Bride Of Frankenstein

Harbinger Of Groom

Bride Of Frankenstein
USA 1935 Directed by James Whale
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Time to revisit one of the great classics finally on Blu Ray.

You know, whenever I watch Bride Of Frankenstein (also known as The Bride Of Frankenstein on most posters but without the 'definite article' on the actual title card of the movie), I always think that this is my favourite of the Universal Frankenstein movies. Then, whenever I watch the next sequel, Son Of Frankenstein, I always think that is. It’s a thin line because they both have a very different atmosphere to them but, for now, I’lll say just on the strength of the blindingly cool score, I’ll have to go with Bride Of Frankenstein as the best of these Universal Monster Classics. Well... until I get around to rewatching and reviewing the next one in the sequence, at any rate.

After a cast list which bills, like the end credits, the titular character of The Bride as being played by ‘?’ (much like Karloff in the original, to preserve the mystery) we get a camera moving in to an establishing shot via a model building where we get a quite wonderful (and heavily pre-cut due to sexual implications of both a verbal and visual nature), prologue featuring Lord Byron, Percy Shelley
and, of course, the character of his wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote the original novel Frankenstein and who is played here by the ‘button cute’ Elsa Lanchester. It is for this role, relatively near the top of the cast list, that Lanchester is credited for, as opposed to her iconic dual role as the Bride Of Frankenstein. Also, since her first character is only on screen for five minutes at the start and her classic monster character only for about five minutes (without bandages) at the end, I think many audience members probably don’t put two and two together in regards to this fact the first time they see it... especially since the make-up is quite different.

Towards the end of the prologue is a montage of scenes from the first film (where Franz Waxman’s amazing score really drives the edits together as a unified whole and which, if memory serves, might even include alternate or unused snippets from Whale’s previous Frankenstein movie too) and then Mary is coaxed into telling Byron and Shelley the rest of the ‘continuing story’ (despite the fact that a tombstone in the film has a death date many decades after Mary died in real life).

And the rest of the film is half some unused parts from the original Frankenstein novel dressed up in new clothes (the book does, indeed, deal with the creation of a ‘bride’ too), along with the usual Hollywood nonsense, some successful and some not so, which can be completely credited to director James Whale who, at this time in his career at least, had complete control of the film.

It’s an interesting film and uses some great lighting effects too (if you watch the films of Ridley Scott, there’s a certain kind of lighting he uses in a lot of his movies... the name of which escapes me... and certain scenes like the interiors of Baron Frankenstein’s home use the same effect) and there’s also the odd hint of German Expressionism again which grows organically from the sets... not as much as it would become a dominating factor as it does in Son Of Frankenstein, perhaps but... it’s definitely in here.

There’s some wonderful acting in this one. Much to Boris Karloff’s dismay, the monster learns to talk this time around, due to his investigation of the siren call of the violin played by an old, blind hermit (played by O.P. Heggie) who befriends him and teaches him rudimentary speaking skills... as well as teaching him how to smoke (can never quite work out how that’s ‘a thing’ to teach anyone but what do I know?). Karloff is absolutely electric in these scenes though, never once going into comedy mode although, you can tell that certain elements of Fred Gwynne's Herman Munster must have come from studying his performance in this film.

Then there’s the somewhat campy Ernest Thesiger playing the equally campy Doctor Pretorious, helping to push the less than hidden ‘gay subtext’ of the movie, which would quite possibly have gone over many of its audiences’ heads at the time. Alas, he also dominates in the one scene which seems completely out of place in the film, where he shows Frankenstein the collection of miniature people he’s grown in bottles. This is the one scene in the movie I almost can’t bear to look at because it’s so off kilter with the rest of the film (but at least Waxman’s music is appropriate... it’s also out of place with the rest of the score in this scene). In fact, going to skip quickly over the memory of this sequence now, thanks.

One of Whale’s favourite ‘doom laden comedy hystrionics’ actresses, Una O' Connor, who had provided similar laughs in the director’s The Invisible Man (reviewed here) also has lots of screaming to do, along with such dialogue nuggets as, when talking about the probable burning of the Frankenstein monster under the mill (wrecked at the climax of the last film)... “Insides is always the last to be consumed”. She also gets the first of the ‘He’s alive!’ lines when talking about the ‘presumed dead’ character of Henry Frankenstein, who has been removed to his and his fiance’s home, in relation to when he first moves his arm and indicates he’s alive. Of course, this completely contradicts the happy ending added on to the film at the end of the last one against Whale’s wishes but, I guess he was happy to ignore it here. Frankenstein is once again played by Colin Clive (two years before his alcoholism fuelled death at the age of 37) but his fiance is played by the then 17 year old Valerie Hobson, who really gives her all in the role.

