Frankenstein, the modern day prometheus

[unknown]

Aphrodite

Is this one? this looks almost like it was etched.

[unknown]

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frank_celluloid.html


The Celluloid Monster



The reshaping of Mary Shelley's story began almost from the

moment it first appeared. The 1931 Universal Studios production of

Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff as the monster, capped more

than a century of variant tellings of the original story. Compared to

Shelley's sensitive, articulate creature, Universal's was crude and

unformed. But the sheer power of Hollywood image-making gave

him an impact as great or greater than Shelley's, and made him into

an icon of popular culture.

Just as Shelley's story was shaped by the science of the day, so

was Hollywood's influenced by some of the scientific and

pseudo-scientific preoccupations of its day, including eugenics,

robots, and surgical transplants.




Frankenstein Movie Poster, 1931
The Granger Collection, New York

***

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Escaping Shelley's Frame

In 1823 Mary Shelley's father told her of an English Opera House

production of a play entitled Presumption; or, The Fate of

Frankenstein. Though inspired by her novel, the play departed from

it freely--as playwrights, filmmakers, and political cartoonists have

done ever since. Shelley's original novel, memorable for its story

and ambitious in the large questions it poses, has invariably been

simplified and distorted, sometimes almost beyond recognition.



The Monster in Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, 1823



The actor T.P. Cooke played the monster in this 1823 stage

adaptation of Frankenstein. His make-up left him, by one account,

with a "shriveled complexion, lips straight and black, and a horrible

ghastly grin."

***


The Irish Frankenstein, 1843
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

When nineteenth-century English editorial cartoonists wished to

depict some group as brutish, primitive, or inclined to run amok, they

routinely invoked the image of the Frankenstein monster. Here, their

target was the Irish.

[unknown]

The Edison Kinetogram, March 10, 1910
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historic Site
The first cinematic version of Frankenstein was a silent film produced by Edison Films; it came two decades before the famous 1931 Universal Studios picture.

Hollywood Produces Frankenstein
Would Americans attend "horror films"? The success of a stage version of Dracula, the story of an aristocratic vampire, helped convince producers at Hollywood's Universal Studios that they would. In 1930, Universal bought film rights to Peggy Webling's Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre, which had premiered in London three years earlier. An obscure English actor, William Henry Pratt, who went by the stage name of Boris Karloff, played the monster in Universal's adaptation of the Webling play. Karloff's success in Frankenstein made him a star. The film itself became an almost instant classic of a new genre--the horror movie.



Boris Karloff Being Transformed into the Monster

In posed studio portraits, Boris Karloff looks like many another conventionally handsome movie actor; make-up artist Jack Pierce made him into the monster. Pierce's three months of research into anatomy and surgery convinced him that a surgeon determined to transplant a brain would cut the top of the skull straight across, hinge it, pop in the new brain, then clamp it shut. Hence, the monster's flat, squared-off head.

[unknown]

Boris Karloff as the Monster in Frankenstein
Photofest
Frankenstein earned rave reviews, was named to top-ten lists, and made lots of money; the production cost $290,000 in Depression-era dollars, and earned more than $12 million.

***

***

Boundary Crossings in 1931
In the years before Universal Studios released Frankenstein in 1931, scientists seemed poised to penetrate once-sacrosanct boundaries between life and death, a prospect that continued both to trouble the intellect and thrill the imagination. Newspapers and magazines speculated freely about one day reviving the dead, achieving immortality through the use of artificial organs, and altering the genetic shape of future generations through eugenics. The Universal film responded to these themes in popular culture.



1935 Article: "Can Science Raise the Dead?"
In the 1930s, American chemist Robert E. Cornish killed a dog with nitrogen gas, then revived it. Emboldened by this success, he vainly sought access to men executed in the chamber. These efforts to revive the dead got widespread press coverage during the 1930s.

[Carolyn Silver]

Cool pix, Unknown, this thread be rockin' now!!!

[unknown]

Augghhh!!!

Thanks Carolyn
I been grabbing stuff from that gif site for an hour!

[unknown]

http://www.hotad.com/monstermania The movies were still very much in their infancy when FRANKENSTEIN was brought to the screenfor the first time. Edison produced a one-reel(975ft.) version in 1910. A film lost to the ravages of time.  Two reviews in the Moving Picture World of the time gave this information: ". . . a liberal adaptation of Mrs. Shelly's famous story . . . it shows Frankenstein, a young student leaving his father and sweetheart to pursue his studies at college. In the course of his research he discovers the awful mystery of life and death and immediately determines to realize his one consuming ambition to create the most perfect human, being that the world has ever seen.

