Frankenstein in 2008: A Year End Review

A ticket to see Frankenstein was an important clue to the origins of Hancock, the obstreperous superhero played by Will Smith, just one of many Frankenstein connections in movies released this year. The problem with the prop ticket from the movie is the date: For starters, June 21, 1931 was a Sunday and, anyway, Frankenstein began shooting on August 24.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe featured cloning, body parts, two-headed transplants and a Russian scientist referred to as Dr. Frankenstein. Igor was an animated feature about a mad scientist’s hunchbacked assistant who wants to build his own monster. As the year came to a close, an independent feature, Frankenstein Rising, had yet to find a distributor.

Guillermo del Toro was the focus of once and future Frankensteins. In Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, scenes from the classic Bride of Frankenstein appeared on TV screens in our hero’s pad as counterpoint to his amorous relations. Director Del Toro was quoted extensively in the press about his plans to shoot a new Frankenstein, even identifying Doug Jones as his choice to play The Monster. As Del Toro will be busy for a while making The Hobbit for producer Peter Jackson, his Frankenstein is tentatively listed on the IMDB as a project for 2012.

In France, the 1931 Frankenstein and the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein were re-released to theaters and then on to DVD. The re-issue posters were superb. The same two classics were conflated for what is perhaps the most unusual Frankenstein film of 2008, The Spawn of Frankenstein, a fanedit by “Jorge”. Scenes were trimmed and rearranged, comedy relief and arguably superfluous material was jettisoned, a musical score and tinting added. The whole exercise was meant to make the story scarier and The Monster appear “bad to the bone”. The (unauthorized) remix can be found online on torrent sites.

In England, the Royal Mail honored Hammer Films with a set of stamps that included one for The Curse of Frankenstein of 1956.

On stage, Frankenstein continues to be endlessly reprised, rethought and refashioned in some way, whether straight drama, experimental, comedic or musical. Halloween alone sparks countless amateur productions. Of note: First introduced in 2007, an acclaimed, multiple award-winning Frankenstein by Edmonton’s Catalyst Theater toured in 2008 and will continue into the new year. A dramatic musical called Mary Shelley and Her Frankenstein, by Shirley R. Barasch, premiered in Pittsburgh.

Out of New York, a cast recording of the serious-minded Frankenstein, A New Musical was released in September. The play had earlier been steamrollered by the megabudget musical retooling of Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein which, in turn, will close on January 4, a victim of hubris, bad marketing and ever diminishing returns as the economic downturn bites Broadway. It remains to be seen if a proposed touring company gets off the ground.

In books, a number of important titles appeared. Using Mary Shelley’s actual manuscript, Charles E. Robinson, a professor of English at Delaware University and an expert on the Shelleys, edited out some 5,000 notes and corrections in Percy Shelley’s hand resulting in The Original Frankenstein, Mary’s story in first draft, as it were.

The novel as illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, long out of print, was given a luxurious 25th Anniversary reissue by Dark Horse.

For young readers, “Doctor” Frankenstein himself guided us through a wonderful, heavily illustrated anatomy book called Frankenstein’s Human Body Book.

Frankenstein’s role in American culture, as a metaphor, and its racial resonance in the United States was the subject of Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor by Elizabeth Young.

In comics, the Monster finally met the monster superhero he inspired, The Hulk, in a Halloween issue published by Marvel Comics. Writer Warren Ellis turned the story inside out, as expected, in a one-shot comic called Frankenstein’s Womb. Skot Olsen illustrated an adaptation of the novel by Rod Lott for Fantasy Classics, Volume 15. Marion Mousse’s excellent comics adaptation, published as three books in France, was translated and collected as one long graphic novel by Classics Illustrated.

The Hammer film magazine, Little Shop of Horrors, devoted it’s 21^st issue to Hammer’s Curse of Frankenstein, and Video Watchdog #142 carried never-before-seen color photographs from the set of Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing, the legendary 1962 episode of TV’s Route 66 where Boris Karloff dressed as the Frankenstein Monster for the last time.

As usual, variations on The Monster, often with garish green skin and oversized neck bolts, popped up on toy shelves in plush and plastic. For serious collectors, Moebius Models released a perfect copy of the famous Gigantic Frankenstein model kit. Amok Time released a 12-inch figure of The Monster from I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.

Sadly, we must mark the passing in 2008 of Stan Winston, the special effects genius who, among an astounding list of credits, perfected The Monster’s makeup for Tom Noonan in The Monster Squad (1987). Also lost to us was the wonderful Hazel Court, horror film royalty and Elizabeth to Peter Cushing’s Victor in The Curse of Frankenstein (1956). And Forrest J Ackerman died on January 4. In February, we had celebrated the 50th anniversary of FJA’s Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Right here on Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog, a little detective work revealed a fun secret from the cover painting of Marvel’s Monsters of the Movies issue number 2. We also tracked down a very rare graphic adaptation of Universal’s Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (1942) made in Spain in 1946.