And, though he had already been killed by Karloff in the last one, we have wonderful character actor Dwight Frye returning as a very similar character called Glutz. It’s always good to see Frye in any Universal movie, to be honest. Even a young John Carradine turns up briefly as a woodsman, foreshadowing his involvement, perhaps, with The Mummy films and also his turns as Dracula for the studio in two of the Frankenstein sequels.

The film was quite heavily trimmed before general release for scenes of religious inappropriateness and sexuality (such as cutting out various sequences which included close ups of Mary Shelley’s cleavage in the prologue and, originally, in an epilogue which also didn’t make it into the final cut) and... I just wish the footage had survived today. Even now, where the script had been censored, you can see where Whale ‘got away with it’ in certain scenes. There’s a great line by Dr. Pretorius where he tells Henry...

“Leave the charnel house and follow the lead of nature... or of God, if you like your bible stories”.

This second part of the line is said with great sarcasm and it’s pretty apparent what Whale’s stance on religion is. What I’d forgotten until rewatching the documentary which has been ported over from some of the DVD releases onto the new Blu Ray, is that the original line before the censors got a hold of it finished... “... or of God, if you like your fairy tales.” It doesn’t really matter though because Thesgiger’s line reading leaves you in absolutely no doubt of his religious standing.

And then there’s the music by composer Franz Waxman. This is what I was always drawn to with this movie, not because of its brilliance here but because I was familiar with it from the many times it was recycled by Universal into other things, like many of their serials. I first heard this score in the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials and, whenever I would go out into the back garden and play at being one of these two iconic heroes, I would be constantly whistling the score from Bride Of Frankenstein as I played, even though I didn’t know that at the time. It’s very much in the leitmotif style which was becoming increasingly popular in Hollywood and it’s just wonderful. LaLaLand Records managed to resurrect and restore the long thought lost master tapes of the majority of this score last year for a limited edition CD release, which sounds surprisingly great for the age of the recording. You can still, at time of writing, purchase a copy from them in the US here. It’s not only been used in numerous Universal films and serials contemporary to this, it’s also been used in terms of film referencing over the years... perhaps the most blatant being the use of the ‘creation’ music in a parody sequence in Joe Dante’s Small Soldiers. If you’ve never heard it before, well... it’s just wonderful. What I hadnt noticed before is the moment in the opening credits where it says it’s conducted by Bakaleinikoff, who did a number of scores such as those for Val Lewton, whose ‘antidote’ to Universal Horror’ movies for RKO are also very much respected.

And there you have it. Bride Of Frankenstein is one of those rare movies where the sequel actually is superior to the original work... in this case by the same director. And I say that with all due respect to Frankenstein (reviewed by me here) which is a truly great movie too. Definitely this and the two Frankenstein films either side of it are required viewing for all those in love with the art of cinema. And very entertaining they are too. Give them a watch.

Prince Valiant

Val Toupee

Prince Valiant
USA 1954 Directed by Henry Hathaway
20th Century Fox/Eureka Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers here regarding the secret identity of one of the characters... although, frankly, it really isn’t hard to figure out.

Back in 1999, I purchased a copy of the newly released FSM (Film Score Monthly) restoration CD score of Prince Valiant and it turned out to be one of my wiser decisions as far as blind buys go. It’s a gorgeous score and I’ll get back to it soon but the point is, it made me want to watch the film at some point to see how the music matched up in context. A number of years ago, the Eureka label in the UK released a new Blu Ray transfer of the movie and, of course, I snapped one up. It’s been languishing in my ‘to watch’ pile throughout the years and months but it finally floated to somewhere near the surface so... at last, I have now watched this thing.

Now Prince Valiant is based on the long running King Features syndicated newspaper strip Prince Valiant In The Days Of King Arthur (more commonly known as simply Prince Valiant), created by Hal Foster in 1937. And when I say long running I mean just that... it’s still running in newspapers in the US to this day (although obviously no longer written by its original creator, who died in 1982). My understanding is the film has taken a fair few liberties with the original material because, from what I read, when Foster returned a severely ‘red penned’ version of the script back to Fox, the studio responded in the same manner in which a lot of Hollywoodland studios have done over the years... they ignored the ‘corrections’ and just continued to do their own thing. To be fair, it had run out of its lease from another studio who had been unable to crack the script due to the severely long and unmanageable (in a pocket sized movie version) story arc and so I expect the studio was not that willing to start playing around too much once they had a halfway decent script down on the page.

