Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Son of Frankenstein

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the classic 1939 Universal horror picture “Son of Frankenstein,” starring Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill. (originally published 10/11/2024)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Today's episode originally published ten eleven, twenty twenty four. It
is our episode in the nineteen thirty nine universal horror
picture Son of Frankenstein. This is a classic. This one's
a lot of fun and it's you know, revisiting this
episode is perhaps necessary because this Friday we'll be discussing

(00:27):
Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, you know, another classic universal horror
picture from the same time period. So without further ado,
let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb,
and this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
And hey friends, if I sound a little bit unusual today,
I am record in a different place than usual. My
audio setup's a little different. So if if you hear
anything different, that's the reason why. In fact, I'm recording
from my secret laboratory because I'm so excited today we're
going to be talking about the nineteen thirty nine universal
monster film Son of Frankenstein. This was a great pick.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Rob, Yeah, this is a lot This film is a
lot of fun and for Weird House Cinema, it's our
return to the nineteen thirties. This is only the fourth
film from the nineteen thirties that we've talked about on
the show. We previously talked about nineteen thirty five's Mad Love,
then nineteen thirty two's Doctor X, and then most recently
last year, I believe nineteen thirty five's Bride of Frankenstein.

(01:40):
Today's film is the sequel to that motion picture.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
The treequel, if you will. And this is really exciting
because Bride of Frankenstein is one of my favorite horror movies.
If you've heard the episode we did on that, a
lot of it was just gushing about how much I
loved the film, And I had always read that the
universal follow up, Son of Frankenstein was a lot better
than you might exp from a third movie in the series.
Until this week, I had never seen it, and Wow,

(02:05):
I was blown away. I love Son of Frankenstein. Not
only is it great, not only is it worthy of
the Frankenstein line. I think I probably like it better
than the original Frankenstein as well. I think it's not
quite at the level of Bride, but it's like the
very next tier down. It might be now my third
or perhaps even second favorite universal monster movie.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, it's really quite a testament to how good it is,
you know, because we've talked about the problem with sequels,
the challenge of sequels in the past, like how do
you capture that magic? And like most most films don't
work the first time around, But then to actually strike
gold and then come back and equal or exceed the
previous film, like that's quite an accomplishment. And then to

(02:48):
have the gall to come back and do a third one,
you know, the odds are not with you. So I
have heard from a lot of people that have said, yeah,
this one is better than the original Frankenstein and it's
more fun or whatever, you know, caveats you want to
put on it. But yeah, I would agree it doesn't
really top the glory of Bride. But and then at

(03:10):
the same time, it also, you know, it doesn't really
do much in the way of digging back through unused
morsels from Mary Shelley's novel. It doesn't dive too deep
into the themes of the original work, but we do
end up with a very entertaining, at times very comedic,
but also weird, fresh film that is still a logical

(03:32):
continuation of the series, full of great sets, great cinematography,
and a lot of fun performances.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, I would agree. I think it probably doesn't have
as much in the way of profound themes as the
first two movies do because they interact more with the
original source material. Like you were saying, there's not much
of Mary Shelley in Son of Frankenstein, and yet it's
just fantastic. It's just a wild, fun ride, full of

(03:58):
zany characters in great scenes, great dialogue, and Bella Lagosi
in a performance I can't believe I've never seen before.
Like having been a Bela Lagosi fan, I don't know
how I was without his igor in this movie. It's
one of his best ever.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Absolutely just terrific performance. And it's not the only scene
stealing performance in this picture. Really, my only complaint, and
it's a small one, concerning Son of Frankenstein, is that
it maybe feels a bit long for a nineteen thirties
monster film. It clocks in at an hour and thirty
nine minutes, whereas the original Frankenstein was an hour in
ten and Bride was an hour and fifteen. As my

