Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) Director:
Rouben Mamoulian
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde may be the most ambitious monster movie ever made. Director Rouben Mamoulian, whose credits also include The Mark of Zorro (1940), presents a story of a man split between good and evil in such an audacious manner, that it's tone still instills uncomfortable shivers, and its effects still leave audiences scratching their heads.
The film is based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novella, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the story is well known to most. A good-hearted Dr. Jekyll makes a potion that turns him into a manifestation of all the evil in his soul, Mr. Hyde. Here in this film, the two are portrayed by Frederic March, who won himself an academy award for his performance in this film.
The film opens with a series of elaborate POV shots that ends with a single long take of jekyll looking in the mirror and fixing his coat, then walking walking outside and getting into a carriage. From there, Mamoulian continues to experiment with his camera using techniques from confrontational straight on close-ups in dialogue scenes to one of the most convincing transformation scenes in any film, even to date.
This transformation scene is another POV shot, where the good doctor walks over to a mirror and we witness the his skin and lips change right before our eyes. No cuts, no dissolves, all entirely seamless in one shot. It's a wonderful, "how'd they do that?" moment and it alone warrants a viewing.
But there is much more to this film than impressive directing and special effects. At its core is a story that suggests an unsettling nature about people. Even the purest of them all still have a sliver of sin within their heart that is lustful and evil. This of course speaks to the strength of the source material, but the way in which the film adapts and articulates these films creates an enormously chilling effect.
We are given a hint that Jekyll is not 100% pure of heart in a conversation he has about temptation early on. This brief scene is monumental in demonstrating that it is not only in his Hyde form where Jekyll possess some darkness. He is a flawed man from the beginning, but when he does become Hyde, the relentlessness of his monstrosity goes so far as to make a film from 1931 still creepy to this day. Most of this comes from the undertones and suggestions of sexual assault and rape throughout the film. Hyde manipulates a woman named Ivy with his money and goes on a rampage of abuse. Close to nothing is shown of his abuse towards her, all we have are descriptions and bruises to infer from. There is even a mention of a whip. The audience feels the terror when they see the fear in Ivy's eyes whenever she's with Hyde. In one scene, Hyde has her perform for him, and while he gleefully watches, she speaks with trepidation while robotically moving to what she hopes are the right steps.
It is this relationship that really serves the horror in this film. Much of the picture is a technical marvel, but none of that means anything if there isn't a human element that is at risk. Jekyll's fiance is never threatened, nor much of anyone else, for that matter. The only real victim in this film, is a random, innocent girl, who gets mixed up with the wrong company. What's truly frightening, is thinking that this is a timeless theme of horror...
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) Director: Roy William Neill
Yesterday I decided to interact with other people, so I fell a little behind with the blogging. Sorry. I still kept to the plan, and have watched a horror movie each day, so don't worry.
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is the first sequel to The Wolf Man and the fifth sequel to Frankenstein. Lon Chaney Jr. returns as Larry Talbot and this time around Bela Lugosi plays the Frankenstein Monster. This film is the first example of a shared universe in film, over 70 years before The Avengers came out. It's pretty awesome seeing the Wolf Man and the Monster share the same screen, and the continuation of Talbot's story is pretty good. Unfortunately, this is also when the continuity in the Universal monster movies begins to deteriorate, but it's pretty easy to look past that and still have a good time.
The film begins with Talbot's grave being robbed and for reasons that extend only to "we need to make a sequel," the light of the full moon awakens him from the dead as the wolf and he kills the grave robbers (or one, at least). Talbot later realizes that he apparently cannot die, so he goes on a quest to find a way to end his life. This leads to him looking for Doctor Frankenstein to learn his secrets of life and death he discovered in his experiments. Along the way he finds the Monster buried in ice and meets the doctor's granddaughter.
Taking place after The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), the Monster has some changes from his original incarnation. In Ghost, the mind if Ygor (Bela Lugosi) was transplanted to the Monster, but as a result lost his eyesight. This is why the Monster in this film walks with his hands pointing out, because he can't see. The Monster was supposed to be able to speak in this movie, but in post-production the producers decided for some reason to remove all of Lugosi's lines. One can actually see the Monster's lips moving in some scenes, but there is of course no sound. This change really doesn't make any sense, and it's quite a shame that Lugosi's performance was altered.
Chaney's performance is just as good as before, and once again the audience truly cares for him. He comes off as rather selfless in his journey to end his life so he will no longer be able to harm others. Lugosi also does a fine job as the Monster, although not nearly as good as Karloff.
