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books, film

Filming Frankenstein

Boris Karloff played the monster with such pathos that he (and Jack Pierce’s makeup) influenced all versions of Frankenstein that followed.

Filming Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus has always proven formidable. The original 1818 edition has 258 pages. These are divided into 23 chapters which were originally published in three volumes. Given its complex themes of hubris, free will, science, nature, loneliness, abandonment — and more — it is no wonder that adaptations to film have, for the most part, fallen short of the expectations of audiences. How do you have a typical ninety-minute to two-hour movie accurately capture all that Shelley packed into her Gothic novel? Much of the disappointment for purists wanting the novel adapted to screen has to do with the accuracy of depicting an intelligent creature philosophizing about its nature. But does that make for compelling drama?

THE PROMISE OF DEL TORO

Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Netflix adaptation of the novel once showed great promise as a faithful adaptation, but now fans aren’t quite so sure.

Due to finish up principal photography this month and set for a 2025 release, del Toro’s film was at first expected to be heavily influenced by Frank Darabont’s original script* for Kenneth Branagh’s MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN (1994). It’s a script Branagh pretty much abandoned as he wildly deviated from the novel in many places, resulting in a severely flawed, but ambitious work. But it was a literate script.

For his adaptation, del Toro told JoBlo.com back in 2007 that he wanted to make a “Miltonian tragedy” — appropriate as Paradise Lost heavily influenced Shelley (she even has the Creature read it as one of the four prized books in his possession). If true, then del Toro would be on the right track to get at the heart of the tragic tale where one man’s drive to become God drives his creation to identify with both the innocence of Adam and Eve, and Satan’s destructive drive to be free. As much as he is a monster, Frankenstein’s creation is an anti-hero (more than mere antagonist), and that’s where most adaptations fail.

But — to many a purist’s concern — there are indications that, in addition to the traditional tale of man creating man, del Toro will introduce the character of Dr. Pretorius (well, re-introduce in a sense, as a version of him was first introduced in Universal’s BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN [1932]) who will be seeking out the creature in order to continue Victor’s experiments. Certainly, this is NOT in the novel, and Pretorius, in his previous incarnation, was something of an oddball and somewhat sinister antagonist.

MINDLESS MONSTERS

Pushing aside Edison Studios’ 14 minute silent film from 1910. (with a hideous freak of a monster without much of a mind) it is Universal Studio’s FRANKENSTEIN (1931) against which most adaptations are measured. Karloff plays the creature with great pathos in the seminal offering from Universal, but here, and in the sequel, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), director James Whale makes his monster (for the most part) mute and a child (or at least childlike), thus depriving it of having a fully fleshed out character. Reduced to a lumbering boogeyman in Universal’s many sequels, there is little character to the character beyond the audience’s sympathies and later, with films like ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948), its laughter.

Christoper Lee’s monster in Hammer’s adaptation was a mindless killer with few moments that elicited any pity. But Peter Cushing’s Frankenstein was worse!

Hammer Studios takes the monstrous monster motif much further in their CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) where Christoper Lee, in grotesque makeup, is, for the most part, a mindless killer. It does, however, have one of the finest Victor Frankensteins in all of cinema, Peter Cushing. But its franchise, too, suffers from eventually reducing the creature to one-note killing machine. What Hammer does extremely well is make clear that their Victor Frankenstein is even more the monster than his creation. But that takes these adaptations even further away from the source material, with the motif of a doppelganger — in a philosophical and psychological entanglement with its creator — at its center.

SERVING MANY MASTERS

By the nineteen seventies — and for decades following — Frankenstein adaptations ran the gamut from the sadly melodramatic (FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY [1973]) to the brilliantly comedic (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN [1974]) to the story behind the story, and everything in between.