(04:37):
wife observed, she watched it with me, as did my son.
They could have maybe done with a few cuts to
the many hatch and door opening scenes and maybe got
that runtime down just a little bit.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
I agree that it's a little bit longer than you
might expect, but at the same time it feels pretty
tight to me. I agree. Yeah, there are a few
like hatch opening scenes, I guess, but it is not
padded out. I mean, this is not it conquered the
world with driving scenes and so forth. We're not spending
time parking the car.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Right, and it is a great hatch. Just what this discuss? Yeah,
quick schedule change. Note you might be some of you
might be wondering why are y'all talking about this nineteen
thirties horror movie. Aren't you supposed to be talking about
a nineteen nineties Cthulhu movie. Well, we had to switch
up in the schedule, but don't worry, and we'll come
back in the future with some other Cthulhu mythos movie
to make up for it. All right, So let's get

(05:31):
back into Son of Frankenstein. Am My elevator pitch for
this one is just Frankenstein. The next generation.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Wait in that analogy is Basil Rathbone, the Picard or
is he more the riker.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Hmmm, that's a great question. We'll have to chew on
that one as we received. All right, let's hear just
a little bit of that classic trailer audio. I think
we have some fun narration in this.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Years ago in the barony of Frankenstein, a monster created
by man stalk to the country, ming and killing. In time, Frankenstein,
maker of the monster, died, the monster disappeared. Now after
twenty years, the son of Frankenstein returns and fear grips
the village. And you, a man tainted by the blood

(06:20):
of his father, can forget his human soul and carry
on the diabolical work of the Frankenstein.

Speaker 5 (06:28):
As a man, I should destroy him, but as a scientist,
I should do everything in my power to bring him
back to conscious life.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Benson Town on the generator.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
All right, So if you're excited for this one, now,
if you've never seen Son of Frankenstein and you want
to watch it, or you want to rewatch it before
getting into the rest of this episode, well we encourage
you to do so. This is a universal monster movie,
so it is widely available in physical and digital formats
of all kind, including Universals Frankenstein Complete Legacy Collection box

(07:07):
set that's eight movies plus extras. For folks looking to
stream it in the States, I believe it's currently on Peacock,
but you know, check that out for yourself and see
if you can find it somewhere that you like.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
I streamed it on the Big River and the quality
was good.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Okay, all right, I watched this one on the big screen,
which is pretty exciting. I don't think I've actually done
that for a weird house cinema before. I saw it
with friends and family at Atlanta's Historic Plaza Theater, presented
as part of the Silver Screens Spook Show series. It's
pretty great in two major ways. So first of all,
Professor Morte and company come out and they do this

(07:49):
fun pre show full of gags and puppets and terrible jokes,
a whole lot of fun. And we caught them the matinee,
so it was all kid friendly, very halloweeny. And second
late it's a real I thought it was just a
real treat to see a nineteen thirty nine film in
a movie theater that opened in nineteen thirty nine.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, I'm not sure if Son of Frankenstein ever played
at the Plaza Back in thirty nine, I looked around.
I couldn't find any really good resources for this kind
of research. But I'll tell you in twenty twenty four,
it looked just tremendous on the big screen, Like it's
just such a well shot picture and the film quality,
and it's been so beautifully restored. It's just just pristine.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
The Plaza really is one of the treasures of Atlanta,
So it is so wonderful.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, and so yeah, if you're visiting Atlanta or you
live here, go check out the Plaza. Check them out
at Plaza Atlanta dot com. They have lots of fun programming,
including Silver screamspook shows. There's also Plaza Drome that's a
partnership that they have with Video Drome. And next week alone,
the week following the original publication of this episode, they're

(08:59):
playing a mc Brothers Bollywood horror film and Beyond the
Black Rainbow. So it's you know, if you like our
show and you have access to this theater, there are
plenty of reasons to go there.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
They are really operating on your frequency, rob.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
I know they they won't they really won't be back
in I'm going to get back in alright. Shall we
get into the people behind this picture?

Speaker 4 (09:26):
Ah?

