Sunday 29 June 2014

A History of Horror 6: Universal's Frankenstein series (1931-1942)


Frankenstein. Along with Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster is one of the most iconic horror monsters in history. Dr. Frankenstein, as well as Dr. Jekyll, is one of the most iconic mad scientists in history. It is no surprise then that after the success of Dracula, Universal Studios decided to produce an adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus. From this series, we got two of the most critically acclaimed movies ever made, including a rare example of a sequel being considered better than the original.

Poster - Frankenstein 02.jpg


It all started in 1931, the same year as Dracula, with another ambitious project from Universal directed by James Whale. And, like Dracula, the movie follows a stage play rather than the original source material.

Plot: Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) are attempting to create life by reanimating a corpse. His fianceé Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) and friend Victor (John Boles) are concerned that Frankenstein is spending too much time on his research and not on his upcoming wedding. So they ask Dr. Waldman (Abraham Van Sloan), his teacher, to talk some sense into him. Meanwhile, Frankenstein has succeeded in creating a new living creature (Boris Karloff). Unfortunately, due to a cock-up on Fritz's part, the creature is a slow dumb-witted monster. Frankenstein tries to dispose of it but the monster escapes and wreaks havoc.

My thoughts: This movie was a bigger success than Dracula and catapulted Karloff to superstardom. Colin Clive gives a fantastic performance as the mad scientist bent on creating life and then regretting ever engaging in such research.
 The movie is iconic because of it's portrayal of the monster, with the flat, square head, bolts sticking out of the neck, largely mute and animalistic nature, all of which were invented by the movie. It also established the use of electricity to create the creature, a process that is not described much in Shelley's novel. And the character of Fritz, a stupid, often disfigured assistant (often called Igor, but that is an influence from the later Frankenstein films as we will see).
 In addition to being influential, this movie was also controversial, two scenes in particular. The first is the famous "It's alive!" speech given by Clive. The original line was: "It's alive! It's alive! In the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!" In some states, particularly Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York, the last sentence was considered to blasphemous and was edited out, to be replaced with a thunderclap (this can be seen in the trailer). The other scene is the one where the monster encounters a little girl and they play throwing flowers into a lake. The monster then picks up the girl, throwing her in the lake too (in a playful manner) but unfortunately she drowns. In the original theatrical release, the scene was cut so you only see the monster encountering the girl, the rest of the scene is explained later in the film when the girl's body is found. Subsequent releases of the film on video and dvd differ on how much of these two scenes they have, with most modern versions having the scene with the girl in full. Sadly, no good recording of the full speech has survived, so it is often inaudible.
 Another interesting tidbit is in the final scene where we see Dr. Frankenstein on a bed being nursed back to health. The camera is placed far away and there is a reason for that. It's not Colin Clive. Originally, the movie was to supposed to end with the monster and the doctor being killed together, but the producers wanted a happy ending so they forced the studio to film a new ending scene showing Frankenstein had survived. No biggie you might think, except that Clive was not in the country anymore so a stand-in was used instead. The identity of this stand-in is not known for certain but is rumored to have been future western star Robert Livingston.
 This was then followed by what could be Universal's best movie, and one of the few times a sequel is superior to the original: 1935's Bride of Frankenstein.

Movie poster with the head of Frankenstein's monster at the center, looking forward with a somber expression. Elevated above him is a woman looking down towards the center of the image. Near the bottom of the image is the Bride of Frankenstein, looking off to the right of the image as her hair surrounds the head of Frankenstein's monster and the body of the woman. Text at the top of the image states "Warning! The Monster Demands a Mate!" The bottom of the image includes the film's title and credits.



Four years after the success of Frankenstein, Universal returned with a sequel, again directed by James Whale.

Plot: After the aftermath of the first movie, Hans (Reginald Barlow), the father of the girl killed in the previous movie, wants to see the monster's body to be sure it is dead. He finds it in a pit and, lo and behold, the creature's not dead and attacks him. The creature escapes the pit and proceeds to cause havoc in the countryside, as all undead monsters do.
 Meanwhile, Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is found to still be alive and is nursed back to health by his fiancée Elizabeth (now played by Valerie Hobson). Upon his recovery, Frankenstein shows regret for creating the creature, but still believes he can unlock the secrets of life and death. Then, as if my magic, his former mentor Dr. Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) appears, and succeeds in coaxing Henry to create a new monster (Elsa Lanchester) with him.
 Of course, everything goes tits up when the monster shows up.

My thoughts: This is a better movie than its predecessor. Much closer to Shelly's novel than Frankenstein, it features possibly the greatest performance of a mad scientist from Ernest Thesiger, whose eccentricity borders on insanity and creepiness. Clive gives another brilliant performance as the conflicted doctor who on one hands yearns for more knowledge while at the same is scared of the means by which to acquire said knowledge. Karloff returns for more grunting and shuffling but he does speak in this one, as the monster could in Shelly's novel (though he will go back to grunting in subsequent movies). And of course, Elsa Lanchester as the Bride is fabulous, and gives a brilliant, almost robotic performance.

