Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! (29 page)

Dracula
. Directed by Tod Browning, starring Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Helen Chandler, Dwight Frye, and Edward Van Sloan. Universal, 1931.

It drops off abruptly when the locale shifts from Transylvania to London, but that’s Browning’s fault. He owes his laurels to
Freaks
(1932), but that film depends entirely upon its shock value, still potent eighty years after it was banned in Great Britain. For comparison, check out George Medford’s Spanish-language
Dracula,
photographed on the same sets at night (appropriately) after the English-language version wrapped for the day, and see what a gifted artist could do with identical material, albeit with the less diverting Carlos Villar in the title role. Most of the action is stagebound, kept alive by Van Sloan and Frye—who would team up again a few months later in
Frankenstein
—but the latter’s Renfield is mesmerizing, unlike just about every other Renfield cast in a part that seems tailor-made for a ham. (A kindly nod to Arte Johnson, who lampooned Frye’s lunatic insectivore so effectively opposite George Hamilton’s urbane Count in 1979’s
Love at First Bite,
especially his creepy laugh.) Lugosi, of course, galvanizes every scene he enters. Unfortunately, Stoker’s story calls for the central villain to remain offstage most of the time. There is no other Dracula for many, just as Johnny Weissmuller will always epitomize Tarzan despite the occasional presence of better actors in the loincloth. Bela had the chops. He proved it in
Son of Frankenstein
and
Ghost of Frankenstein
; but he inhabited the cape (and it inhabited him) more than anyone else before or since. Yes, he was buried in it, at his own request. It’s doubtful anyone else will dare claim that privilege.

Frankenstein
. Directed by James Whale, starring Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Edward Van Sloan, John Boles, Dwight Frye, and Boris Karloff. Universal, 1931.

Boles is a stiff, but the poor schnook’s role was made meaningless by a decision in post-production to have Clive’s Henry Frankenstein survive, depriving best-friend Victor (a mistake in Robert Florey’s first draft of the script transposed the Christian names of Mary Shelley’s characters) of the opportunity to step in and sweep Clarke off her feet. Most of the rest of the cast compensates. Clive’s gaunt, frenzied heretic, Van Sloan’s plummy-voiced skeptic, and Frye’s hunchbacked helper, which created an archetype as enduring as Karloff’s monster (no one but a skilled talent would have thought to ad-lib stooping to pull up his raveled sock in mid-scuttle down a Gothic staircase), provide powerful balance to Clarke’s stoic heroine, surely the most patient bride-to-be in history. (She would attain legendary status that same year by taking half a grapefruit in the kisser from James Cagney in
The Public Enemy
.) Karloff’s the jewel in the crown. Generations of audiences have identified with his tragic brute, so beautifully drawn despite the painful hindrances of makeup and costume. No one suffered more physical hardship under Whale’s inexplicably vindictive direction, and his name, when it finally appeared on the end title, came dead last. He wasn’t invited to the premiere.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
. Directed by Roy William Neill, starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Patrick Knowles, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya, Lionel Atwill, Dennis Hoey, and Dwight Frye. Universal, 1943.

It must have galled Lugosi to don the headpiece Jack Pierce created for Karloff a dozen years after he haughtily turned down the part of the Monster in
Frankenstein,
and to accept third billing behind Patrick Knowles, easily the blandest scientist to succumb to the temptation of reanimating the dead. Because Ygor’s brain had been placed in the Monster’s skull at the end of
Ghost of Frankenstein
(see below), rendering him blind because of incompatible blood types, it was only natural that his voice should again be heard coming from the brute, and that he play the role as sightless, groping about with arms extended. But his speaking scenes were cut after a disastrous sneak preview, and because they explained his affliction, audiences were perplexed by his stumbling. Chaney added a tragic nuance to the haunted lycanthrope he created in 1941’s
The Wolf Man,
with Ouspenskaya repeating her performance in
The Wolf Man
as the old gypsy woman, Maleva. Neill, who also directed the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series at Universal, brought along Dennis Hoey to represent Scotland Yard yet again, only this time not as Inspector Lestrade. The atmospheric gypsy-violin score from
Ghost of Frankenstein
was recycled for this first no-holds-barred monster a monster smackdown. It’s a pale carbon of the first three in the series, but there’s nary a dull moment.