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah, I guess we should. Now. One thing that you
might assume if you haven't seen the movie yet and
you just look at the creative names behind it, you
might assume a big problem would be where's James Whale? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (09:41):
I think that that is one of the things that's
often pointed out in at least reviews, if not criticism
of the film is we have to move on from
James Whale at this point, and it's another director taking
the film. It is Roland V. Lee, who lived eighteen
ninety one through nineteen seventy five, an American director and
an established name at this point, having directed since I

(10:02):
Believe nineteen twenty and written, produced nearly and produced nearly
as long. This was his only horror film, however, coming
off of a number of historical adventures and comedies, including
nineteen thirty fours The Count of Monte Cristo, nineteen thirty
seven's Love from a Stranger that would starred Basil Rathbone
as well, nineteen thirty nine's Tower of London, which had
both Rathbone and Carloff in it, and his last directorial

(10:27):
credit was nineteen forty five's Captain Kidd, after which he
retired to run a ranch. But I believe he returned
at one point in nineteen fifty nine to produce and
do some writing on a film called The Big Fisherman.
Also he was a founding member of the Screen Directors Guild.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Incredibly big shoes to Phil coming in after James. Well,
but I don't know. To me, this movie feels directed
with extreme confidence. There is just such a strong, steady
storytelling hand at the helm, with a great sense of humor.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah, And it's all the more amazing when you read
a little bit about the problems with the screenplay and
the challenges with the screenplay running into this. So the
screenplay is credited to Willis Cooper, who lived eighteen ninety
nine through nineteen fifty five. This is a guy who
created an old time radio horror show called lights Out

(11:17):
that ran from thirty four through forty seven. His other story,
screenwriting and dialogue credits include a few Mister Moto movies
and the nineteen thirty nine serial The Phantom Creeps. Now Again,
son of Frankenstein apparently had a lot of script problems.
Cooper's initial script was rejected, and Lee had numerous issues
with the script as production proceeded. Apparently even as they

(11:38):
were shooting it. They were apparently still writing pages minutes
before the film rolled, and Lee himself was in there
doing some of the writing uncredited. So I mean that
in some pictures that would be a recipe for chaos
and disaster. But it works here, and we'll get into
some of the ways that it works really well as
we proceed' wild.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
It doesn't feel like that. It feels tight. It feels
tight and well considered, and all the scenes feel constructed
with the overall arc of the story in mind.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, and it could be based on what I was reading,
it could be that, like, it wasn't a situation where
they necessarily threw everything out. They kind of kept to
the basic bones. They'd shift characters, they'd change characters, but
you know they maybe they were making just very deliberate
choices every time they changed something and made sure that
they weren't just completely jackknifing the vehicle.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
I'm seriously impressed.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
We'll mention in passing here that, of course, this is
ultimately based on the work of Mary Shelley, who lived
seventeen ninety seven through eighteen fifty one, the English writer
responsible for a good seven novels and multiple short stories.
But her first eighteen eighteens, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus,
this is the one that made her a legend. This
is the book that kind of gave birth to so

(13:02):
much in gothic horror and certainly science fiction. It's almost
impossible to overstate the importance of this book in general.
And of course without this book we wouldn't have this movie.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, and we talk at link about the importance of
Mary Shelley in the history of science fiction and horror
in the episode we did on Bride of Frankenstein, So
check that one out too. In fact, I think that's
gonna be rerunning soon, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, it is rerunning this October. I'm not sure where
it's gonna fall on either side of this publication, but
look out for it. You don't have to do too
much of digging in order to listen to our Bride
episode again.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, but big, big Mary Shelley fan here.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, it's a tremendous book. If you haven't read it,
you don't be afraid of that publication date. It stands
the test of time, all right. There are a number
of other names that we have discussed on the show before,
some in Bride of Frankenstein, and of course the big
one literally is the monster himself, played by Boris Karloff,
who lived eighteen eighty seven through nineteen sixty nine. I