1973’s FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY, a teleplay in two parts, may be the first adaptation to make some claim on getting close to the source material. But in much the same way Dracula has been adapted, character names and elements of plot are mixed up; there’s even a bit of The Picture of Dorian Gray with the creature starting life as quite attractive and getting uglier as the story progresses. And while it stands on its own as an interesting story, much as it tries to pass itself off as Shelley’s story, it isn’t. It is, however, many a fan’s favorite, and the closest in spirit to the novel up until that time.

1974’s YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN boldly makes no such claim, as it is an homage to all that was Universal horror, plus a subversion of audience expectation, and just downright hilarious. And while there is a cultural significance to a comedic Frankenstein, it gets us further away from Shelley.

Some filmmakers of the nineteen eighties could be said to have returned to the source. But that didn’t translate into filmic versions of the novel. Those behind GOTHIC (1986), and HAUNTED SUMMER (1988), for example, would eschew the book and instead find turn to tales of Mary, Percy, and Lord Byron (with others in tow) on their trip to Geneva. A game of telling ghost stories sparks the idea for the novel, but little else is of note in those two terrible films. More interesting is 1988’s ROWING WITH THE WIND where the creature actually materializes as a manifestation of May Shelley’s darkest thoughts, but the creature here becomes little more than a conjured demon of the mind.

In 1992, Frankenstein returned to television. Starring Randy Quaid as the monster, it, more than any previous version explored the psychic bond between the doctor and his highly intelligent creation. But there’s a reason it holds just a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It is a snooze fest, and suggesting some sort of telepathic link between creator and creation can only be pushed so far before it becomes silly. The doctor and the monster are father and son, God and his creation, not separated twins.

Robert De Niro’s Creature was horribly disfigured, and was a threatening presence in MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN (1994).

A return to the source material as potential for real drama (and big screen horror, or so it was sold) was evident in the aforementioned MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN (1994).  But rather than stick to that source, director Kenneth Branagh instead approaches caricature with his adaptation. His scenery-chewing portrayal of Victor is a spectacle to behold, and even Robert De Niro as a unique monster that is equal parts an innocent and a force for revenge can’t save the film from becoming an overwrought mess. It’s histrionic filmmaking in the service of its director. And while it is the most ambitious of any Frankenstein adaptation to date, Branagh’s efforts to have his production be the biggest production of the novel ever attempted is all over the place. The pieces ultimately don’t come together very well. But it worth the watch, if only because its reach exceeds its grasp.

Ten years later, 2004’s FRANKENSTEIN, a Hallmark teleplay (of all of things!), faithfully sticks to the plot of the novel and carries real emotional weight. Here, the creature is very much the philosopher, and the producers get extra credit for depicting a monster that is accurately androgynous with long dark hair and yellowish skin. Unfortunately, it is even more boring than the 1992 television production, and comes off as one would expect a Hallmark movie would. Turns out a creature too hung up on the human condition makes for little on-screen action.

A decade later, VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN (2014) with James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe took an entirely different approach, telling the tale from the assistant Igor’s perspective. But since Victor never had an assistant in the novel, we’re even further from the source material. That same year, I, FRANKENSTEIN took the story in the silliest of directions where the monster fights demons.

BOTH MAN AND MONSTER
Showtime’s PENNY DREADFUL has a surprisingly accurate Creature that captures much of the spirit of Mary Shelley’s novel.

Oddly enough, the most faithful adaptation of Frankenstein may not be an attempt to film the novel at all. Showtime network’s PENNY DREADFUL series (2014-2016), starring Eva Green, captures the spirit of Shelley’s work. Victor is arrogant, and viciously cold towards his creation, but he is not a madman hell bent on being God. The creature (not only physically accurate as he is in the novel) can think and reason, feel abandonment and longing, but also be quite ruthless and vengeful,  His determination not to be alone leads the audience to feel not only pathos, but also dread at the lengths to which he will go to have his creator make him a bride. He is both man and monster, as is his creator.