Ghost of Frankenstein
. Directed by Erle C. Kenton, starring Cedric Hardwicke, Lon Chaney, Jr., Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi, Evelyn Ankers, Lionel Atwill, and Dwight Frye. Universal, 1942.

Chaney comes off as more drunken circus strongman than walking corpse, which may explain why the villagers don’t seem nearly as frightened as they should to find him in their midst. If Frankenstein’s son (Hardwicke) suffers from his father’s derangement, he must be in his depressive phase; he never bothers even to gum the scenery. It’s left to Lugosi to deliver the goods in his second run at Ygor, and he does. He owns every scene he enters, and even when it’s just his voice coming from Chaney’s mouth he manages to steal everything but the lightning rods.

House of Dracula
. Directed by Erle C. Kenton, starring Onslow Stevens, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Martha O’Driscoll, Jane Adams, Lionel Atwill, and Glenn Strange. Universal, 1945.

House of Frankenstein
. Directed by Erle C. Kenton, starring Boris Karloff, J. Carroll Naish, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Elena Verdugo, Anne Gwynne, Lionel Atwill, Peter Coe, George Zucco, and Glenn Strange. Universal, 1944.

It’s easy to lump these two together because they’re the same film, although it’s refreshing to see Karloff back, even if it’s only as another mad scientist and not the Monster, who fell to Glenn Strange, a former professional wrestler who would go on to glory in TV westerns as Butch Cavendish, the desperado inadvertently responsible for creating the Lone Ranger, and a permanent gig as Sam, the bartender in
Gunsmoke
. Carradine is a wonderfully effective Dracula, who in
H of D
seeks a cure for his vampirism; the screen would not see so regretful a bloodsucker until Francis Ford Coppola’s execrable
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
in 1992. Both films represent a sort of
Grand Hotel
compilation of box-office champions gathered in one place. Strange, who like Karloff played the Monster three times, claimed to have received pointers from the master about how to handle the part on the set of
H of F
, but he seems to have patterned himself after Lugosi’s rickety fiend in
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
instead. But he looks formidable.

Son of Frankenstein
. Directed by Rowland V. Lee, starring Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson, and Donnie Dunagan. Universal, 1939.

Karloff’s last time in the getup—which this time includes a fleece vest, presumably supplied by goatherd Lugosi—found him unconscious on the operating table for most of the picture, which persuaded him to bow out before the Monster became absolutely comatose, as he nearly did in the five productions to follow. Rathbone, as Frankenstein’s firstborn son, is manic enough for both Clive and little brother Hardwicke (neither of whom appear in this one), especially when playing darts and exchanging verbal barbs with police prefect Atwill and his wooden arm. Toddler Dunagan’s adorable, which is his purpose, no doubt gleefully anticipating a fat part in
Grandson of Frankenstein
. Atwill and Rathbone would have run away with the whole thing if Ygor weren’t on hand, in a characterization that might have netted Lugosi an Oscar had the Academy taken horror pictures seriously. (Admittedly, the competition was fierce this year, which included
Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz,
and
Gone with the Wind
.)

2. Tributes

Ed Wood
. Directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, and Bill Murray. Touchstone, 1994.

Runaway entertainment, hilarious and moving by turns, and arguably the best movie about heartless Hollywood after
Sunset Boulevard
(1950). Depp is a giddy force of nature in this biopic as Edward D. Wood, who contrary to popular opinion wasn’t the worst director of all time (I nominate Robert Altman, with
Nashville
his
Plan 9 from Outer Space
), but was certainly the most clueless. Martin Landau plays Bela Lugosi in his pathetic extremity, Depp the desperate Orson Welles wannabe who befriends the faded star and makes him the focus of his celluloid atrocities. Murray was never better, Jones surpasses his Austrian emperor in
Amadeus,
and the re-enactments of Wood’s canon of schlock are sublimely cheesy. Landau earned an Oscar for his unflinching portrayal; another went to makeup artist Rick Baker for matching him so well to the original that authentic close-up footage of Lugosi in
White Zombie
(1932) is shown undoctored. This gem has done more to resurrect a forgotten icon’s reputation than any dozen comebacks.