Son of Frankenstein movie poster.jpg

As mentioned before, Universal experienced a slump as moviegoers lost interest in horror. As a result, the studio commissioned Rowland V. Lee to make another Frankenstein movie. And, to further increase sales, it would include the two powerhouses of Universal horror - Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi.

Plot: It has been many years since the events of Bride of Frankenstein and Dr. Frankenstein has passed away (as had Colin Clive in the intervening years). His son Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone) has moved into the town with his wife Elsa (Josephine Hutchinson) and son Peter (Donnie Dunagan) in order to redeem his father's name. This turns out to be a difficult task because the locals want nothing to do with the family and regard them as trouble. The family's only ally is Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill) who was attacked by the monster as a child. While investigating the family castle, Frankenstein meets Ygor (Béla Lugosi) who shows him to the creature (Boris Karloff) who is in a coma. Frankenstein decides to revive the monster and prove that his father was right all along. Of course, this goes terribly wrong because Ygor has other plans for the creature.

My thoughts: Good film. Rathbone gives a tremendous performance, especially since he didn't want to appear in the movie in the first place, he then went on to have more success playing Sherlock Holmes in a series of films in the 1940s. Atwill gives his best performance after only appearing in small parts in previous movies. Sadly, the two "big guys" Karloff and Lugosi, weren't the stellar success Universal hoped. Karloff's creature became a puppet or henchman rather than the sympathetic, misunderstood monster in the two previous films. However, this would be Karloff's last appearance as the monster as he was tired of others mocking his performance. Lugosi's acting was passable but the character is so unlikable, you forget about his performance.
 The movie introduced the idea of the monster being a slave, only being able to obey simple instructions. It also introduced the character of Ygor (often spelled Igor) who is often combined with Fritz from the first movie to form a hunchbacked or disfigured assisstant to a mad scientist.

The Ghost of Frankenstein movie poster.jpg



After Universal received new management, who did not see the potential in horror, it was only a matter of time before Frankenstein would receive a sub-par sequel, directed by Erle C. Kenton.

Plot: Fleeing from an angry mob, Ygor (Béla Lugosi) finds the monster's body (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and decides to visit Ludwig Frankenstein (Cedric Hardwicke), Dr. Frankenstein's other son, to revive the monster. Ludwig and his assistants Dr. Kettering (Barton Yarborough) and Dr. Bohmer (Lionel Atwill) just happen to have invented a way of "fixing" a damaged brain by removing all forms of mental illness. Of course, when Ygor and the monster arrive, they cause chaos and are captured. Ludwig, Dr. Bohmer, Ygor and even Dr. Frankenstein himself (in ghost form - hence the title) all have different plans for the monster. Of course there's a lot of double crossing, experiments, science stuff and growling.

My thoughts: This movie is "meh". This was a time when Lugosi's career was going downhill and it shows. Chaney did his best but he's no Karloff. Personally, I had a hard time following it because Hardwicke and Atwill look similar. This is Universal's final movie to just feature Frankenstein. From here on out, Frankenstein will be featured with other monsters, usually in a henchman role. Shame really.

What's next? HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!

See also:

Saturday 14 June 2014

Were any dinosaurs aquatic?


No dinosaur is known to have been primarily aquatic. However, the idea has been raised a few times before. This post will look at three of the main ones: the sauropods, the hadrosaurs and Compsognathus corallestris.


When Sauropods were first discovered in the early 19th century, palaeontologists were puzzled about the lifestyle of the animals. They assumed that due to their large size, sauropods could not possibly have lived on land and must have lived in water. Indeed, this is even reflected in some of their names such as Cetiosaurus (Whale Lizard) (Owen, 1841). One of the first people to suggest sauropods might have been terrestrial was Elmer Riggs, who noted that sauropods had large hollows in their vertebrae, a feature that no aquatic animal but plenty of terrestrial animals possess (Riggs, 1904). In fact, these hollows had been discovered earlier by Harry Seeley in the sauropod Ornithopsis (Seeley, 1870), although this led him to believe the animal to be a flying pterosaur. In fact, these hollows had been interpreted by Othniel Marsh as weight-reduction features (Marsh, 1877) and by Edward Cope as floats (the dinosaur equivalent of armbands) (Cope, 1878). Furthermore, Riggs found that the limbs and feet of sauropods are ill-suited to an aquatic way of life but were perfect for supporting a large amount of weight. However, Riggs' ideas went unnoticed and the view of sauropods being aquatic prevailed. But in 1951, Kenneth Kermack argued that a submerged sauropod's ribcage would be under immense pressure - pressure it was not designed to handle (Kermack, 1951). And so this became the proof that convinced the scientific community that sauropods were fully terrestrial. End of story, roll the credits, fat ladies singing everywhere. Or so we thought. An interesting wrench was thrown into the works in 2004 when Donald Henderson investigated how well sauropods could float. What he discovered was quite startling - sauropods, even the biggest ones, were less dense than modern alligators. In other words, they could float better than modern aquatic reptiles! (Henderson, 2004) Riggs' evidence that sauropod limbs were better for terrestrial locomotion and not for swimming still stands, however.