Some of our most popular posts, based on hits and linkage, included the one about the Frankenstein View-Master reels, and guest blogger Geof Smith’s reminiscence of Nelson Bridwell’s 1970 children’s book How To Care For Your Monster. Also popular was the Alex Velazquez illustration of Frankenstein contemplating liposuction, and posts about The Munsters, namely a look at the ‘lost” Munsters color pilot. A cover of Monster World #2 featuring The Munsters and their Munster Koach was widely reblogged, as well.

Hitwise, by far the most popular post ever on Frankensteinia was The Bride Unwrapped featuring the lovely retro (and NSFW) photography of Aleksey Galushkov. The post was referenced on io9, Nerdcore, the AMC blog and numerous other high-profile sites. Sex sells, who knew?

A point of pride: This blog was singled out by Intute, a consortium of UK Universities, as “a useful research aid for those seeking to survey the uses to which the Frankenstein monster is still being put in popular culture, and the contemporary neo-gothic / neo-Victorian imagination in general.”

And finally, Frankensteinia turned one year old in August, and we celebrated by launching a sister site, the picture blog called MONSTER CRAZY!

Onwards to 2009.

The preceding was my personal overview of the 190^th year in the ongoing career of Frankenstein. It was not meant to be exhaustive. If there is any Frankenstein reference from 2008 that you think should be mentioned, please post a comment and share it with us.

Have a great New Year!

Dr. Frankenstein's Human Body Book

Here’s a fabulous book that, despite its title, has a rather tenuous if amusing connection to our monster-making experimenter. Dr. Frankenstein’s Human Body Book, from DK Publishing, is actually an illustrated anatomy primer wherein, merely for introductory purposes, young readers are invited to assist Dr. Frankenstein in assembling a human body.

The Frankenstein references are strictly limited to short diary entries, written with gentle humor, to accompany and encourage the reader/assistant. Connecting limbs to the skeleton, the diary reads, “Up to the elbows with work. Assistant managed to put the humerus in the right place without hitting the funny bone”. Examining the central nervous system, the diary notes, “Assistant and I used our gray matter to install a brain…”. Otherwise, the text, by Richard Walker, a science writer and a veteran of anatomy books, is perfectly serious.

The information is doled out in easy-reading, bite-size pieces that support the generous iconography. Illustrations allow us to peer inside a bone or an eyeball, and a skull is exploded into its component parts. Medical photographs reveal microscopic structures and inner workings.

The book is beautifully designed and the production values are off the scale. This is one of those indestructible books with a vinyl cover and rigid, extra-thick board pages. Every spread opens flat. The cover features a lenticular 3-D image that peers inside a human heart.

I couldn’t help noting that for all its completeness, meticulously stepping through every layer of the human body, the naughty bits have been left out, probably to spare parents who will explore the book with very young children. It’ll be up to the grownups to fill in the details when and as they see fit.

Dr. Frankenstein’s Human Body Book, subtitled The monstrous truth about how your body works, is an unusual but welcome addition to the Frankenstein Library. Aimed at very young readers, it will delight the curious of all ages.

Here’s the Publisher’s page, with a glimpse at inside pages. You can order the book directly from them, or through the Frankenstore.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Monster World No. 6

From the fall of 1965 (with a January ’66 cover date), a Don Post mask of Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein Monster made festive for Warren & Ackerman’s Monster World number 6.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who visited Frankensteinia this year. Readership is still growing (!) and that is very gratifying to me. Thanks to all of you who left comments — much appreciated! — and all of you who became “Friends of Frankensteinia”. If you are a regular reader and you have a blogger account, click “Follow This Blog” on the right-hand menu and make yourself known. You can also hook up with Frankensteinia on MySpace and/or Facebook. Come on, us Frankenstein fans have to stick together!

And may I say thanks, also, to those who follow my picture blog, Monster Crazy. I’ve posted every day there since launching back in August. Having a lot of fun with it, too. Check it out, won’t you? There’s a prominent link at right.

Here’s to a great Holiday Season, and may the New Year be your best one ever.

Have a Cool Yule!

Herman Munster Meets Santa Claus

The Munsters have been periodically revived through the years in TV specials and even a clone series that tallied as many episodes as the original 1964 sitcom. The latest incarnation — notwithstanding a recent Hustler Video Classics-Gone-Porn version — was the 1996 Holiday TV Movie, The Munsters’ Scary Little Christmas, in which Grandpa’s experiments transport Santa Claus to 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

Critics were unimpressed. The best thing said about the show was that very young children might be entertained. At least the casting was inspired, with Sam McMurray valiantly channelling Fred Gwynne’s genius, Sandy Baron — a Catskills-trained comic — picking up for Al Lewis, and the formidable Ann Magnuson a good pick to essay Yvonne De Carlo’s Lily. The 91-minute special survives on DVD.

Staying in a Christmas mood, here’s a real treat: The original Munsters appearing in Macy’s Santa Claus Parade!

Up on YouTube is a wonderful vintage movie newsreel from 1964, Santa’s in Town, subtitled “Munsters Escort Kris in Parade”. Gwynne and Lewis appear in character, riding the Munsters Koach down Broadway. There are nice shots of the novelty car’s detailing, such as a spider and its web in a corner of the windshield.