(14:04):
won't go into as much detail here since we have
covered Karloff multiple times for different films that he's appeared in,
but British actor born William Henry Pratt Boris Karloff was
his stage name. His credits go all the way back
to nineteen nineteen, and he already had a long filmography
by the time of nineteen thirty one S Frankenstein came around,

(14:24):
which of course really put him on the map in
the horror genre and helped make him a legend. And
he appeared in various other horror films as well, which
is nineteen thirty four's The Black Cat, nineteen thirty two
is The Mummy. This, of course is the last time
that he appears as Frankenstein's Monster in a feature film.
I think he would do like a little one offs

(14:45):
here for TV a handful, but this is the last
time he truly played the Monster.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Now, I will have almost exclusively positive things to say
about this movie, but I think one fair criticism you
could make about Son of Frankenstein is that it signals,
in a way a retreat from the complexity and the
pathos that were imbued on the monster in both of
the two previous films, In the original and then especially

(15:14):
in Bride, where the monster becomes so interesting and pitiable,
and you know, you get that section in the middle
of the movie where he lives with the old man
in the cottage, and then you get his conclusion at
the end when he decides that we belong dead. The
version of Karloff's Monster that appears in Son of Frankenstein

(15:36):
is very psychologically stripped down compared to that. I mean,
he has some interesting moments, and you can see Karloff
really giving the character, probably more than is even on
the page. Like there is a scene where he confronts
Basil Rathbone for the first time and he reaches up
as if he's deciding whether to kill him or to

(15:59):
embrace him when he doesn't know which he should do.
And so Karloff is I think bringing his own stuff.
It almost feels like to what's there I think maybe
one of the weakest things about the movie though, is
that they did away with a lot of the complexity
that the Monster earned already in this series.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, I absolutely agree. So we don't see any of
these moments. Aside from the scene you highlighted, there aren't
really any scenes of like real transcendence with the creature.
Both of the previous films had some really haunting moments
that you might forget if you haven't seen the film
in a while. I'll also note that the other big

(16:38):
difference with the Monster this time around still looks great.
Makeup still is tremendous, Karloff still shines through. But the
monster also has this big furry coat on which, you know,
it's a different look.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
It's he's winnerized, he's he's dressed like Trumpy from Pod People. Yeah,
you know, he's got that that furry coat.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
All right. Next up, we have Baron Wolf von Frankenstein.
This is the titular son of Frankenstein, played by Basil Rathbone.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
You know, there are multiple sons of Frankenstein in the movie, though,
because Basil Rathbone plays the son of Henry Frankenstein. Henry
being the movies version of Victor Frankenstein from the novel
and then also Wolf Frankenstein. Basil Rathbone has a son
in the movie, Peter Frankenstein, who is his son. And

(17:29):
then there's also discussion of whether or not the monster
should be thought of as Henry Frankenstein's other son. So
is the monster Basil Rathbone's brother. So it's just a
SunFest Sons Abound.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
They could have called it Sons of Frankenstein and that
would that would have been a great title. I don't know. Yeah,
So anyway, this is this is the biological son of
the original Frankenstein again, Barren Wolf von Frankenstein played by
Basil Rathbone. Basil Rathbone lived eighteen ninety two through nineteen

(18:03):
sixty seven. Famed British actor who we've previously discussed on
the show for his roles in nineteen sixty two's The
Magic Sword in nineteen sixty six is Queen of Blood.
But that's a that's a much older Basil Rathbone that
we were talking about there. Here we get to see
him in his prime, you know, coming off of a
lot of like swashbuckling stuff. You know, he's even got

(18:25):
that nice pencil thin mustache going on. Yeah, and he
gets to buckle some swash late in the picture, you
know he does he swings yeah, so it you know,
it's it's impossible not to compare his performance to, of course,
that of Colin Clive in the previous two films who

(18:45):
played the original Victor Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Clive of course was movies.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yes, sorry. Colin Clive was tremendous. He had just such
amazing frantic energy. But Basil Rathbone, I think that's a
pretty great job getting somewhere near that level without being
because he's also not supposed to completely embrace the madness
of his father, or at least not immediately, Like that's

(19:13):
part of the substance of the film. It's like, to
what extent are you going to step into your father's
shoes and be the man he was for you know,
good or for bad?