Next are the hadrosaurs, better known as the duck-billed dinosaurs. The first to argue for this lifestyle was Joseph Leidy who suggested that Hadrosaurus was fully aquatic - despite also saying that Hadrosaurus walked upright on two legs (Leidy, 1858). Odd, considering all known aquatic animals are quadrupeds. Our good friend Edward Cope also believed the hadrosaurs were aquatic, based on the duck-like bill and the "weak" teeth. Cope supposed that the only food they could possibly eat would be soft water plants (Cope, 1883). However, this argument was refuted by Richard Lull and Nelda Wright who showed that the teeth were not weak but arranged in a dental battery and were continuously replaced. In this way, hadrosaurs had jaws that worked like a grinder, enabling them to break down tough plant material. However, Lull and Wright still believed hadrosaurs were aquatic (Lull and Wright, 1942). The idea of hadrosaurs being aquatic was finally put to rest in 1964 when John Ostrom showed that hadrosaurs were fully terrestrial based on gut contents (some of which had been known since 1922 but Lull and Wright thought were anomalous) and the presence of ossified tendons (tendons containing bone) in their vertebrae. This gave hadrosaurs a stiff but well-supported spine perfect for a large terrestrial reptile but very much a hindrance for an aquatic one (Ostrom, 1964).

(Words cannot describe how inaccurate this image is)

In 1972, a fossil of a small theropod was described from France. Named as Compsognathus corallestris, it made headlines because it was announced as the first fully aquatic dinosaur discovered, based on the imprints of flippers found on the hands (Bidar et al., 1972). But then, things went wrong. Our favourite debunker John Ostrom had a look at the fossil and couldn't work out how Bidar and friends thought it had flippers because there was nothing to suggest there was any webbing of any kind on the forelimbs (Ostrom, 1978). Not only that, but it was later shown to be the same as the only other species in the genus, Compsognathus longipes (Wagner, 1861, Peyer, 2006).

Maybe one day we will find evidence of fully aquatic dinosaurs. But until then, it is just speculation.

See also:
More dinosaurs
More about Richard Owen who named Cetiosaurus
More about Edward Drinker Cope who described the sauropods' floats

References
Bidar, A., Demay, L. and Thomel, G. (1972) 'Compsognathus corallestris, une nouvelle espèce de dinosaurien théropode du Portlandien de Canjuers (Sud-Est de la France)', Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Nice, 1, pp. 9-40

Cope, E. (1878) 'A new species of Amphicoelias', American Naturalist, 12, pp. 563-565

Cope, E. (1883) 'On the characters of the skull in the Hadrosauridae', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of Philadelphia, 35, pp. 97-107

Henderson, D. (2004) 'Tipsy punters: sauropod dinosaur pneumaticity, buoyancy and aquatic habits', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 271, S180-S183

Kermack, K. (1951) 'A note on the habits of sauropods' Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 4, pp. 830-832

Leidy, J. (1858) 'Hadrosaurus foulkii, a new saurian from the Cretaceous of New Jersey', Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1858, pp. 215-218

Lull, R. and Wright, N. (1942) 'Hadrosaurian Dinosaurs of North America', Geological Society of America Special Paper, 40, pp. 1-272

Marsh, O. (1877) 'Notice of new gigantic dinosaur', American Journal of Science, 14, pp. 87-88

Ostrom, J. (1964) 'A reconsideration of the paleoecology of the hadrosaurian dinosaurs', American Journal of Science, 262 (8), pp. 975-997

Ostrom, J. (1978) 'The osteology of Compsognathus longipes', Zitteliana, 4, pp. 73-114

Owen, R. (1841) 'A description of a portion of the skeleton of the Cetiosaurus, a gigantic extinct saurian reptile occurring in the oolitic formations of different portions of England', Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 3, pp. 457-462

Peyer, K. (2006) 'A reconsideration of Compsognathus from the Upper Tithonian of Canjuers, Southeastern France', Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 26 (4), pp. 879-896

Riggs, E. (1904) 'Structure and relationships of opisthocoelian dinosaurs. II'', Publication Field Columbian Museum Geological Series, 2, pp. 229-248

Seeley, H. (1870) 'On Ornithopsis, a gigantic animal of the pterodactyle kind from the Wealden, Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 5, pp. 279-283

Wagner, A. (1861) 'Neue Beiträge zur Kenntnis der urweltlichen Fauna des lithographischen Schiefers; V. Compsognathus longipes Wagner', Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 9, pp. 30-38