Frankenstein Must Be Unemployed

The end of an era: 

Terence Fisher’s last film, and Peter Cushing’s last turn as Victor Frankenstein, now calling himself Dr. Carl Victor, having used up every last syllable of his name in his previous pseudonyms. Remember how there’s always a character called Karl? Now Frankenstein himself has fulfilled his destiny by becoming that Karl.

After the splashy big-budget (by Hammer standards) production of FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, with it’s actual night-for-night photography and fiery denouement, F.A.T.M.F.H. is something of a chamber piece, confined after its first scenes (featuring the beloved Patrick Troughton as a grave-robber) to a lunatic asylum (The Ingolstadt Booby Hatch for Stereotypical Nutters), where the Baron has been confined, before basically taking over the place by means of blackmail.

Fiona was surprised and pleased by the film, having previously judged it by the standard of Dave Prowse’s rather O.T.T. makeup. Why hire a muscleman and then coat him in a fake muscle suit? It is a rather overdone neanderthal effect, although I’d argue only slightly more extreme than that guy in THE KILLING.

A weirdness: Madeline Smith plays a hysterical mute (screenwriter John Elder shamelessly plagiarising his own work on EVIL OF F), cured by a second trauma. Director Fisher made some of his best work after being hit by car during an inebriated stroll — his work on THE DEVIL RIDES OUT and FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED was some of the best of his career. But between those films and this one, he got drunk again, and got hit by a car again — a second trauma! – and relapsed into the more sedentary style of his early ’60s work.

Fisher wasn’t the only team member to have suffered. This is the only time Cushing played the Baron after the death of his beloved wife, Helen. Much has been written about his devotion to her, and he spent the remainder of his life in a state of mourning, requiring persuasion to emerge from seclusion to make films. To the end of his days, he would sign letters “Peter and Helen”.

Big Victor.

There’s more to this, and the first hint came from actor Brian Cox, who starred with Cushing in an episode of Hammer House of Horror. “I think there was a bit of guilt involved in all that, because he had an eye for the ladies.”

The full story, apparently: Helen Cushing was unable to enjoy sex, and told her husband that it would be alright if he wanted to seek satisfaction elsewhere. This understanding was gradually stretched until Cushing was rogering girls in the bedroom upstairs while his wife did the housework downstairs. Then, on her death bed, she told him he’d broken her heart and she could never forgive him.

Ulp.

Leaves From Satan’s Book.

The film begins: clumsy slapstick grave-robbing, grubby hamming from Troughton (he kept two families, you know), dim lighting and cramped sets and framing. Then, hope: prettyboy Shane Briant, who Hammer were grooming for stardom, plays Dr. Simon Helder, an aspiring Frankenstein who’s read all the Great Man’s works, is arrested for sorcery, although as described by the judge it sounds like something even more unspeakable: “You have been found guilty of one of the vilest of crimes. How a man of your breeding and education could fall so low as to contaminate himself with this disgusting performance…”

Actually a pretty GOOD performance!

Thrown into the nuthouse, Briant becomes Bosie to Frankenstein’s Wilde, helping the Baron with his latest bodybuilding project. Screenwriter Elder, having played fast and loose with series continuity in the past, now makes amends by giving the Baron those injured hands last seen in CREATED WOMAN, and having him attribute the injuries to “a fire… in the name of science.” Of course, regular viewers will recognise this as a little white lie, or at least a grotesque distortion. But it allows us to conclusively place MUST BE DESTROYED earlier than CREATED WOMAN, although a case could then be made for CREATED WOMAN coming after this one, but let’s not go there.

Why doesn’t the Baron have Bryant replace his hands? A mystery.

(I’m reminded why I must NEVER FORGIVE John Elder: that subplot of EVIL OF F about the Baron trying to win back his stolen furniture.)

Since he can’t operate with his scorched mitts, Doc Vic has been assisted by mute Madeline. This is a departure for Smith, since she was basically cast as an ambulatory bosom in most films of the era. Here, both her mammoth bust and tiny voice remain unexploited for most of the film (she gets a few lines at the end). It’s a touchingly inept performance, seemingly modelled on the facial expression you get on a young Springer Spaniel, all big wet eyes, but it’s powerless to mar the film. It’s kind of RIGHT. Smith seems a lovely lady in interviews, although she has a strange tendency to denigrate feminism (I guess a lot of feminists denigrated her and her work), suggesting that the entire women’s movement was the work of flat-chested viragoes jealous of her gigantic attributes (Am I distorting her argument here? Well, a bit).

The Baron is initially quite kindly here, protecting inmates from the cruelty of the warders (Ernst and the inevitable Hans) and the sexual depredations of the Director (fun actor John Stratton, not Terence Fisher). But he’s been using the inmates as a sort of talent pool, harvesting their body parts to create his latest monsterpiece, an eyeless cro-magnon lump of latex in a cage. Body of a genetic throw-back, hands of a master-craftsman, and brain of a musical and mathematical genius, as soon as Cushing can drive the brain’s owner to suicide (hanging by violin string — nasty!).

With Briant now performing the scalpelwork, we get the series’ most graphic and unpleasant operation scene yet, as the chalk-white corpse has his scalp lifted off, a literal skull-cap, and his brain (bigger than we’ve been used to seeing) deposited in the Incredible Bulk. Alone, unshaven and exhausted after the lengthy procedure, Cushing muses to himself, “If I have succeeded this time, then every sacrificewill have been worthwhile.” Add up the body count from the previous films, and those sacrifices could form quite a heap. This is the Baron’s most introspective moment in any of the films, and spoken by the haggard, aged Cushing (always gaunt, but now prematurely shrivelled at 60) it has chilling resonance.

The asylum setting, with its array of novelty inmates (the geezer who thinks he’s God, the cackling lady who spits her medicine out in a scene borrowed, astonishingly, from Kurosawa’s REDBEARD) allows both for echoes of the Val Lewton classic BEDLAM (since we spend all our time inside after the opening sequence, the madhouse becomes the world of the film and vice versa) and the life and work of Sade (and Peter Brook’s film of Peter Weiss’s MARAT/SADE, which featured future patient of Frankenstein Freddie Jones). It seems apt that a critic suggested a new certificate for REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN: “The S Certificate — for Sadists Only”.  Although arguably the willing suffering of a horror movie audience is more akin to masochism.

Pathos alert! The monster weeps, as the kindly-yet-demented violinist trapped within the hulking frame is horrified at his new pecs and hirsute appearance. Soon, a Cartesian dilemma presents itself: the body is overpowering the brain, asserting its dominance. Elder could have perhaps explained this with hormones and such, but prefers to mangle his science, as has been traditional throughout the series. But Cushing is undaunted: a more perfect specimen can be created by cross-breeding the artificial man with mute Maddy: “Her true function as a woman can be fulfilled.” This marks a new low for the Baron, who has just been sympathetically recounting the cause of Smith’s traumatic aphasia: attempted rape at the hands of her father. Now he’s proposing to make her brood mare to his orang-utan-man.