Not sure, but I think the first shot might have been doctored by Universal’s special effects department, the film marquees whited out so as not to promote competitors’ films.

It’s a wonderful time machine glimpse of Macy’s parade 44 years ago, and its fun seeing Al Lewis having a ball in the city he loved.

The Munsters in Santa's in Town on YouTube.

Screencaps from The Munster’s Scary Little Christmas on Marky Munster’s elaborate fan site.

The Munsters Scary Little Christmas on DVD.

Related
The Munsters's Color Pilot
Frankenstein Meets Santa Claus

Frankenstein's Daughter

"Tonight, you'll live again, you vixen!"

— Oliver Frank(enstein)

Frankenstein’s Daughter turned 50 on December 15, 2008.

Working with a meager $65,000 budget, a breakneck six-day shooting schedule and a crackpot script, director Richard Cunha delivered a businesslike, unapologetic grade-z programmer that is perfectly entertaining. It was the last of four ultra-low budget monster movies punched out by Cunha in 1958, which have since earned him cult director status. He made two more pictures and moved on to television as a director of photography.

The mad scientist in this effort — played as an unrepentant sleazeball by TV actor Donald Murphy — is Oliver Frank, a third-generation Frankenstein, operating out of a Los Angeles bungalow. Early on, he spikes fruit punch with a special formula that turns heroine Trudy (Sandra Knight) into a freaky monster that runs around scaring the neighbors. The Jekyll and Hyde juice makes her grow bushy eyebrows, bad teeth, and makeup man Harry Thomas’ trademark ping-pong eyeballs (also used to goofy effect in Killers from Space). The rest of the time, Knight looks confused by the weird goings on, at least when she isn't required to scream and faint, which she does a lot.

Meanwhile, Oliver, with the help of his exceedingly seedy assistant Elsu (Wolfe Barzell), is putting together a female creature, the title character, honoring the family tradition. The Monster, dressed in a bulky rubber suit, has a bandaged head and brutish features, with a gruesome scar running right down the middle of its face.

Apparently, no one told the makeup man (either Paul Stanhope or Harry Thomas, accounts vary) that The Monster was female and meant to look somewhat like blonde bombshell Suzie (Sally Todd), murdered by Oliver after refusing his advances and getting her head stapled onto The Monster’s body. There was no time or money to fix the mistake, so they slapped lipstick on The Monster and, according to director Cunha, “we pushed the guy on the set and started shooting.”

Actor Harry Wilson plays the stiff-limbed, robotic Lady Monster who goes on a brief neighborhood rampage before returning home and politely knocking on the door to be let in. She’s later used by Oliver to dispatch enemies, responding to the ever-compelling command to “Kill… KILL!”.

Wilson, afflicted like Rondo Hatton with acromegaly, had an astounding list of credits, nearly 250 films running from the silent era to the mid-sixties, playing character parts like “inmate”, “bar fly”, “thug” and “pirate with an eyepatch”. He was also Wallace Beery’s stunt double for 25 years.

The film pauses halfway through for a poolside barbecue party, complete with rock and roll band, and the events wrap up quickly after Trudy’s ducktail-coiffed boyfriend and the slowpoke cops finally stumble over to the laboratory. Oliver Frank(enstein) gets a facefull of acid and the highly flammable Monster goes up in a whoosh — Harry Wilson doing a harrowing fire stunt — after bumping into a Bunsen burner.

Frankenstein’s Daughter, classic drive-in and fleapit fare, was quickly turned over to TV for late-night showings, where a generation of kids was treated to its bizarre monster and its cheap shocks.

Frankenstein’s Daughter is a very rough gem and it makes for a fine guilty pleasure.

You can download or watch Frankenstein’s Daughter online at Internet Archive.

Tom Weaver interviews director Richard Cunha on The Astounding B Monster.

A fine, in-depth review of the film on Monsters From The Vault.

Related
Frankenstein 1958

Master of the Mad Lab

“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.”

— Mary Shelley

In 1931, when he was tapped to equip Frankenstein’s tower laboratory with its own "powerful engine", Kenneth Strickfaden brought a unique set of skills to the job.

Born in Montana in 1896, Kenneth Strickfaden’s early, adventurous career took him all over America working in amusement parks, and overseas serving in World War One. He raced cars and boats, put time in as an airplane mechanic, built and tuned Tesla coils and X-Ray machines, eventually ending up in Hollywood, in the late twenties, as a studio electrician.

When called upon to assemble the lightning-powered machines that would blast Boris Karloff to robotic life, Strickfaden combined equal parts electrical science and sideshow pandemonium to create the ultimate Mad Scientist’s Laboratory. Early designs for Frankenstein proposed a neat, modern laboratory, but by the time the set was built, Strickfaden’s forbidding science fiction contraptions were installed in steampunk juxtaposition against the medieval stonework of Frankenstein’s mountaintop hideout.