And it’s kind of a fun movie, actually. It’s a bit slow moving, perhaps, for modern teenage audiences but the splendour of what was a ‘Cinemascope’ picture is all present. Actually, since composer Alfred Newman’s Cinemascope extension to the 20th Century Fox fanfare also dates to around a year of this time, I suppose this makes it one of the first pictures to benefit from the added bars.

Now, don’t get me wrong... for a swashbuckler this isn’t half the picture that, say, The Adventures Of Robin Hood was but that’s almost like comparing apples to oranges and Prince Valiant has a lot going for it. It also has a lot of silly stuff too, which I’ll get to fairly soon.

Okay, so we have both Janet Leigh and Debra Paget playing the love interest of various characters in this movie. The costumes are lovely and, it has to be said, that while Leigh’s performance is pretty good, her bosoms do threaten to steal the scenes from various actors and actresses throughout the course of the movie. But not as much as the hair piece sported by the leading actor, Robert Wagner, who plays Valiant, the viking prince trying to be accepted into the Knight’s Of The Round Table so he can lead his exiled father back to his own country to regain his rightful throne. Okay, the story just about makes sense and maybe you have to ‘be there’ watching the film to be fully appreciative of it.

After a run in with The Black Knight, where Valiant barely escapes with his life, he gets taken under the wing by Sir Gawain, played by a young but gruff Sterling Hayden and tries to help find The Black Knight who is terrorising half of King Arthur’s kingdom. Much to the dismay of Sir Brack, played here by James Mason who, as soon as he opened his mouth and started to speak, tipped me off that he was almost certainly The Black Knight that everyone was looking for. After various misunderstandings and trials, Valiant helps free his father, mother and the fair Princess Aleta (played by Leigh) from the clutches of the usurper who has taken the throne of his father’s kingdom in Scandinavia. He also has that great character actor Victor McLaglen to help him. Then, after this we get what amounts to, after all these story beats... a second, lesser climax where Valiant has to battle Brack in Camelot to prove the veracity of his own accusations against the dark knight (and luckily run him through with his broadsword so the guy can’t make a decent defence anyway, it should be noted).

And it’s a nicely done romp with some lovely location photography of England (I’ll get back to that in just a sec) and some beautifully designed shot set ups. One interior scene, for instance, has a series of wall textures and depths running across the full cinemascope screen, splitting it into three vertical sections and housing two of the characters who are facing each other in conversation, Janet Leigh and Debra Paget, in the left and middle segments. There’s nothing jarring about any of the transitions in this one either and you can tell the director and cinematographer knew just what they were doing to design the look of the various shots and their flow into the next one in such a competent and creative manner.

That being said the film is also quite camp and ridiculous a lot of the time.

Robert Wagner has said himself that he was miscast but the look of the character in the comic has a very specific hairstyle and, it has to be said, Wagner’s huge and hilarious wig is a scene stealer in its own right, even distracting from Janet Leigh’s bounteous bosoms on occasion. Apparently, he was mistaken for Jane Wyman by a visiting actor to the set one day in this wig but, to me, it’s like you’re watching a movie where the star of the show is a masculine version of Louise Brooks. This is definitely a Lulu bob Wagner is sporting and... yeah... it does take some getting used to. I guess in terms of the make up and costume tests it was a question of “toupee or not toupee?” and I guess the wig won out. That being said, it’s not the most ridiculous hairpiece in this movie, believe it or not. The ‘other’ Prince Valiant in the film has an even more enormous looking and unwieldy wig. And when I say ‘the other’ I mean... whoever the guy was who was doing the long shots of the characters when they were running around the English landscape with their backs to the camera. I figured they were using badly disguised doubles and the IMDB confirmed my suspicions that all the long shots, involving actual locations, were shot in England while the close ups and mid shots were of the main cast in the US, presumably using some dodgy back projection which I think I spotted in a few sequences. Apparently Janet Leigh’s double for these location shots was Shirley Eaton, who would go on to claim her 15 minutes of fame ten years later in the James Bond film Goldfinger (reviewed by me here).

Other things which amused me greatly is the fact that Valiant rarely walks or runs to his destination when a series of more acrobatic but less accessible routes are somehow available. Why run up a perfectly good set of steps and along a corridor, for example, when you can just jump over there, jump up there, grab a flag, swing over there and get to where you were going a few more seconds earlier but, presumably, with a lot less breath still left in your lungs. Honestly, it’s like Robert Wagner invented the sport of ‘free running’ way ahead of his time just for this movie. I can just imagine the director yelling... “Okay, Wagner, now run over there but try and find the least obvious route to arrive at your destination.” It’s like Prince Valiant’s brain is the ultimate Sat Nav, taking you miles out of you way just to travel a few seconds across to the other side of the set. Entertaining though, to be sure.

