October 16, 2020 • 46 mins
Robert Lamb and Paul join Chuck to discuss Frankenstein in detail, along with an overview of the Universal Monster universe.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.
(00:28):
Hey everybody, and welcome to Movie Crush Halloween Freight Toober continuation.
Here with a little mini round table with Paul and
Robert Lamb. Hey, how's it going, Hey than having Yeah,
everyone knows Paul, I think, uh, Robert, were you on
last Halloween at all? I think last year was was
too crazy and I wasn't able to make it. I
(00:50):
think it was the year before that that podcast partner
Joe and I came on, right, So tell everyone what
you do and what's out there that they can listen to.
That's from you know, your your staple show. Well, I
mean it's pretty much the staple shows. The main thing
right now. We we were doing Invention and we we
kind of sunset that one. So now it's we're focusing
(01:12):
it on stuff to boil your mind. We're trying to
bust that out into a uh if if our boss
has his way six days a week show. So is
that what's going on? That's that's what the talk is.
So you know, we'll probably bust out some you know,
stick to our core episodes that deal with science and culture,
but maybe have some more laid back content as well
(01:35):
that you have part of the weekly offering. All right, well,
this show is all about laid back content, right, I
love it. So, dudes, what we're gonna do is something
that I've never done before, which is to dive into
the world of the universal classic monsters. And we watched
Frankenstein inteen thirty one Frankenstein, which we'll get to shortly,
(01:58):
but uh, we wanted to talk a little bit at
first about this what what it turns out was the
first shared universe in movie history back in starting in
the early nineteen thirties. Um, I guess actually sort of
mid twenties is when it really started, with a Hunchback
of Notre Dame. But they consider the uh I think
(02:20):
the very first horror film ever made to be The
Phantom of the Opera. Yeah, and that was, um a
silent film from nine, which uh, I actually have not.
Have you guys seen it? I have not, so I
can't talk too much. I've never watched it. No. No,
I mean, this is a is a world I don't
know much about. Um. As far as you know. You
(02:43):
read down the laundry list and it's the classics as
Stracula and Frankenstein, and the Mummy, Invisible Man, the Wolfman,
Creature from the Black Lagoon. And it feels like it's
weird for someone who's never really sat down and watched
these old films. Somehow they're still part of the fabric
of my life and as a movie lover. And when
(03:03):
I sat down to watch this from the day, I
was like, wait a minute, but I've never actually seen
any of these. Yeah, it's kind of I was thinking
the same thing about how I'd never seen the original
Frankenstein until I sat down to watch it for this show, uh,
like last night. And uh, and yet there's so much
of it that you just end up absorbing through popular culture.
And in a in a way, these these films and
(03:24):
these visions of these these horror icons are kind of
like the old gods, you know. Uh, even if you
don't actually worship them, he worshiped something that's kind of
passed down from them. What about you, Paul, Had you
seen any of these previously? Yeah? I went through probably
I think maybe around Halloween last year. I went through
and watched a handful of these classic horror films. Uh,
(03:46):
mainly just because I knew, you know, they were well
regarded and Um, they were so famous and I had
never really seen any of them. I think I mentioned
to you guys, I'm as a rule, not much of
a horror guy traditionally, uh, you know, with some exceptions,
but um, I really wanted to check out these just
because they've influenced um so much cinema. So I think
(04:09):
last year when I first sat down to watch them,
I watched, Uh, I think I started I kind of
in chronological ordinance, so I watched Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy,
Invisible Man, and Bride of Frankenstein. So I have not
seen I've not seen Phantom of the Opera or Wolfman
or Creature from Black Lagoon, which I think all those
right there that I've just listed are kind of considered
(04:31):
like the the super classics, even though there's like dozens
more that could be categorized as these universal monsters films.
And um, yeah, I think I was the one who
suggested that we watched Frankenstein for this just because I think, uh,
it's sort of the maybe the best representation of what
these films can be, even though, um, you know, I'm
(04:54):
a fan of all of them, but they are of
varying degrees of quality in my opinion and personally, I
find that um, like the very first ones to be released,
Dracula and The Mummy. I guess Frankenstein was in between those,
But Dracula and the Mummy I remember watching and thinking, man,
these are like okay, but they're very creaky and very
(05:17):
of their time and very much uh. The issue I
think is that these are all very early sound films,
and around this time, movies around this time hadn't quite
figured out how do you sound in film? And so
you even see in Frankenstein's like there's almost no soundtrack
except maybe at the beginning of the end. I know,
(05:38):
and we'll talk about that when it comes up. But
it that was striking to me, how uh. It really
stood out in a lot of moments that I think
we as a modern audience rely on these audio cues
to feel a certain way, to be scared, to be happy. Um,
it's it. There was a hole there for me. However,
(05:59):
I will say that the music in Frankenstein, like the
opening music, I found it kind of jarring in a way.
It's very I don't know if it's horns or what.
So I was kind of thankful that it didn't keep
showing up in the film. Um, I don't. I don't know,
And maybe that's just me and the sort of soundtracks
I tend to steer toward. Yeah, I think it was
just I think there were a few notable scenes where
(06:21):
we're so used to hearing something like the creation scene. Um,
and like I said, it's sort of those cues that
you don't realize as a movie go or that you're
so sort of trained to pick up on, and when
it wasn't there, I was I missed it a little bit,
I think. Yeah, I agree. I think I think Frankenstein,
as opposed to some of the other ones of this time,
benefits a little bit because, Um, as the movie goes on,
(06:44):
there's lots of elements of the soundtrack that do kind
of add atmosphere. I think. You know, during the whole
like wedding sequence, you have the music being played in
the town square sort of like the wedding music, and
then when they go kind of to hunt down Frankenstein,
you just have lots of um atmospheric noise of the
the villagers, like screaming and shouting and the sounds of
(07:07):
the fire crackling. Whereas I think, like I remember watching
especially Dracula and The Mummy. Those stretches of silence are
much longer in those films, and it just makes them
like very awkward, you know, especially because they're recording with
you know, not or at the time probably state of
the art audio equipment. But you know, it's like you
can sort of hear the hiss of the soundtrack of
just the the audio tape, you know, and it's it
(07:30):
just requires a bit of calibration on the viewer, I think,
to sort of orient yourself to, oh, this is just
how these films were at this time. Yeah. I mean,
when you're watching movies made in the nineteen thirties, you
need to watch them through a different lens. You can't
come in as a modern filmgoer and expect to be
riveted in quite the same way. There is a bit of, uh,
(07:52):
there's a bit of an Edward e end quality to
some of this stuff. Uh, And I think some of
it is supposed to have a bit of a sense
of humor, but and in fact even went full on comedy. Um.
I was looking through sort of the history of the
u c M and you mentioned dozens of movies, Paul.
You know, they had their staples like you said with Mummy, Phantom, Dracula, Frankenstein,
(08:14):
Uh Werewolf, Wolfman. But then they I mean there were sequels,
there were there were remakes like six and eight years later. Uh,
they would re release them into the theaters years later,
like the very same movies to great success, And they
were just printing money basically, the profits and the grosses
(08:36):
they were making in today eight dollars is pretty staggering. Yeah,
and like you said, with going full on comedy, like
I think later much later, there's like Abbott and Costello
Frankenstein and stuff like that, which I've not seen, but well,
you know, they were, like I said, they were printing
money in Abbott Costellary huge, so it sort of made
sense now. I was reading a little bit about the
director James Whale, uh Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein,
(09:00):
and the source was looking at pointed out that he
did like to use camp occasionally in his films, and
I didn't pick up on it as much in Frankenstein itself,
but there are moments in Bride of Frankenstein where you
know it'll, um, They'll be this moment with somebody reacting
hysterically to the monster and it. It seems pretty clear
they were going he was going for something over the
top and perhaps comedic at least in those small moments. Yeah. Um,
(09:25):
I think there was one moment in Frankenstein too, and
those two. I looked at a at some somebody did
a ranking online of all the u CM movies and
they ranked Bride of Frankenstein as the best, and Frankenstein
is number two, and I think Dracula was down to
four or five. And I saw where Logosi wanted to play, um,
(09:46):
Henry Frankenstein, uh, you know, Dr Frankenstein, but they said, no,
you've got If you're gonna play anyone, you gotta play
the monster. And apparently they did a makeup test that
was went very very poorly, and so he got heck
out of there and Boris Karlov stepped in to uh
you know and became sort of a legend in the making.
And Karloff is great in it. Uh you know. There
(10:07):
there's some wonderful small moments and just the original Frankenstein
with him as the monster, not so much maybe the
grunting and fire bad stuff, but like that scene where
he's reaching up at the sunlight, like there's something kind
of there's something legitimately haunting about that scene. I've never
seen that before, Like, that's not one of these moments
that I feel like it's been uh, you know, just
(10:28):
launched at you time and time again in popular culture. Yeah,
for sure. What do you think Paul over the top?
I know I agree with with Robert. I think Karloff's
performance adds so much pathos to this character that could
easily go over the top, you know, if done wrongly.
(10:50):
And um, yeah, that moment where he's grasping, reaching towards
the light is one of them. And I do think
also Robert, you mentioned some of the noises he makes,
the grunting and the moaning. I think, you know, those
add actually a lot because it reminds you just how
much he's very much like a child, you know, and
(11:10):
he has sort of a child's mental development, And to me,
they add a lot of My emotional response comes a
lot from some of those those noises he makes. Yeah,
there are times when he's being like harassed by what
is it, Frits, the assistant, and it almost looks like
he's he's like it almost looks like he's cracking up, right,
But then he realized now, this, This must be intentional.
(11:33):
It's kind of like he is this this like he's
even he's like a feral child, you know, he has no,
uh no ability to properly process what's happening to him.