Strickfaden’s machines sparked and screeched as levers were pulled, blinding electric arcs dancing wildly in glass vials and streaming off copper spheres. Needles went off the dials as magnets hummed and corona disks whirled out of control. Frankenstein’s machines concussed and smoked from way too much voltage. You could almost smell the scorched metal and the waves of ozone.

Frankenstein’s 1931 laboratory became the instant, permanent movie mad lab reference and Strickfaden would recombine and reuse his booming, spark-blasting machines not only in most Frankenstein films to come, but also in Flash Gordon serials and countless horror and science fiction films for decades to come. The original equipment was still being used in an episode of TV’s The Munsters in the mid-sixties, and hauled out of Strickfaden’s garage again for Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein in 1974.

On a parallel track, Strickfaden lugged his gadgets all over North America as eye-popping teaching tools, lecturing in schools and auditoriums from 1933 until his death in 1984.

The image at the top is from a 1949 article, High Voltage Magic, in Popular Mechanics Magazine, posted on the excellent and ever-fascinating Modern Mechanix blog. Click through to see the whole article and more pictures of Kenneth Strickfaden at work.

The article mentions that Strickfaden doubled for Boris Karloff, but it was not in a Frankenstein picture. Strickfaden stepped in for Boris for a hair-raising scene, holding a large sword in a streaming arc of lightning, in MGM’s The Mask of Fu-Manchu. The studio must have heaved a sigh of relief as it was a badly grounded Strickfaden, rather than their star, who was thrown clear across the set by the electrical blast. Strickfaden was shaken but, thankfully, not barbequed.

Strickfaden’s biography, Frankenstein’s Electrician, by Harry Goldman, from McFarland. Also available through The Frankenstore.

Photos from the Academy of Motion Pictures homage to Strickfaden.

A selection of surviving gadgets from Strickfaden's movie laboratories.

Related
Frankenstein’s Laboratory

Frankenstein 2008

The latest Frankenstein film is producer David S. Sterling’s Frankenstein Rising, written by Monte Hunter and directed by Eric Swelstad.

Currently in post-production, the film is notable for its cameo by 98-year old Anita Page as Elizabeth Frankenstein, her last screen appearance. Miss Page passed away on September 6.

Eighty years ago, the teenage, sad-eyed Page appeared as a flapper protected from gangsters by tough-guy detective hero Lon Chaney in While The City Sleeps. Page’s rise was meteoric, starring opposite the late silent/early sound era's most famous leading men. She was called “The Ideal Movie Star”, drawing more fan mail than anyone except Greta Garbo. Page is said to have even received several marriage proposals from a smitten Benito Mussolini.

Page, surprisingly, quit the movies at the height of her powers, in 1933, waiting until 2004 to reveal that her early retirement was a case of blacklisting for refusing the advances of MGM headman Irving Thalberg. She only returned to films, in small parts, over the last decade.

There’s a trailer for Frankenstein Rising on YouTube. The narration is by another classic film legend, Margaret O’Brien. The Monster is essayed by Randal Malone.

The Art of Frankenstein : Jeff Heermann

Here’s the 1910 Edison Frankenstein program cover recast as an engaging illustration by San Francisco-based artist Jeff Heermann.

Though the film was given a graphic novel adaptation, cartoonists’ takes on Charles Ogle’s expressive Monster remain relatively rare. Heermann’s sketchy brushwork suits Charles Ogle’s wildman Monster well.

Check out Heermann’s website, blog and flickr stream.

Related
The First Frankenstein of the Movies
Silent Frankensteins

All Seats 35 Cents!

Seventy-seven years ago today, on December 4, in 1931, Frankenstein premiered in New York at the Mayfair Theater. Pictured above is the original newspaper ad that ran on this day in The New York Daily News. The Monster’s image is based on the alternate, unused makeup with curious, stapled folds in the forehead.

The Mayfair originally opened as the Columbia, a Burlesque house, in 1910. The famous theater architect Thomas W. Lamb gave it an Art Deco makeover in 1930, when it became the RKO Mayfair, showing movies. In its heyday, sitting at Broadway and 47th, the building often carried a giant billboard poster, several stories high, that wrapped all the way around the corner.

It was called the DeMille in the Sixties, playing super-large screen 70MM and Todd-A-O blockbusters, its last hurrah before being chopped up and repurposed as the Embassy, a multiplex.

Abandoned and boarded up since 1998, the theater was demolished in 2007. It was the last of the old Times Square movie palaces to go.

Related
Frankenstein Premieres
The Selling of Frankenstein

Frankenstein Meets Santa Claus

As Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ends, The Monster is last seen jumping from Walton’s ship “upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.”

Many writers have conjectured on The Monster’s fate as he disappeared into the merciless Arctic night. Turns out, according to Paul Dini, writer-producer of numerous animated TV series including Batman and Justice League, that the Big Guy ended up as a doll maker at Santa’s North Pole Workshop.

That’s the kick off to Santa Claus Vs. Frankenstein, a one-shot, 32-page Holiday comic starring Santa’s brat of a teenage daughter, Jingle Belle. Stephanie Gladden provides the art. The issue, in comic stores December 4, launches the Dinitoons imprint at Top Cow comics.