Briant, like previous assistants, rebels against this new abomination, resolving to mercy-kill the monster, now descended to subhuman brutishness. But the beast escapes, low-budget mayhem ensues, a past evil is avenged, and then poor Prowse is dismembered by excited inmates, harking back to Cushing’s fate at the hands of the poor in REVENGE. Cushing is injured but undaunted — the monster was a failure, but lessons have been learned. Credits role as he cheerfully sweeps up the debris, planning his next atrocity, with every suggestion that Shane and Maddy will remain by his side, assisting him.

Playful self-reference: Cushing recreates a famous moment from CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

It’s a little pedestrian in pacing, but after the uncertain beginning, this film is more than worthy of the series. I actually prefer it to REVENGE and CREATED WOMAN. The Monster is preposterous (and not from Hell) but then, Christopher Lee’s makeup was just a lot of silly putty. The Baron’s theory that a beautiful mind would render those features agreeable was never really put to the test, was it?

What emerges most clearly of all in this film is that the Baron’s plans never work because he is incapable, being inhuman himself, of taking into account human behaviour. He never foresees his creations turning upon him, though they generally have sound reasons to do so, and he is likewise blind to his various assistants’ moral qualms. The series charts the decline of a scientific mind into a quagmire of brutishness, due to its inherent blindness to human nature, the very thing it is seeking to master.

Here endeth the Frankenthon.

Frankenstein Must Be a Freud

Headshrinker.

Well, he describes himself as an expert in psychiatry at one point in FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN…

“I always regarded ‘Baron Frankenstein’ as a forerunner to Dr. Christian Barnard, the South African surgeon who was the first man to transplant the human heart, which he did in 1967…” ~ Peter Cushing.

That same year, as I was working up to getting born, Cushing returned to the role of Dr. F in the third canonical Terence Fisher-Peter Cushing-Hammer-Frankenstein, which Fiona and I looked at again as part of our week-long Frankathon. 

Strange film! After the extremely neat dovetailing of the first two films in the series, this delivers a bit of a jolt, continuity-wise. After last seeing Frankenstein ensconsed in a thriving Harley Street practice and a new, but identical body, it’s kind of a shock to see him experimenting with soul-catching force fields in Europe, his hands mysteriously mutilated… it would seem the fabled Frankenstein sequence is not as coherent as advertised — unless you do what we’re doing, and swap this film with MUST BE DESTROYED. That explains the Baron’s burned hands, at least.

But to briefly consider this film in the light of the year it was made:

Almost a decade had passed since director Terence Fisher’s last visit to the lab, and in the interim screenwriter John Elder had given us EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN for director Freddie Francis. Francis was a very competent director who was sometimes actually inspired (he was a seriously brilliant cameraman, whose work on THE INNOCENTS and THE ELEPHANT MAN should be enough to earn him immortality, without the need for Frankenstein’s soul-catcher) but he couldn’t do much with Elder’s wandering, unstructured script. Jimmy Sangster might cheerfully own up to being not the world’s best screenwriter, but he’s a veritable Joe Mankiewicz compared to Hinds.

Alas, Hinds does duty as writer on this one as well, and having, in EVIL, sabotaged the careful continuity of Sangster’s work, here he procedes to ride roughshod over his OWN continuity. One of the weird things about EVIL is the way it’s a sequel that contains its own original. This also happens in EVIL DEAD II, which begins by reprising the first film. Elder fits his remake of CURSE into an insanely prolonged flashback, reminding us of all the stuff that should be pretty obvious from the framing story — like, how Frankenstein is this guy who’s made a monster… In this alternative universe, the Baron’s first monster WASN’T destroyed in an acid bath, but frozen, to be revived later on, in this movie…

I’m going to stop writing about EVIL OF now because it makes my head hurt (oh, for a sharp bone saw and some forceps). On to FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN, which has the benefit of a groovy title (although I’d prefer it to go all out and begin with “…AND”) and a slightly less shaky narrative. Elder’s biggest mistakes this time are, in order of egregiousness:

1) Ignoring both Sangster’s and his own continuity. Not only has Frankenstein aquired a new lab and assistant (an uncharacteristically muted Thorley Walters as a drunken old village doctor) but a new speciality, physics. He spends the film’s first half wasting our time with his force field, which may be novel but rather lacks the gory frissons of his early surgical experiments. 

2) Beginning far too early, a recurring Hammer problem (I always cite CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT as the daftest, since it begins, for no reason, with the protagonists’ birth). This one starts off in a supporting characters’ childhood, in what seems to be a borrowing from Frank Borzage’s sublime MOONRISE: our loveable stooge Hans (there’s ALWAYS a character called Hans, and usually a Karl and a Kleve, for some reason), having witnessed his father’s execution on the guillotine, feels predestined for the same fate.

3) Metaphysical crimes. Suddenly Cushing’s Baron is obsessed with THE SOUL, which never interested him before. The whole plot could have been made to work with brain transplants, which would have taken less time to set up and would have been consistent with the Baron’s M.O. as established in three previous films. The film’s soul transplant never makes much sense, but it IS intriguing.

A progressive touch: a disabled, unmarried character with a sex life.

4) Crude characterisation. Three Vicious Local Toffs are set up early on, and their characters fail to develop beyond being V.L.T.s for the whole running time. During the first forty mins they endlessly repeat their basic cycle of nasty behaviours, taking forever to actually set the plot in motion. Once they do, Hans is executed for a murder they committed, his disabled girlfriend drowns herself (oh, what hours of misery Lars Von Trier could make of this!) and “Baron Frankenthing” as a local yokel calls him, can finally do something, implanting the captured soul of Hans in the repaired body of his beloved, Krista.

5) For some reason, this causes her to go blond.

Frankenstein’s personality is a little different here, but I’m not going to call that a fault, just a difference. As in EVIL, there’s more of a sense of Dr. F as a Great Man Surrounded By Fools, persecuted for his genius by an uncaring world. There are certainly hints of the old callous bastard Sangster created and Cushing brought to unapologetic life, but mostly this is a reformed Frankenstein who generally means well. He’s a little warmer, more concerned with justice, and altogether less rapey than the Baron seen in MUST BE DESTROYED. Maybe his experience almost being roasted alive by Freddie Jones has reformed him somewhat.

When Dr. F testifies as a character witness for his unjustly accused assistant (Cushing idles in the witness box, flicking through the bible he’s sworn on — “Looking for loopholes,” Fiona suggests) he makes a poor job of it, but one feels he meant well. If Sangster were writing this, he’d have Cushing deliberately condemn Hans, just so he could get his body (and soul) to experiment on. Which would have given Cushing a lot more to bite into, actually.

Elder redeems himself with Cushing’s zestful seizing of the opportunity to abduct the executed man’s soul. He’s his old cold-blooded self again, arguing against asking his subject’s permission: “He might refuse.”