So it makes sense that he's not even making necessarily,
you know, completely human reactions to these things. Let's talk
(11:56):
about Fritz for a second. I think this is one
of the moments that maybe there was some intended comedy
um or maybe not. It's hard to tell, like when
you're watching a movie from but this certainly the moment
where Fritz goes in to steal the brain and there's
and there's two brains. There's good brain and bad brain.
(12:19):
And uh he there's like a gong it sounds like
clanging in the background, and it scares him and he
drops the jar with a good brain in it, and
and this is kind of like, well, I'll get the
other brain. And I laughed out loud. I thought that
was a really kind of fun moment. And I want
to think that they thought it was a fun moment. Oh, surely, surely, Yeah,
that was a great that was great. And also just
(12:41):
the fact that like the brains are set out just
right there, for somebody's steal and it's like very clearly labeled.
This is the good brain, this is the bad brain.
So if anyone wants to steal them, right here they are.
That's pretty great. And Fritz, oh boy, I mean, can
we agree that he's the worst assistant in the history
of assistance? Yeah? Yeah, he he doesn't. He barely does
(13:03):
what he's told um and and then winds up getting
himself killed by the monster because he's harassing it too much,
just harassing it like crazy, he's and even right after
he's told him, he's like, don't use this fire, like,
put the torch down. You're scaring him basically, and he
leaves and he goes right back in there with that
fucking torch. And I'm just like, where did Fritz come from?
(13:24):
Who is this guy? Even? Do we know? Is there
any background on Fritz? Um? You know, I I don't know.
I don't think there's a Fritz in the novel. I mean,
of course, of course, then again, this whole film is
just kind of inspired by Frankenstein has not an attempt
to directly adapt it. He's kind of that that that
archetypical character, that ego or character that we come to
(13:45):
associate with the brand later. But he's not particularly hunchback
he you know, in the sense that we we want
that character to be, like you wanna Peter Lori type
figure in that role, and like the character playing Fritz
isn't even like that asthmatic or um or interesting. Yeah,
I just kept wondering why Fritz had that gig and like,
(14:08):
was he an experiment gone wrong or something possibly in
Dr Frankenstein's pass and he felt like you needed to
keep him around, or also just the fact that the
experiments Henry Frankenstein is performing are let's shall we say,
not above board, and so he probably needs somebody with uh,
(14:30):
you know, morals and a sense of being willing, being
flexible on what he's willing to do, because you know,
at the opening scene, they're literally literally stealing a dead
body that was buried not ten minutes before we we
opened at the funeral and they dig up the body
right after. Yeah, that scene looks so great too, uh
(14:53):
and it really, um really made me appreciate what they
did on stages back then, uh, and sort reminded me
of Edwood, how they would create these big outdoor you know,
these huge piles of dirt and a cemetery and these
beautifully lit um cloud painted cloud backgrounds. Uh. And it
really really does look great. I love that stuff. The
(15:16):
lighting by torch and and lamplight. It all looked really
really good. I thought, Yeah, I think it's so effective.
And even though when you watch it, there's no there's
no mystery, like you know, it's it's clearly a sound stage.
It's it's not attempting necessarily to fool you into thinking
it's they're on a real, real location somewhere, and yet
it still works. And I especially love how how disturbing
(15:40):
the imagery is in that opening sequence because it even
has you know, like the Christian iconography, the crucified Jesus
off to the side, you know, and just the fact
that we're witnessing a funeral and you see them, you
see the guy digging, you know, throwing the dirt on
the grave. Um. I think like for somebody like me
who is Day's like Catholic and going to going to
(16:02):
church every Sunday, and just like the idea of the
rituals and the iconography made this opening scene very effective
for me. Yeah, it was funny to the uh that
pan across and it was just panning across the different
humans at the funeral, and then it was like, oh,
and there's a skeleton on across just hanging out there
(16:22):
in the background. I love those interiors as well, though,
those you know, all the shots of the front Frankenstein's tower. Yeah,
and that that was something that really struck me as um,
something you don't see anymore, like you rarely, especially on
a on a stage. The whole point is you don't
see the ceiling because there is none. It's you know,
(16:43):
lattice work of lights and microphones and stuff like that,
and you never see ceilings of interiors. And they shot
this movie in a very tall way. Um, the tower
stuff looks amazing, these huge the you know, tall laboratory stuff,
and then just the regular interior of I guess it
was Baron Frankenstein's castle or house or whatever. I mean,
(17:05):
all that stuff is just amazing. It's overwhelming how big
it was. And yeah, just the way it's the way
it's shot, in the way it's lit. I think, you know,
James Whale said himself like, it's very indebted to sort
of that German expressionism, you know, the big shadows on
the walls and like you said, the tall sets that
kind of had that gothic architectural style. Yeah, and you
(17:27):
get extreme angles too when you have that kind of height,
and they definitely played a lot with that. And this
is the beginnings of filmmaking, you know, like this is
the stuff that we kind of take it for granted now,
I think. And when you see the origins of these
people that were just figuring this stuff out, it's kind
of cool and definitely appreciated it, you know. Yeah, I
(17:47):
was thinking a lot about that in terms of just
how scary it was and to what extended scary to
a modern viewer. You know, you just have to like
like reminding myself that like this was in a way
like the starting point, like all of all of our
additional scares and stylistic changes and how we scare people
is built upon this. Yeah, totally, man, I mean, this
(18:09):
is the foundation. And I try when I watch a
movie like this, I try to put myself into the
headspace of a theater goer in nineteen thirty one. And
it must have been terrifying, don't you think. Oh? Yeah,
I was. I was looking around at some of the uh,
the the initial responses to it, particularly from the Sensors
because there were various people thought stuff was blasphemous. But
(18:33):
I also ran across this, this wonderful um bit from
the from from the from the Irish Film Censors records
from a censor by the name of John the James Montgomery.
And so it was initially banned in Ireland before than
then being reversed. And they they showed it. But this
guy's ride up said and this. You can find this
on the the online archive of the Irish Film Sensors.
(18:55):
But it says I cannot issue a general certificate licensing
this film for exhibition to audiences containing children or nervous people.
It is a horror and notwithstanding its grotesque absurdity, it's
cruelty and brutality would have a demoralizing effect on many.
I reject the film as being unfit for exhibition, even
(19:15):
to an adult audience, as it panders to the morbid
and unhealthy minded. I love it, man, I would put
that on the poster. I put that podcord on a
poster that will bring in the put some butts in
the seats. That does remind me of uh. I think
it's worth mentioning that this film was considered a pre
code film, meaning the Hollywood Production Code, which UH basically
(19:39):
was responsible for censoring films from the mid thirties to
until about the nineteen fifties. And that's uh, you know
the era when you saw where you know, you couldn't
show anything. You couldn't show sex, you couldn't show a
married couple of sleeping in the same bed, you could
barely show people kissing, stuff like that. And so pre
code was this kind area in like the late teens,
(20:02):
twenties and up to the early thirties where you saw
a lot of these films being made with watching him
now you're like, oh, this is actually some pretty risk
ay stuff for for the time. UM, and this this
film falls into that category. UM, and I think it's
worth mentioning. Robert, you were talking about censorship. I looked
a little bit into that too, and Um, one of
(20:24):
probably the most notable aspects of the censor board UH
coming down on this film was the scene with the
little girl Maria. And basically this is the scene where
he meets the little girl by the lake and they
play and then he picks her up and throws her
into the lake, and it's brutal and this scene was
originally cut by the sensors, at least the end of
(20:47):
it where he throws her in the lake, so I
think it was kept when they're playing, but then when
he actually kills her, they cut that out, And in
fact the footage was considered lost for many years and
it wasn't until the nineteen eighties that I think gives
the British National Film Archive, uh found it somewhere and
since then it's been re reinstated into all subsequent releases
(21:07):
of the film. Could you imagine that day where it's
some like Britt was like we got the shot or
the girl going into the lake. It must have been
fantastic imagining the film without that that ending to that
scene is it's hard because to me that that's probably
my favorite scene of the movie, and it's it's such
sort of like your Rosetta stone for understanding what the
(21:29):
film is after in terms of the themes. Yeah, I
mean that scene is tough. I mean they really lay
it on thick. It's like, let's get this cute little girl,
let's give her a guy damn kitten, and let's have
her holding a handful of daisies, like the only thing
she didn't have was a bluebird on her shoulder. And uh,
you're right though, I think thematically that's the only sort
(21:52):
of connection he makes, human connection he makes in the
whole film, because, like you said, he has this child
like mind, and she shows him the flower and how
she turns it into a boat and how it floats,
and then he does the same, just tosses are in there, man,
and and the presumption he kind of blocks the the shot,
(22:13):
but the presumption is that she drowns, right, Yeah, yeah,
because later you have her father bringing her like soggy
corpse into town with that you know, drawn look on
his face. That was one of the most more disturbing
sequences I think in the movie was was that shot
where he was walking through town, because you see all
the people partying and having a good time, and as
(22:33):
he passes each group, they they all sort of just
even the kids kind of go blank and stop what
they're doing. And uh, yeah, that one actually affected me.