Publisher’s site: Top Cow Productions.

Writer Paul Dini interviewed on Newsarama.

With Thanks to Sam!

Young Frankenstein Folds

Broadway’s Young Frankenstein will close on January 4.

The spectacular, $16-million musical, adapted by Mel Brooks from his own film of 1974, officially opened on November 8, 2007. The end comes after 484 performances and some 30 previews, far short of the six-year run enjoyed by Brook’s The Producers.

“Broadway is Dry-Eyed as Monster Falls Hard”, writes Patricia Cohen of The New York Times, suggesting that bad marketing decisions were chiefly responsible for the show’s demise. Problems included filling a gigantic 1800-seat theater and sticker shock, with top tickets going for a record-setting, stick-em-up $480 apiece. By the spring of ‘08, ticket prices were adjusted downwards and cast salaries were slashed by as much as fifty percent, but sales remained sluggish. With the current economic downturn starting to bite, the show’s producers decided to call it quits. In a difficult season when an unusually large number of high-end Broadway shows are folding, the bloated and beleaguered Young Frankenstein was doomed.

The producers claim that the show will return with a national tour in the fall of 2009. Rumor has it that Cloris Leachman is being lured back to reprise the Frau Blucher part she originated in the film.

Patricia Cohen’s article in The New York Times.

Young Frankenstein To Close in January 2009 on Playbill.

Related
Previous posts about Mel Brooks' Musical Young Frankenstein

Making a List, Checking It Twice

Recently, Brian Solomon, over at The Vault of Horror, asked fellow horror bloggers and critics, 32 in all, to list their choices of “Greatest Horror Films”. The compiled results are posted as The 50 Best Horror Films of All Times. Click through to discover the list for yourself.

The most entertaining thing about Best Of lists is watching people get upset over them. Fans (and, indeed, some of the participants in the survey) disagree with the results. Where’s MY favorite? Thriller — Are you kidding me??? How could you not include a Hammer film? But Alien is NOT horror! What — No Ringu?!?

I think the new list is interesting and it serves its purpose to foster debate. The best thing about these lists is that, perhaps, someone, somewhere, might be surprised or intrigued by a title that got listed and be moved to seek out the film.

Through the focus of this blog, I note that three Frankenstein films made the list: James Whale’s 1931 version is a deserved Top Ten title, coming in at number 6. Whale’s follow-up, The Bride of Frankenstein, is number 12. I was surprised to see J. Searle Dawley’s 1910 version, the so-called “Edison” Frankenstein, at number 36. No doubt this one made the list on the basis of historical significance.

Speaking of lists, I have been tagged by friend and Frankensteinia contributor Thom Ryan of Film of the Year to participate in the Alphabet Meme. The game consists of coming up with a film title for every letter of the alphabet. I thought I’d have some fun with this and I made two lists, a regular one where I listed the first film that came to mind, and another consisting only of Frankenstein titles. Here we go…

The Frankenstein List
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein
Curse of Frankenstein
Dr. Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks
Evil of Frankenstein
Frankenweenie
Ghost of Frankenstein
House of Frankenstein
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter
Killing Frankenstayn’a kasri (Killing vs Frankenstein)
Lust for Frankenstein
Il Mostro di Frankenstein
Necropolis
Orlak, el infierno di Frankenstein
Prototype
Quella Villa Acanto al Cimitero (The House by the Cemetery)
Revenge of Frankenstein
Sevimli Frankenstayn (aka Turkish Young Frankenstein)
Torticola contre Frankenberg
El Ultimo Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein
War of the Gargantuas
X-Files: Post-Modern Prometheus
Young Frankenstein
El Zorro Escarlata

The ‘Regular’ List
Atarnujuat, the Fast Runner
La Belle et la bete
Chinatown
Dr. No
8 1/2
Frau Im Mond
Gods and Monsters
Hara-Kiri
Island of the Lost Souls
Je t’aime, je t’aime
Kiss Me Deadly
Lulu (aka Pandora’s Box)
La Mome vert de gris (Poison Ivy, an Eddie Constantine film)
Night of the Living Dead
Out of the Past
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
Quai des Brumes
Repulsion
Shanghai Express
The Thing From Another World (1951)
The Usual Suspects
Vertigo
Werewolf of London
X, The Man With X-Ray Eyes
Les Yeux sans visage
Z (Costa-Gavras)

Note: The rules of the Alphabet Meme are posted on Film of the Year. The whole thing was originally launched by Blog Cabins.

I am now supposed to tag other bloggers. If I may, I’ll limit the damage to three names: Kate at Love Train For The Tenebrous Empire, Illoc Zoc at Zombos Closet of Horror and Karswell at The Horrors of it All.

The illustration for this post is from Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein, previously reviewed here.

Wake The Dead Concept Art

No sooner has one comic book writer's interpretation of Frankenstein been revealed (see previous post) that another one appears. Steve Niles’ Wake The Dead is being made into a movie, and Shock Till You Drop has posted a pre-production portrait of the creature.

