Curse of Frankenstein

Can a movie about such a familiar monster as Frankenstein filmed in 1957 still be scary?


Why yes, yes it can.

In the past week or so I've introduced to you the glories of Hammer studios take on Dracula and the Werewolf. Today I sat down and watched the Curse of Frankenstein with my kids. The movie stars Hammer familiars Peter Cushing as Dr. Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the monster. The movie came out in 1957, in color, and was Hammer's first take on one of the classic monsters. In watching the movie, I've learned a couple of things this time around that I thought were interesting enough to share.






First off... the differences. The most famous interpretation of the Frankenstein novel is Boris Karloff's version from Universal studios in 1931. It's the first movie I show in the Dill household every October. It's moody, familiar, and it's a different story than what you'll find in the novel. The strong elements are there, but there are a lot of details that are different. First and foremost, the monster speaks in the novel. It's a thinking, speaking thing.

I learned from IMDB trivia about the Curse of Frankenstein that Universal studios were very concerned about Hammer's horror efforts. It seems they were still making money booking both Dracula and Frankenstein in theaters back then. They warned Hammer that if their movie was too close to the classic Universal movie that there would be a subsequent lawsuit. In fact, Hammer's original script WAS too close to the Universal version and had to be re-written.



Two things grab my attention about what I just wrote. The first is that the power and influence of the original 1931 Frankenstein movie is so great that it's become the Frankenstein story that people want, not the original by Mary Shelley.

Second, is my casual couch-research using IMDB to find this fact.

When I was in college the biggest thing that stymied my analysis and paper-writing ability was the research. I hated it. Hated the time spent in the library hopelessly trying to find facts for my topics. Today, it's simplicity itself. Now when I watch movies it's always with my iPad close by and the IMDB app open. I'm able to put some things in context with dates, actors, and the trivia section from IMDB. More importantly as a parent, I'm able to use IMDB's parental guide to know what my kids can and can't watch. I don't necessarily have to rely on memory to make sure that a scene I wouldn't want my 13 year old to see is only seconds away.


In my opinion, this is one of the reasons that I think of 2012 as a golden age for enjoying entertainment of the past.






In Hammer's version of Frankenstein, the movie is almost entirely about Dr. Frankenstein, played by Peter Cushing. Cushing gives a fantastic performance and Lee's scenes as the monster are few and far between. The audience starts out sympathizing with young Victor, and slowly over the course of the movie are turned cold towards the horrific acts of Dr. Frankenstein. This is one of the primary reasons I really find it to be a magnetic movie.





The look of the monster is very different from Karloff's monster. But the performances are similar and the reveal moment of the monster is pivotal, just as it is in the Universal classic.








Another thing that's interesting to me is just how horrific the movie can be if you're willing to put a little thought into it. Today's horror movies don't expect any effort from the audience and try to shock with gore, spook with imagery, or startle with a jump scare. In Curse of Frankenstein there's a scene where Dr. Frankenstein rushes home in excitement, eager to speak with his assistant Paul. He pulls Paul into his work room and, like a kid on Christmas morning, shows Paul two severed hands that he stole from a recently deceased artist. Paul stares at Victor in concerned revulsion. Victor is too excited to notice. It's through the character Paul that we as the audience take our cues that it's time to stop sympathizing with Dr. Frankenstein and time to start regarding him as what he's become... a monster.





So can a movie from 1957 about a creature so well known as the Frankenstein monster be scary? The answer lies in how much of yourself are you willing to put into it.


Or maybe just how old you are?

Thanks,
DCD

Curse of the Werewolf

I recently wrote about the Hammer Films classic Horror of Dracula, comparing that film to its much earlier Universal Studios equivalent. And as original as Hammer’s interpretation was, it just didn’t have that feel of originality to it. The Dracula character is too well known, the story the character comes from has been told too many times.

One Hammer film that does not suffer from this problem is the Curse of the Werewolf, a 1961 Hammer films offering starring Oliver Reed.