Speaker 3 (19:23):
M Besil Rathbone does well with this role because it's
written in a way that you might say contains contradictions.
Like ultimately he's a quite sympathetic character, and yet he
behaves in ways that are really not I don't know,
if you like just described his scene to scene behavior.
A lot of it is not very sympathy earning the

(19:44):
way he is just so defensive about his father's legacy,
and he's dismissive of you know, oh, all these peasants
afraid of monsters. Bah. He is defensive and shows insufficient
concern for others at many times, and you could argue
as even vainglorious to some ext and yet in the
end you don't think of him as one of those
protagonist villains. Ultimately you're on his side.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, yeah, and he you know, there's a nice lead
up to him doing any mad science. You know, it
starts off more as a gentlemanly curiosity about these things,
and then it becomes increasingly personal and obsessive. Yeah all,
but oh, as we previously alluded to, this film also
features the legendary Bela Lagosi, who lived eighteen eighty two

(20:29):
through nineteen fifty six. This, of course, is the Hungarian
American actor and classic horror icon, best known for his
portrayal of Dracula in the nineteen thirty one Universal Horror film,
which of course came on the heels of a Broadway
play based on the novel Dracula from I Believe twenty seven,
and his success as Draca led to a number of

(20:51):
additional horror films. This is interesting though. One of the
things about Legosi's career though, of course, is there's often
an une than an even downward trajectory. You know, there
are a number of issues that kind of derailed his career,
especially late in life, and in fact, this film apparently
occurs at a point of decline as well. His part

(21:15):
in this apparently wasn't even in the original screenplay, and
when the character of Igor that's with a why was
initially added, it was a very small part for apparently
little pay, almost an insulting level of pay, many thought,
for someone of Lagosi's stature and his talent. And so
the director the story goes Lee here stood up for Legosi,

(21:37):
and as much of the shooting script was again being
written and prepared last minute, he was able to continually
beef up Legosi's role, giving him more and more dialogue,
making his character more and more important, because ultimately, instead
of getting like just a Toady or a Hinchman here,
or just a you know, sort of like the crazy
old hermit character, instead we end up positioning Bella Lugosi's

(22:01):
Igor as really the central antagonist of the picture.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Oh, I can't believe this movie was ever envisioned without him.
He's the star of the show. It is a scene
stealer every time. Every time he comes on screen, I
would just light up, like, Oh, here he is again.
I'm so excited. And his scenes are great again. It
does not have the feeling of something thrown together at
the last minute. His scenes feel like the core texture

(22:28):
of this movie.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, and I mean it even brings up some deeper
concepts about the overarching themes of Frankenstein, which we'll get into. Yeah.
He's yeah, so he has some of the trappings of henchman,
but he's also like a satanic antagonist, a tempter that
is luring Barren Wolf von Frankenstein into deeper experimentation with

(22:53):
his father's legacy.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah. And there are just so many moments where it's
the perfect pairing of an ominous, understated line in terms
of the words with Legosi's predatory delivery, like that part
where he's talking about how the monster is his friend
and then he just says he does things for me.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Those things are murder, as we will learn.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
But yeah, I mean, if Legosi was actually feeling I
don't know demeaned or depressed about this role. It does
not come through in the movie. He seems like he
is having a ball.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, that's my understanding is that he he was greatly
appreciative of everything that Lee did for him here and
giving him more to work with and letting him go
beyond just mere you know, villain stuff, getting into comedy,
Like there's there's some really funny moments from this character
and yeah, us other characters in this picture.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
When he coughs on the guy in the testimony scene,
that was laughing so hard. Sorry I cough.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
Apparently in the earlier versions of the script, the inspector
was the primary antagonist.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
Hmm, that's funny because the Inspector comes off quite honorable
in the final telling.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yes, and is also just a tremendous scene stealing performance
as well. This is Inspector Krogue, played by the great
Lionel Atwell, who lived eighteen eighty five through nineteen forty six.
This is an English and American actor of stage and
screen who is perhaps best remembered today for his roles
in various horror films, because he was in some pretty