Steve Niles has visited Frankenstein before. His short version of the original novel, illustrated by Scott Morse, appeared in The Little Book of Horror: Frankenstein, and his DC Comics horror superhero, Simon Dark, uses elements of Frankenstein and Edward Scissorhands.

Wake The Dead, first published in 2003, updates the basic premise of the classic tale —Victor is a contemporary science student assembling a man from spare parts — and takes it from there into new territory. The screenplay, by Jim V. Hart and director Jay Russell, further expands the story, “beautifully”, according to Niles.

The pre-production art, overseen by Peter Jackson’s WETA special effects house, is the work of Gino Acevedo.

Click through to Shock Till You Drop’s article to see the full portrait in great detail.

An interview with director Jay Russell on io9.

Steve Niles’ website, and an interview with Niles about the upcoming film, on Comic Book Resources.

Frankenstein's Womb

Here’s a first look at The Monster by artist Marek Oleksicki in Frankenstein’s Womb, a graphic novella — fancy-speak for “one-shot comic book” — written by cult favorite Warren Ellis.

The story plays off Mary (then Godwin) Shelley’s purported but unlikely visit to Burg Frankenstein during her elopement/vacation with Percy in 1814. Speculation has it that Mary visited the castle there and heard stories about the blasphemous experimenter Johann Konrad Dippel, providing, two years later, a name and a model for her fictional scientist.

Frankenstein's Womb has Mary visit the old castle and encountering the creature haunting it. Considering how Ellis, on his game, can weave a story with the finesse of a fine watchmaker, this new variation on the Frankenstein myth sounds very promising.

The 48-page, black and white book arrives in comic shops in December, or you can order it through the Frankenstore.

Avatar Press website.

Warren Ellis is ubiquitous on the Net. Here’s his blog.

With thanks to Monster Rally for the heads up.

Related
Castle Frankenstein

Frankenstein Meets Mickey Mouse

The Mouse, created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, first graced the screen in 1928. The Monster, assembled by James Whale, Jack Pierce and Boris Karloff, followed in 1931. Twentieth Century icons, their parallel paths would intersect twice in the first sixty years of their ongoing careers.

The phenomenally successful Frankenstein made its Monster an instant cultural reference, signaled by appearances in three animated shorts in 1933. Betty Boop’s Penthouse features a laboratory-made, wraith-like Frankenstein menace, and Bosco’s Mechanical Man is a frenzied robot called Frankensteen. It fell to Mickey’s Gala Premiere to present the first recognizable representation of the Karloff Monster.

The story — Mickey’s new picture premieres in Hollywood — serves as an excuse to caricature a parade of then current movie idols, from the Marx Brothers, Greta Garbo and Mae West, to now largely forgotten stars like George Arliss, Chester Morris and Mark Swain. The Frankenstein Monster appears in the company of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and a missing link-like Fredric March as Mr. Hyde. The monstrous trio, enjoying the show, laugh in perfect unison. According to studio archives, the sequence was animated by Art Babbitt.

What’s interesting here is that the animator’s reference was obviously a photo of an unused, early test makeup that had curious fleshy folds, or ‘horns’, on the forehead. Babbitt replaced the circular clamps with safety pins and added electric wires to the neck bolts.

In 1995, Mickey Mouse became the Frankenstein Monster in Runaway Brain, an energetic short where Mickey’s brainwaves are switched with that of a giant creature with a peg leg and a flat Frankenstein skull. The film, nominated for an Academy Award, was directed by Chris Bailey.

In the age of YouTube, Mickey’s Gala Premiere, unseen for many years, is now freely available on the Net (see how many Golden Age movie stars you can ID!), as is the entertaining Runaway Brain.

The Art of Frankenstein : M.S.Corley

Struck to life by a lightning bolt through the heart, sporting a tattooed symbol of his genesis, this forlorn Frankenstein Monster is one of an excellent and promising set of Horrors of Literature portraits undertaken by young American illustrator M.S.Corley.

The artist is putting together a wonderful collection of characters that not only includes classic figures like Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll and H.P.Lovecraft’s creations, but also illustrates the more obscure and rarely seen dramatis personae, like Guy de Maupassant’s Horla, Algernon Blackwood’s Wendigo, Allain and Souvestre’s Fantomas, and Alcasan’s Head from C.S.Lewis’ That Hideous Strength.

Given there’s an inexhaustible supply of fictional frights, one hopes there’s lots more to come from Mr. Corley.

M.S.Corley’s blog.

Via Under Vhoorl’s Shadow.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Famous Monsters No. 42

I hadn’t planned on making this a Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man week, but here’s a nice tie-in with my two previous posts: A Ron Cobb reworking of the film’s original poster as a cover for Famous Monsters of Filmland No. 42, January 1966.

Cobb got started professionally at Disney Studios, working as an inbetweener on Sleeping Beauty, in 1955. By ‘66, he was an “underground” artist and a celebrated political cartoonist for the L.A. Free Press. In 1967, he created the classic LP cover for Jefferson Airplane’s After Bathing at Baxter’s.

