Frankenstein (1931)

Literary critics have said for some time that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a reaction to the horrors of child birth. In a time when one out of three women died giving birth, that is really not such an irrational idea. However, I'd like to get more specific. I think she wrote Frankenstein in reaction to the horrors of raising a toddler. For what is Frankenstein's monster but an 18-month old with the strength of twenty men. Despite his criminal brain, he reacts mostly as a child would react to many situations--a child that had the power to kill people who annoyed him. Developmental psychologists tell us that children don't understand right or wrong until around three or four years old. To understand metaphysical cause and effect, one must first grasp physical cause and effect. In other words, throw an object, be it a rock, a flower or a small child into a lake and that object will either float or sink to the bottom. And these are the sort of real life experiments that the monster goes about making. If only someone would have given him a nap and juice box instead of a firey torch in the face maybe the whole thing wouldn't have ended so badly. As the parent of a toddler I can totally relate to the doctor's reaction to his creation's first murder which is essentially, "yeah, but, to be fair, dude totally had it coming to him."

Watching James Whale's Frankenstein for the first time, I also realized that growing up with Mel Brooks' version will completely ruin all the other Frankenstein movies for you. It really is such an uncanny parody, at times its not even a parody. The assistant really does drop the normal brain and replace it with a criminal one. Less the scene where the assistant explains, "I brought you the brain of Abby someone..." it's pretty much the same sequence of events and they have a low comedy in the original as well. And Peter Boyle totally nailed Boris Karloff's monosyllabic, yet expressive mode of communication.

Karloff's acting here is definitely to be admired. He communicates without words and with little mobility in his face and body. Like Lugosi with Dracula, we probably remember all the copies more than the original and yet, I felt karloff's monster was certainly the best and most scary as well as the template for say, Herman Munster. The effects are pretty seamless as well which always makes for an enjoyable horror movie and once again, I really dug the sets and costumes. Frankenstein's tower filled with old science stuff is just awesome.

The best thing about Frankentstein (1931), besides the monster of course, was Colin Clive as as the mad doctor. He did a good job of conveying obsession while still remaining reasonable on many levels. I think that is the key to getting the whole mad scientist persona. Mae Clark and John Boles are both remarkably wooden in comparison. This isn't the first movie Mae Clark has failed to impress me. I'm starting to think she really couldn't act and that she just got a lot of big parts in the early thirties because of her looks.


Bonus Eye Candy: Boris Karloff in the monster making chair

Wives under Suspicion (1938)

I have not seen the original pre-code version of this film "The Kiss Before the Mirror," also directed by James Whale. Presumably it was too racy to be re-released so it was remade, with one of the great actors of the pre-code period, Warren William as its star. Gail Patrick (My Favorite Wife, Stage Door) co-stars as his long-suffering wife. William plays a prosecutor whose work has begun to poison his whole life. He keeps a ghoulish abacus on his desk to keep track of the criminals he's sent to the chair, the beads on which are little skulls. He neglects his wife who spends her time changing clothes and hanging around with her young unmarried cousin and her fiancee. He takes on the case of a University Professor who murders his wife in a crime of passion. As we see the prosecutor's own home life unfold, it becomes clear that there are a number of striking parallels. It all becomes a little too clear, actually. The story telling is heavy handed and any subtlety in William's acting is pointless since the film posits a very unsubtle scene to explain every nuance.

Gail Patrick is an actress I've never liked. In part because the movies I've seen her in she plays unpleasant people, but here, when she's supposed to be sympathetic, she still isn't likeable. I really tried honestly, and maybe I'm blaming her for the weaknesses in the script, but I feel like she doesn't give her character any kind of arc. She is supposedly a long-suffering, adoring wife, who becomes distanced from her husband because of a case he's prosecuting. Her tone in every scene is the same. She seems like she doesn't really love the guy from the beginning. Maybe it's that Patrick and Warren don't seem to have any heat together. He is far more enjoyable playing off Cecil Cunningham (Aunt Lucy from The Awful Truth) as his faithful Gal Friday, Sharpy. After a while I wanted Hollywood to drop it's deeply entrenched age double standard, its production code and abandon the whole belabored point of the film and have him run off with his secretary. Cunningham was only six years older than William, and he just doesn't seem to have any chemistry with the woman almost twenty years his junior who was cast as his wife.