Capturing the human soul with a satellite dish and a carrot.

The mystery and majesty of the human soul — stripped bare! And if that doesn’t suit you, we have Susan Denberg.

Then we get a very odd remake of MY FAIR LADY/PYGMALION, with Cushing and Walters making a lady out of, well, in this case, a cadaver, and granting it a male soul. Soon they have her making breakfast for them. Krista is played in both disfigured and reanimated versions by starlet Susan Denberg, a slightly controversial figure. Here’s what the IMDb has to say:

Mini Biography

After becoming immersed in the 60s high life of drugs and sex, Denberg left show business and returned to Austria. News interviews at the time show a depressed Denberg in the company of her mother, at home in Klagenfurt. These news items, repeated in fan periodicals for years, gave the impression Denberg was suicidal or had already died. Actually, she is still alive.

Spouse: Tony Scotti

(? - 1968) (her death)

So, according to this, she died in 1968 but is still alive. Shades of her character in this film.

(Tony Scotti, incidentally, had his moment of fame in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, playing a character with a truly beyond-fabulous name: Tony Polar. I propose a new sequel, TONY POLAR MEETS FRANKENSTEIN. The Baron, rendered immortal by injections of spinal fluid, has set up shop as a plastic surgeon in Vegas, where a reclusive Howard Hughes type is sponsoring him to create the Perfect Woman from murdered showgirls. Only Tony Polar can stop him!)

PYGMALION soon collides with THE BRIDE WORE BLACK as Denberg, urged on by her lover’s transplanted soul (?), begins wiping out the V.L.T.’s who caused his death. Confusingly, the soul’s urgings seems to emanate from his severed head, even though it’s supposed to be inside HER, according to the Baron. Logic was never Elder’s strong suit. What follows should be immensely satisfying, as the horrible V.L.T.s (who include Derek Fowlds of TV sitcom Yes, Minister) are bloodily murdered, but it’s somehow all a little underdone. Frankenstein becomes the Man Who Knew And Tried To Warn Them, kept under house arrest by the authorities until it’s too late. Leaving Thorley Walters to ineffectually drop out of the narrative, Cushing arrives at the scene of Denberg’s last murder too late to do anything but witness her suicide.

In a welcome nod to NIGHT MUST FALL, she’s been trotting around with Hans’ head in a hatbox. Now she drowns herself, AGAIN. As usual, she transforms into a burly, gallumphing stuntman.

The film has more ideas than REVENGE, to be fair to it, but many of them are not the kind of ideas that can be usefully exploited for horror purposes. The business with trapping the soul is echoed in a howlingly wonderful ’70s weirdfest  called THE ASPHYX, with the Roberts Stephens and Newton Powell attempting to trap the “death force” in a similar fashion, and similarly, that film fails to actually behave like a horror film (but it does contain my favourite ever mind-boggling line, yelled by Stephens in a crescendo of passion: “Was the smudge trying to warn Clive of danger?”).

So, once again, Baron Frankenstein lives to operate again (although throughout this film he requires the buffoonish Walters’ assistance, since his hands are maimed — when did this happen?). I think it might have been nicer if Hammer had gone to the trouble of killing him off each time, as they did in CURSE, and then beginning the next film by explaining how he escaped death. REVENGE breaks with this pattern by showing Cushing die AND be resurrected at the end, which is OK too. But having the Baron just sort of wander off, as he does here, is a little less than awesome.

Frankenstein Must Be Annoyed

Well, he’s forever losing his patients (sorry).

This one DOES have a nice singalong theme tune by James Bernard.

So, some clever people on the IMDb have worked out that maybe the best way to make sense of the Hammer FRANKENSTEINs, leaving aside HORROR OF, which substitutes Ralph Bates for Cushing (how do we feel about this? I’d say it’s an interesting alternative in theory, in keeping with the Baron’s history of sexual ambivalence, beginning with Colin Clive. I’m renting HORROR, because I quite enjoyed FEAR IN THE NIGHT, which HORROR helmer Jimmy Sangster also directed). According  to Elsa4077  you need to swap 1967’s FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN with 1969’s FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, and regard EVIL OF as a dream. This allows the firey climax of DESTROYED to serve as the missing explanation for the Baron’s burned hands in CREATED WOMAN. It’s a pretty good theory, especially since Cushing’s hands are fine throughout DESTROYED, but damaged again in FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, the last in the series. which makes no sense if the stories run in the order they were shot in.

It doesn’t explain what became of “Dr. Franck’s” Harley Street practice or his partnership with Francis Matthews, though. I propose an exercise in fan fiction, dealing with the London-centric mad science that brings about Dr. Hans Kleve’s death, amid welters of Kensington gore, and leads to the Baron fleeing back to the continent. Let’s call it FRANKENSTEIN HAS RISEN FROM BELGRAVIA, and have the London experiments result in the mysterious figure known as Spring-Heeled Jack. Douglas Noble, AKA Stripforme, suggests that the Baron could end up as Jack the Ripper, but he CAN’T, silly! We all know that Jack the Ripper was really Martine Beswick in DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE.

We first meet the Baron this time in a natty spats and latex monster mask combo (his cheek bones still show through, says Fiona), decapitating a doctor in order to supply his latest creation with a suitably educated brain. An intruding burglar leads to the destruction of this monster-to-be, and the discovery of the Baron’s secret lair. Plus an impressively nasty moment when, fighting with the baron, the burglar is knocked over and finds himself touching the severed head. Jeepers!

In his memoir, Rungs on a Ladder, production manager Christopher Neame (son of Ronald) reports that the actor playing the burglar was so distressed by the rushes, he was found pacing a corridor clutching his head to ensure it was still attached.

This opening, and the rest of the film, is considerably more energetic than the previous entries in the series, with series regular cameraman Arthur Grant using wider lenses, getting in closer, and moving the camera sharply in nearly every shot. Terence Fisher’s increased liveliness behind the lens is all the more remarkable considering he was walking with the aid of a stick after recently been seriously injured after drunkenly wandering into traffic.

Next we meet incompetent Inspector Thorley Walters, playing a quite different kind of idiot from his kindly assistant in CREATED WOMAN — officious, and in a perpetual state of umbrage. He’s a bit like Raymond Walburn’s apoplectic authority figures in Preston Sturges’ films. Assisted by long-suffering police doctor Geoffrey Bayldon (another veteran of these things) Walters is lots of fun, although the investigative part of the film fails to really catch up with the rest of the narrative. But the comic dialogue is surprisingly sharp (screenwriter Bert Batt was an A.D. who had never written a film before) and the acting by everybody is just DELIGHTFUL: Robert Gillespie as the dry-witted mortuary man — “I last saw him on the day I slid him into the drawer,” — Allan Surtees as the sergeant, reporting as if it were a mere formality, “His head’s been cut off.” Priceless.

The Geoffrey and Thorley Comedy Show.