By the late 70’s, Cobb was combining a vivid imagination with meticulous drafting skills to produce designs and concept art for motion pictures. His credits include Star Wars, Conan The Barbarian, and The Abyss. He designed and directed the opening sequence for the Spielberg-produced TV series Amazing Stories. He created the spaceship for Alien, the Nazi flying wing for Raiders of the Lost Ark and the time-traveling DeLorean for Back to the Future. He also wrote the story that would eventually become E.T. The Extraterrestrial. Cobb’s non-film clients include NASA, the Los Angeles Olympics, and Peter Gabriel.

Ron Cobb has enjoyed a superlative career. It's nice to note that, along the way, he painted 11 splendid covers for Warren magazines.

Ron Cobb’s official website and IMDB page.

Creative Masters video interviews with Cobb on Wacom’s The Art of Wa site.

Related
When Frankenstein Met The Wolfman
Frankenstein y el hombre lobo
The Covers of Frankenstein: Mad Monsters No. 5
Happy 125th, Bela Lugosi

Frankenstein y el hombre lobo

On the cover, the two graceful, elongated monsters seem to float like characters in a Cocteau movie. Here’s a unique, rarely seen graphic adaptation — artist unknown — of Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943), published in Spain by Editorial Fher, in 1946.

The book, a collection of postcard-like images, is done in expressionistic black and white washes. It is a perfect companion to the film, a wonderful Folk Art rendering of an elaborate fairy tale about two timeless monsters teaming up in an Oz-like quest for Frankenstein’s notebooks. One, lusting for artificial life, seeks a power boost. The other, cursed by the Moon, dreams of permanent death.

The story, told at a pace of one frame per page, 144 in all, is very faithful to the film, some of the art suggesting scenes remembered and reinterpreted by the artist, such as The Monster discovered in a very stylized ice wall. Other scenes, notably the laboratory sequence, are obviously copied from lobby cards or available stills.

Throughout, the anonymous artist’s style shines, his characters fairly dancing off the page. Wolfman Larry Talbot leaps from a speeding wagon and the bendy Frankenstein Monster towers over terrified villagers and strikes poses like Goya’s Straw Mannikin.

There’s very little information available on this lovely and intriguing book. Images measure 18 by 13 cm (roughly 7 by 5.5 inches). I've a seen photo of the cover art printed in purple.

All the illustrations here come from the excellent Spanish blog, El Desvan del Abuelito (Grandpa’s Attic). Click the link to see more great images.

If anyone reading this has any additional information, please share (in the comments, or email me: Frankensteinia at gmail.com) and I’ll update this post.

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When Frankenstein Met The Wolf Man

When Frankenstein Met The Wolf Man

On this day, November 11, in 1942, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man wrapped after a month of filming. During the editing process over the days that followed, the film would be fundamentally transformed.

The project began as a vehicle for Lon Chaney Jr., touted by Universal as their new horror star. The young actor had gone directly from his break-through part in The Wolf Man to The Ghost of Frankenstein, taking over The Monster role vacated by Boris Karloff. The new film, as planned, would combine the two monsters, with Chaney, the “Master Character Creator”, playing both parts.

Two days into shooting, on October 14, Variety was still reporting on Chaney’s “double-header” part, but that notion had been scrapped. The flashy twin-role stunt would have meant the use of doubles and complicated split-screen effects, not to mention the wear and tear of heavy makeup sessions on a notoriously impatient Chaney. The actor settled for his signature role as the lycanthropic Larry Talbot and, at the last minute, Bela Lugosi was drafted for The Monster’s part. It made sense. In the previous Frankenstein film, Chaney’s Monster had been given Lugosi/Ygor’s brain and distinctive voice.

Technically speaking, it was Lugosi’s second swipe at the part. Eleven years earlier, he had piled on the makeup for the notorious, now lost test reel for the original Frankenstein. But Lugosi had begged out of the part he felt “any half-wit extra could play”, only to see it make a star out of his replacement, Boris Karloff. By 1942, Lugosi had settled in as a Poverty Row menace and he no longer had the means to refuse a part, even the one he had evaded earlier. “Isn’t it crazy” Lugosi’s wife, Lillian, said, “After turning down the original, Bela winds up doing it anyway… He finally did it because of money. He didn’t do it any other way!” At least, this time, The Monster’s part was a speaking one.

Lugosi, who turned 60 on October 20^th, was not in good health. Reports had him rising at 2:30 AM, soaking in a hot bath and taking a massage to prepare for the grueling, four-hour makeup session and the sixteen-hour workday. Lugosi’s age shows through the makeup. He appears frail and shrunken in the big Monster suit. On November fifth, inevitably perhaps, Lugosi collapsed on set, due to exhaustion. It wasn’t a good day for the film’s cast: During another setup, a horse-drawn cart overturned, spilling Chaney, who suffered cuts and bruises, and Maria Ouspenskaya (as the old Gypsy Woman), who broke her ankle.