And another thing... he’s really bad in a fight. Asides from escaping, by fluke, from The Black Night and his men near the start of the picture, he rarely ever wins a fight. Every time he tries to fight someone he gets knocked unconscious. The same thing when he offers a challenge in a jousting competition. Heck, he can’t even escape more rogues in the forest without getting an arrow in his back and having to be rescued and stop off for a long recovery period in a nearby castle... it’s embarrassing. How he manages to lose any battles at all when he has such a magnificently distracting hair piece on his noggin is beyond me. If I was an opponent of his I’d be well put off from my sword skills with this big mass of hair in front of my face. Actually, now I think of it, maybe that’s why he’s so bad in a fight... because his hair keeps getting in the way of his vision. How he wins the final duel against James Mason’s Sir Brack is not something I can figure out. There must be hell toupee if he’s put off his sword stroke I guess. it’s ridiculous.

I’ll tell you what isn’t ridiculous though... Franz Waxman’s truly gorgeous, playfully Korngoldian score. There is a lot of nice stuff in this although, I have to say, I did notice it was definitely overcompensating for some pretty boring shot sequences in some places... trying to increase the speed at which they are perceived in exactly the same way that Elmer Bernstein’s score for The Magnificent Seven lifts the tempo of that film. There are loads of wonderful leitmotif melodies and there’s even something special that Waxman pulls out at the last minute for when Prince Valiant is finally united with his father’s legendary sword...

A sword that’s been talked up big throughout the movie, as it happens, which is only reserved for those worthy enough to wield it... a bit like Thor’s hammer, I guess. Except, when it’s finally brought into action at the end its... well, it’s pretty much just a sword, to be honest. Although... wait... even though it does nothing except split wood and counter Sir Brack’s blows, Waxman adds, possibly for the first time in cinema (?), an electric violin into the mix on a slow variant of Prince Valiant’s main theme to show just how special his sword is. And it’s pretty cool and sounds just a little like it should be used in a Universal monster movie rather than here but it sure is a nice touch. It’s a shame, then, that for the FSM restoration of the score, the violin layer to the music could not be located, so we are left without a stand alone version of this magical moment in the film. Still, great score from Waxman and it works really well away from the movie too.

And that’s me about done with Prince Valiant. Anyone who loves an enjoyable period swashbuckler with some robust scripting and a groovy score... not to mention an abundance of bosoms and wigs... should get a rush out of this movie. Definitely recommended for die hard and casual cinephiles alike. Although I did find it curious that Merlin didn’t show up as a character in the film but, then again, Valiant’s strong pursuit of an over zealous Christianity might have possibly clashed with the dark arts of a magician added into the mix, perhaps.

Demetrius and the Gladiators

Another Fine Messalina!


Demetrius and the Gladiators US 1954
Directed by Delmer Daves
20th Century Fox Region 2

This review is dedicated to @muttivon2 (Petra Cahill), one of my new twitter followers who has been patiently waiting for me to get on and watch and review this movie. Thanks for the prod! 

Warning: There are some spoilers in this one so tread cautiously. They do follow a standard Hollywood formula, though, so I suspect I’m not telling you anything you wouldn’t already guess.

Demetrius And The Gladiators, made in Cinemascope, carries on from The Robe (reviewed here) just a few minutes before it left off and uses the last scene in that movie as its prologue... with a quick insert shot of some new, important characters, such as Claudius and Messalina, who are spliced in to watch the two lovers from the previous film, Richard Burton and Jean Simmons, walk towards their death sentence. This is only fair, of course, because... since The Robe was already assumed to be a sure-fire succes when it was to be released, this sequel actually started shooting only three weeks after the previous film was shot and, as a result, some of the establishing shots of the gladiator school used in the earlier sequences here were borrowed to use as establishing shots in the opening sequence of The Robe... which was presumably still being edited while the daily rushes from this movie were coming in.

Question to my readers: Is this the only film in cinema history to have footage from its sequel already in it (prequels don’t count)? Please enlighten me.

Okay, so once again in this movie, The Robe of Christ is still a prominent artefact in that it holds power in the minds of both the Christians and Emporer Caligula, once again played by Jay Robinson. Most of the important, original cast of The Robe are back for this one, including Michael Rennie as Peter, who is mostly in this one at the start and at the end of the movie as a framing character who pretty much comes to the rescue of the title character, again played by Victor Mature, when Demetrius has renounced his faith and principles. But I’m getting ahead of myself...