It's and it's a very I think it's done almost
all in one long tracking shot. Yeah, as he enters
the town and like you said, you can hear the
festive music in the background, and as he keeps walking
(22:53):
that music gradually dies out, and yeah, it's it's very
effective for me as well. I did see a thing
too in the Sensors where I mean, you know, it's
the story of Frankenstein and his monster, so there's obviously
a god complex happening. But the line where he very
much on the nose, just straight up says, you know,
I know what it's like to be God, and I
(23:15):
know that line in pre code they were cutting. You know,
different municipalities in different states would cut what they wanted,
and a lot of them apparently wanted to cut that
line because of the blasphemy. I read that. I don't
know if you guys ran across this as well, but
apparently the state of Kansas requested cutting thirty two different
scenes down. And if they had for being you know,
(23:36):
offensive or blasphemiths, etcetera. But if, but they if if
they would have made all these cuts, it would apparently
have cut the film in half. And of course the
film already is a glorious seventy one minutes long. Yeah,
it's pretty pretty lean, well, and that's kind of what's
fun about the story is they jump right in, Um,
you know, it was a time where movies were much simpler,
(23:59):
I think plot wise, and um, I love early on
that they basically he's trying to keep this whole thing
a secret. You know, He's got this big project to
create a living human being, and it's he didn't want
anyone to know about it until they knock on the
door and call him crazy. And then he's like, oh, yeah,
well come down here, I'll show you who's crazy. He
(24:22):
invites everyone down there to see. That was pretty good
and just uh, you know, talking about the length of
this film, a lot of these universal horror films are
in the seventy to eighty minute range, and I think
for any like filmmakers aspiring filmmakers out there, I recommend
watching these just because you can learn a lot for
how to make a very lean film, you know, and
(24:42):
get get all get all your points across in less
than ninety minutes. I love the runtime on this because
I often find myself checking out films that are are
maybe not that great, and I always look at the
run time to just see how much of the stuff
that doesn't work I'm gonna have to endure. And there's
something like, you know, it's it's nice to see, well,
(25:03):
whatever happens, it's only gonna be seventy minutes. Yeah, that's
a good way to look at it. And you know,
that's a good message to filmmakers. We're gonna make a
B movie, make it short. Yeah, you know, you don't
want to have people sitting around for too long. Another
one of my favorite lines was, I think he's talking
to uh who is the his mentor? Uh? Was it Waldman? Yeah? Sorry, Waldman?
(25:26):
Is it Waldman? So he was talking to him and
Waldman is sort of judging him about his sanity, and
he goes, I am astonishingly saying doctor, it sounds like
something our president might say. And you know, I think
Colin Clive's performance in this is worth mentioning because he
carries a lot a lot of the film outside of
(25:47):
Karloff himself. Just with that again, it's an archetype we've
seen much of it, probably derived from this film of
the the sort of mad scientist who's convinced he can
play god and he just you know, Colin Clive has
those intense eyes throughout the whole film that sell a
lot of what the film is doing. Yeah, he has
a he has a nervous intensity in in the in
(26:09):
these films, and I think I've only seen him in
like three things. I also saw him in the excellent
Peter Laurie movie Mad Love. But in all of those films,
he he has this there's this this nervous intensity about him,
you know, And I wonder how much of that is
just like part of Colin Clive himself, because I know
he had a lot of personal uh problems, but it
was it was also just a tremendous actor. But yeah,
(26:31):
he brings a real presence to this. He might have
been on speed too. It's well, you know, mentioning his
personal problems. He's kind of a sad story. He actually
died uh in ninety seven at the age of thirty seven,
so only only a few years after this movie came out.
And um, what I read was, yeah, he was suffered
from chronic alcoholism, uh and I think though he died
(26:53):
from I read complications from tuberculosis, but I guess his
alcohol alcoholism was was a known entity. Um, A lot
of times people talked about him being, um, you know,
inebriated on set and it it uh made him difficult
to work with a lot of the time. But just
kind of a you know, very sad ending for a
for a very talented actor. Yeah, it's um interesting to
(27:17):
think about. I think people think like drugs and alcohol
is sort of a more modern problem. But when you
hear about stuff like this and Legosi and his opium
addiction and whatever other drugs he was doing, um that
you know, I think since there have been drugs and alcohol,
people have been abusing drugs and alcohol. Um. The monster
(27:39):
reveal I thought was really interesting too in this UM
and that was one of the notable parts where I
think I missed a score because he quietly sort of
moon walks into the room, does this turn to reveal
his face. And that's usually when you're like that that
that you have like the big score happening. Uh. But
(28:00):
it was. It was a cool reveal and and the
monster created, you know, the monster makeup was great. It
looked really good. I'm not surprised though that the monster
reveal of having the monster walked backwards into a room
that that didn't catch on, that that didn't become the
iconic moment. It is funny though, Jason, where he is
walking into the room backwards and then jazz handed with
(28:20):
the with the hockey mask. It is funny though, how
um we talked about how these these movies, even if
we haven't seen them, they're so sort of ingrained in
our culture. And I think about Frankenstein in particular, like
any cultural depictions of Frankenstein today are almost always directly
(28:45):
based on this, this Carl Off version of Frankenstein where
you've got the bolts in the neck and the sort
of flat square head. I mean, you think about like
kids with their little trick or treat bags and it
has that face on it or something, and then it's
all indebted to this to have very a very good
moving performance, you know. Yeah, And you know, over the years,
we've seen different Frankenstein's um universal has been they had
(29:10):
the rights to all these monsters, so they've been making
these movies kind of over and over in different iterations
over the years, to varying degrees of success. Lately not much.
I know those Brendan Fraser Mummy movies did pretty good.
But I know that Tom Cruise win bombed that Wolfman
movie they did not too long ago bombed. I remember
the Frankenstein movie with de Niro years ago. I don't
(29:32):
know if you guys saw that. Um, I thought that
it wasn't a great movie, but I thought creature wise,
he looked pretty cool. It was a more realistic take.
It wasn't the bolts to the neck and the big flathead.
It was it looked more like he had been stitched together,
you know, like a skin suit. And that I mean
that one was certainly, of course, more true to the
(29:53):
novel two of having Frankenstein's monster being not just this,
not just this, uh this sort of brute and done,
you know, sort of feral creature, but having an intellect
and and being capable of, you know, of reasoning and
figuring out what was wrong with his plight and raging
against his creator. All these Miltonian qualities, you know, they're
that are very much part of the book. Uh. It
(30:14):
sounds like you've read the book, Robert, Yeah, I read
the book it. Um. I think I was. Weirdly enough,
I was inspired to read it, not by um the
de Niro film, but in there was a TV movie
version of it. It started Patrick Bergen as Dr Frankenstein
and Randy Quaid as the monster. And I have no
(30:35):
idea that holds up today because I haven't seen it
since I was since ninety two or at the time.
I loved it. I was like, down, this is Frankenstein.
Now I'll read the book. I am googling Randy Quaid
Frankenstein as quick as my little fingers will type. Okay,
I remember this one. Wow. Interesting. I think it came
on T and T back in the day. It looks
(30:58):
like he's wearing a fuzzy uh like hairsuit. Very interesting,
like a big foot suit. Yeah, and on Paul if
you look up the de Niro Frankenstein. Yeah, it's pretty
pretty chilling. Um. I mean, that's definitely a more realistic
take on what someone might look like. But I don't know, Man,
at the end of the day, I'm going with karl Off.
(31:18):
It's so iconic. I mean, that's what Herman Munster was
based on, like a TV show that Robert and I
probably grew up watching. I don't know if you watched it, Robert,
but I certainly did. Uh. And there's something about that
that flathead in those bolts Man kids are still dressing
up like that. Like you said, I never understood the
flat head though, Like I was talking to my wife
(31:40):
about this and she was like, why the flathead, And
I like, I don't know, Like you know that like
crodes are bolts. Makes sense, But yeah, why the flathead
is it? Because uh, you know, he had to probably
he inserted a brain into a skull, and maybe I
always thought maybe either that made the head bowls or
maybe the top. But the head is supposed to be
(32:01):
like from another body or something, and it's sort of
some weird you know, trying to meld two different skulls together.
I don't know. Or maybe it's just an aesthetic choice. Yeah, yeah,
I never really thought about that. I could see maybe
if they put in the brain, like cut off the
top of the head, put the brain in, and then
the rest is I don't know, Plywood, I'm not sure.
(32:26):
If they put Fritz in charge of the covering it up,
that's the problem Fritz. I gotta say I hated Fritz
so much. It was very satisfying to see him swinging
by his neck when they finally come in there and
sees that the monster had gotten a hold of him,
and it's it's you know, Fritz is the very first
person who uh basically is mean to Frankenstein or to
(32:49):
excuse me, to the monster. Always important to remember that
Frankenstein is a scientist. The monster is the monster. But
but you know, when we first meet the monster, we
it's that shot we mentioned earlier of him holding his
hands up to the sunlight. And then immediately after that,
Fritz comes in with a torch and just sort of
harasses him, like you said. And you know, again, if
(33:10):
we think about Frankenstein's monster of having the sort of
intellect of of a young child, of course he's going
to react adversely to that. And that's I think plays
into what for me watching the film this time, the
sort of if you want to boil down to one
important theme, it's sort of the idea of nature versus
nurture and how you know, even the film seems to
(33:31):
say even though the monster is created from the brain
of a murderer and stuff like that, he hasn't faded
to be a murderer himself. In fact, the only reason
he he kills people is because he is attacked first.
He never you know, draws first blood, so to speak. Right, Yeah,
that was another funny moment too, though, when he is
(33:51):
talking out about the brains with Waldman and he that's
when he reveals he was like, well, no, the only
brain that was stolen was the bad criminal brain and
and the look that goes on on Frankenstein's face and
he's kind of like, I'm sure it will be okay.
Basically he kind of displays it off like, oh, I
didn't know that, but it'll be fine, right. And I
(34:15):
also love how cranky uh the baron Frankenstein is his dad.