Lugosi’s part was filled out by a tag team of stuntmen. Sharp-eyed viewers can make out different people wearing the neck bolts and hinged skullcap in scenes showing The Monster lying in a block of ice, throwing barrels off a speeding wagon, carrying off sculptural heroine Ilona Massey, battling The Wolf Man, and getting violently swept away in the closing tsunami. In fight scenes, Lugosi appears in brief close-up inserts, tying the action together.

Update: Stuntman Eddie Parker has often been credited as Lugosi's stand-in, but careful study of the film indicates that most of the stunt work was done by Gil Perkins.

Shooting had been an ordeal for Lugosi, but the final ignominy was still to come. According to screenwriter Curt Siodmak, The Monster’s dialog “sounded so Hungarian funny that they had to take it out”. It seems late in the game, after a month of shooting, to decide that Lugosi’s accent was unsuitable for The Monster. Perhaps Lugosi spoke his dialog with Ygor’s spirited, lusty delivery, which had worked beautifully for that character but would have been overdone for the stone-faced Monster. Whatever the reason, the solution was drastic. Entire scenes were dropped and, in short sequences that couldn’t be excised, Lugosi’s voice was erased, though we still see his lips move.

Gone were all the exposition between Lugosi and Chaney. Surviving stills show Chaney and Lugosi sharing their stories in front of a warming fire in the ice cavern. Also gone with the dialog was a key plot point explaining how The Monster was weakened, half blind, and dependent on Chaney’s Larry Talbot. As a result, Lugosi’s flung-back head stares and outstretched arm gropes are interpreted as robotic spasms, and the impact of the final laboratory scene is lost: After the juice is turned on and The Monster is re-energized, a shot of Lugosi grinning malevolently was meant to signal that he was back at full danger-zone power, with eyesight restored.

For all the butchering done in editing, the resulting film is surprisingly effective. It’s a brisk and very entertaining adventure movie, with monsters. The graveyard opening sequence and Chaney’s moonlit reanimation is gorgeous. Chaney and Lugosi meet in an underground ice cavern, and go on to explore a wonderful smashed castle set. The local Tyrolean-type town and its festive villagers provide scenes for genre regulars Dwight Frye and Lionel Atwill, and everyone panics on cue when The Monster clomps down Main Street. The climactic wrestling match between the title monsters is a little too short to be entirely satisfying, but the stunt men go at it with wild abandon, Wolf Man leaping and The Monster throwing refrigerator-sized lab equipment, until the dam blows and the monsters are drowned, or at least sent into icy hiatus until the next film.

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man’s advertising campaign, touting the “Titans of Terror”, yielded a great movie poster, a lurid pulp magazine-style painting of The Monster cranking up a knockout blow against The Wolf Man’s animalistic lunge. The title logo has “Frankenstein’ spelled out in riveted letters, and “The Wolf Man” written in fur. Ilona Massey reclines across the bottom of the image in a flimsy, off the shoulder nightgown.

The original script by Curt Siodmak, entitled Wolfman Meets Frankenstein — featuring all of The Monster’s dialog — is still available in book form.

The film is available on DVD packaged with The House of Frankenstein, or as part of The Wolf Man Legacy Collection.

The film’s very entertaining re-release trailer is on You Tube.

The Political Frankenstein

Frankenstein was frequently referenced in the recent, interminable American election campaign, mostly in regards to Republican candidate John McCain.

Newspaper editorials spoke of “McCain’s Frankenstein” after a reform bill the Senator had championed in 2002 “turned against its creator”, drastically limiting his fund-raising abilities. Less kindly, McCain’s handicap, a stiff, straight-out arm salute, was lampooned as “The Frankenstein Wave” or “The Frankenstein Handshake”.

Back in 2004, Democratic candidate John Kerry’s stern looks and elongated, Herman Munster face rated numerous Frankenstein comparisons. The illustration at left is by Christopher Foote.

Four years earlier, Al Gore’ characteristically rigid posture made him the Frankenstein of that contest. When he approached his opponent during a televised debate, bearing down on George Bush to make a point, the press referred to the moment as Gore’s “Frankenstein lurch”.

The illustration above is from The Party’s Over, a post-campaign satirical picture book by artist Zina Saunders. The McCain Frankenstein is raised by campaign mastermind Steve Schmidt as a familiar-looking Bride looks on. Another illustration in the book shows the McCain Monster set upon by the torch-wielding ladies of TV’s The View.

Frankenstein’s Monster, truly indestructible, endures as a strong political symbol, suggesting menace, things gone wrong or, as caricature, mocking a public figure’s demeanor. It’s a long tradition going all the way back to 1824, barely 6 years after Mary Shelley’s book was first published, when a British Parliamentarian compared newly emancipated slaves to potential Frankenstein Monsters. Politicians, political commentators and editorial cartoonists have alluded to Frankenstein’s Monster ever since.

In the most recent campaign, Senator McCain turned the joke around, introducing himself at a rally by saying, “I’m older than dirt, and I’ve got more scars than Frankenstein!”

A video clip of John McCain’s (slightly flubbed) Frankenstein self-reference.

Zina Saunders’ The Party’s Over, with a preview of the book.

Zina Saunders’ website.

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Frankenstein For Fear
Frankenstein For President