Article: Frankenstein: A brief history of cinematic body-building

Klif delivers nothing short of a masterpeice with this breif history of Frankenstein and cinematic body-building.

Mary Shelly’s novel ‘Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus’ is one of the most popular works of gothic horror and science fiction literature and is also among the best known novels of English Romanticism. However most people are unaware of the actual story. It’s probably not high on the ‘to read’ list of a lot of young people these days. The stylised prose of the early 19th century written by a well brought up 21 yr old woman don’t stand up well against the Gameboys , Playstations and the Internet.

Most people , when asked, can probably tell you the basics of the story and if asked to describe the Creature will probably mention flat heads and bolts through the neck and a stiff heavy footed gait. Some will even refer to the Creature as ‘Frankenstein’, ( a misunderstanding that can probably be blamed on Universal, but I’ll come to that shortly).

In fact, the fame of Victor Frankenstein and his creation depends mainly on various adaptations and re-writings of the original 19th century novel. The Frankenstein myth entered the 20th century popular culture and is still a part of the 21st in the same way as Coca Cola, James Bond, Dracula, Levi Jeans, Mickey Mouse, Marilyn Monroe, Indiana Jones, Elvis Presley or the Beatles.

The origins of the book are well documented and have even been woven into the plot of a few of the numerous adaptations of the tale.

Mary Shelly was on holiday with poet Percy Shelly in Geneva at the same time as Lord Byron and his physician, John Polidori were at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. Shelly and Byron were great friends and the two parties met up at the Villa which overlooked the lake. During a heavy thunderstorm Byron and Shelly read the assembled friends ghost stories and Byron suggested that they should all write a ghost story. For days Mary Shelly couldn’t come up with a suitable story line but after listening to Shelly and Byron discuss life and whether it’s true secret, it’s ‘essence’ could ever be captured and re-created she had the start of an idea. With this for inspiration she came up with the basis of the novel.

Scientists of the time, tantalised by the elusive boundary between life and death, probed it through experiments with lower organisms, human anatomical studies, attempts to resuscitate drowning victims and experiments with electricity to restore life to the recently dead.

However, Mary Shelly had no medical or scientific training or qualifications and nowhere in her book does she give any description of the process or means by which Victor Frankenstein brings his creation to life. If I may quote from the original text:

“ It was on a dreary night in November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was one in the morning; rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”

That is Shelly’s entire explanation of the actual bringing to life of the Creature “..I collected the instruments of life around me…”. This has given film makers free reign to come up with all sorts of ingenious methods of ‘infusing life’ into the Creature mostly involving huge electrical currents and/or a raging storm.

However, nearly all the aspects of the original story that have become well known are inventions of Hollywood. The lightning storm that gives the Creature life, Igor/Fritz/Hans, the mute/deaf/ hunch-back assistant, the stolen, damaged brain..none of this is in Shelly’s original plot.

Shelly describes the Creature thus: “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips”.

Again, this is not the image most people think of when they picture Frankenstein’s creature. The flat top head and bolted neck made famous by Boris Karloff in the 1931 Universal production was created by make up artist Jack Pierce. The 3 months Pierce spent studying anatomy and surgery convinced him that a surgeon determined to transplant a brain would cut off the top of the skull straight across, hinge it, pop in a new brain and clamp it shut. Hence the flat, squared off head we have come to associate with the monster.

However Karloff was not the first cinematic Frankenstein monster. In 1910, an actor called Charles Ogle played the Creature in a version of the tale made by the Edison Studios. A four act, silent one reeler , the Creature was portrayed as “an aseh-faced, frizzy haired hunchback” .

The success of the film version of Dracula in 1930 convinced Hollywood that there was an audience for films of this nature and so in 1931 Universal released their adaptation of a play by Peggy Webley called ‘Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre’ which was based on Shelly’s original story and had played to packed houses in the UK for three years. Directed by James Whale, Colin Clive was cast as Dr. Frankenstein and his name was changed to ‘Henry’. An unknown English actor, William Henry Pratt, who went under the stage name of Boris Karloff, played the Creature in the Universal film after Bela Lugosi had in fact turned it down believing the almost mute role would harm his new found fame. Karloff’s success in Frankenstein made him a star almost over night and the film itself became an instant classic of the new cinematic genre-‘The Horror Film’.

