Horror posts

A list of the horror posts on this blog, in chronological order:

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920-2005)
Nosferatu (1922-1979)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
Universal's Dracula (1931-1979)
Universal's Frankenstein (1931-1942)
Universal's Wolf Man (1941-2010)
Universal's Monster Mash Movies (1948-2004)

Looking for something different? How about some dinosaurs? Or mysteries?

Dinosaur Pages

This is a list of all the dinosaur-related posts on the blog. Basic, yes, but it serves its purpose

General
What is a dinosaur?
Geochronology
Jurassic Park
Comparative Anatomy
The Code
Life before the dinosaurs
Heads up!
Discovering a dinosaur
Age of the dinosaurs

Taxa
Tyrannosaurus rex

History
OUM J13505
Gideon Mantell
Richard Owen
Edward Drinker Cope

FAQs
Which was the biggest dinosaur?
How long did a dinosaur live and fast did they grow?
Were any dinosaurs aquatic?

Looking for something different? How about horror films? Or mysteries?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

More horror

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

A History of Horror 5: Universal's Dracula series (1931-1979)

Dracula. One of the most iconic horror villains of all time. Originally appearing in the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, there have been many movies, television shows, video games, books and even pinball machines and musicals based on the character. Let's take a look at where it all started with the Dracula movies made by Universal Studios. Note, this will only cover those movies where Dracula is the only villain. The monster mash-ups of the 1940s will be covered separately.

First we have Dracula (1931) directed by Tod Browning. This is the first official Dracula film. After the success of Phantom of the Opera (1925), Universal Studios were hoping to capitalise on another successful horror franchise. They chose the best-selling novel Dracula as a source material (although the film is actually closer to the stage production by Hamilton Deane and John Balderston).

Plot: I presume most of you are familiar with the story of Dracula but for those that aren't here is a brief summary. Renfield (Dwight Frye) is a solicitor who has been tasked with visiting Count Dracula (Béla Lugosi) to arrange for the count to buy Carfax Abbey in London. On his way there, Renfield has some strange encounters. The locals seem terrified of the count and urge Renfield to go home. A strange carriage appears to take him to the castle and is later seen being driven by a bat. At the castle, Renfield is attacked by Dracula and becomes a madman, obsessed with eating insects. Upon their return to England, Renfield is committed to Dr. Seward's (Herbert Bunston) sanitorium. Meanwhile, Dracula becomes friends with Dr. Seward's daughter Mina (Helen Chandler), her fiancé John Harker (David Manners) and friend Lucy (Frances Dade). Lucy becomes fascinated by Dracula, but when she turns up dead the following day, with strange bite marks in her neck, the family call in Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) to get to the bottom of the mystery.

My thoughts: It's a good film. Very 1930s feel to it. Lugosi is wonderful as Dracula, helped by his thick Hungarian accent and his prior experience playing the character in the Deane and Balderston play. Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula set the standard and pretty much everyone has copied him to this day. The best performance, however, is that given by Dwight Frye, who was so good at playing a madman you could be fooled into thinking he wasn't acting. The female characters were typical 1930s female characters and Manners does a competent job as Harker. The only thing I don't like about this film is Van Sloan as Van Helsing. He just comes off as smug and he loves it when he knows something the others don't, even going as far as mocking Dracula himself about it as seen in the trailer. Anyway, we now move onto to a movie which is effectively a remake...

Made at the same time as the previous film this time in Spanish. At the time, French, Spanish, Italian and German versions were made of the big films but unfortunately, most of them are lost. In fact, this one was believed lost until a copy was found in the 1970s.

Plot: This film's plot is exactly the same as the previous film's

My thoughts: The crew were able to watch the English-language version being filmed and they spent their time figuring out how to make theirs better and some believe they succeeded. It certainly is more atmospheric but I still prefer the American one. It might be because Carlos Villarias doesn't look like Dracula, especially when he smiles. He looks goofy to me. Anyway, you should check it out as it is available on DVD with English subtitles.

Dracula was followed by a sequel in 1936 Dracula's Daughter directed by Lambert Hillyer. This would be the only Dracula film from Universal not to feature Dracula himself (although his corpse does make a brief appearance).