Needing a new place to set up shop, Baron F moves into Veronica Carlson’s lodging house. I suggested last time that having used up the pseudonyms “Stein” and “Franck”, he would have to start calling himself “Dr. En”, and he almost does — he’s “Dr. Fenner” now. Mad genius that he is, he’s soon blackmailing Veronica and her doctor boyfriend, Simon Ward, who’s been dealing coke on the side to support Carlson’s ailing mother (another plot thread that goes nowhere, but let it pass). This strand of the story shows Frankenstein at his most unsympathetic (and he’s not exactly the most warm-hearted fellow in the other films), forcing Carlson to make him endless cups of coffee, then raping her. Then getting her to make more coffee, which I thought was going a bit far.

The controversial rape was added in at the behest of the distributor, supposedly, and everybody was compelled to go through with it even though subsequent scenes had already been shot. It’s a pretty appalling insight into British cinema circa 1969 that a gratuitous rape scene was considered a way to bolster the entertainment value and commercial appeal of an already pretty gory horror film. Terence Fisher shot the scene under protest, and both Cushing and Carlson found the experience mortifying. Cushing, ever the pro, throws himself into it with gusto, and interestingly the sequence is the most dynamic in the film, with a powerful subjective camera track in on Cushing ominously offering the door-key to Carlson, and then a flurry of violent handheld camera as he wrestles her on the bed. Now, Fisher HATED handheld photography: “The camera never stops moving, and the audience quite rightly wonders why,” and he uses it just once elsewhere in this film, so there’s a suggestion that it’s use here was a gesture of contempt for the offensive material. But it works, making the scene properly ugly, rather than the titillation the distributor had wanted.

There’s a serious question about whether this scene (damnit, these are SERIOUS FILMS!), tacked on late in the day, damages the Baron as a character. We know from his liaison with the French maid in CURSE that he’s not solely dedicated to his work. He’s a lusty kind of fellow (as was Cushing). But he’d always behaved like a gentleman, of sorts. If we take the films to chart a descent into depravity, this scene shows the Baron having become even more heartless than ever, and it’s in keeping with his committing a gratuitous murder later on, just because his plans have been thwarted. For all his Man Of Science act, the Baron is a rather headstrong, emotion-driven guy. And also evil as fuck.

The plan this time is to abduct Frankenstein’s crazy partner, Dr. Brandt (the skin care specialist?) from the asylum where Simon Ward works, and cure his madness with a groundbreaking trepanning procedure. But the mad scientist suffers a heart attack, and Cushing is forced to transplant his brain into the body of Freddie Jones, as you do. This film is very big on brain transplants, with everyone acting as if they’d never been done before (REVENGE is all about brain transplanting, with even Cushing joining in himself), but remembering the recent work of Christian Bernard transplanting the first human heart in 1967, it’s easy to see why this stuff was of special interest at the time.

Gurgle.

Freddie spends much of the movie in a comatose state, having his head drilled and milksyphoned into him, which is no way to win an Oscar, but then he wakes up and gives what Fiona suggests is THE BEST GUEST-STAR PERFORMANCE EVER IN A HAMMER FILM. Desperate to be reunited with his wife — the great Maxine Audley from PEEPING TOM – who believes him dead (she’s seen his old body) he escapes from the Baron’s HQ andclimbs in her window. What follows is a wooing-by-proxy scene, with Jones speaking from behind a screen, that practically echoes CYRANO DE BERGERAC, and is the certainly most emotional material in any of the Frankenstein films.

It turns out the Baron only brought Brandt back to life and sanity in order to get from him an important MacGuffin formula which is raised rather late in the proceedings and never explained, but at least it’s clear that Frankenstein is acting in the interests of science, not charity, which is consistent with his M.O. Cushing arrives at chez Brandt to get the formula, but the brain-transplanted Brandt is waiting for him…

Things then erupt in what I can only call a fiery denouement, expertly staged and cut (Fisher was a former editor who had a real mastery of building scenes from simple but effective blocking). It looks like it’s possibly be done with multiple cameras, a necessity considering the special effects involved, but it doesn’t rupture the carefully designed shooting style of the film. There’s a rhythmic quality to the slamming and opening of doors and hurling of lanterns, and Cushing’s work here, particularly stylish in longshot, reminds me of the reason Scorsese gave for his gang’s enthusiasm for this actor: “We admired the precision of his movements within the frame.” They must have had some great 42nd St cinephile discussions, those boys.

Freddie can sling a lantern with the best of them.

Well, a real, honest-to-God fiery denouement is exactly what one wants in a Frankenstein film, and they pull out all the stops here, throw them on the floor and burn them. The credits pop up as Freddie’s house goes up, just like at the end of APOCALYPSE NOW. The horror! It’s never explained exactly how the Baron escapes cremation to ride again, but at least this acts as a belated explanation for his singed mitts.

All in all, this seemed like both the most dynamic film in the series to date, as well as the best-written, with comedy relief brought in early enough so that it doesn’t jar, unlike in the Sangster scripts, and a reasonably solid structure and controlled pace, unlike those written by John Elder. If it doesn’t have the cerebral and metaphysical qualities of CREATED WOMAN, it benefits from keeping it’s brain on the subject at hand — demented surgical mayhem — and not being distracted with stuff about souls and force fields. A shame Bert Batt didn’t write more.

Frankenstein Must be Enjoyed

We have been watching…

Well, the second Terence Fisher / Jimmy Sangster / Hammer Frankenstein film, REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (there’s no revenge) was one I was curious to see again, mainly because I had terrible memories of it. It’s without any real monster, which put me off as a kid. I guess the point is, Cushing IS the monster.

One of the nice things about the Hammer Franks is their continuity, and this one certainly plays fair, beginning exactly at the end of CURSE OF, with Peter Cushing’s Baron being led to his appointment with Madame Guillotine. But with the aid of a hunchbacked assistant (where did he come from? well, the continuity isn’t perfect) Cushing escapes, decapitating the priest instead. Good! He was an officious jerk in the first film, that priest.

Then Sangster’s script provides one of its better moments of humour, as two grave robbers (Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper, and Britain’s greatest expressionist, Lionel Jeffries) dig up the Baron’s coffin and find a headless priest. As Cushing steps from the shadows, Ripper flees and Jeffries suffers a heart attack. Cushing’s contemptuous shrug in response to the stranger collapsed in his grave is pure comedy gold.

Banned in Sweden!

We next encounter Cushing operating (wantonly) under the pseudonym of Dr. Stein. He’s got a thriving medical practice, and also runs the poor hospital, where he’s merrily harvesting healthy limbs from the poor of the parish in order to create a substantially improved monster (Michael Gwynn). This one, a departure from Christopher Lee’s “road accident” look, just has a few facial scars. The new body is to be repository for the hunchback’s brain — the Baron has found a happy volunteer, for once.

Sangster smartly plants the hunchback’s infatuation with socialite Eunice Gayson (who would go on to appear in the first two Bond films as Sylvia Trench: the Bond girl with the least sexy name) before the brain transplant, and develops it further post-op.