(24:30):
notable ones, including nineteen thirty two's Doctor x, which we
talked about on the show, The original nineteen thirty three,
The Mystery of the Wax Museum, as well as assorted Frankenstein, Dracula,
and Sherlock Holmes movies of the era. He even got
to play Professor Moriarty at one point. He was active
in Universal Horror for quite a bit there. The personal

(24:52):
scandal ended up relegating him to mostly smaller roles in
smaller pictures for the last several years of his life
and career. But he's great here portraying this proud and
proper inspector who lost an arm to the monster as
a child. And this is one of those performances where
every scene involving the character is worth watching for all

(25:13):
sorts of just little performance details, like little momentary shifts
in his facial expression, as well as all these grandiose
manipulations of his prosthetic arm. So between this performance and
Legosi's Igor performance, oh man, it's just this is such
a feast.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yeah, packing in the oddball characters, because again, you might
get the wrong impression about this guy from the role
he plays in the plot that he's like the you know,
the arm of the law. He's the police investigator, and
he's portrayed as mostly honorable and upright, and yet he
is eccentric to the max. Like every scene he does

(25:51):
something really weird.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, there are a lot of gags with the prosthetic arm,
but they're not they're not like super for Goofyure gags,
like they're all very much in character for this very
prim and proper man who believes that if not for
this accident, not an accident, if not for this attack
that he suffered as a child, he would be a general.

(26:15):
He would be he would be a man of far
more importance in the world. But he still holds himself
up as if he does have this this true purpose
in life.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
You know, if not for Boris Karloff, I would be
Napoleon yea. And there are these these little moments, like
the scene where he does the little heel click at
Basil Rathbone and Bazil Rathbone tries to do it back
at him, but he just stares at him because like
Rathbone didn't do it right, so he has to click
his heels again.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
So good, all right, let's see Son of Frankenstein also
has a wife, and this is an American wife. Elsa
von Frankenstein played by Josephine Hutchinson.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Elsa von Frankenstein doesn't sound like a character written as
an American.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah, it might have. This is one of those things
that might have changed as they were moving through the
production process. So she's played by American actress Josephine Hutchinson,
perhaps best known for supporting roles in nineteen fifty nine
is North by Northwest, and she'd previously co starred in
the nineteen thirty four musical Happiness Ahead. That was her
first feature film. Coming off of stage work. She worked

(27:33):
a lot on TV up until nineteen seventy four, I believe,
appearing on such shows as the original Twilight Zone.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
In several scenes throughout the movie, she's sort of the
presence that is helping to pull Basil Rathbone back from
the brink from going too far with his experiments. She's
sort of a voice of goodness and reason, an interest
for their family at least, though it's interesting also that
she's portrayed as like not personally being I'm very excited

(28:01):
about moving to wherever this is Transylvania. It's not Transylvania,
you know, wherever this is supposed to take place the
village of Frankenstein, which is just surrounded by this barren,
horrible landscape of dead trees. And she clearly is not
excited about that, but she's game, you know, She's like,
I'm gonna give it a try. We're going to see
if this works.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Dead trees and intense lightning storms. Yes, And they've of
course brought their son. This is son of Frankenstein or
grandson of Frankenstein's def anyhow you want to describe him.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
This is the son of Frankenstein.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
This is Peter von Frankenstein played by Donnie Dunnagan born
nineteen thirty four and as of this recording still still
still very much out there retired now. He was a
child actor of the late thirties and forties who also
appeared in Tower of London. He also most famously was
the voice of young Bambi in the nineteen forty two