Plot: Taking place immediately after the events of Dracula, Van Helsing has been arrested and charged with the murder of Count Dracula. Instead of hiring a lawyer, Van Helsing hires a former student of his, Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger), a psychiatrist. Meanwhile, Count Dracula's daughter, the Countess Maria Zeleska (Gloria Holden) and her manservant Sandor (Irving Pichel), have stolen Dracula's body and plans to burn it in an attempt to free Maria from the curse of vampirism. It doesn't work. But when Maria meets Dr. Garth, she is filled with a renewed hope that the doctor's science can help. Unfortunately, Sandor is in no hurry to see Maria cured.

My thoughts: Good movie. More creative and thought-provoking than Dracula. Probably why it didn't perform very well at the box office. I guess people didn't like the idea of a vampire being portrayed in a sympathetic manner. Also, the implied lesbian overtones are very apparent and who doesn't like lesbian suckers? Worth checking out.

Dracula's Daughter was followed by another sequel in 1943, Son of Dracula (not to be confused with a 1974 film with the same title starring Leslie Nielsen). By this point, Universal were struggling to get audiences interested in their horror films, a lot of patrons believed horror was just a passing fad. As a result, Universal churned out many low quality horror flicks and this one is no exception.

Plot: The film is set on a New Orleans plantation when a mysterious stranger, the Hungarian Count Alucard (read it backwards) (Lon Chaney, jr.) turns up, invited by Katherine Caldwell (Louise Allbritton), daughter of a wealthy plantation owner Colonel Caldwell (George Irving). Shortly after this, the colonel dies of heart failure and leaves his possessions to his two daughters: Claire (Evelyn Ankers) receives his money and Katherine receives the estate. Katherine marries Alucard, something that her boyfriend Frank Stanley (Robert Paige) is none too pleased about. He shoots Alucard in anger, but the bullets (somehow) go through his body and hit Katherine who is standing behind him. Frank is understandably distraught and seeks his friends Dr. Brewster (Frank Craven) and Professor Laszlo (J. Edward Bromberg) for advice. Together they realise that Alucard and Katherine are not what they seem and what follows is a very confusing tale of immortality.

My thoughts: This movie is confusing. Mainly because it can't make up it's mind if Alucard is Dracula or not. Hell, just look at the title. No explanation is given as to how Dracula survived having his corpse burned in Daughter of Dracula, nor why a seemingly Hungarian count has an American accent. Not much to say about this although it is the first movie to feature an on-screen vampire-to-bat transformation scene (previous movies had the transformation occur off-screen) and it is the only movie where Chaney played Dracula (he has also played the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster and the Mummy in various other Universal movies). Check it out if you're curious otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

After the 1940s, Universal branched away from horror and never really went back to it. However, after The Exorcist (1973), Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Jaws (1975), revived interest in the American horror film, they decided to bring back one their most successful characters with a modern remake in 1979 directed by John Badham.

Plot: The film is set in 1913 Whitby when Count Dracula (Frank Langella) is washed ashore after his ship runs aground. Mina (Jan Francis) is on her way to visit her friend Lucy (Kate Nelligan) when she stumbles across a bedraggled Dracula. Dracula later visits Mina and Lucy at Lucy's house, where he meets her father Dr. Jack Seward (Donald Pleasence) and her fiancé Jonathan Harker (Trevor Eve). The following morning, Mina is found dead with throat wounds. This causes the Sewards to contact Mina's father, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier) who is convinced his daughter has become the victim of a vampire. Meanwhile, Lucy finds herself falling in love with the mysterious Count Dracula, much to the chagrin of Harker. The rest of the movie is the typical Dracula story.

My thoughts: In my opinion this is the best version of Dracula. A lot people say Bram Stoker's Dracula is the best, but I think this one's better. All the actors play their parts well (Olivier does sometimes go over the top however) and the film overall is very atmospheric. Even the romance element is done well. The big changes made to story were the Lucy and Mina characters being swapped over, Mina being Van Helsing's daughter and the character of Renfield being largely removed. Definitely check it out.

So far, those have been the only Dracula movies Universal have made. Many other Dracula films have been made, most notably the ones made by British studio Hammer Films. We'll look at those later. Next, the other big hit for Universal: "It's alive! It's alive!!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!".