Oh yeah, the old man good, he's great, and um,
it's so weird at the end. Now I understand that
they the ending is the upbeat ending that the studio
insisted on. But after all of this, the these struggles
between mad scientists and monster, Like, we ended with that
(34:37):
weird walky scene where he's out there just having a
bit of champagne with the with the the help. Uh,
and it's like, what why is that? Why is that
the moment we end on? It was a very weird
less shot. Um, it was like tin tin handmaids basically
giggling uh and trying to serve wine to the recuperating
(34:59):
franken'st It was very strange. Yeah, and the old Man's like, oh,
he doesn't need it anyway, give me that glass. It
is funny though, because that very last moment he takes
the glass and he gives a toast and I think
he says something like a toast to my to a
future grandchild or something like that. And it's kind of
this actually kind of ironic note because if you think about,
(35:20):
you know, Frankenstein's desire to play god, he sort of
already had. He creates his own son, so to speak,
and it's sort of this ironic moment where it's like, oh,
to a future son, even though Frankenstein had to kill
his firstborn in a sense that does work, could Paul, Uh,
Let's talk a little bit about that whole last. That
(35:43):
whole last like fifteen minutes is UM for me kind
of the truly terrifying part of this movie UM, starting
from when I mentioned earlier when Maria's dad brings her
body back through the town square, which is also kind
of fun to think about that being shot in you know,
burb Bank on a back lott in Burbank. Um. But
(36:03):
from that moment on it is truly scary UM with
the torch wielding mob and those dogs, the bloodhound sparking
and just the cacophony of all that noise and the
hunt for uh Frankenstein's monster that ends in the burnt
in his like burning at that mill it's all really
scary to me. Yeah, the whole like just the the
(36:26):
mob mentality of the situation, even though I guess, you know,
you can you can certainly make an argument that they
have a righteous cause and there's a an actual monster
murdering people, but still it's it's I I found it
a little unsettling to watch, you know, all all these
these people come together and just grab torches and head out,
and then weirdly enough, like Victor Frankenstein is there, like, yeah,
(36:46):
let's go get him, and nobody's mad at him. He's
the one who made the monster, but he's just fallen
in with the mob. It never really does come back
to him, does it. Well, that's what's interesting too, is
I want to hear what you guys think about at
this but it's not really explored in any depth in
the film, but the sort of the politics that play
between the baron Frankenstein's family and the rest of the
(37:10):
town because it's taking place in in some kind of
like Bavarian Alps region, it looks like, and if he's
the baron, then he's the wealthy landowner and then these
are all the peasants, and the fact that you know,
as you said, when they bring the girl's body, they
go to Baron Frankenstein's house because it's like, oh, he's
(37:33):
the one in charge, He's going to decide what we do.
And yeah, you know, it's ultimately Henry Frankenstein's fault, if
you know, for creating this monster that led to all this,
and yet he's never uh, he never gets any sort
of punishment or come up, it's because of it. Yeah,
that's a good point. Um, maybe that happens later. They
they do at least allude to it a little bit
(37:54):
in Bride of Frankenstein, which you know, which which definitely
grabs some more elements from in the original novel and
uses those. But there, I think there's a scene where um,
essentially the villain of that piece, this sort of rival
matter mad scientist uh named Dr Praetorious. I think he is.
He kind of threatens um frankens Stein by by letting
(38:17):
him know that he might he might let the townspeople
know that he's responsible, if I'm remembering that correct. Interesting,
So what is the story there? Does he create? Uh?
Is there Frankenstein's monster? Is it just the woman version?
It's both, So it's it's kind of a situation where
Frankenstein is He's like, I'm not doing this anymore. But
then the mad or mad scientist Dr Pretorius shows up
(38:40):
and he's like, no, we're doing this. We're totally doing this.
I've got my own experiments. They're going great, what you're
doing is great. Let's make a woman and m and
so that's kind of what happens. So it's weird with
science a little bit. Yeah, it's it's it's weirder and
and I think it is the superior film. Um it has.
(39:00):
It also brings in one of the other great humanizing
moments for the monster from the novel, when when the
monster lives with a blind man for a period of time. Right,
I read the novel. Took a a literature of horror
class at in college at Georgia as an English major,
and I read, uh that, and I read brom Stoker's Dracula,
(39:23):
and then I think it was those are the only
two novels, and then it was a bunch of short
stories and stuff. But um, I remember really enjoying Frankenstein.
I thought it was good. It's good to read. It's
a wonderful novel and it's worth noting The full title
of the novel is Frankenstein Colin or the Modern Prometheus. Yeah,
it's a great, great title totally. Um, let's jump back
(39:44):
to the end of the movie though. Uh. When they
I thought it was a really good special effect. However
they did it when they threw when the monster threw
Frankenstein off of the mill, and he caught himself on
the windmill blade, which ended up sort of saving him
from probably being thrown to his death. But I'm not
sure how they did that, but it looked pretty good.
(40:05):
It looked to me like a like a dummy that
they threw, I think, so. I mean, I could be wrong.
I thought it looked pretty good, though, I mean it
looks I'm not saying it didn't look good. Yeah, but yeah,
but I'm still kind of shy. I was kind of
shocked that he still survived after hitting the windmill played
and then falling again to the ground, and I was like, oh,
(40:26):
he must be dead. Okay, he's alive. Uh. And there
was a lot of great firework, um, which I'm sure
was not safe at all. Oh God, can you imagine. Yeah,
there's that early scene we were talking about where Fritz
wants to burn him with the torch and Frankenstein comes
in and scuffles with him. Like I was watching the
torch fall and it catches part of the set on
(40:46):
fire visibly, you know, and you just think, oh my god,
this would never fly today. Yeah. I kept waiting. I
think I had um anxiety, fire anxiety, especially in that
last scene with all those torches, all those men and
they were sort of willy nilly with them, the way
they were wielding them, and when they're actually burning the mill.
(41:07):
I mean, that's a terrifying scene. And I'm trying to
imagine a nineteen thirties audience. It must have been horrible.
I don't know anything to add to that. I agree,
you agree, Yeah, I mean that's everything I've got on
my list. Did you guys have anything else good movie
worth watching? Oh? Definitely. I do feel like I want
(41:27):
to stress anyone out there that hasn't seen them to
to try and watch the first two, uh, just because
I do feel like like there's just so much about
the first Frankenstein that has again just sort of been
spoiled through culture, and you're just kind of you anticipate
most of it as it occurs on screen, but but
you have Bride to Frankenstein adds just some additional weirdness
(41:49):
and some additional intrigue to the basic premise, and and
sometimes you find them packaged together. I know, um to
watch this one. Um My podcast partner Joe lent me
his box that of Blue Rays, Universal Classic Monsters, the
Essential Collection, And yeah, it's really gorgeous set. And it has, uh,
it has like several of these films we've been mentioning today,
(42:10):
Original Mummy, the Wolf Band, Phantom Creature. We should have
had Joe in here too. I feel bad. Now. Well,
if you know he's super into the different versions of
the original Dracula. It's some sort of a Mexican Dracula,
so you have you have to hunt him down to
ask him about that. Yeah, I'd love to ask him
about the frankl Angela Dracula from nine. That was the
(42:31):
Coppola Dracula from the nineties. Oh, yeah, of course, I'm
a big fan of that one. I'm a big fan
of that one. Yeah, I haven't seen it in a
long time. I think I liked it back then though.
It Yeah, I watched it within the past year and
it definitely holds up. It's it's just like it goes
full like it just goes to you know, ten the
whole time, and I love it because of that. Yeah,
(42:53):
and again Universal cranking these out all these years later,
it's a they have a lot of valuable properties, and
I think they're trying to figure out a way forward
with them. Uh, even after the misstep of the Cruise
Mummy and the Wolfman thing. I know that Paul Feig
has an original story for more Universal monsters and he's great. Uh.
(43:14):
And I didn't see the new Invisible Man movie, but
I heard that it was pretty good and that it
was probably a smarter way forward to try and bring
it into a new modern sensibilities. Have you guys seen
that one? I haven't, but but likewise i'd heard good
things about it. Yeah. Same here. And I think for me,
just getting back to the original Frankenstein just the thought
(43:38):
I sort of kind of ended on after finishing the
movie last night because I mentioned, you know, the theme
of nature versus nurture in the film, and for me
that the what the film is sort of arguing in
its own way is the idea that you know, Frankenstein
wasn't born a monster, he was turned into a monster.
And I think that's best emphasized in again that scene
(44:01):
with the little girl Maria, because it's worth noting that
when Frankenstein first appears to her, she isn't afraid of
him at all. The first thing she says to him is, hey,
do you want to play with me? And so, you
know what it's saying here is that cruelty and meanness
isn't something one is born with. It is something it's
something that is learned in society. And I think that's
(44:24):
a pretty you know, valuable takeaway from a film that's,
you know, ostensibly just an old, cheesy horror film. Yeah.
And I think the other takeaway is if there's a
Fritz in your house, I got to get rid of
him before he turns people bad because it's all Fritz's fault. Yeah,
get better help, get better help. I hated Fritz. Oh god,
(44:44):
he's so annoying. The whip he was whipping him. We're
gonna get a lot of comments on the Fritz. Uh,
the Fritz fan club here, the Fritz, the pro Fritz people,
And don't think there are pro fritzers out there. Be shocked.
If you're an undecided voter that election, than I don't
know what to say. All right, guys, you got anything else? No,
(45:07):
just other than you know, thanks for inviting me on.
I enjoyed having an excuse to to watch these films,
to sort of shoehorn him, you know, into the day
and U this is this was great. Yeah, I'm gonna
I'm gonna watch a couple of more of these. I
think the Wolfman intrigues me. I would uh again, I
have not seen The Wolfman, but of the ones I
have seen, I would say my favorite are Frankenstein, Bride
(45:29):
of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man, which great performance by
Claude Raines as the Invisible Man in that. And I
didn't even realize this till today, but all three of
those were directed by James Whale. So good director, right there.
Sweet all right, dudes, Well thanks a lot, and uh,
thanks you for listening, and we encourage you to go
out and watch old movies. Um, it's a little bit different.
(45:51):
You gotta kind of wrap your head around being a
different experience. Don't bring your modern sensibilities and check those
at the door, and try and appreciate something that was
that laid the groundwork for what was to come. All right, guys. Yeah,
definitely Hi. Everybody. Movie Crash is produced and written by
Charles Bryant and Roel Brown, edited and engineered by Seth
(46:12):
Nicholas Johnson, and scored by Noel Brown here in our
home studio at Pontsty Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.