This werewolf movie is strikingly original. Where Dracula and Frankenstein both spring from famous novels, the werewolf not so much. Because of this, many more liberties can be taken with the character. So for fans of the 1941 Wolf Man film starring Lon Chaney Jr, rest assured that there is absolutely no similarity here. Well… except for basic furryness of the monster.

In the 1941 Wolfman movie, Larry Talbot becomes the Wolf Man by being bitten but not killed by another Wolf Man. Almost every villager he talks to chants to him the following:

Even a man who is pure in heart
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright.


And so it goes for most origins of werewolves. Being bitten means you turn, right? Not in Curse of the Werewolf.

One of the things that makes Curse of the Werewolf feel so unique is the origin of the monster, which we don't learn until quite a ways into the movie. In fact, the movie spends quite a segment of time setting up the history and backstory of the character. Showing a beggar being toyed with and eventually imprisoned by a nobleman. Showing that beggar being forgotten about in the dungeon, where he eventually attacks and rapes a young, mute girl. She escapes and is found by the kindly couple of the movie. She dies giving birth to Leon Corledo, our main character, on Christmas Day. And the token superstitious older woman of the movie warns that Leon is cursed, both by the evil circumstances of his conception and being an unwanted child born on Christmas Day.


And that's it. It's the curse. Those factors somehow mixed together to make Leon a werewolf during a full moon.


OH! There's one other thing that sets Hammer's werewolf apart from the others. It's not just a silver bullet that will kill him, but a silver bullet made from a melted down crucifix.


I've heard people say that they feel the removal of the more superstitious elements from these classic monsters are making them more cool. Vampires don't burn in sunlight and don't care about crucifix's and stuff like that. I feel quite the opposite, feeling that these elements add a much needed dash of superstition to firmly plant these monsters into fantasy. Again... I don't care for my entertainment to be gritty and realistic, I want it to be entertaining. I'm often told I'm in the minority.


In terms of appearance, Wolf Man and Curse of the Werewolf share the idea of a flat faced monster who looks more like a man turned into a wolf than a wolf that can walk. Shying away from the full snout sported by werewolves of today.


Today's werewolves largely obey the idea of being cursed once your bitten. But the interesting thing to me is how different modern day werewolf depictions in movies are from older stuff. It seems like werewolves are just growling, ripping killing machines today. Or armies of furry beasts cultivated to fight vampires, or some such nonsense. The most interesting parts of Wolf Man and Curse of the Werewolf, at least in my opinion, are the parts where the main character is trying to restrain himself, resist the curse, and protect those around them. They generally don't want to BE werewolves. They want to be civilized men, not lost to the beast-like unpredictability of their curse. Which I think is the core meaning of the character. And if we're losing that point with modern storytelling and caving in to the idea that we want to be werewolves because werewolves are cool.... well what does that say about modern society.

I'm reminded of the most memorable werewolf moment in the movie Monster Squad from 1987. The moment when the man, frantically worried about the monster within him, starts to attack a station full of police and yells "LOCK ME UP!"


They just shoot him instead.

Thanks,
DCD

Horror of Dracula

As I write this to you, it's the first weekend in October. Stereotypically enough, it's the tail end of a weekend that's been rainy, dark, cold and miserable. It's the first weekend that I haven't been outside in awhile. So yeah... winter is coming. The older I get, the more I dread December and January.

However, there is one big bright spot to the onset of October. It's time to focus on yet another hobby. Horror movies.

I'm home alone with the kids today. And they asked me to put on one of my horror movies. Katie, my eleven year old daughter, asked for Dracula. Alex, my six year old son, asked that it not be the old black-and-white Dracula. He finds that movie terrifying. So I smiled, patted his head in reassurance, and told him I had something even scarier in mind and he better go potty now instead of waiting.