(28:55):
Walt Disney animated film Oh Yeah, Yeah, Okay Yeah. Texas
born and I believe at the time based out of Memphis, Tennessee.
Something that becomes very obvious with this performance because his
father is British his mother is American, but with kind

(29:16):
of like a what a transatlantic kind of accent going on.
Little Peter, though, has a very loud and at times
difficult to understand, thick Southern accent.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Like what is going on with his accent? There's one
part where he's saying his prayers before bed and he
says the word amen, and I don't know how many
syllables are in the word amen when he says it.
It's a lot. He is. The accent is is nuts,
but it but also I love this kid's presence. It's

(29:50):
like it doesn't really fit realistically, but it's so much
fun every time he starts talking.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, and to be clear, if we're not shame southern accents,
Lord knows, we sound pretty plenty Southern to many of you.
I'm sure, yeah, but it just feels wildly out of place.
And I've read that the actor here, looking back on
his time, he says like a part of it was
that the director kept telling him to speak his lines

(30:17):
louder and these big cavernous sets that they were using,
and that just ended up enhancing his Southern accent, like
you just having to act act louder, and that just
made him more Southern sounding. Yeah, but uh, it's yeah,
it is a wild performance. It's like that thick Southern
accent going along with the sort of I guess Shirley
temple s precociousness of the actor and the character.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
With the super curly hair. So yeah, but yeah, so
you get these exchanges where it's like Basil Rathbone being like, yes, son,
what do you what have you been doing? And then
it's like I've been out hunting there.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, yeah, it is alarming. The the the audience in
the theater didn't didn't know what to make of this
at times.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
But yeah, Donnie, I wouldn't change it for the world.
It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
But Donnie done again. He apparently had a kind of
a challenging time after this picture, but ultimately, as an adult,
ended up joining the Marine Corps, served in Vietnam and
has since his time as a marine, has done a
lot of interviews about Bambi, about this film, about his
time as a child actor, and you know, answered a

(31:28):
lot of questions about it, and also mentioned that he
was terrified of letting anybody know that he was the
voice of Bambi when he was in the Marines, because
he's like, if they find out, that will be my
nickname and I just can't have that. Oh no, yeah,
all right, Well, we mentioned the look of this film
being so spectacular, so I want to briefly call out
the director of photography, George Robinson, who lived eighteen ninety
through nineteen fifty eight. Yeah, he also worked on Tower

(31:52):
of London, forty two's The Mummies Tomb, various Frankenstein and
Dracula sequels, and even nineteen fifty five's Tarantula. And likewise,
we have set decoration by Russell A. Goussman who lived
eighteen ninety two through nineteen sixty three, who won Oscars
for his work on nineteen forty four's Phantom of the
Opera in nineteen sixty one Spartacus. He also worked on

(32:12):
a number of other major and minor universal horror films.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Was Tarantula, the spider movie we covered that had a
spider getting really big and attacking a town, and they
discovered that the secret to defeating it was explosives.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yes, yes, yes, yeah, via Eastwood showing up at the
end in a jet.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, that's right, Clint Eastwood flying a jet fighter.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, yeah, let's see. The makeup is once more by
a Jack P. Pearce who lived eighteen eighty nine through
nineteen sixty eight, monster makeup legend who worked on all
so many great films of this era. Twenty eight's The
Man Who Laughs, thirty one's Dracula, thirty two's The Mummy,
thirty three is The Invisible Man, nineteen forty one's The Wolfman,
and so much more so again legend and master of

(32:57):
the craft. His credits run really deep. And then finally,
the music is by Frank Skinner, who lived eighteen ninety
seven through nineteen sixty eight. Five time OSCAR nominated composer.
His genre scores include The Wolfman, various Mummy and Invisible movies.
Nineteen fifty five is Revenge of the Creature and more.
I have to admit, like when I was watching the film,
I really didn't think much about the music. The music