The film was made for $290,000 depression era dollars. It went on to make the studio $12m.

Many people complain these days there are too many sequels of successful (and in many cases unsuccessful) films being made but Frankenstein was really the first to set the sequel ball rolling. The producers at Universal knew they were onto a money spinner and followed the original with a sequel in 1935 that some critics claim is better than the original, ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ which reunited the triumvirate of Whale, Clive and Karloff. This attempt to create a ‘mate’ for the Creature was a continuation of Shelly’s original story. But that is where we see the last fragments of Shelly’s original tale disappear into Hollywood history. Bizarrely, Ernest Thesiger appears at one point as 'Dr Pretorious’ a fellow ‘scientist’ who has his own pet project he wishes to show Henry Frankenstein. He is breeding miniature people (in character costumes) in jars. Go figure!

‘Bride..’ was followed by ‘Son of Frankenstein’ in 1939. This had Basil Rathbone as Wolf von Frankenstein (the name having acquired a ‘von’ since the last film) as the new occupant of ‘Castle Frankenstein’ This was to be Karloff’s last outing as the Creature. It was also the last time in, this series, the Creature evoked sympathy from the audience. From here on he would be a shambling killer…a boogyman. It was in ‘Son..’ that Bela Lugosi got in on the franchise as ‘Ygor’ , a Gypsy who escaped the hangman’s noose when his broken neck failed to kill him. A menacing portrayal and one where he avoids his usual hamminess and type casting. Ygor uses the Creature to kill off the jury that convicted him.

‘Ghost of Frankenstein’ in 1942, had Lon Chaney Jnr in the big boots and bolts and Cedric Hardwicke as the latest Doctor. The plan is to put a ‘good’ brain in the Creature. Lugosi back as Ygor (despite dying in the previous film) manages to get his brain in the creature instead which proceeds to go blind and stumble around , smashing up the lab and starting a fire. Despite going up in flames at the end the Creature, now more ‘Monster’ returned in the last of the Universal classics, ‘Frankenstein meets the Werewolf’ in 1943. Now Lon Chaney Jnr was the misunderstood Lycanthrope, Lawrence Talbot and it was Lugosi’s turn to play the monster, and not very well at that. Neither Lugosi or Chaney could evoke the sympathy with the Creature that Karloff had reached. Lugosi’s monster was all snarls and killing. In the finish both the monster and the Wolfman , after one doozy of a fight, get swept away when the local Dam breaks.

But by this time the monster, much like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees some 40-50 years later, would just keep coming back, seemingly unstoppable (but at the end gets killed.. until the next time when they find some lame method of reviving him). The success of the pairing of two of Universal’s big monsters in the last film prompted more multi monster films. The monster was wheeled out again (along with Chaney’s Wolf Man and John Carradine’s gaunt but debonair Dracula in ‘House of Frankenstein’ in 1944. In a reversal of roles Karloff was now playing the Doctor. This time it was an actor called actor Glenn Strange as the monster. Carradine, Chaney and Strange repeated their roles in ‘House of Dracula’ in 1954 in between which Strange would play the monster again when Abbott and Costello inevitably met Frankenstein in 1948.

In all of these films the monster appeared in the classic Jack Pierce make up and was played by four different actors. It was probably due to the monster’s continuing , unchanging appearance in this series that gave rise to the misconception by the film going public that ‘Frankenstein’ was the name of the monster and not his creator. After all, he was in all the films, wasn’t he?

Incidentally, the only reason Dr Frankenstein is often given the title of Baron is merely to put him on the same aristocratic footing as Dracula, who was a Count. In Shelly’s book Victor Frankenstein is a medical student from a wealthy family, but he is not titled.

During the 1950’s Frankenstein’s popularity waned somewhat. The cinema going public were bored with the concept. The slow, lumbering monster had became a bit of a joke. Science had moved on and space was the new frontier of movie makers. Sci-Fi , aliens and atomic mutations became the flavour of the month. Frankenstein still cropped up occasionally but it was normally just in the title of truly awful 10th rate films like the 1955 cheapie ‘Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter’. A film that, like one of the good Doctor’s own creations , is two movie genres crudely sewn together with the resulting disaster.