Hammer solemnly swore to the British censor that they would cut this shot — and then didn’t!

Cushing has enlisted a new assistant, Francis Matthews, who proves less scrupulous than his first, effectively blackmailing the baron into teaching him his advanced scientific knowledge — which, as always with Jimmy Sangster, consists of complete nonsense. In the first film we’re told that a brilliant mind will transform the scarred-up visage of Christopher Lee into a handsome and noble countenance. In this one we learn that a chimpanzee transplanted with the brain of an orang-utan suffered a “burst brain cell” and became a cannibal. This is to have dire consequences for our poor hunchback.

But not too dire: probably for censorship reasons, when Gwynn goes berserk after being punched about by a sadistic janitor (inefficiently, Sangster gives much screen time to one janitor, then gives the plot point to someone we’ve barely seen) he’s allowed to look at the beefy corpse and salivate, but then he gets himself under control and runs off, his hunched back reasserting itself in some completely spurious way, defying even the tenuous “logic” of Sangster’s script.

“It’s a shame, because he’s quite good, and he’s doing the best he can…with what they’ve given him,” said Fiona of Gwynn’s performance. He does that John Barrymore thing of trying to suggest a monstrous transformation just by pulling faces — always dicey. I liked him as a character, and he’s a good contrast with Christopher Lee’s mute lunk, but he needed more of a decline into savagery.

As always with Sangster, there’s a bit of wholly inappropriate comedy relief right towards the end. Here it’s a courting couple — he’s more interested in ants than making out, so she storms off and gets mauled and possibly slightly eaten by Gwynn, who then dies of natural causes — but not before accidentally exposing Dr. F.’s true identity. A nice scene, with the shabby monster invading a swank concert party. Death as social embarrassment and vice versa.

All the brains are REALLY SMALL — even Frankenstein’s.

Then Frankenstein is “ripped to pieces” by his impoverished victims (they ARE victims, but Sangster portrays them consistently as vile, verminous and criminal — they could have hobbled out of VIRIDIANA). This would feel more like a climax if it had followed directly on from the “monster’s” death, without a bunch of boring piffle with the medical council in between. 

Fortunately for the franchise (hereafter to be referred to as the ”Frankenchise”) he’s prepared a duplicate body. HOW??? I refuse to believe you can make a Peter Cushing from bits of corpses: you wouldn’t find cheekbones like that if you searched for years. Nevertheless, this allows Cushing to fake his own death more convincingly than the last time, and we end with him set up in practice in London, name changed from “Dr. Stein” to “Dr. Franck”. At this rate he’s going to wind up calling himself “Dr. En.”

“He burned his own body.” ~ Not a line every actor gets to say.

Freeze frame and roll credits, with a fairly obvious invitation to another sequel. Hammer being the kind of clunky outfit it was, they didn’t manage one for six years, and then it was the non-canonical EVIL OF. So our next visit to Frankenstein’s surgery will be for FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN, in the year of my birth, 1967.

Frankenstein Must Be Deployed

…THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

Yes! This week we watch all the Terence Fisher Hammer Productions about Baron Frankenstein and his varied creations.

This means omitting EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN, which isn’t a Fisher and doesn’t fit the continuity of the other films (indeed, it seems to go all-out to destroy all coherence) and HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN which stars Ralph Bates instead of Cushing and likewise isn’t a Fisher.

Most of the Fishers are written by Jimmy Sangster, Hammer’s prime creator of thick-eared dialogue and inventive plotting, a very important figure in the development of the Hammer style. While the cast may have despaired of Sangster’s speeches (Christopher Lee grumbled about having no lines and Cushing told him to be grateful), he was instrumental in stripping away the niceties of Universal’s gothic tales, substituting brutality, villainy and nihilism.

Of course, part of the Hammer approach is catchpenny hucksterism, beginning with the title of this one — there’s no curse mentioned in the movie. (Similarly, the later VIKING QUEEN has no Vikings, but a line of dialogue has been helpfully added to appease pedantic Scots like me: “She is our Viking Queen!”) Hammer obviously wanted a title distinctly different from Universal’s, because they were nervous of lawsuits. I don’t see any evidence that Sangster ever read Mary Shelley’s original novel (try it, it’s perfectly readable and entertaining), but he probably glanced at it, borrowing the notion of referring to Lee’s mangled creation as “the creature” rather than “the monster”, which again was useful in differentiating the new film from its predecessor.

Despite the fear of being seen as an unlicensed remake, Sangster cooked up a few references to the first two James Whale movies — at one point, a small boy and a blind man are introduced. The boy immediately heads to the shore of a lake, where he sits and picks something off the ground, immediately recalling Boris Karloff’s encounter with the flower-picking little girl. Meanwhile, the blind man, a direct swipe from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, meets and is immediately attacked by the creature. Hammer films are setting out their store: there is to be no pathos and no sentimentality here, just nasty surprises all the way.

The other classic horror film that seems to inform this movie is Murnau’s NOSFERATU, both in the cut of Lee’s coat, and in his pose when spying on Hazel Court through a skylight. Images like this show Fisher’s flair for this kind of storytelling. Robbed of the dreamlike somnambulism of Murnau, CURSE picks up the pace and delivers muscular thrills and punchy delivery. Fisher is helped enormously in this by his cast.

First, Cushing. Influenced by his admiration for Laurence Olivier, Cushing delivers an energetic and highly physical performance, throwing himself into the action sequences with abandon (see how he mimes getting a stitch in his side after running upstairs to fight the monster– sorry, “creature”). Baron Frankenstein may be a man of science, but he’s also a MAN. Sangster has also added an illicit affair with the French maid, so that from the very first film, Cushing’s Baron is morally tainted by more than his zeal for medicine. MOST of his crimes are motivated by a desire to achieve greatness in science, but he’s also perfectly capable of beastly behaviour for purely selfish ends.

Cushing is so perfect for this film, and this genre, and somebody was smart enough to realise it. He goes with the generally vigorous style of the movie (vigorous in a slightly stiff way, like Lee’s energetic yet ungainly creature) but adds cultivation and a believable intelligence. He’s also adroit at getting away with Sangster’s more boggling lines of dialogue, such as “We hold in the palms of our hands such secrets that have never been dreamed of.” And when handed a nice gag, like “Let him rest in peace — while he can,” he underplays magnificently.

Playing the juvenile version of Cushing is Melvyn Hayes, whose presence can be distracting to some: he’s famous in Britain for playing a transvestite bombardier in a campy sitcom about a military “concert party” (troupe of entertainers) in WWII Burma, called It Ain’t Half Hot Mum. Imagine OBJECTIVE, BURMA! only with more songs and dragging up. But Hayes is a very good actor and, unlikely as it seems, a resonably plausible physical embodiment of a juvenile Cushing. (Irrelevant sidenote: Cushing was dressed as a girl by his mother, a reaction perhaps to so many boys being lost in WWI.)