[unknown]

The actually repulsive situations in the original version have been carefully eliminated . . . no film has ever been released that can surpass it in power to fascinate an audience. The scene in the laboratory in which the monster seemed gradually to assume human semblance is probably the most remarkable ever committed to a film." -(MPW March 19th, 1910) "The formation of the monster in the cauldron of blazing chemicals is a piece of photo graphic work which will rank with the best of its kind. The entire film is one that will create a new impression that the possibilities of the motion picture in reproducing these stories are scarcely realized. . ." -(MPW April 2nd, 1910).

The review in the March 15th, 1910 Edison Cinetogram gives the impression of a Jekyll-Hyde or Dorian Gray treatment of a story- that the monster is somehow connected with the lower part of Frankenstein's nature, and that when the young scientist loses all morbid, unnatural thoughts and ambitions, and thinks only of his love for Elizabeth, the monster dissolves into thin air. This same issue has two rare stills of the monster, looking something like the dwarf, Mime, in Fritz Lang's SIEGFRIED. Of course, credits were rarely if ever given in films or their reviews at that time, so it's not known who worked in or on the film.

[unknown]

The powerful image of the Frankenstein monster from Mary Shelly's

memorable novel has been a source of movie inspiration almost

from the beginning of the medium, and continues to be a large

box-office attraction even in this day of epic spectacles.

It was well over a century since this classical story had first been

told. Mary W. Shelley's strange novel was published in 1818.

The authoress was the wife of Percy Shelley, the famed poet. She

had written and researched the story on a dare! when she was only

eighteen.

The novel achieved worldwide fame. It is still solidly in print (recently

having sold over quarter of a million copies in  a paperback edition).

But the movie became known to people who had never heard of the

book.

 The word "Frankenstein" has become part of the language. (It has

also, by mistake, become attached not to the famous doctor but to

his gruesome creation.)

An extensive search has been under way for many years to locate

some print or even a scene from the first film version of the novel,

filmed by Thomas Edison about 60 years ago! Many film collectors

are still confidentof eventual success, although others are afraid that

this rare classic has been lost forever.

The first surviving version Golem was made in Germany in 1914.

The part of the clay giant, brought to life through magical means,

was played by Paul Wegener, who himself produced and again

starred in the second version.
Homunculus, made in 1916 is about a powerful artificial man who

brings death and destruction upon mankind until killed by a bolt of

lightning.

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The following belong to the Universal Pictures "eight original" FRANKENSTEIN group:  FRANKENSTEIN (1932); BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935); SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939); GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942); FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN (1943); HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1945); HOUSE OF DRACUIA (1945); ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948).

Boris Karloff played in four of the above; also, in the later FRANKENSTEIN 1970 but he only played the Monster three times.

The first FRANKENSTEIN was directed by the great late James Whale; we owe all later versions to him. He was the genius behind it all. John P. Fulton's electrical and photographic wizardry was responsible for the fabulous apparatus that brought the monsterto fearful life. Jack Pierce's make up, which took hours to apply, was the foundation of the grand illusion. An expert cast also assisted. Mae Clarke was Elizabeth, the first of many heroines to scream and faint after catching sight of the undying Monsterfor the first time; Edward Van Sloan portrayed Dr. Waldman; and Dwight Frye was the famous hunchback servant with the sadistic streak giggling and laughing as he tormented The Monster with the waving of a flaming torch. burial and sewn to gether into one being.

The Boris Karloff Frankenstein was very commercial in concept. The Golem had been highly succesful, and Lugosi's Dracula had proved the financial advantages of the eerie sound motion picture. And of course Lon Chaney's silent masterpieces had more than proven themselves. But the idea of Frankenstein was also highly risky. It would be the first picture actually concerned with revival of a dead being. And not just one being, but a number of corpses, desecrated from their holy burial and sewn to gether into one being.

(Two Examples of the excellent sets         
created for BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN)         

Could such a presentation survive the criticism and objections that were bound to be deluged upon it?

In a way it was an extremely risky ****. No commercially motivated backer would have dared stick

his money into such a ****. Yet, within its budget, Frankenstein remained fairly close to the original
book with the notable exception that Shelly's  monster despite his hideous form is superior to man in every

respect including intellectually (and morally?)  Shelly's  monster is not a lumbering oaf to be pitied, rather

an ubermensch to be feared. A primary defect of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein, although the best to date,

was the limited boundaries of the monster's travels. The original novel screams for color and vast backgrounds

of ice and snow. (John Ford?)

[Carolyn Silver]

Cool stuff, but I think your thread is haunted!