However you can’t keep a good monster down and in 1957 the British Hammer Studios resurrected the Frankenstein theme with it’s ground breaking horror film ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ starring Peter Cushing as the Doctor (again a Baron) and Christopher Lee as his creation. This gave birth to a whole new series of films about the good Dr F.

Hammer couldn’t use the flat headed Jack Pierce make up, or anything too similar as it was (and still is) copyrighted to Universal so the monster was re-designed to look more like Mary Shelly’s original description, although little else of Shelly’s original was used. Lee’s performance as the scarred and scared Creature drew comparisons with Karloff for the sympathy evoked but like all of Frankenstein’s ‘body building exercises’ it all ends up in death and destruction. Unlike the Universal series, at the end of each Hammer film the Creature was usually(and fairly convincingly) destroyed. This gave each film a new ‘monster’ . This time it was the same Creator, not the same Creature who got to come back again.

Universal’s continuing element in their series of films had been the Creature/monster (which had looked, to the film going public, the same in the Pierce make up regardless of who played him). Hammer , however, chose the person of Frankenstein as their focal point. Peter Cushing would eventually play the part of the Doctor a total of six times each time with a different looking creation.

‘Curse of Frankenstein’ was followed by ‘Revenge of Frankenstein’, in ’1958 which had Frankenstein (cunningly calling himself Dr Stein) now working in a hospital and up to his old tricks. He survives the angry towns folk when his identity is revealed and turns up in London at the end as ‘Dr Frank’. However in ‘Evil of Frankenstein’ in ’64, he returns to his ‘Balkan’ home and discovers a monster he must have forgotten about frozen stiff under the ruins of his ancestral pile. Wrestler Kiwi Kingston lumbers around in dreadful make up looking like he has a box paper mache’d to his fore head. However by ‘Frankenstein Created Woman’ in ’67, Peter Cushing’s Doctor was getting the hang of it. He might have produced some ugly male monsters but his attempt at a woman was pretty good, with emphasis on the ‘pretty’. Still, Susan Denbergh, the brain transplanted beauty he produces still manages to go ga-ga and kill folks with her big knife.

Cushing was back again as Frankenstein, now a complete madman. in ‘Frankenstein must be Destroyed’ in ’69 which was , up to this point the goriest of the series. Grand Guignol in style Cushing is seen hacking cadavers apart and splattered with gore. This time he transplants the brain of a mad scientist into the body of a hospital worker. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. Freddie Jones is the resulting creation and death for all concerned in a huge fire at the end.

In 1970 Ralph Bates starred as a rather nasty Frankenstein (the line of lineage now totally lost) in ‘Horror of Frankenstein’ but he was no replacement for Cushing. David Prowse (later to find fame as the embodiment of Darth Vader played a rather dull creation).

However Cushing’s Frankenstein was a sturdy old stick and he survived yet again to turn up in ‘Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell’ in 1974 which was Cushing’s (and Hammer’s) last Frankenstein outing. In this, Frankenstein is now comitted in an insane asylum but is still allowed to continue cutting up inmates and finally manages to transplant a (guess what)..that’s right, a damaged brain in to a hulking brute(played by David Prowse again but this time unrecognisable under a huge, bulky hairy ‘body suit’). By far the goriest of the series this has close ups of brain removals and organs flopping all over the place. All hell breaks loose in a blood soaked and gore splattered finally and the curtain came down on Hammer’s Frankenstein series.

By now we were into the mid 70’s and all sorts of bizarre and in some cases frankly ridiculous variations of the Frankenstien story were cropping up. We had Dr Frankenstein’s castle of Freaks’ which sounds more like a carnival side show.We got a soft porn version, ‘The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein’. A blaxsploitation version called (surprise-surprise) Blackenstein. Another version but with 3 Dimensional gratuitous gore was ‘Andy Warhol’s ‘Flesh for Frankenstein’ which came out in 1973,(Although Warhol actually had nothing to do with it. It was written and directed by Paul Morrisey but some of the ‘actors’, like Joe Dallesandro and Udo Keir were associated with Warhols ‘Factory’) This was excessively gory and was even released in a 3D version. Containing scenes of necrophilia and with it’s Frankenstein and his sister’s incestuous relationship it’s one of the more extreme films to bear the name ‘Frankenstein’ . It contains the memorable line ‘To know death, Otto you have to fuck it in the gall bladder’.