(00:28):
Hey everybody, and welcome to Movie Crush Halloween Freight Toober continuation.
Here with a little mini round table with Paul and
Robert Lamb. Hey, how's it going, Hey than having Yeah,
everyone knows Paul, I think, uh, Robert, were you on
last Halloween at all? I think last year was was
too crazy and I wasn't able to make it. I
(00:50):
think it was the year before that that podcast partner
Joe and I came on, right, So tell everyone what
you do and what's out there that they can listen to.
That's from you know, your your staple show. Well, I
mean it's pretty much the staple shows. The main thing
right now. We we were doing Invention and we we
kind of sunset that one. So now it's we're focusing
(01:12):
it on stuff to boil your mind. We're trying to
bust that out into a uh if if our boss
has his way six days a week show. So is
that what's going on? That's that's what the talk is.
So you know, we'll probably bust out some you know,
stick to our core episodes that deal with science and culture,
but maybe have some more laid back content as well
(01:35):
that you have part of the weekly offering. All right, well,
this show is all about laid back content, right, I
love it. So, dudes, what we're gonna do is something
that I've never done before, which is to dive into
the world of the universal classic monsters. And we watched
Frankenstein inteen thirty one Frankenstein, which we'll get to shortly,
(01:58):
but uh, we wanted to talk a little bit at
first about this what what it turns out was the
first shared universe in movie history back in starting in
the early nineteen thirties. Um, I guess actually sort of
mid twenties is when it really started, with a Hunchback
of Notre Dame. But they consider the uh I think
(02:20):
the very first horror film ever made to be The
Phantom of the Opera. Yeah, and that was, um a
silent film from nine, which uh, I actually have not.
Have you guys seen it? I have not, so I
can't talk too much. I've never watched it. No. No,
I mean, this is a is a world I don't
know much about. Um. As far as you know. You
(02:43):
read down the laundry list and it's the classics as
Stracula and Frankenstein, and the Mummy, Invisible Man, the Wolfman,
Creature from the Black Lagoon. And it feels like it's
weird for someone who's never really sat down and watched
these old films. Somehow they're still part of the fabric
of my life and as a movie lover. And when
(03:03):
I sat down to watch this from the day, I
was like, wait a minute, but I've never actually seen
any of these. Yeah, it's kind of I was thinking
the same thing about how I'd never seen the original
Frankenstein until I sat down to watch it for this show, uh,
like last night. And uh, and yet there's so much
of it that you just end up absorbing through popular culture.
And in a in a way, these these films and
(03:24):
these visions of these these horror icons are kind of
like the old gods, you know. Uh, even if you
don't actually worship them, he worshiped something that's kind of
passed down from them. What about you, Paul, Had you
seen any of these previously? Yeah? I went through probably
I think maybe around Halloween last year. I went through
and watched a handful of these classic horror films. Uh,
(03:46):
mainly just because I knew, you know, they were well
regarded and Um, they were so famous and I had
never really seen any of them. I think I mentioned
to you guys, I'm as a rule, not much of
a horror guy traditionally, uh, you know, with some exceptions,
but um, I really wanted to check out these just
because they've influenced um so much cinema. So I think
(04:09):
last year when I first sat down to watch them,
I watched, Uh, I think I started I kind of
in chronological ordinance, so I watched Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy,
Invisible Man, and Bride of Frankenstein. So I have not
seen I've not seen Phantom of the Opera or Wolfman
or Creature from Black Lagoon, which I think all those
right there that I've just listed are kind of considered
(04:31):
like the the super classics, even though there's like dozens
more that could be categorized as these universal monsters films.
And um, yeah, I think I was the one who
suggested that we watched Frankenstein for this just because I think, uh,
it's sort of the maybe the best representation of what
these films can be, even though, um, you know, I'm
(04:54):
a fan of all of them, but they are of
varying degrees of quality in my opinion and personally, I
find that um, like the very first ones to be released,
Dracula and The Mummy. I guess Frankenstein was in between those,
But Dracula and the Mummy I remember watching and thinking, man,
these are like okay, but they're very creaky and very
(05:17):
of their time and very much uh. The issue I
think is that these are all very early sound films,
and around this time, movies around this time hadn't quite
figured out how do you sound in film? And so
you even see in Frankenstein's like there's almost no soundtrack
except maybe at the beginning of the end. I know,
(05:38):
and we'll talk about that when it comes up. But
it that was striking to me, how uh. It really
stood out in a lot of moments that I think
we as a modern audience rely on these audio cues
to feel a certain way, to be scared, to be happy. Um,
it's it. There was a hole there for me. However,
(05:59):
I will say that the music in Frankenstein, like the
opening music, I found it kind of jarring in a way.
It's very I don't know if it's horns or what.
So I was kind of thankful that it didn't keep
showing up in the film. Um, I don't. I don't know,
And maybe that's just me and the sort of soundtracks
I tend to steer toward. Yeah, I think it was
just I think there were a few notable scenes where
(06:21):
we're so used to hearing something like the creation scene. Um,
and like I said, it's sort of those cues that
you don't realize as a movie go or that you're
so sort of trained to pick up on, and when
it wasn't there, I was I missed it a little bit,
I think. Yeah, I agree. I think I think Frankenstein,
as opposed to some of the other ones of this time,
benefits a little bit because, Um, as the movie goes on,
(06:44):
there's lots of elements of the soundtrack that do kind
of add atmosphere. I think. You know, during the whole
like wedding sequence, you have the music being played in
the town square sort of like the wedding music, and
then when they go kind of to hunt down Frankenstein,
you just have lots of um atmospheric noise of the
the villagers, like screaming and shouting and the sounds of
(07:07):
the fire crackling. Whereas I think, like I remember watching
especially Dracula and The Mummy. Those stretches of silence are
much longer in those films, and it just makes them
like very awkward, you know, especially because they're recording with
you know, not or at the time probably state of
the art audio equipment. But you know, it's like you
can sort of hear the hiss of the soundtrack of
just the the audio tape, you know, and it's it
(07:30):
just requires a bit of calibration on the viewer, I think,
to sort of orient yourself to, oh, this is just
how these films were at this time. Yeah. I mean,
when you're watching movies made in the nineteen thirties, you
need to watch them through a different lens. You can't
come in as a modern filmgoer and expect to be
riveted in quite the same way. There is a bit of, uh,
(07:52):
there's a bit of an Edward e end quality to
some of this stuff. Uh, And I think some of
it is supposed to have a bit of a sense
of humor, but and in fact even went full on comedy. Um.
I was looking through sort of the history of the
u c M and you mentioned dozens of movies, Paul.
You know, they had their staples like you said with Mummy, Phantom, Dracula, Frankenstein,
(08:14):
Uh Werewolf, Wolfman. But then they I mean there were sequels,
there were there were remakes like six and eight years later. Uh,
they would re release them into the theaters years later,
like the very same movies to great success, And they
were just printing money basically, the profits and the grosses
(08:36):
they were making in today eight dollars is pretty staggering. Yeah,
and like you said, with going full on comedy, like
I think later much later, there's like Abbott and Costello
Frankenstein and stuff like that, which I've not seen, but well,
you know, they were, like I said, they were printing
money in Abbott Costellary huge, so it sort of made
sense now. I was reading a little bit about the
director James Whale, uh Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein,
(09:00):
and the source was looking at pointed out that he
did like to use camp occasionally in his films, and
I didn't pick up on it as much in Frankenstein itself,
but there are moments in Bride of Frankenstein where you
know it'll, um, They'll be this moment with somebody reacting
hysterically to the monster and it. It seems pretty clear
they were going he was going for something over the
top and perhaps comedic at least in those small moments. Yeah. Um,
(09:25):
I think there was one moment in Frankenstein too, and
those two. I looked at a at some somebody did
a ranking online of all the u CM movies and
they ranked Bride of Frankenstein as the best, and Frankenstein
is number two, and I think Dracula was down to
four or five. And I saw where Logosi wanted to play, um,
(09:46):
Henry Frankenstein, uh, you know, Dr Frankenstein, but they said, no,
you've got If you're gonna play anyone, you gotta play
the monster. And apparently they did a makeup test that
was went very very poorly, and so he got heck
out of there and Boris Karlov stepped in to uh
you know and became sort of a legend in the making.
And Karloff is great in it. Uh you know. There
(10:07):
there's some wonderful small moments and just the original Frankenstein
with him as the monster, not so much maybe the
grunting and fire bad stuff, but like that scene where
he's reaching up at the sunlight, like there's something kind
of there's something legitimately haunting about that scene. I've never
seen that before, Like, that's not one of these moments
that I feel like it's been uh, you know, just
(10:28):
launched at you time and time again in popular culture. Yeah,
for sure. What do you think Paul over the top?
I know I agree with with Robert. I think Karloff's
performance adds so much pathos to this character that could
easily go over the top, you know, if done wrongly.
(10:50):
And um, yeah, that moment where he's grasping, reaching towards
the light is one of them. And I do think
also Robert, you mentioned some of the noises he makes,
the grunting and the moaning. I think, you know, those
add actually a lot because it reminds you just how
much he's very much like a child, you know, and
(11:10):
he has sort of a child's mental development, And to me,
they add a lot of My emotional response comes a
lot from some of those those noises he makes. Yeah,
there are times when he's being like harassed by what
is it, Frits, the assistant, and it almost looks like
he's he's like it almost looks like he's cracking up, right,
But then he realized now, this, This must be intentional.
(11:33):
It's kind of like he is this this like he's
even he's like a feral child, you know, he has no,
uh no ability to properly process what's happening to him.
So it makes sense that he's not even making necessarily,
you know, completely human reactions to these things. Let's talk
(11:56):
about Fritz for a second. I think this is one
of the moments that maybe there was some intended comedy
um or maybe not. It's hard to tell, like when
you're watching a movie from but this certainly the moment
where Fritz goes in to steal the brain and there's
and there's two brains. There's good brain and bad brain.