[unknown]

Ha Ha

Hi Carolyn

All the little ghouls and goblins are welcome, even ghosts...

[unknown]

Hi Carolyn


Thanks for posting that gif site!

[unknown]

The book was not widely read, and the cast was not even headed by a name star (Lugosi had refused the roll of the creature.) But sincerity of production triumphed, and, as is often the case with truely original approaches, the final product realized a fortune. Bride of Frankenstein took another careful look at the book and drew forth much that had been bypassed the first time around. In a special prologue, Miss Lanchester is shown as the authoress of the story, Mary Shelley.

She continues the story of Frankenstein from where it had left off at the end of the first film. We see Dr. Pretorius, coming to see Dr. Frankenstein and persuading him to continue his experiments.   They decide to create a bride for the monster, who still lives. Dr. Pretoriusis a strange individual indeed. He keeps tiny people in bottles; and he tries to teach the monster to speak .... with some success. (But in the third film the monster is as dumb as at the start.)   The monster is captured, and imprisoned in the village jail. But it escapes.It also meets an old, blind hermit who treats it like an equal, not being able to see its ugly form. Frankenstein refuses to go on with his experiments, and the monster then steals the Doctor's wife, Elizabeth. Forced to continue, he creates a mate who screams and shrieks and shrinks away from the "bridegroom." In rage, the monster throws the inevitable switch, and the laboratory blows sky-high. Bride of Frankenstein, although an imitation, was artistically successful through sheer inertia from the first production. Son of Frankenstein, by all rights, should have been commercial garbage. Son of Kong sold itself totally on a good reputation in the name, made a fast buck, and retreated to count its spurious gains.

(Elsa Lanchester and Boris Karloff       
         in James Whale's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN)     

Son of Frankenstein could very well have done the same. Yet the producers didn't. They gave

their theme a fresh approach, a name cast, and more than adequate funds to produce another

classic.

Son of Frankenstein, the last of the Boris Karloff trilogy, was in many ways equal, if not superior

to "Bride". The fourth film, although shoddy in many respects (make-up defects were not properly

attended to before close-upshots; unlike the minute care taken in the first film) came forth with

a good deal of dramatic power all its own.


Few people seeing Ghost of Frankenstein could forget the sequence of the monster surviving even

deriving energy from the very lightning which killed Nomunculus.
 

Then, in 1943, screenplay scripter Curt Siodmak penned  the fast-paced FRANKENSTEIN MEETS

THE WOLFMAN. Universal Jumped on it hoping to suck the last drops of life out of two over

exposed brand names.


Bela Lugosi, who had originally been screen tested for the role of the Frankenstein monster

in 1931, at last a dozen years later, doffing his cape of Dracula, became the creature

created by Boris Karloff. Lon Chaney repeated his role of Larry Talbot, victim of Iycanthropy. 

Four years after the tragic death of Larry Talbot, killed by his own father, two sinister

figures enter the graveyard where the Talbot crypt is located, planning to rob the body

of Larry Talbot of its valuables. When they open the coffin, they are frightened to find

the corpse in a perfect state of preservation except for a large scar on its forehead

where Larry was beaten to death in his werewolf form. The full moon shines through the

window and falls on the exposed body. A moment later, one of the grave robbers is seized

by the hand of the corpse itself and dragged screaming toward the coffin. The other villain

scrambles out of the crypt, a babbling  oaf.


The over hammy portrayal of the creature by Bela Lugosi in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

makes one give thanks that he passed the offered role to Boris Karloff originally.


In 1956 at the time of Hammer's Curse of Frankenstein, -the features of the Frankenstein

monster were familiar in everyone's mind. The Boris Karloff version no longer held intrinsic

terror. It had long since been lost to the parade of silly cartoons, bad remakes and endless

merchandising aimed at small childern.  The price of success.


Unfortunately, a heavy price paid by Boris Karloff in later years, since his original brilliant

performance was so closely tied to his fortune.  Hollywood systematically reduced Frankenstein

from monster to baffon  as it drained every dime it could from the brand.  The Frankenstein

name now became a mixed blessing for Boris Karloff.


Then came Hammer Productions. The Frankenstein name, by this time, was not an assured

box office success. Color could lend the subliminal suggestion of "quality". But to be on the

safe side, plenty of sex and blood would always attract a crowd.


In UK post war it became necessary to look deeper into the original story and make the

good Victor an out-and-out sex-fiend if not a out right Joseph Mengela. Curse of Frankenstein, 

relied upon the horror of gore and brutality to take audiences to a  neo-realist level

of "terror." Not an easy task in post war England.