Caligula is getting more and more outrageous in this movie and wants to find The Robe for himself, since he is convinced by the comments of Messalina , Claudius’ wife (and future lover of Demetrius) who wants Caligula dead, that he is a God on earth, and therefore could use the supernatural powers which he believes are to be found in The Robe. Meanwhile Demetrius is captured and put in gladiator school when he punches out a Roman for mistreating his “girlfirend”. Messalina is fascinated by him and wants to see if, as a Christian, he’ll fight to the death. He doesn’t, at first, kill any of his human combatants but proves his mettle by killing off a lot of tigers (presumably tigers are less important than men in the Christian faith) and after he sees his girlfriend die (or so he thinks) at the hands of some of the gladiators, he renounces his Christianity and takes bloody vengeance in the collisseum against those responsible. He then takes Messalina as a lover and rises in the ranks.

However, when Caligula’s madness forces Demetrius to confront his former fellow Christians, including Peter, to retrieve The Robe, he discovers that his girlfriend was just in a coma and has been seeking comfort in this inmportant piece of cloth. With Demetrius’ arrival, she is made well. So Demetrius takes up his Christianity again, as suddenly and as unconvincingly as he renounced it earlier in the film, but is sentenced to more carnage in Caligula’s collisseum when the Emporer of Rome cannot get his head around the idea that The Robe does not do him any good and is only any use as a symbol of a lifestyle, and not the supernatural magic wand he’d hoped for.

Things are at the worst possible situation? Will Demetrius have his throat cut in the arena? Will Caligula’s madness never cease? Well, if you’re familiar with the standard Hollywood 50s movie then you’ll probably have already figured out the answer to that one but, just remember, the last movie ended with the death of the two lead protagonists so... well you may yet be surprised. Probably not but, after the last movie, anything could happen.

This was a pretty good and entertaining flick. A good, work-a-day director keeping everything on track and to the predictable Hollywood formula but, you know, that’s no bad thing and not always so easy to do, either. You’ll be rooting for Demetrius and his chums all the way through and shaking your fist at the antics of Caligula... and one scene right near the end may even have you cheering with anticipated blood lust... but I’ll leave you to discover that for yourself.

The score for the former movie was handled by legendary 20th Century Fox studio composer Alfred Newman and it was considered at the time (and now too, I believe) to be one of the great, classic soundtracks. So it annoyed a lot of people that The Robe was one of the few Newman scored pictures to not receive an Academy Award nomination for that year (I believe Newman won another oscar that year anyway, for another film score, but his outstanding work on the score to The Robe was not officially recognised... although I understand the studio heads were well pleased with it).

One of the people who was particularly annoyed that Newman didn’t get an Oscar nod for The Robe was skilled composer Franz Waxman (The Bride Of Frankenstein, The Spirit Of St. Louis etc.) who was tapped to provide a score for Demetrius And The Gladiators. As a result, and since Waxman wanted to use some of Newman’s themes and work them into the lietmotif of this movie, Waxman insisted that Newman get a “themes” credit on his own credit card alongside him. Nice move and Waxman’s score certainly serves the film well, with Newman’s motiffs for The Robe worked in whenever the garment is being talked about or is seen on screen. In many ways, in fact, this is almost (but not quite) a better score than the original in that the music all works together more appropriately than it did a few times in the former picture where there were, at least in my opinion, some jarring musical choices during certain scenes which did not blend well in their juxtaposition to certain other scenes.

That being said, though, the music is more keyed into a more stable environment on this one because it’s not the globetrotting, Biblical road movie its predeccessor was... this one is pretty much all set in Rome (barring the odd reused footage flashback to the previous movie) and so, in some ways, perhaps the less cosmopolitan nature of the second movie informed the musical limitations to a less jarring result?

Demetrius And The Gladiators is a fine film. True, it’s 1950s Hollywood style Christian propoganda at best, but there’s really nothing wrong with enjoying that kind of movie and this one will certainly hold your interest while you’re waiting to see if Demetrius will let go of his passive nature long enough to take vengeance against those who would set themselves up as his enemies. It’s also got a very young, pre-Marty Ernest Borgnine in it as the tough, but kindly, head of the gladiator school. He doesn’t do much in this one but he’s always a comforting actor to watch on screen. A friendly face if ever there was one.

This one’s definitely worth a watch if you liked the first one and have never seen it before but, a word of caution. While it probably works just fine as a stand alone movie experience, you’ll get a much richer entertainment from it if you watch the The Robe first. Obviously, it’d make a heck of a good double bill.