See also:
More horror
Nosferatu

Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897)

During the late 19th century, the race was on to see who could discover the most dinosaurs. The two combatants of these 'Bone Wars' were Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.

Edward was born on 28th July 1840 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Alfred and Hanna Cope. His mother died when he was three years old and his father re-married to Rebecca Biddle. His father wanted Edward to receive a Quaker education like he had and so he sent him to the Friends' Boarding School. It was here that he developed his interest in natural history. However, his father did not want his son to pursue an academic career but instead to become a gentleman farmer like himself. Edward hated farming, finding it boring and continued to educate himself in his spare time. Eventually, his father relented and agreed to finance his studies at the University of Pennsylvania under the tutelage of Joseph Leidy. It was here that he published his first papers.

In 1863, with the American Civil War raging on, Cope took a tour of Europe, visiting many reputable museums and societies. Some of his biographers believe he took this tour to avoid being drafted into the war. During this tour, Cope had a love affair with a unnamed woman. His father strongly disapproved of this relationship and forced Edward to end it. Also during this European foray, Cope met another fellow American, Othniel Marsh, who was studying at the University of Berlin. The two men became friends and after Cope went back home, they stayed in touch with each other, exchanging papers, specimens and letters.

After returning to the States, Cope got a teaching job as the Professor of Zoology at Haverford College, Pennsylvania. In 1864 he married Annie Pim, a fellow Quaker and, two years later, had a daughter Julia. It was at this time that Cope described the first of many prehistoric animals, the prehistoric amphibian Amphibamus grandiceps (Cope, 1865).

Between 1866 and 1867, Cope travelled across America, exploring caves and pits. He resigned from his post as professor and sold the family farm in order to finance his research. From the caves and pits, he described new prehistoric animals such as the plesiosaur Elasmosaurus platyurus (Cope, 1868) and the dinosaur Laelaps (Cope, 1866) (subsequently renamed Dryptosaurus (Marsh, 1877) because Laelaps had already been used by a mite (Koch, 1836) but Cope refused to acknowledge the new name and continued using Laelaps, even naming new species).

The 1870s were a high point in Cope's academic career. Amongst his best known discoveries of this time are the mammal-like reptile Lystrosaurus (Cope, 1870), the crocodile-like reptile Champsosaurus (Cope, 1876) and potentially the largest dinosaur that ever lived Amphicoelias (Cope, 1878). Cope published between 25 and 76 papers each year. Unfortunately, this high volume of publications meant that Cope made many errors and had to print multiple corrections and redactions. This did not do his reputation any favours. It also didn't help that he mostly published his works in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society journal, a journal that was not widely read. Meanwhile, Marsh published very high-quality papers in the much more well-read American Journal of Science and his reputation skyrocketed.

Unfortunately, the 1870s also marked a low for Cope as his father, Alfred, died in 1875. This hit Cope hard as he was always close to his father, despite his father's reservations about his scientific career. He spent the rest of the decade writing up the findings of his earlier expeditions. He made another trip to Europe in 1878 and met with some of the greatest palaeontologists of the time including Richard Owen, Thomas Huxley, Ferdinand Hayden, Albert Guenther and Harry Seeley.

Cope is best known for his fierce rivalry with Othniel Marsh. This all started when Cope asked Marsh to examine his fossil of Elasmosaurus that he had discovered and reconstructed. Marsh informed Cope that he had, in fact, stuck the head on the end of the tail! The two argued back and forth for weeks about it until Cope asked his former mentor Joseph Leidy to have a look. Leidy took one glance at the skeleton, picked up the head and placed it at the other end. Cope was devastated because he had just published a paper describing Elasmosaurus with the incorrect drawing. It got worse when Leidy brought the issue to public knowledge during a meeting of the American Philosophical Society. Marsh just sat there looking smug. Cope was furious.

In 1877, American schoolteacher Arthur Lakes found a stash of fossil bones in Morrison, Colorado. He sent these bones to both Cope and Marsh. However, when Marsh agreed to pay Lakes $100 for his finds, Lakes asked Cope to forward the bones to Marsh. Cope was highly offended. Instead, Cope received bones from another schoolteacher Oramel Lucas from nearby Canyon City.