That whirring sound is Mary Shelly spinning in her grave.

Over the years there has been a 4 hour TV movie called ‘Frankenstein: The True Story’ which incorporated elements from earlier films, added a few previously unused bits from Shelly’s original story, and even involved a mad scientist called Dr Polidori (who, as I mentioned earlier, was in fact Byron’s physician at the Villa Diodato!) There have been several other attempts, all claiming to tell ‘the real story’ but all miss out bits or merge characters. Of course the theme is ripe for pastiche and parody.

We have had ‘Frankenhooker’ ,1989, about a guy who builds himself a girlfriend out of bits of prostitutes, and we’ve had the Disney produced short ‘Frankenweenie’ which has a young boy bringing his dead dog back to life and launched the career of one Tim Burton! There was the very funny Mel Brooks version ‘Young Frankenstein’ with Gene Hackman’s spot on portrayal of the blind hermit, Peter Boyle as the monster with a zipper in his neck, Marty Feldman as the bug eyed Igor and the wonderful Madeleine Kahn as Elizabeth, (complete with the ‘Bride’ beehive with the white flashes) , There is even a musical, ‘The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show’ which was camper than a scout jamboree and where the Doctor goes by the name of Frank N. Furter. The appearence of the monster has been lampooned and parodied for humerous effect in TV shows like The Munsters (Herman) and the Addams Family (Lurch)

Sting got in on the act when he appeared in a remake of Bride of Frankenstein, called ‘The Bride’ . A very good variation on the Shelly theme carrying on from where the original ‘Bride..’ had left off. Clancy Brown is the male Creature with little make up. Despite his size Brown still emphasised the emotional rather than the physical aspects of the Creature.

There have been films that were obviously inspired by the concept of Shelly’s novel such as RoboCop and it’s sequels.

Also films based on books that seem to have been influenced by Shelly’s book, such as H.P Lovecraft’s Re-animator and it’s sequel ‘Bride of the Re-animator’.

In 1990 a film version of a Brian Aldiss story called ‘Frankenstein Unbound’ involved a future time traveller, played by John Hurt, who managed to travel back through time and bring a very real Dr Frankenstein , played by Raoul Julia , and Shelly together to inspire one another. It seems the real story, as Shelly wrote it had been completely forgotten in the mists of cinematic time.Which brings us up to 1994 and the most recent adaptation, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh.

This version presents the monster as a victim of it’s circumstances, a pitiful creature who is driven to evil by society and it’s maker. By casting Robert De Niro, an actor of average height, as the Creature and not making him a 7ft tall giant, the Creature physically appears more ‘human’.

The creation sequence is especially good employing the technology of the time well with Branagh’s Victor Frankenstein using accupuncture points, electric eels and amniotic fluid to bring De Niro’s Creature to life.

Despite the minor changes in the story it can surely be said that of all the film versions, Branagh’s film comes closest to Mary Shelly’s novel. The film presents the central ideas of the novel, straightens the plot and removes implausible elements, for which the novel has often been criticised. De Niro is good as the misunderstood, confused creature, created without consent and abandoned ‘at birth’ by the one person who is responsible for his existance. He teaches himself to read and finds out his origins. His revenge on Frankenstein for denying him a mate while he himself marries his beloved Elizabeth is brutal. ‘I will be with you on you wedding night’ he promises and so he is, to rip the still beating heart from Elizabeth’s chest. Powerful stuff.

Later on this year we will have Hugh Jackman as the eponymous ‘Van Helsing’ in which he fights Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s ‘monster’. What this incarnation of the creature will be like we’ll have to wait and see but it just goes to show you: 185 years on from the publication of that book by a sensitive young girl of just 21 and Frankenstein and his many, many creations are still stomping and murdering their way through our cinemas and TV.

And long may they do so.