Second lead: Robert Urquhart, as the Sensible Friend. “I bet nobody talks about him because they’re all too busy looking at Cushing,” says Fiona. “But he’s GOOD.” It’s true. Playing straight man to Frankenstein can be a thankless role, but Urquhart (good, unpronounceable Scottish name) espouses the morality without becoming priggish or boring. Whenever he’s given the chance to loosen up a little, he takes it, breathing life into the character as surely as he restores respiration to a dead puppy. Plus he gets that great end scene, betraying his old friend in the hour of his greatest need – Hammer’s moral characters often tend to be even nastier than the villains, and Urquhart’s cold-bloodedness here prepares the way for horrible heroes like Van Helsing (what an appalling man!).

(Side-note — the best perf in Kenneth Branagh’s Francis Ford Coppola’s MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN is Tom Hulce, in the tedious role of Sensible Friend. He should be a bore, but he winds up the only character you’d care to have a pint with. Hulce, the miracle-worker.)

Talk about thankless parts: Hazel Court has little to do save remain in ignorance throughout. Seeing her in something like MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH or THE RAVEN shows what a capable, sexy and witty performer she could be: Roger Corman always gave her enjoyable parts. She’s in lots of Hammer films but rarely got any interesting business: she doesn’t even get vampirized. Not once.

Then there’s Christopher Lee, of course. I think it’s fair to say, with no unkindness intended, that the man was cast for his height, here. The part nearly went to Bernard Bresslaw, another tall man, who had to content himself with fleshing out the role of Rubba-Teetee the mummy in CARRY ON SCREAMING instead. Lee’s one-off perf as the creature — he couldn’t return in sequels because Sangster had, perhaps shortsightedly had him dumped in an acid bath at the end of this film (having already been shot and set alight) — did, however, lead him to the role of Dracula, which he made his own and got a whole series out of. Indeed, a whole career (262 screen roles listed on the IMDb, and still going strong).

Lee’s creature is devoid of any of the nobler qualities of the Karloff monster, but the performance is not without detail. “Looking like a road accident” in Phil Leakey’s gruesome slap (crude but effective would be a polite way to describe it), Lee plays the character as brain-damaged and confused. The encounter with the blind man is particularly interesting for Lee’s odd movements and posing. This creature isn’t evil, as such, just bewildered, and he lashes out in violence at everything he doesn’t understand — which is EVERYTHING. It took some effort, but I was able to find him sympathetic at some level, although the character/behaviour is a bit too close to that of some school bullies I recall. At least the Lee-creature has an excuse: the jar with his brain in was smashed against a wall. His brain’s probably full of broken beaker (his revival is prefigured by a sound of smashing glassware: Fiona wonders if this is the sound the creature makes when he thinks). “Why didn’t Frankenstein just get a new brain?” asks Fiona, agitated. “Even a bog-standard brain would be better than a genius brain that’s full of broken glass!”

Lee gets the film’s coolest shot (quoted by Kubrick in LOLITA! I should write a whole piece about Kubrick and Hammer films’ odd synergistic relationship) is Lee’s unmasking. Lurching about in muslin wrapping, he’s discovered by Cushing just as he raises his hand to the bandages swathing his lumpy kisser. The hand clutches the cloth, and just as it pulls away the covering, Fisher’s camera switches from 24fps to something more like 6, and we track in impossibly fast, Lee swooping forward at us in all his milky-eyed awfulness, his small movements suddenly insectoid in their inhuman speed.

“Hold your horses, I’m thinking with GLASS, here!”

It’s fascinating to me how Sangster and Fisher get away with delaying the monster’s appearance until about halfway through, with only a bit of medical grue and gallows-robbing to sustain the tension until the big reveal. Of course there’s something else at work: anticipation. Mary Shelley gets her monster onstage faster, but she was telling the story for the first time. Hammer realised they could rely on the audience already knowing the basic premise: they await the monster with eager dread. The tactic was to deliver a monster more unpleasant than expected.

The whole thing goes like a train, with the monster escaping, running amok, getting shot in the head, brought back to life, killing the French maid (as arranged by the Baron, since she’s outlived her usefulness and grown inconvenient) and finally escaping AGAIN and attacking Hazel Court. Time for the first of Hammer’s patented overkills (never JUST shove a stake through Dracula — try throwing holy water in his face, causing him to fall from a belfry into a pit with a stake in it, then poke him with a shovel just for good measure: DRACULA A.D. 1972), as Cushing shows more of his physical dexterity:

“I’ve created a monst — I mean, creature!”

Not only a great actor, also a great SHOT — right into the lens! The slung lantern sets Lee alight, and he falls into the convenient acid bath. Every home should have one. Except — not so convenient. Now there’s no evidence the monst creature ever existed, so Cushing’s going to be executed for the creature’s crimes. Which is fair enough, really.

A missed opportunity! As Cushing is led off to be executed (it suddenly occurs to us to wonder how he was convicted of the French maid’s murder, since presumably he dissolved her remains), we cut to the guillotine, its blade cranked up to the highest position. The credits roll…

And then — nothing! Fade to black. When it’s obvious to any gorehound that the blade should descend with a sickening SHOONK after the last credit has crawled off the top of the screen. THAT would be showbiz. Perhaps Hammer were already thinking about sequels, already regretting melting their creature like an Alka Seltzer. Using Cushing’s Baron as the constant feature of the films that followed, rather than his first creation, makes the Hammer FRANKENSTEINS delightfully different from their Universal forebears.

As we shall see.

Tick Tock

TIME WITHOUT PITY continues my exploration of the work of Joseph Losey – pith helmet on, machete in hand.

The plot — Michael Redgrave is an alcoholic novelist newly emerged from a sanatorium to discover his son convicted of murder and due to be executed. Armed only with an unshakable faith in his boy’s innocence, Redgrave attempts to redeem his dissolute life and failed parenthood by finding some “tangible evidence” to save the son from execution.

The script is faintly derived from Emlyn Williams’ play Someone Waiting, but screenwriter Ben Barzman  (a fellow blacklistee of Losey) has completely exploded the plot and reassembled it in a radical new shape: Williams’ play takes place entirely AFTER the son’s execution. Despite completely remodelling the narrative trajectory, Barzman retains most of Williams’ characters, and some of the clues by which the murder is cunningly solved, including a very unusual alibi.

The film boldly begins by revealing the true killer, in a starkly lit murder scene that certainly catches the attention, with Tristram Carey’s clamorous score blasting at us, swaying lights and looming shadows, a sexy victim, and the bulbous form of Leo “Number Two” McKern. Nevertheless, I felt it may have been a mistake to discard any mystery at this early point. It’s true that Leo McKern turning out to be the killer would be unlikely to surprise anyone, but perhaps a solution might have been to recast the part with someone softer and rewrite the character to make him less of a shouty caricature of capitalist vulgarity. Without someone as blazingly guilty as McKern, naturally shifty performers like Paul Daneman and Ann Todd would have moved into prime suspect mode. But then we wouldn’t have McKern, which would be kind of a shame.