Shortly after this, both Cope and Marsh heard about a large boneyard at Como Bluff in Wyoming and sent collectors to the site. Both groups attempted to sabotage the others' progress with Cope offering to pay Marsh's men large sums of money if they defected and Marsh attempted to persuade Ferdinand Hayden, Cope's chief publisher, to reduce the number of papers of Cope's he approved. Marsh even had his dig sites dynamited so Cope couldn't dig there after they left!

In 1877, Cope returned from a trip to Europe to be greeted by two years' worth of bones found by Lucas. Amongst them were the remains of the dinosaur Camarasaurus (Cope, 1877). In 1879, the United States Congress assembled all the geological survey teams into one and appointed Clarence King as the leader. Cope was hopeful that he would be named chief palaeontologist so you can imagine his disappointment when King named Marsh to that position instead.

Then things got much worse in the 1880s. Marsh's role in the Survey gave him access to essentially unlimited resources. Cope, on the other hand, was running out of money. Fast. His good friend Ferdinand Hayden, who worked for the Survey, lost his position, and was unable to fund Cope's work. Instead Cope turned to mines, investing in a number of silver mines in New Mexico. For a while, this tied him over, but by 1886, he was forced to sell his stock as the mines closed down. In the same year, he took a teaching job at the University of Pennsylvania but it wasn't enough to satisfy him, so he looked for work elsewhere. Both the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History, both prestigious institutions, turned him down. Although offered to join the Survey, Cope refused because it meant working with Marsh and Marsh's buddy Colin Powell.

Marsh convinced Powell to force Cope to return all the specimens he had gathered as part of previous government surveys. Cope was outraged and refused on the grounds that he had been a volunteer on those surveys and not been an official employee and therefore the specimens he had found were his and not the government's. However, Cope decided it was time to fight back and he went to the editor of the New York Herald with a notepad in which he had recorded every mistake and accusation made against Marsh and Powell. This he had gathered from previous employees and consisted of claims of errors, employees being denied credit and being underpaid, to misappropriated government funds. Marsh and Powell both published rebuttals but it was in vain. Although no criminal proceedings were made against Marsh and Powell, their reputations suffered and as a result, Marsh was removed as chief palaeontologist and Powell had his funding cut significantly.

However, Cope's own reputation and friendships became strained as well. But he didn't particularly care. In fact, he even named a species of prehistoric mammal after his haters Conacodon cophater (Cope, 1884). He then went on to name two of the most important fossils of his career, the mammal-like reptile Edaphosaurus (Cope, 1882) and the dinosaur Coelophysis (Cope, 1889). In 1889, his good friend Joseph Leidy passed away and Cope succeeded him as Professor of Zoology at the University of Pennsylvania. This increase in pay allowed Cope to buy back the family farm that he previously had to sell.

Then, in 1892, fortune struck Cope. He was offered a position with the Texas Geological Survey to conduct field work. With the extra money generated from this he was able to publish two huge books that had he had been working on for years: Batrachians of North America, about North American amphibians and The Crocodilians Lizards and Snakes of North America, about...well, the title is pretty self-explanatory really. In 1894, his daughter, Julia married an astronomy professor, William Collins. Together they moved to Haverford, Pennsylvania, and afterwards so did Cope's wife, Annie. Cope stayed in Philadelphia, his reasoning being that he did not wish to commute, although his pupil, Henry Osborn (the guy who described Tyrannosaurus) later reported that the two had separated by this point, although they remained amicable towards each other.

Cope's final act before his death was to sell his collections in 1895. His fossil mammal collection, with 10,000 specimens, sold for $32,000, whilst the rest of his 13,000 specimens sold for $29,000. With this extra money, he was able to rehire fossil collectors, including the great Charles Sternberg, with the aim of starting a fresh, new career in palaeontology.