Gods and Monsters
. Directed by Bill Condon, starring Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich, David Dukes, and Kevin J. O’Connor. Lions Gate, 1998.

Condon won an Oscar for adapting Christopher Bram’s novel
Father of Frankenstein,
but McKellen and Fraser proved up to the challenge as the haunted James Whale and his naïve confidant; the late Dukes is extremely effective in a critically undervalued performance as Whale’s former lover. Elsa Lanchester, Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, and Ernest Thesiger (Clive and Thesiger in flashback) are perfect physical matches in casting, and Redgrave received honors for playing against type as Whale’s put-upon Greek chorus of a housekeeper. The usually reliable Leonard Maltin reviewed the movie as “Exceptional (if entirely fictional),” but evidently he was unfamiliar with James Curtis’ Whale biography, which appeared about the same time as the film.

(Tip: Next time you host a Halloween party, consider screening
Ed Wood
and
Gods and Monsters
back-to-back with E. Elias Merhige’s
Shadow of the Vampire
(2000), a supernatural take on the filming of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 silent
Nosferatu,
with John Malkovich as the brilliant European director and an unrecognizable Willem Dafoe as the sinister Max Schreck.)

Young Frankenstein
. Directed by Mel Brooks, starring Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, and Kenneth Mars. 20th Century Fox, 1974.

Wilder, it’s said, sat nearly on Brooks’s head to curb his reckless genius and preserve the integrity of Wilder’s script. If so, he’s to be commended for this spot-on affectionate satire of the first three
Frankenstein
s (with a dash of
King Kong
during the theater scene; and don’t forget to watch for
Ghost of Frankenstein
’s Ralph Bellamy in the audience). Everyone is wonderful, and it’s with great difficulty that one picks out a particular highlight, but that would have to be Brooks and Wilder’s hysterical take on the scene in the blind hermit’s (Gene Hackman’s) hut from
Bride
. Is it just me, or do I hear phantom chuckling from Karloff, Lugosi, Dwight Frye, and company every time I screen it?

(Tip: This one is best enjoyed after watching
Frankenstein
,
Bride of Frankenstein,
and
Son of Frankenstein
in close succession.)

AUTHOR’S NOTES

1. Fun-Ereal Fact

Two films in this sub-genre drew their titles from lines spoken in the first: both
Young Frankenstein
and
House of Frankenstein
from Baron Frankenstein’s (Frederick Kerr’s) toast in the final scene. Hammer Films’s
Curse of Frankenstein
(1957) was inspired by a villager’s cry in
Ghost of Frankenstein
.

2. Steams Like Old Times

Steampunk is one of the lighter-hearted youth movements of recent years. Part rebellion against Cyber Age technology, part dress-up, it celebrates the visual contrast of massive moving metal parts glistening with oil with the proper dress, genteel manners, and strict mores of Victorian society. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, so there is little to be found upon the subject between covers. Ironically, one must turn to its
bete noir,
the Internet, for further information. (But then, hasn’t mankind managed to create its own Frankenstein’s Monster in the form of the microchip?)

3. Frankenstein Meets Dracula

Bela Lugosi’s test as the Monster in
Frankenstein
is no novelist’s invention. It was shot under Robert Florey’s direction in June 1931, and was by all accounts terrible, drawing derisive laughter from Carl Laemmle, Jr., when Lugosi’s close-up was screened. Although rumored to have been destroyed, it resurfaced (perhaps) thirty years ago in a trade-paper advertisement in Los Angeles, only to vanish once again. In view of the fact that the only poster known to exist promoting Lugosi as the star sold at auction recently for six figures, it’s anyone’s guess what those two reels would bring.

Books by Loren D. Estleman

AMOS WALKER MYSTERIES

Motor City Blue

Angel Eyes

The Midnight Man

The Glass Highway

Sugartown

Every Brilliant Eye

Lady Yesterday