(12:19):
And uh he there's like a gong it sounds like
clanging in the background, and it scares him and he
drops the jar with a good brain in it, and
and this is kind of like, well, I'll get the
other brain. And I laughed out loud. I thought that
was a really kind of fun moment. And I want
to think that they thought it was a fun moment. Oh, surely, surely, Yeah,
that was a great that was great. And also just
(12:41):
the fact that like the brains are set out just
right there, for somebody's steal and it's like very clearly labeled.
This is the good brain, this is the bad brain.
So if anyone wants to steal them, right here they are.
That's pretty great. And Fritz, oh boy, I mean, can
we agree that he's the worst assistant in the history
of assistance? Yeah? Yeah, he he doesn't. He barely does
(13:03):
what he's told um and and then winds up getting
himself killed by the monster because he's harassing it too much,
just harassing it like crazy, he's and even right after
he's told him, he's like, don't use this fire, like,
put the torch down. You're scaring him basically, and he
leaves and he goes right back in there with that
fucking torch. And I'm just like, where did Fritz come from?
(13:24):
Who is this guy? Even? Do we know? Is there
any background on Fritz? Um? You know, I I don't know.
I don't think there's a Fritz in the novel. I mean,
of course, of course, then again, this whole film is
just kind of inspired by Frankenstein has not an attempt
to directly adapt it. He's kind of that that that
archetypical character, that ego or character that we come to
(13:45):
associate with the brand later. But he's not particularly hunchback
he you know, in the sense that we we want
that character to be, like you wanna Peter Lori type
figure in that role, and like the character playing Fritz
isn't even like that asthmatic or um or interesting. Yeah,
I just kept wondering why Fritz had that gig and like,
(14:08):
was he an experiment gone wrong or something possibly in
Dr Frankenstein's pass and he felt like you needed to
keep him around, or also just the fact that the
experiments Henry Frankenstein is performing are let's shall we say,
not above board, and so he probably needs somebody with uh,
(14:30):
you know, morals and a sense of being willing, being
flexible on what he's willing to do, because you know,
at the opening scene, they're literally literally stealing a dead
body that was buried not ten minutes before we we
opened at the funeral and they dig up the body
right after. Yeah, that scene looks so great too, uh
(14:53):
and it really, um really made me appreciate what they
did on stages back then, uh, and sort reminded me
of Edwood, how they would create these big outdoor you know,
these huge piles of dirt and a cemetery and these
beautifully lit um cloud painted cloud backgrounds. Uh. And it
really really does look great. I love that stuff. The
(15:16):
lighting by torch and and lamplight. It all looked really
really good. I thought, Yeah, I think it's so effective.
And even though when you watch it, there's no there's
no mystery, like you know, it's it's clearly a sound stage.
It's it's not attempting necessarily to fool you into thinking
it's they're on a real, real location somewhere, and yet
it still works. And I especially love how how disturbing
(15:40):
the imagery is in that opening sequence because it even
has you know, like the Christian iconography, the crucified Jesus
off to the side, you know, and just the fact
that we're witnessing a funeral and you see them, you
see the guy digging, you know, throwing the dirt on
the grave. Um. I think like for somebody like me
who is Day's like Catholic and going to going to
(16:02):
church every Sunday, and just like the idea of the
rituals and the iconography made this opening scene very effective
for me. Yeah, it was funny to the uh that
pan across and it was just panning across the different
humans at the funeral, and then it was like, oh,
and there's a skeleton on across just hanging out there
(16:22):
in the background. I love those interiors as well, though,
those you know, all the shots of the front Frankenstein's tower. Yeah,
and that that was something that really struck me as um,
something you don't see anymore, like you rarely, especially on
a on a stage. The whole point is you don't
see the ceiling because there is none. It's you know,
(16:43):
lattice work of lights and microphones and stuff like that,
and you never see ceilings of interiors. And they shot
this movie in a very tall way. Um, the tower
stuff looks amazing, these huge the you know, tall laboratory stuff,
and then just the regular interior of I guess it
was Baron Frankenstein's castle or house or whatever. I mean,
(17:05):
all that stuff is just amazing. It's overwhelming how big
it was. And yeah, just the way it's the way
it's shot, in the way it's lit. I think, you know,
James Whale said himself like, it's very indebted to sort
of that German expressionism, you know, the big shadows on
the walls and like you said, the tall sets that
kind of had that gothic architectural style. Yeah, and you
(17:27):
get extreme angles too when you have that kind of height,
and they definitely played a lot with that. And this
is the beginnings of filmmaking, you know, like this is
the stuff that we kind of take it for granted now,
I think. And when you see the origins of these
people that were just figuring this stuff out, it's kind
of cool and definitely appreciated it, you know. Yeah, I
(17:47):
was thinking a lot about that in terms of just
how scary it was and to what extended scary to
a modern viewer. You know, you just have to like
like reminding myself that like this was in a way
like the starting point, like all of all of our
additional scares and stylistic changes and how we scare people
is built upon this. Yeah, totally, man, I mean, this
(18:09):
is the foundation. And I try when I watch a
movie like this, I try to put myself into the
headspace of a theater goer in nineteen thirty one. And
it must have been terrifying, don't you think. Oh? Yeah,
I was. I was looking around at some of the uh,
the the initial responses to it, particularly from the Sensors
because there were various people thought stuff was blasphemous. But
(18:33):
I also ran across this, this wonderful um bit from
the from from the from the Irish Film Censors records
from a censor by the name of John the James Montgomery.
And so it was initially banned in Ireland before than
then being reversed. And they they showed it. But this
guy's ride up said and this. You can find this
on the the online archive of the Irish Film Sensors.
(18:55):
But it says I cannot issue a general certificate licensing
this film for exhibition to audiences containing children or nervous people.
It is a horror and notwithstanding its grotesque absurdity, it's
cruelty and brutality would have a demoralizing effect on many.
I reject the film as being unfit for exhibition, even
(19:15):
to an adult audience, as it panders to the morbid
and unhealthy minded. I love it, man, I would put
that on the poster. I put that podcord on a
poster that will bring in the put some butts in
the seats. That does remind me of uh. I think
it's worth mentioning that this film was considered a pre
code film, meaning the Hollywood Production Code, which UH basically
(19:39):
was responsible for censoring films from the mid thirties to
until about the nineteen fifties. And that's uh, you know
the era when you saw where you know, you couldn't
show anything. You couldn't show sex, you couldn't show a
married couple of sleeping in the same bed, you could
barely show people kissing, stuff like that. And so pre
code was this kind area in like the late teens,
(20:02):
twenties and up to the early thirties where you saw
a lot of these films being made with watching him
now you're like, oh, this is actually some pretty risk
ay stuff for for the time. UM, and this this
film falls into that category. UM, and I think it's
worth mentioning. Robert, you were talking about censorship. I looked
a little bit into that too, and Um, one of
(20:24):
probably the most notable aspects of the censor board UH
coming down on this film was the scene with the
little girl Maria. And basically this is the scene where
he meets the little girl by the lake and they
play and then he picks her up and throws her
into the lake, and it's brutal and this scene was
originally cut by the sensors, at least the end of
(20:47):
it where he throws her in the lake, so I
think it was kept when they're playing, but then when
he actually kills her, they cut that out, And in
fact the footage was considered lost for many years and
it wasn't until the nineteen eighties that I think gives
the British National Film Archive, uh found it somewhere and
since then it's been re reinstated into all subsequent releases
(21:07):
of the film. Could you imagine that day where it's
some like Britt was like we got the shot or
the girl going into the lake. It must have been
fantastic imagining the film without that that ending to that
scene is it's hard because to me that that's probably
my favorite scene of the movie, and it's it's such
sort of like your Rosetta stone for understanding what the
(21:29):
film is after in terms of the themes. Yeah, I
mean that scene is tough. I mean they really lay
it on thick. It's like, let's get this cute little girl,
let's give her a guy damn kitten, and let's have
her holding a handful of daisies, like the only thing
she didn't have was a bluebird on her shoulder. And uh,
you're right though, I think thematically that's the only sort
(21:52):
of connection he makes, human connection he makes in the
whole film, because, like you said, he has this child
like mind, and she shows him the flower and how
she turns it into a boat and how it floats,
and then he does the same, just tosses are in there, man,
and and the presumption he kind of blocks the the shot,
(22:13):
but the presumption is that she drowns, right, Yeah, yeah,
because later you have her father bringing her like soggy
corpse into town with that you know, drawn look on
his face. That was one of the most more disturbing
sequences I think in the movie was was that shot
where he was walking through town, because you see all
the people partying and having a good time, and as
(22:33):
he passes each group, they they all sort of just
even the kids kind of go blank and stop what
they're doing. And uh, yeah, that one actually affected me.