Fun fact: Lugosi was originally offered the role Monster in the original film, but turned it down. There are varying reports as to why he did so, with some claiming he didn't like the fact that he didn't speak in the film. Oh, the irony.
Let them fight.
Frankenstein is a fun film, that works much better as a Wolf Man sequel than a Frankenstein one. This is mainly due to the fact that the movie is much more about Talbot than anyone named Frankenstein. The climax is a little clunky, but it is still a blast to see these two monsters sharing the screen and battling it out.
After Pearl Harbor, Universal was unsure of the box office appeal of monster movies, and the cycle was about to end. The Wolf Man was a huge success, however, and reignited the genre. The film stars Lon Chaney Jr., the son of the famous silent film actor, Lon Chaney Sr., who also portrayed monsters in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Chaney was billed as simply "Lon Chaney" to bank off of the reputation of his father, and this film forever cemented him within the monster movie genre.
The story follow Larry Talbot returning from the United States to his home in Wales, where he is the heir to his family's estate after his older brother died in a hunting accident. Larry tries to become acquainted with the town and falls for a woman next door named Gwen Conliffe. He tries to woo her, but it turns out she is engaged. Larry convinces Gwen to go out with him, but she takes a friend along. The trio go to the gipsies in town to get their fortune told, but on their way back home they are attacked by a wolf. The secondary girl dies and Larry is bitten in his struggle to kill the wolf. Turns out it was a werewolf, and Larry begins to transform himself.
Chaney's performance is great, and he does a terrific job of portraying a sympathetic character. He's extremely likable in the way he plays a sort of dorky playboy at the beginning, and later in the second half as a man who fears that he is going crazy. Of all the characters in the Universal monster movie canon, Larry Talbot has the most dimension and the one a viewer connects the most with. Talbot feels guilt for the murders he commits and attempts to find a cure and latter a way to end his life in the sequels to save others from himself.
Claude Rains pays Larry's father, a man who is more concerned with the outward appearance of his family than the inner torment of his own son. The irony, of course, is that Larry's outward appearance changes into a monster, and his father is unable to recognize that his son is inside. Sir John Talbot is also assertively scientific in his way of analyzing everything that happens in the film. He throws out words like schizophrenia and split personalities in order to explain werewolfism. It's interesting to see how he uses the then modern sciences, such as psychoanalysis, to diagnose his son.
In this film, Larry doesn't transform into a wolf at the full moon. Instead it is because the wolfbane is in bloom, so he transforms every night. The sequels later introduce the fact that he transforms when the moon is full. The transformation itself is nothing fancy. There are a series of dissolve shots where makeup was applied between each shot. In this film we only see Larry's feet when he transforms into the wolf, and we latter see his face when he transforms from the wolf back into a man. In the later films the transformation is much smoother and impressive.
The Wolf Man was actually not the first werewolf movie, and not the first made by Universal. That honor goes to The Werewolf of London (1935). That film certainly has its charm and nice makeup, but it lacks the humanity that makes The Wolf Man so timeless. Anyone can identify with Larry's struggle to convince people that he is not insane, and it is this struggle that really makes this film great.
Released in the same year as Universal's Dracula, Frankenstein follows the story of a mad scientist who makes a man from dead bodies. The story is very loosely based on the famed novel of the same name written by Mary Shelley, and actually has more differences than similarities with the source material. Directed by the under appreciated James Whale, Frankenstein stands as perhaps the most iconic and greatest monster movie of all time.
Running at a mere 71 minutes, not a single frame is wasted, making Frankenstein as perfect of a film as is possible to reach. At each moment something fascinating is happening both in every possible element that constitutes filmmaking. Even the peculiarities perfectly work within the world that Whales has created in this film, and there are an abundance of these peculiarities, indeed.
The strangeness of Frankenstein is perhaps its most enriching quality, beginning with the film's vaudeville-esque introduction. Few discuss that the film begins with a prologue introduced by actor Edward Van Sloan before the opening credits even start rolling. Here he warns the audience of the terrors that they are about to see. I've never seen a film do something quite like this. Quite unsuaul for the time, this scene clearly acknowledges the artifice of the film, by stating that what comes is a film, and only a story invented in someone's mind.