As Redgrave begins to investigate, Losey lets rips with some mirror-maze visuals and allows us to see just how pathetic a figure the hero is. This really works. Not only is the man faced with a horrific deadline (like THE BIG NIGHT, this film compresses its narrative into a tight frame), but he’s hopelessly ill-equipped, both physically and psychologically, to tackle the task in hand. All he has going for him is utter desperation.

Redgrave is the perfect man for the job — in his youth, the kind of light comedian Britain abounded in, as demonstrated in Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES, by middle age Redgrave was our finest neurotic, able to make weakness of any kind both sympathetic and compelling. He’s perfectly fitted to this role, and makes one wish the film were about, say, 15% better to bring it up to his superb level. 

Guest stars! Peter Cushing as an expository plot function; Joan Plowright as a showgirl (!); Renee Houston as a drunken Scotswoman surrounded by clocks. Houston, a recent discovery of ours, brings a welcome touch of music hall grotesquerie to any film. Here she’s in full harridan mode, with Bride of Frankenstein hair, but brings enough nuance to her role to justify the excessive symbolism of her cacophonously ticking, ringing and chiming flat. Hefting a clock, she slurs:

“One of the little pleasures in life, Mr. Gage, I can now give myself: just to hear it ring, and know you don’t have to go anywhere.”

Good scenes like the above, and each of Redgrave’s painful visits to his son (each starting with calm and reconciliation, degenerating into despair and recrimination, driving home more fully each time what a failure our hero is), are somewhat let down by bad ones. A visit to the offices of an MP campaigning against the death penalty allows for some dramatically redundant and boring speechifying, delivering points which should be illustrated dramatically by the plot. (But is that a frivolous Dirk Bogarde cameo, or just some cut-price Dirkalike?)

Losey’s artsier moments are enjoyable, but his more restrained ones are excellent too. Tracking from a wide shot into an over-the-shoulder, moving his actors out of frame to have them rediscovered by the camera seconds later, he choreographs the film with economy and elegance, with impactful cutting and subtly emphatic framing. British producers hoping for a bit of Hollywood dynamism from their blacklisted Americans got their money’s worth from Losey.

Not to spoil the end, but of course Redgrave must stake his own life to save his son’s — here there’s evidence of censorship and mucking about, with unlikely carelessness with guns and lip-flap from a major character, who presumably said something politically or morally questionable (the more you look at censorship practice the more it always seems to have a political point to limit thought). But the main thrust of the conclusion is excellent, even if the details are weakened — it confirms Lars Von Trier’s verdict on capital punishment: a very bad thing, but excellent for drama.

(But before you ask — I LOATHE Von Trier’s DANCER IN THE DARK.)

On His Todd

 

So we attended the tale of SWEENEY TODD THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET, Tim Burton version.

On the whole I liked it. The score has a massive amount of sheer OOMPH, the lyrics are spectacular (if you want dance numbers, just watch those words leap to and fro), and I enjoyed the performances, especially Sacha Baron Cohen and Timothy Spall. I was intrigued to see that Johnny Depp’s vocals boast their own producer…a touch of digital pitch-correction going on there, Fiona suggests.

There are a few unfortunate things about the film, and I’m going to dwell on them, I’m afraid. It’s a testament to the strength of the story and score and acting that the film entertains as well as it does, because these problems could really butcher a lesser film.

1) The Look. I think it’s too murky, and this combines with the C.G. backdrops and the theatrically enclosed narrative to make it rather claustrophobic. This might be OK if it’s your kind of thing, but since films with a very C.G. look — like “300″ — tend to feel a little stifling no matter how the filmmakers try to open them out and give them sweep, I’d have awarded points to Burton for breathing some air into this.

(Very dark films sometimes look sharper on DVD than on the big screen — Darius Khondji’s most eye-straining work sometimes has this quality. So Dariusz Wolski’s smeary work here may likewise shine on home vid — the stills look much clearer than the movie did when I saw it. Perversely, Wolski’s lensing of DARK CITY was radiant by comparison.)

2) The Plot. I don’t know the play but I was sure there had been some kind of ineffectual tampering when we got to the aftermath of the climax. I looked it up on Wikipedia and, although I hadn’t guessed the exact nature of the changes, tinkering had indeed taken place and the ending of the original sounded markedly more effective. I can’t go into this without major spoilers, but it’s largely a structural thing. Burton has never had much story sense, tending to favour image over word and missing the Hitchcockian principle of telling stories with pictures. Burton’s images are often stand-alone tableaux or, at most, gags.

(MASSIVE SPOILER:

Todd spares his daughter’s life for no convincing reason, and then she disappears from the narrative altogether. In the play, the authorities arrive at the end, obviously alerted by her, so at least there’s a pay-off to her survival. The film also soft-pedals young Tobias’ madness at the end, so that his killing Sweeney isn’t quite credible.)

3) The Squeamishness. This might be an odd thing to charge an 18-Rated musical with, but it seemed to me that the makers were rather shy of the whole cannibalism thing. You wouldn’t know, from the mise-en-scene, that there was anything unusual about the pies all those extras were munching. I can sort of understand Burton wanting to hold back on the horrors of the kitchen until they are discovered by little Tobias — except that doesn’t sound like the sort of narrative concern that would even occur to Timbo. It feels like he’s been told he can have his head with the throat-slitting, but could he please hold back on the old anthropophagy? And since that’s what the whole film’s about, it strikes me as an unfortunate area to ellide. When somebody doesn’t actually want to tell the story they’re telling, it never bodes well.

4) The Momentum. The thrust of the story is maintained fairly well, and that’s something that musicals often sacrifice in order to celebrate a moment. But this film has too oppressive a milieuto really get away with that, so it needs to drive forward, from a bad situation to a worse: without shark-like constant forward motion, the audience isn’t going to want to hang about waiting for the next sordid crisis. The sequence which damages the momentum most is the song “By the Sea,” which doesn’t advance the story at all, but may be absolutely essential as the only scene to admit bright light, blue sky and fresh air into the film. It helps the sense of space even as it damages the sense of time. My theory is that the song may have been necessary on stage to show how Mrs. Lovett feels about Todd, but due to the huge amounts of emotional information conveyed by Helena Bonham-Carter in close-up, it’s redundant several times over in film terms.

5) Alan Rickman. Although he fills his trews prodigiously, Rickman has an unpleasant singing voice and is too predictable a baddie to offer much here, except when Judge Turpin has a sentimental moment. Rickman wisely makes the most of these: it’s unexpected to see how moved Turpin is by Todd’s lie that his ward has “repented” and wants to see him again.