It's and it's a very I think it's done almost
all in one long tracking shot. Yeah, as he enters
the town and like you said, you can hear the
festive music in the background, and as he keeps walking
(22:53):
that music gradually dies out, and yeah, it's it's very
effective for me as well. I did see a thing
too in the Sensors where I mean, you know, it's
the story of Frankenstein and his monster, so there's obviously
a god complex happening. But the line where he very
much on the nose, just straight up says, you know,
I know what it's like to be God, and I
(23:15):
know that line in pre code they were cutting. You know,
different municipalities in different states would cut what they wanted,
and a lot of them apparently wanted to cut that
line because of the blasphemy. I read that. I don't
know if you guys ran across this as well, but
apparently the state of Kansas requested cutting thirty two different
scenes down. And if they had for being you know,
(23:36):
offensive or blasphemiths, etcetera. But if, but they if if
they would have made all these cuts, it would apparently
have cut the film in half. And of course the
film already is a glorious seventy one minutes long. Yeah,
it's pretty pretty lean, well, and that's kind of what's
fun about the story is they jump right in, Um,
you know, it was a time where movies were much simpler,
(23:59):
I think plot wise, and um, I love early on
that they basically he's trying to keep this whole thing
a secret. You know, He's got this big project to
create a living human being, and it's he didn't want
anyone to know about it until they knock on the
door and call him crazy. And then he's like, oh, yeah,
well come down here, I'll show you who's crazy. He
(24:22):
invites everyone down there to see. That was pretty good
and just uh, you know, talking about the length of
this film, a lot of these universal horror films are
in the seventy to eighty minute range, and I think
for any like filmmakers aspiring filmmakers out there, I recommend
watching these just because you can learn a lot for
how to make a very lean film, you know, and
(24:42):
get get all get all your points across in less
than ninety minutes. I love the runtime on this because
I often find myself checking out films that are are
maybe not that great, and I always look at the
run time to just see how much of the stuff
that doesn't work I'm gonna have to endure. And there's
something like, you know, it's it's nice to see, well,
(25:03):
whatever happens, it's only gonna be seventy minutes. Yeah, that's
a good way to look at it. And you know,
that's a good message to filmmakers. We're gonna make a
B movie, make it short. Yeah, you know, you don't
want to have people sitting around for too long. Another
one of my favorite lines was, I think he's talking
to uh who is the his mentor? Uh? Was it Waldman? Yeah? Sorry, Waldman?
(25:26):
Is it Waldman? So he was talking to him and
Waldman is sort of judging him about his sanity, and
he goes, I am astonishingly saying doctor, it sounds like
something our president might say. And you know, I think
Colin Clive's performance in this is worth mentioning because he
carries a lot a lot of the film outside of
(25:47):
Karloff himself. Just with that again, it's an archetype we've
seen much of it, probably derived from this film of
the the sort of mad scientist who's convinced he can
play god and he just you know, Colin Clive has
those intense eyes throughout the whole film that sell a
lot of what the film is doing. Yeah, he has
a he has a nervous intensity in in the in
(26:09):
these films, and I think I've only seen him in
like three things. I also saw him in the excellent
Peter Laurie movie Mad Love. But in all of those films,
he he has this there's this this nervous intensity about him,
you know, And I wonder how much of that is
just like part of Colin Clive himself, because I know
he had a lot of personal uh problems, but it
was it was also just a tremendous actor. But yeah,
(26:31):
he brings a real presence to this. He might have
been on speed too. It's well, you know, mentioning his
personal problems. He's kind of a sad story. He actually
died uh in ninety seven at the age of thirty seven,
so only only a few years after this movie came out.
And um, what I read was, yeah, he was suffered
from chronic alcoholism, uh and I think though he died
(26:53):
from I read complications from tuberculosis, but I guess his
alcohol alcoholism was was a known entity. Um, A lot
of times people talked about him being, um, you know,
inebriated on set and it it uh made him difficult
to work with a lot of the time. But just
kind of a you know, very sad ending for a
for a very talented actor. Yeah, it's um interesting to
(27:17):
think about. I think people think like drugs and alcohol
is sort of a more modern problem. But when you
hear about stuff like this and Legosi and his opium
addiction and whatever other drugs he was doing, um that
you know, I think since there have been drugs and alcohol,
people have been abusing drugs and alcohol. Um. The monster
(27:39):
reveal I thought was really interesting too in this UM
and that was one of the notable parts where I
think I missed a score because he quietly sort of
moon walks into the room, does this turn to reveal
his face. And that's usually when you're like that that
that you have like the big score happening. Uh. But
(28:00):
it was. It was a cool reveal and and the
monster created, you know, the monster makeup was great. It
looked really good. I'm not surprised though that the monster
reveal of having the monster walked backwards into a room
that that didn't catch on, that that didn't become the
iconic moment. It is funny though, Jason, where he is
walking into the room backwards and then jazz handed with
(28:20):
the with the hockey mask. It is funny though, how
um we talked about how these these movies, even if
we haven't seen them, they're so sort of ingrained in
our culture. And I think about Frankenstein in particular, like
any cultural depictions of Frankenstein today are almost always directly
(28:45):
based on this, this Carl Off version of Frankenstein where
you've got the bolts in the neck and the sort
of flat square head. I mean, you think about like
kids with their little trick or treat bags and it
has that face on it or something, and then it's
all indebted to this to have very a very good
moving performance, you know. Yeah, And you know, over the years,
we've seen different Frankenstein's um universal has been they had
(29:10):
the rights to all these monsters, so they've been making
these movies kind of over and over in different iterations
over the years, to varying degrees of success. Lately not much.
I know those Brendan Fraser Mummy movies did pretty good.
But I know that Tom Cruise win bombed that Wolfman
movie they did not too long ago bombed. I remember
the Frankenstein movie with de Niro years ago. I don't
(29:32):
know if you guys saw that. Um, I thought that
it wasn't a great movie, but I thought creature wise,
he looked pretty cool. It was a more realistic take.
It wasn't the bolts to the neck and the big flathead.
It was it looked more like he had been stitched together,
you know, like a skin suit. And that I mean
that one was certainly, of course, more true to the
(29:53):
novel two of having Frankenstein's monster being not just this,
not just this, uh this sort of brute and done,
you know, sort of feral creature, but having an intellect
and and being capable of, you know, of reasoning and
figuring out what was wrong with his plight and raging
against his creator. All these Miltonian qualities, you know, they're
that are very much part of the book. Uh. It
(30:14):
sounds like you've read the book, Robert, Yeah, I read
the book it. Um. I think I was. Weirdly enough,
I was inspired to read it, not by um the
de Niro film, but in there was a TV movie
version of it. It started Patrick Bergen as Dr Frankenstein
and Randy Quaid as the monster. And I have no
(30:35):
idea that holds up today because I haven't seen it
since I was since ninety two or at the time.
I loved it. I was like, down, this is Frankenstein.
Now I'll read the book. I am googling Randy Quaid
Frankenstein as quick as my little fingers will type. Okay,
I remember this one. Wow. Interesting. I think it came
on T and T back in the day. It looks
(30:58):
like he's wearing a fuzzy uh like hairsuit. Very interesting,
like a big foot suit. Yeah, and on Paul if
you look up the de Niro Frankenstein. Yeah, it's pretty
pretty chilling. Um. I mean, that's definitely a more realistic
take on what someone might look like. But I don't know, Man,
at the end of the day, I'm going with karl Off.
(31:18):
It's so iconic. I mean, that's what Herman Munster was
based on, like a TV show that Robert and I
probably grew up watching. I don't know if you watched it, Robert,
but I certainly did. Uh. And there's something about that
that flathead in those bolts Man kids are still dressing
up like that. Like you said, I never understood the
flat head though, Like I was talking to my wife
(31:40):
about this and she was like, why the flathead, And
I like, I don't know, Like you know that like
crodes are bolts. Makes sense, But yeah, why the flathead
is it? Because uh, you know, he had to probably
he inserted a brain into a skull, and maybe I
always thought maybe either that made the head bowls or
maybe the top. But the head is supposed to be
(32:01):
like from another body or something, and it's sort of
some weird you know, trying to meld two different skulls together.
I don't know. Or maybe it's just an aesthetic choice. Yeah, yeah,
I never really thought about that. I could see maybe
if they put in the brain, like cut off the
top of the head, put the brain in, and then
the rest is I don't know, Plywood, I'm not sure.
(32:26):
If they put Fritz in charge of the covering it up,
that's the problem Fritz. I gotta say I hated Fritz
so much. It was very satisfying to see him swinging
by his neck when they finally come in there and
sees that the monster had gotten a hold of him,
and it's it's you know, Fritz is the very first
person who uh basically is mean to Frankenstein or to
(32:49):
excuse me, to the monster. Always important to remember that
Frankenstein is a scientist. The monster is the monster. But
but you know, when we first meet the monster, we
it's that shot we mentioned earlier of him holding his
hands up to the sunlight. And then immediately after that,
Fritz comes in with a torch and just sort of
harasses him, like you said. And you know, again, if
(33:10):
we think about Frankenstein's monster of having the sort of
intellect of of a young child, of course he's going
to react adversely to that. And that's I think plays
into what for me watching the film this time, the
sort of if you want to boil down to one
important theme, it's sort of the idea of nature versus
nurture and how you know, even the film seems to
(33:31):
say even though the monster is created from the brain
of a murderer and stuff like that, he hasn't faded
to be a murderer himself. In fact, the only reason
he he kills people is because he is attacked first.
He never you know, draws first blood, so to speak. Right, Yeah,
that was another funny moment too, though, when he is
(33:51):
talking out about the brains with Waldman and he that's
when he reveals he was like, well, no, the only
brain that was stolen was the bad criminal brain and
and the look that goes on on Frankenstein's face and
he's kind of like, I'm sure it will be okay.
Basically he kind of displays it off like, oh, I
didn't know that, but it'll be fine, right. And I
(34:15):
also love how cranky uh the baron Frankenstein is his dad.