The peculiarities of the film only build from there. One moment in the film that makes close to no sense, whatsoever, involves Henry Frankenstein's assistant, Fritz. At one point during the sensational monster creation, Fritz is walking up a staircase and stops for a moment to fix his sock. Why does he do this!? I'm not going to go off and give some bullshit theoretical explanation on how it reflects the political climate of the time. My views are more similar to those of James Rolfe, in his cinemassacre review.
Frankenstein's father is yet another peculiar character, and his jolly high-brow demeanor contrasts with everything else in the film, and yet still works and isn't distracting. His main function seems to be a sort of mockery of high class living compared to the normal peasant folk. One scene that illustrates this well is when he shares his good wine with the wedding guests, but only cheap champagne with the servants.
Colin Clive and Boris Karloff each give genre defining performances that have been replicated and references since the film first came out. Clive's portrayal of a crazy, mad scientist is electrifying, but he isn't without sympathy. At his core is a good heart, but his mad ambition drives him to commit the ultimate sin. Karloff's portrayal of the monster is impeccable in how he is able to elicit fear and empathy even within the same scene. His greatest moment is in the film's climax when he screams in fear at the fire surrounding him. It's an image that never loses it's effect.
Crazy, am I?
One of the apparent themes of Frankenstein is the tragic warning against a man trying to play God by creating life. But is he really playing God? Is his ambition about being God, or does it actually stem from an envy of women? After all, women can produce life, even without all the fancy science equipment. Frankenstein seems to be more of an outward manifestation of a man's own frustration toward being unable to directly reproduce as a woman does.
Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Director: James Whale
Four years after the release of the first film, Universal released the James Whale directed sequel to Frankenstein. This was the first sequel in Universal's monster movie series, and set forth a slew of many more to come for the next decade and a half. Bride is most often seen as an example of one those rare cases when the sequel actually surpasses the original. While I do not entirely agree that Bride is the better film, that does not mean that it is not also a masterpiece that must be seen by everyone.
What makes Bride of Frankenstein work so well is that it is incredibly layered both in the genres it is working within, as well as on a thematic level. Part horror, part satire, part tragedy, Bride of Frankenstein is perhaps the first horror film to be self-ware and mock the horror genre. An approach that does not truly become popular until the release of Wes Craven's post-modern slasher, Scream in 1996. Not only does Bride play with the already developed horror film genre conventions, but it also openly mocks the then ongoing classical Hollywood style.
The story is not over yet.
Like with the first film, there exists a prologue in Bride before the main feature begins. Here, the first shots of the film appear to set up the horror atmosphere, with a stormy night setting, but the camera then enters a room that is set up as a costume drama where Marry Shelly explains that there is more to her story about the monster. The acting is intentionally stagy and the dialogue is rather tongue in cheek, mocking the early talkies and the often absurd extravagance of Hollywood films. This strange humor persists throughout the rest of the film, with Frankenstein’s house maid (Una O'Connor), Minnie’s exaggerated screams that appear to be almost mocking the audience, and the frequently odd conversations Doctor Pretorius holds, including a moment where he ponders over everyone being devils.
Once Whale takes the audience to the primary story of the film, one is immediately shown the Monster murdering two villagers. Again, Whale meets the spectator’s expectations, this time by showing the monster as a terrifying, murdering creature. Throughout the rest of the film, however, Whale continues to provoke sympathy from the audience for the Monster, a creature that they were previously made to fear. There were moments of compassion for the Frankenstein Monster in the original film, but they were brief and subtle. In Bride, the Monster is shown to be clearly misunderstood as villagers mistake his saving of a woman for an attack and his friendship with the blind hermit as a hostile engagement. The Monster also learns to speak in this film, giving further insight into its emotions.
Many critics see homosexual themes in Bride of Frankenstein, but I've always been afraid that is mostly from people reading too deep into the fact that James Whale was opening gay, which was unusual for the time. I think there are certainly some queer elements, but I think their presence is perhaps overplayed.
One other aspect that must be discussed is the character Dr. Pretorius played brilliantly by Ernest Thesiger. It did not seem possible that someone could possibly play a better mad scientist than Colin Clive, but Thesiger's performance absolutely incredible. Maybe gay, maybe Jewish, but certainly mad, Dr. Pretorius is an ingenious and terrific addition to the Frankenstein story, and what really sets Bride apart from its predecessor.
They are my only weakness...
I opened by stating that I prefer the original film, but when watched back to back, these two movies are shorter than any entry in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Honestly, if you're going to watch one, watch them both, because they are two of the greatest films ever made.