Warren William does have one really great scene in the movie, that made it worth watching for me. He takes a confession, playing the "good cop" and listens to the professor pour his whole heart out. His reactions are so sympathetic and human and given the parallels to his own marriage, you start to wonder if he's going to cut the guy a break. As soon as the prisoner is taken from his office he cackles with delight that he wormed the confession out of him. The about face is startling and chilling, owing a good-deal to the gloomy, rainy night atmosphere in the office during the confession. If James Whale would have used a script that was more sparse and let his camera tell the story more, this would have been a much better movie. The forced "happy" ending also sucks away any tension or feeling of "noir" that he might have built up.

This movie isn't a complete waste of time, but it's not one I'd recommend either. I don't give stars or anything like that in my reviews but if I did, the gratuitously racist "comic relief" would be enough to subtract a star. I can cringe and bear the occasional "simple" african american stereotype popping up in an old movie. Generally, I hope it ends as quickly as possible. Lillian Yarbo, a talented black actress who was relegated to playing maids in many films, gets an unfortunate amount of screen time as the Stowell's dim-witted maid. One line in particular made me just about fall out of my chair. Gail Patrick says to her guests, "well at least she can cook which is more than you can say for most of them." Yikes.

Horror movies for non-horror fans

Happy Halloween! To celebrate the day I've put together a list of scary movies (one per decade) that may appeal to those of you,who, like me, would rather watch ten obscure pre-code films than one horror movie.

Well how about starting it off then with an obscure pre-code horror movie? The Old Dark House (1932) starring Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, Boris Karloff, Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart and Lilian Bond and directed by James Whale is a good old-fashioned things that go bump in the night kind of movie. This film doesn't use a lot of fancy effects or make-up to create horror. It uses the darkness, tension and the sound of wind on a stormy night in Wales to create the atmosphere. Because it's pre-code, there's a bit of raciness in that Lilian Bond plays a show-girl whose shacked up with Charles Laughton but falls in love with a traveling stranger played by Melvyn Douglas. They manage to sneak in a rather sweet romance in between screams.

The Uninvited (1944) is another things that go bump in the night movie about a couple that rent a haunted house on the English Coast. It stars Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey and Donald Crisp. The ghost is kind of annoying rather than scary. I enjoyed this movie priamarily because I love Ruth Hussey and it was great to see her in a such a big part even if she only plays the hero's sister.

Eye Without a Face (1959) This French film is creepy in the extreme while making a really powerful statement about the beauty culture in which we live. Pierre Brasseur plays a mad scientist trying to restore his daughter's face which was horribly disfigured in a car accident. He keeps her prisoner while he kidnaps women, and attempts to remove their faces and surgically transplant them onto hers. All this goes down rather poorly with daughter and her fiancee who thought she died in the accident.

The Innocents (1961) starring Deborah Kerr is a brilliant adaptation of Henry James' novel "The Turn of the Screw." This is agreat ghost story whose techniques of filming have been borrowed so frequently since that it doesn't quite seem as pioneering as it probably did in the early sixties. This movie relies almost entirely on tension, lighting and music to convey the horror. The creepiest scene in the movie takes place in broad daylight. Kerr is always wonderful, but here she is at her best conveying the sense of rising terror and panic that may or may not be her own hysteria.

The Wicker Man (1973) is another movie that is almost all atmosphere and tension. Edward Woodward plays a police detective sent to a remote island in the Hebrides to investigate a missing child. The great horror veteran Chirstopher Lee plays Lord Summerisle, Woodward's adversary. One unnerving and unsettling event after another happens leading the audience down the garden path to the film's surreal and horrible conclusion.

The Changeling (1980) Looking back on my list, there is a predominance of haunted house movies, but this is probably the scariest of the lot. The contemporary Japanese horror film Ringu and it's American re-make, The Ring, borrowed heavily from this tale of lonely man (George C. Scott) in haunted house trying to solve the mystery of its former occupants. In most haunted house movies you wonder why the occupants don't just leave after the first incident, but the Changeling offers the explanation that this man would really rather have a ghost as his companion than no companion at all.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) If you can take all the cursing and the horrible hand-held camera work, this is possibly the scariest movie of all time. Relying on pyscological tension and a few well placed gimmicks, the story follows three film students who get lost in the woods. The innovative techniques used to make this film on a miniscule budget make it legendary. No film in my recollection has caused such a polarized reaction. Peoople either bought into and thought it was scary as all get out as I did, or they were bored silly. I saw this film in the theater when it first opened and my friend and I literally clinged to one another through the second half of the movie. I happeneded to be scheduled to go on a ten day camping trip right afterward. Just hearing the sound effects in the trailer is enough to get my heart rate up to this day. This movie has been parodied enlessly, but that is only a reaction to the complete hold it had on pop culture one summer.