Oh yeah, the old man good, he's great, and um,
it's so weird at the end. Now I understand that
they the ending is the upbeat ending that the studio
insisted on. But after all of this, the these struggles
between mad scientists and monster, Like, we ended with that
(34:37):
weird walky scene where he's out there just having a
bit of champagne with the with the the help. Uh,
and it's like, what why is that? Why is that
the moment we end on? It was a very weird
less shot. Um, it was like tin tin handmaids basically
giggling uh and trying to serve wine to the recuperating
(34:59):
franken'st It was very strange. Yeah, and the old Man's like, oh,
he doesn't need it anyway, give me that glass. It
is funny though, because that very last moment he takes
the glass and he gives a toast and I think
he says something like a toast to my to a
future grandchild or something like that. And it's kind of
this actually kind of ironic note because if you think about,
(35:20):
you know, Frankenstein's desire to play god, he sort of
already had. He creates his own son, so to speak,
and it's sort of this ironic moment where it's like, oh,
to a future son, even though Frankenstein had to kill
his firstborn in a sense that does work, could Paul, Uh,
Let's talk a little bit about that whole last. That
(35:43):
whole last like fifteen minutes is UM for me kind
of the truly terrifying part of this movie UM, starting
from when I mentioned earlier when Maria's dad brings her
body back through the town square, which is also kind
of fun to think about that being shot in you know,
burb Bank on a back lott in Burbank. Um. But
(36:03):
from that moment on it is truly scary UM with
the torch wielding mob and those dogs, the bloodhound sparking
and just the cacophony of all that noise and the
hunt for uh Frankenstein's monster that ends in the burnt
in his like burning at that mill it's all really
scary to me. Yeah, the whole like just the the
(36:26):
mob mentality of the situation, even though I guess, you know,
you can you can certainly make an argument that they
have a righteous cause and there's a an actual monster
murdering people, but still it's it's I I found it
a little unsettling to watch, you know, all all these
these people come together and just grab torches and head out,
and then weirdly enough, like Victor Frankenstein is there, like, yeah,
(36:46):
let's go get him, and nobody's mad at him. He's
the one who made the monster, but he's just fallen
in with the mob. It never really does come back
to him, does it. Well, that's what's interesting too, is
I want to hear what you guys think about at
this but it's not really explored in any depth in
the film, but the sort of the politics that play
between the baron Frankenstein's family and the rest of the
(37:10):
town because it's taking place in in some kind of
like Bavarian Alps region, it looks like, and if he's
the baron, then he's the wealthy landowner and then these
are all the peasants, and the fact that you know,
as you said, when they bring the girl's body, they
go to Baron Frankenstein's house because it's like, oh, he's
(37:33):
the one in charge, He's going to decide what we do.
And yeah, you know, it's ultimately Henry Frankenstein's fault, if
you know, for creating this monster that led to all this,
and yet he's never uh, he never gets any sort
of punishment or come up, it's because of it. Yeah,
that's a good point. Um, maybe that happens later. They
they do at least allude to it a little bit
(37:54):
in Bride of Frankenstein, which you know, which which definitely
grabs some more elements from in the original novel and
uses those. But there, I think there's a scene where um,
essentially the villain of that piece, this sort of rival
matter mad scientist uh named Dr Praetorious. I think he is.
He kind of threatens um frankens Stein by by letting
(38:17):
him know that he might he might let the townspeople
know that he's responsible, if I'm remembering that correct. Interesting,
So what is the story there? Does he create? Uh?
Is there Frankenstein's monster? Is it just the woman version?
It's both, So it's it's kind of a situation where
Frankenstein is He's like, I'm not doing this anymore. But
then the mad or mad scientist Dr Pretorius shows up
(38:40):
and he's like, no, we're doing this. We're totally doing this.
I've got my own experiments. They're going great, what you're
doing is great. Let's make a woman and m and
so that's kind of what happens. So it's weird with
science a little bit. Yeah, it's it's it's weirder and
and I think it is the superior film. Um it has.
(39:00):
It also brings in one of the other great humanizing
moments for the monster from the novel, when when the
monster lives with a blind man for a period of time. Right,
I read the novel. Took a a literature of horror
class at in college at Georgia as an English major,
and I read, uh that, and I read brom Stoker's Dracula,
(39:23):
and then I think it was those are the only
two novels, and then it was a bunch of short
stories and stuff. But um, I remember really enjoying Frankenstein.
I thought it was good. It's good to read. It's
a wonderful novel and it's worth noting The full title
of the novel is Frankenstein Colin or the Modern Prometheus. Yeah,
it's a great, great title totally. Um, let's jump back
(39:44):
to the end of the movie though. Uh. When they
I thought it was a really good special effect. However
they did it when they threw when the monster threw
Frankenstein off of the mill, and he caught himself on
the windmill blade, which ended up sort of saving him
from probably being thrown to his death. But I'm not
sure how they did that, but it looked pretty good.
(40:05):
It looked to me like a like a dummy that
they threw, I think, so. I mean, I could be wrong.
I thought it looked pretty good, though, I mean it
looks I'm not saying it didn't look good. Yeah, but yeah,
but I'm still kind of shy. I was kind of
shocked that he still survived after hitting the windmill played
and then falling again to the ground, and I was like, oh,
(40:26):
he must be dead. Okay, he's alive. Uh. And there
was a lot of great firework, um, which I'm sure
was not safe at all. Oh God, can you imagine. Yeah,
there's that early scene we were talking about where Fritz
wants to burn him with the torch and Frankenstein comes
in and scuffles with him. Like I was watching the
torch fall and it catches part of the set on
(40:46):
fire visibly, you know, and you just think, oh my god,
this would never fly today. Yeah. I kept waiting. I
think I had um anxiety, fire anxiety, especially in that
last scene with all those torches, all those men and
they were sort of willy nilly with them, the way
they were wielding them, and when they're actually burning the mill.
(41:07):
I mean, that's a terrifying scene. And I'm trying to
imagine a nineteen thirties audience. It must have been horrible.
I don't know anything to add to that. I agree,
you agree, Yeah, I mean that's everything I've got on
my list. Did you guys have anything else good movie
worth watching? Oh? Definitely. I do feel like I want
(41:27):
to stress anyone out there that hasn't seen them to
to try and watch the first two, uh, just because
I do feel like like there's just so much about
the first Frankenstein that has again just sort of been
spoiled through culture, and you're just kind of you anticipate
most of it as it occurs on screen, but but
you have Bride to Frankenstein adds just some additional weirdness
(41:49):
and some additional intrigue to the basic premise, and and
sometimes you find them packaged together. I know, um to
watch this one. Um My podcast partner Joe lent me
his box that of Blue Rays, Universal Classic Monsters, the
Essential Collection, And yeah, it's really gorgeous set. And it has, uh,
it has like several of these films we've been mentioning today,
(42:10):
Original Mummy, the Wolf Band, Phantom Creature. We should have
had Joe in here too. I feel bad. Now. Well,
if you know he's super into the different versions of
the original Dracula. It's some sort of a Mexican Dracula,
so you have you have to hunt him down to
ask him about that. Yeah, I'd love to ask him
about the frankl Angela Dracula from nine. That was the
(42:31):
Coppola Dracula from the nineties. Oh, yeah, of course, I'm
a big fan of that one. I'm a big fan
of that one. Yeah, I haven't seen it in a
long time. I think I liked it back then though.
It Yeah, I watched it within the past year and
it definitely holds up. It's it's just like it goes
full like it just goes to you know, ten the
whole time, and I love it because of that. Yeah,
(42:53):
and again Universal cranking these out all these years later,
it's a they have a lot of valuable properties, and
I think they're trying to figure out a way forward
with them. Uh, even after the misstep of the Cruise
Mummy and the Wolfman thing. I know that Paul Feig
has an original story for more Universal monsters and he's great. Uh.
(43:14):
And I didn't see the new Invisible Man movie, but
I heard that it was pretty good and that it
was probably a smarter way forward to try and bring
it into a new modern sensibilities. Have you guys seen
that one? I haven't, but but likewise i'd heard good
things about it. Yeah. Same here. And I think for me,
just getting back to the original Frankenstein just the thought
(43:38):
I sort of kind of ended on after finishing the
movie last night because I mentioned, you know, the theme
of nature versus nurture in the film, and for me
that the what the film is sort of arguing in
its own way is the idea that you know, Frankenstein
wasn't born a monster, he was turned into a monster.
And I think that's best emphasized in again that scene
(44:01):
with the little girl Maria, because it's worth noting that
when Frankenstein first appears to her, she isn't afraid of
him at all. The first thing she says to him is, hey,
do you want to play with me? And so, you
know what it's saying here is that cruelty and meanness
isn't something one is born with. It is something it's
something that is learned in society. And I think that's
(44:24):
a pretty you know, valuable takeaway from a film that's,
you know, ostensibly just an old, cheesy horror film. Yeah.
And I think the other takeaway is if there's a
Fritz in your house, I got to get rid of
him before he turns people bad because it's all Fritz's fault. Yeah,
get better help, get better help. I hated Fritz. Oh god,
(44:44):
he's so annoying. The whip he was whipping him. We're
gonna get a lot of comments on the Fritz. Uh,
the Fritz fan club here, the Fritz, the pro Fritz people,
And don't think there are pro fritzers out there. Be shocked.
If you're an undecided voter that election, than I don't
know what to say. All right, guys, you got anything else? No,
(45:07):
just other than you know, thanks for inviting me on.
I enjoyed having an excuse to to watch these films,
to sort of shoehorn him, you know, into the day
and U this is this was great. Yeah, I'm gonna
I'm gonna watch a couple of more of these. I
think the Wolfman intrigues me. I would uh again, I
have not seen The Wolfman, but of the ones I
have seen, I would say my favorite are Frankenstein, Bride
(45:29):
of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man, which great performance by
Claude Raines as the Invisible Man in that. And I
didn't even realize this till today, but all three of
those were directed by James Whale. So good director, right there.
Sweet all right, dudes, Well thanks a lot, and uh,
thanks you for listening, and we encourage you to go
out and watch old movies. Um, it's a little bit different.
(45:51):
You gotta kind of wrap your head around being a
different experience. Don't bring your modern sensibilities and check those
at the door, and try and appreciate something that was
that laid the groundwork for what was to come. All right, guys. Yeah,
definitely Hi. Everybody. Movie Crash is produced and written by
Charles Bryant and Roel Brown, edited and engineered by Seth
(46:12):
Nicholas Johnson, and scored by Noel Brown here in our
home studio at Pontsty Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Movie Crush News
Host
Chuck Bryant
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