6) Blocking. David Bordwell has argued very coherently that the art of complex blocking in Hollywood films has almost been lost. Characters either “walk and talk” or “stand and deliver” — no longer do they stalk around each other and move from close-up to long-shot and back within a single take. Burton has a reputation as a visual stylist, but he struggles to bring the songs to dramatic life through dynamic movement: shot as if they were dialogue scenes in a very dark episode of Eastenders, the songs feel somewhat squashed. Since this musical doesn’t use dance at all, a choreographic interplay of camera and actor would have been nice — oddly, this is something Burton has often brought to action sequences in other films. He does a bit of his trademark swooping, but that’s a bit overpowering. The Minnelli touch is lacking.

7) The deplorable absence of Christopher Lee. It was announced early on that Lee would play a part, but he was later dropped (along with the other ghosts). He would have been the best singer in it. Lee has suggested that his part was cut due to time difficulties: Johnny Depp’s daughter became ill during filming and some shooting days were lost. In which case, one can only sympathise, and admire Depp’s performance even more.

Still, despite my admiration for Johnny and Helena’s work here, I can’t avoid a little thought experiment, as to who could have been cast if the film had been rushed into production in 1979, after the play’s premiere…

BLUE SKY CASTING #5:

SWEENEY TODD: the British horror version

Director: Piers Haggard. His experience with the BBC period musical Pennies From Heaven and the Tigon horror BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW makes him a fitting choice. and his lovely and talented daughter Daisy would have been just the right age to play the baby Johanna. (Daisy, who always cries at the end of KING KONG because the big gorilla reminds her of her dad.)

SWEENEY TODD: Christopher Lee.

MRS. NELLIE LOVETT: Barbara Steele.

ANTHONY HOPE: Tim Curry.

JOHANNA: Britt Ekland, dubbed by Annie Ross.

TOBIAS RAGG: Dexter Fletcher.

JUDGE TURPIN: Peter Cushing.

BEADLE BAMFORD: Donald Pleasence.

BEGGAR WOMAN: Sheila Keith.

ADOLFO PIRELLI: Vincent Price.

Hmmm, I can’t quite decide which version I’d rather see. With my usual perversity, I think I’ll plump for the one that doesn’t exist.

Dra-cu-la!

 

James Bernard’s theme music tends to play out the title as if it were a song lyric. So the score for DRACULA goes “Dra-cu-la!” and the score for TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA goes “Taste - the - Blood - of  - Dra-cu-la!” etc. And that’s just fine with me.

Christopher Lee’s entrance as the Count is the best ever. I do like the Lugosi (the first half of that movie is really good, creepy and dreamlike and nonsensically populated with armadillos and a tiny coffin with a bug in it and MAN!) and the Spanish language version filmed at night while they were shooting Bela by day has a great shot that swoops up the stairs to meet the vamp coming down, and Gary Oldman in the Coppola version looks like Glenn Close in DANGEROUS LIAISONS and Barbra Streisand in FUNNY LADY at the same time and of course the Nosferatus are brilliant BUT!!!

Chris Lee’s entrance is tops and here’s why: ‘There’s nothing like the introduction of Dracula in that picture, in which Christopher Lee just walked down the stairs, sort of bounced down, and said “Hello, I’m Dracula.” Having been reared on Bela Lugosi, with whom you knew you were in trouble, Lee just seemed like a very sensible, sophisticated gentleman.’ — Martin Scorsese.

Lee is really scary here as he advances into huge close-up with a fairly wide-angle lens, fairly low: the shot is telling us to run for cover but there’s nothing in the performance to clue in the other guy in the scene, so for once the poignancy works without Harker looking like an idiot.

Scorsese’s other remarks are fun. On CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN: ‘The audience loved it, and there was a graphic quality to it that was… totally uncalled for! And was extremely endearing to us at about the age of fifteen.’

And more on Lee: ‘…he was a very likeable Dracula — we enjoyed his company, we could imagine socializing with him. We also liked Peter Cushing a great deal as Van Helsing, because he had such insight, and he was very precise in his movements within the frame.’

I kind of wonder if Scorsese’s teenage friends all admired the precision of Cushing’s movements… but Cushing certainly moves well, and often. An admirer of Laurence Olivier, he brings a comparable dashing physical gusto to his work, but as Scorsese observes, he’s more camera-wise.

The third horror star in this film is often overlooked: Michael Gough. His work in later horror films has attracted favourable attention, and Tim Burton made good use of him in his BATMEN and SLEEP HOLLOW films, carrying on where Vincent Price left off in EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, but it seems almost to be forgotten that he’s even in DRACULA.

Everyone who ever works with Gough remarks on how extremely clever he is, and so, with all respect to director Terence Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster*, I tend to attribute this next bit of clever business to Gough:

Van Helsing brands Gough’s sweetheart on the brow with a crucifix, and as she screams, Gough clutches his own temples in sudden sympathetic pain.

A moment later, Cushing’s V-H dispatches the vampire gal with a businesslike stake to the heart, and Gough pulls the same stunt a second time, this time clutching his ticker.

Fine fine work from the Goughster.

*Sangster is amusingly modest about his writing abilities, but has written some fine films, a favourite of mine being THE NANNY. But at times he does live up to his reputation for rubbishness: his autobiography actually ends with the line “I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.” On CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Lee was sulking about not having any lines, and Cushing told him “Think yourself lucky, have you READ the script?”

The Great Stone Face

 

My partner’s brother Roddy is a movie buff too. He has learning difficulties, which partly means he’s even more certain about what he likes than most of us, and what he likes is Hammer Horror. As he’s with us for Christmas, we’re going en famille to the digitally restored DRACULA tomorrow, but this afternoon we ran Terence Fisher’s lesser-known THE GORGON, also with Cushing and Lee.

It’s a slow-paced bit of thick-ear, with a Greek gorgon rather oddly transplanted to Germany, and an unusual restraint shown in revealing the monster, perhaps due to the makeup and special effects departments’ inability to muster a convincing headful of serpents for the titular mythological beast-woman. They really needed Ray Harryhausen to pull this one off.

Then there’s a distinctly Scooby Doo shortage of suspects — there is precisely one. Essentially all we have to see us through to the climax is atmosphere (dry ice and lighting, sets, Peter Cushing and what Scorsese calls “the precision of his movements within the frame”, James Bernard’s yowling score) and a few petrifications, though at the end there’s a rather lovely effect as we are startled by the decapitated gorgon Megaera’s transmutation into — the only other woman in the film!

THINGS SAID BY RODDY DURING “THE GORGON”

“Is this black and white?”

“Where’s he going?”

“Who’s this?”

“What’s he doing?”

“Where’s he going?”

“I don’t think it’s her.”

“I can’t see a thing.”

“Where’s Christopher Lee going now?”

“Uh oh.”

“That did the trick.”

Harryhausen can’t help but make monsters more monstrous than they’re supposed to be! His cyclops has goat legs, his troglodyte has a horn on his head, and Medusa is kitted out with scales and a serpent’s body. Generosity, that’s what I call it.