By 1896, Cope was ill. Very ill. He was bedridden with a severe gastrointestinal illness which he said was cystitis. He was looked after by his wife, who came up from Haverford, and his secretary Anna Brown, when his wife was unable to. He prescribed himself medicines composed of morphine, belladonna (a poison derived from the Deadly Nightshade) and formalin (a chemical similar to formaldehyde). When Osborn visited him and discovered what Cope was doing, Osborn convinced him to stop and undergo surgery instead. Arrangements were subsequently made but were then cancelled after Cope showed improvement. Cope, feeling better, travelled to Virginia to look for more fossils but fell ill again and returned home. On 5 April 1897, Osborn visited again but Cope didn't want to talk about his health and instead wanted to have a discussion on the origins of mammals. Over the next few days, other friends visited but again, Cope wanted to have academic debates and not talk about his condition, despite developing a severe fever. Then, on 12 April 1897, Cope passed away at the age of 56. His funeral was a small affair, with a Quaker ceremony and 6 people in attendance. However, he wasn't buried as he had his body donated to science and it still resides at the University of Pennsylvania. His cause of death is still unknown.

See also:
More dinosaurs
More on Amphicoelias fragillimus and other large dinosaurs
Richard Owen

References
Cope, E. (1865) 'On Amphibamus grandiceps, a new Batrachian from the Coal Measures: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1865, pp. 134-137

Cope, E. (1866) 'On the remains of a gigantic extinct dinosaur, from the Cretaceous Green Sand of New Jersey', Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 18, pp. 275-279

Cope, E. (1868) 'Remarks on a new enaliosaurian, Elasmosaurus platyurus', Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 20, pp. 92-93

Cope, E. (1870) 'On the skull of dicynodont Reptilia. Lystrosaurus frontosus from Cape Colony', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 11, p. 419

Cope, E. (1876) 'On some extinct reptiles and Batrachia from the Judith River and Fox Hills Beds of Montana', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 28, pp. 340-359

Cope, E. (1877) 'On a gigantic saurian from the Dakota epoch of Colorado', Palaeontological Bulletin, 25, pp. 5-10

Cope, E. (1878) 'On the Vertebrata of the Dakota Epoch of Colorado', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 17 (100), pp. 233-247

Cope, E. (1882) 'Third contribution to the History of the Vertebrata of the Permian Formation of Texas', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 20, pp. 447-474

Cope, E. (1884) 'Second addition to the the knowledge of the Puerco Eocene epoch', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 21, pp. 309-324

Cope, E. (1889) 'On a new genus of Triassic Dinosauria', The American Naturalist, 23, p. 626

Koch, C. (1836) Deutschlands Crustaceen, Myriapoden und Arachniden, Regensberg: F. Pustet

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

A History of Horror 4: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Now we enter the talkie-era with another movie based on a successful novel, this time The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. 

(Not a trailer, just a scene to show Mr. Hyde's douchebaggery)

Plot: Dr. Henry Jekyll (Frederic March) is convinced that it is possible to split the human personality into two halves: a "good" half and an "evil" half. His colleagues in the scientific community scoff at the idea, deriding it as nonsense. Dr. Jekyll, however, is determined to prove them wrong and succeeds in bringing out the evil side of him, dubbed Mr. Hyde. Unfortunately, Hyde becomes uncontrollable and wreaks havoc in the city. Can Dr. Jekyll rein in his other half or will Mr. Hyde become his significant other? You'll have to watch the film to find out.

My thoughts: This is a good film. It caused a sensation at the time because of its depiction of violence and domestic abuse, topics that were very much taboo. Even by today's standards, this film is not tame. Frederic March's performance is fantastic, so good in fact that he won the Oscar for Best Male Actor, one of the few times a horror film has been honoured by the Academy. The transformation sequence is amazing, especially considering they didn't have computers or animatronics like they do these days (and they look crap but that's another story), it was all done with different coloured make-up and camera filters. In terms of influence on later horror movies, this film established three elements that were not present in Stevenson's novel. Firstly, the simian/grotesque appearance of Mr. Hyde and secondly, a love interest, in this case a separate one for both Jekyll and Hyde. Finally, this film established the pronunciation of Jekyll as "Jeckel". Stevenson, however, said that it should be pronounced as "Jeekle" but because of this film, everyone pronounces it wrong.10 years later, the movie was remade scene by scene with Spencer Tracy in the title role. I have not seen it, but my research suggests that it was drastically inferior in every way. Hmmm...a direct remake of a classic horror movie that was deemed unnecessary, why does that sound familiar? *Cough*Psycho*Cough*

Next time, we will look at a true classic: Dracula!

See also:
More horror