Perhaps the novel then is too unwieldy and cerebral to capture on film. Maybe it is the spirit of the characters that most needs to be depicted, and not in some cut up, abbreviated version of the novel where some but not all characters are intact. An altogether new approach like PENNY DREADFUL may ironically be most faithful to Shelley’s vision as it is not inhibited by it.

Which gives del Toro’s adaptation a chance to prove itself among the best of Frankenstein adaptations. Not just a retelling assembled from pieces of what came before, but a new creation that none will feel the need to abandon soon after its release.

 

*See Movieweb.com’s “Shawshank Redemption Director Describes This as ‘The Best Script I Ever Wrote & the Worst Movie I’ve Ever Seen'” for more about Darabont and the movie that could have been.

film

Universally Monstrous: Filmland’s Famous Fiends and The Humanity of Horror

Although lauded for their archetypal images, gloriously gothic sets and stark cinematography, the Universal monster movies of the 1930s and 40s are often criticized for deviations from — and oversimplifications of — their literary, folkloric and mythological source material.

Where Karloff’s creature could only grunt, Mary Shelley’s man-made man read Milton. Stoker’s wild man of a vampire, a pointy-eared, bushy-browed mustached aristocrat, is a far cry from Lugosi’s thin-lipped, slickly coiffed and quaintly caped count. And what self-respecting werewolf — save Lon Chaney Jr.’s — would run amok in dress pants and a button-down shirt?

Yet, over seventy-five years since the release of Universal’s Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), [the superior] Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941), Universal’s monsters are still the definitive versions of these pop culture icons, and for good reason.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And while it is undeniable that twenty first century audiences have the advantage of 24 hour access to a constant stream of content, cinema goers of the thirties and forties had something  that very few living have today:  a singularity of shared cultural experience.

Born of the shadows of German Expressionism with sights and sounds the silent age couldn’t offer, horror films of the thirties and early forties were one of the few forms of escape for audiences under the tremendous weight of the real horrors of the Great Depression. That shared experience was like an atom bomb dropped on the cultural landscape. Yet unlike the fears of the bomb (and all manner of death from the skies) that defined horror films of the fifties, the monsters of Universal’s heyday had a odd innocence and air of dread that made them all the more… human.

The penultimate, heartbreaking scene from James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein is reason alone why Universal’s monsters leave an indelible mark on most viewers. As Karloff’s creature reaches out for his newly made bride, beckoning with shaking hands, her rejection is palpable. Filled with tension, all at once the scene is comic, hopeful, repulsive and devastating.

Horror works best when it plays on a range of emotions. The sustained beat of much of modern horror with its often relentless assault of gore certainly has its place. But one need only watch something like the recent, brilliant episode of THE WALKING DEAD entitled “The Grove” to see the difference between monsters and the truly monstrous.

Beneath the superficiality of often short-sighted scripting, Universal’s monster movies were effective because of their humanity. Commenting on Jack Pierce’s (and later Hammer Horror’s version of) the Frankenstein monster makeup alone, Stephen King, in Danse Macabre, states that effectiveness simply:

“there is… something so sad, so miserable there that our hearts actually go out to the creature even as they are shrinking away from it in fear and disgust.”

Long after any blood hits the screen, the lasting impressions of the horrible and grotesque in cinema lie in their ability to engage our sense of dread. Whether we cringe or jump, laugh uneasily or sit frozen, pulse pounding, watching horror films provides us with release. It is the release from knowing what lies at the heart of nature. That there is something within the human condition that sublimates yet secretly knows that we all must inevitably confront the horror that comes with simply being. It is a horror that ends in death.

“We belong dead,” says Karloff’s creature at the end of Bride of Frankenstein, devastated emotionally as he literally brings down the house. And while that action may seem quaint and comical to modern, more sophisticated (and possible jaded) audiences, Universal’s monsters share with currently popular, quality shows like THE WALKING DEAD an understanding of the human condition and therefore an undeniably powerful undercurrent of what true horror can be.