About five years ago, I found out about the Hammer horror films. Hammer was a British studio that reached the pinnacle of it's popularity in the 1960's. They were most famous for their horror movies, putting out a line of Dracula movies starring Christopher Lee as Dracula. They did a line of Frankenstein movies, Mummy movies, and only one Werewolf movie. Hammer studios excelled in creating atmosphere. Creepy old mansions, castles, villages, dark countrysides, beautiful backdrops for their creepy stories to take place. When I 'found' the Hammer horror movies, it was like stumbling onto a hidden treasure that you didn't know you were looking for. There were times when it didn't even matter if the movie was good! The sets were so beautiful that the movie was a visual treat regardless.



One of their better films was the Horror of Dracula. The movie was released in 1958 in full color. As I mentioned, it starred Christopher Lee as Dracula. Which was magnificent enough. But to top that off the movie casts Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing. A perfect match up in casting.


The interpretation is an interesting one. The story doesn't strictly follow Bram Stoker's novel, but it's close enough to feel like you're slipping on an old shoe. Usually I write about how a character is portrayed differently through the ages. Dracula has the same comparison with some slight differences. The biggest being that his story almost always takes place in the same time frame. It's only the production that moves between eras. So the Dracula we get from Bela Lugosi in 1931 is different from Christopher Lee's Dracula in 1958, Gary Oldman's Dracula in 1992, and (Heaven help us) Frank Langella's groovy Dracula of 1979. We can learn things about what was considered scary and entertaining for the audiences of the different decades.

... or maybe it's age.

As an adult, I don't find Hammer's Horror of Dracula particularly scary. I love the movie and I can see why it was popular or considered scary for it's time. But I've seen much worse. However, for my son Alex, it's easily the scariest thing he's ever seen. As Universal's Dracula was before it. There were moments when Alex refused to even look at the screen.


So is it a jaded contemporary culture that needs more blood and gore for the scare with each decade? Is it up to the individual and what entertainment they've experienced before that makes it scary? Or rather, is it the horror movies themselves? Having seen the 1931 Dracula, it's lost it's bite. So time to try to scare a new decade of movie-goers that have seen the horror movies of the past. Hollywood stuck in a never-ending cycle of trying to top it's last scary outing.


Horror of Dracula sets itself apart from it's predecessor through the use of color. Where the 1931 Dracula film evokes strong mood and gothic atmosphere with it's black and white medium, the Horror of Dracula specializes in shocking the viewer with bright, bright red blood. Clearly unnaturally bright red blood. The effect is starting, even to my 2012 brain. The opening scene of the movie is a shot zooming in on the coffin of Dracula, which suddenly gets splattered with blood from above. We never see the source of the blood, but I imagine the effect on 1958 audiences, used to black and white features, was dramatic.


The other striking difference between the two Dracula's is the actor himself. As a kid, when I thought of Dracula I thought of something tall, dark, lean, and angular. I don't know where I developed that impression, unless it was from Frank Langella (gasp!) But the reality of Bela Lugosi is quite different. Short, with a round face and an odd shape, Lugosi doesn't really seem built to play the character as I've described. Where Lugosi puts it over the top is accent, acting, the way he held his hands, and the intensity of his eyes.



Christopher Lee is different from Bela Lugosi in almost every way. While Lee was probably a more accomplished actor than Lugosi by the end of their careers, Lee's performance still seemed less 'crafted' than Lugosi's. Lee was tall, slim, angular, striking, imposing, threatening, and just darn impressive. A shot of Lugosi as Dracula standing at a distance from the viewer evokes in you a sense of weirdness about the character and what's to happen next. When you see Lee standing there in the black cape, you just want to run.





Langella? I confess I don't remember much. But I do remember thinking he was Disco Dracula.


The kids loved the movie, by the way. And they've given the Hammer horror films, what few they've seen, the thumbs up. It'll be awhile before I let them see Bram Stoker's Dracula with Gary Oldman, though.

Maybe I should pull out the Frank Langella?


This is Ashton at probably around five.



Katie at about age three.


Ashton's first real Halloween, just over a year old.


Thanks,
DCD