge of Frankenstein Wraps

We Dare You To See It! We Double-Dare You To Forget It!
— Advertising slogan for The Revenge of Frankenstein.

Fifty years ago today, March 4, 1958, filming wrapped on Hammer Films’ The Revenge of Frankenstein.

In January, actor Peter Cushing, director Terence Fisher and crew had gone directly from making (Horror of) Dracula to the new Frankenstein film with barely three days off between shoots. The Revenge of Frankenstein, originally advertised in the trades as Blood of Frankenstein, was a direct sequel to the hugely successful Curse of Frankenstein, shot almost exactly a year earlier and still in distribution. The action picks up as Baron Frankenstein is led to the guillotine, delivering the first of several shocking twists that drive the grisly and literate script, probably writer Jimmy Sangster’s finest.

The film features impeccable period sets by Bernard Robinson, gorgeous photography by Jack Asher, and a superlative cast. Francis Matthews plays Frankenstein’s studious assistant, Eunice Gayson appears in standard issue Hammer Glamour décolletage, and Richard Wordsworth plays a conniving orderly. The always reliable Wordsworth had played the infected astronaut, Carroon, in The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and would essay the doomed beggar in The Curse of the Werewolf (1961). In smaller parts, Hammer regular Michael Ripper teams up with Lionel Jeffries as a memorable pair of grave robbers.

Michael Gwynn is outstanding as the woebegone hunchback who submits to a brain transplant, swapping his broken body for Frankenstein’s handsome creation, only to transform into a violent and brutally twisted monster with cannibalistic appetites. Gwynn’s performance is heart wrenching. Scenes where he stuffs his old body in a fiery furnace, and his poignant confrontation with Frankenstein, interrupting a society evening, are highlights.

Topping the cast, Peter Cushing delivers a crowning performance, a career tour de force, adding layers of nuance to his reading of the energetic Baron, a part he would have the unique opportunity of developing further in four more films. In the Revenge’s ultimate switcheroo, the Baron is subject to his own experiments and Cushing gets to play both creator and created in the same film, a trick also used with Boris Karloff in Frankenstein 1970 (1958), and Ian Holm in television’s Mystery and Imagination: Frankenstein (1968).

In the summer of ’58, (Horror of) Dracula and The Revenge of Frankenstein would consolidate Hammer’s growing reputation. The posters for the Frankenstein film featured Gwynn’s leering pop-eyed face, and a hairy claw. The unique and unusual trailer has Peter Cushing talking directly to the audience, establishing Hammer’s Frankenstein era by placing his botched execution in the year 1860.

“I, Baron Frankenstein… have escaped the guillotine” he says, “and I shall avenge the death of my creation!”

The trailer is online, on YouTube.

Poster from the Belgian release courtesy of 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.