(33:20):
just kind of felt like what I expected of a
picture like this. But we were chatting with my son afterwards,
who had never seen a Frankenstein movie before and hasn't
really seen much in the way of I don't think
he may have never seen a black and white film before,
so it was a first in many ways. But he
said that he thought the music made it scarier, so

(33:40):
kudos to Frank Skinner. It is an effective score.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
Well, you know, there are actually some parts with some
important diegetic music in the plot because we see Bella
Lagosi standing in the window playing his whatever instrument this is.
It looks like a cross between like a clarinet and
a horn of some kind. I don't know what that is,
but I think he's standing there playing creepy music as
an alibi. So he's like always doing that while the

(34:05):
monster is out killing somebody, so he can't be blamed.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
Oh god, these scenes of what is it he's playing
like clarinet or some sort.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Of I don't know, that's what I was saying, some.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Weird mountain flute. But we get those great scenes of
Igor playing it.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Love it. By the way, you mentioned Jack P. Pierce
doing the makeup effects. I guess it must have been him.
But whoever did Bella Legosi's teeth in this movie needs
needed an oscar. These are some good. He almost has
fangs they or maybe they are fangs, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, I mean he's he is almost a monster in
and on himself. He's just like as close to like
he almost looks like a wolf man like I think
they realize there's a line we can we can only
go so far here, and then we're in a two
monster film and we can only have one monster in
this picture. But they bring it right up to the
line with this character design.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
All right, well, do you want to talk about the plot?

Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yeah, let's get into it.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
The very first thing we see is an exterior shot
of a town square with mountains in the background holding
a dark castle on top. And then in the foreground
we see this winding wall topped with spires, gate of
these vertical posts like a palisade gate, and then a
gatehouse with a roof that just curves like calligraphy. And

(35:21):
the columns and the archway surrounding the gate are not
straight up and down or horizontal. They're tapered and tilted,
as if the set designer were like a Peter Watts
vampire allergic to right angles. And this seems to be
laid out in a style lightly reminiscent of German expressionist

(35:41):
horror films like The Cabinet of Doctor Kligari, which strives
not for strict realism and set decoration, but for these
kind of warped geometries that express feelings and ideas rather
than the natural forms of real objects. Now, the geometric
weirdness in Son of Frank is nowhere near as extreme
as it is in Caligary and other real German expressionist films,

(36:03):
but we are in for some unusual angles and slopes
in this bleak world. So I think you might call
the visual style of this movie somewhere in between your
classic universal gothic horror cinema cinema style and half expressionist.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's really interesting because the sets are gorgeous.
You could almost never mistake them for an actual interior space,
you know, like this doesn't you know, this is not
a location, this is a set. But they also don't
feel surreal like they they you can you can look
at it and be like, okay, you know, I'm buying
this as a physical space. But again, it's if you

(36:41):
start thinking too hard about like what kind of room
is this? Like what are these twin balconies, like eagle
shaped balconies over the dinner table and so forth.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, the breakfast room with the turrets in it.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's amazing. It's highly effective, very dramatic.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
And some of this all some of this weird are
architecture is also done with shadows where you would place
So you might have a room with a fairly normal
logical staircase in it, but the placement of lights in
the room causes the shadow of that staircase to like
fall crazily up the side of the wall in a
way that it never would in a real dwelling. But

(37:20):
just because you've got the light source in such an
odd place, the shadows are extremely unusual and create that
expression this feeling again. But anyway, so we open on
this locale and we zoom in on the gate here
and it reads engong verboten, entry prohibited, and above that
in wrought iron letters, it says Frankenstein. And then we

(37:43):
pan over to a broken window nearby and see somebody
looming in the window. Who is that? Is that Bela
Lugosi staring out?

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, that's Igor creeping. He does a lot of creeping.
He's a great creep.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
Oh yeah. So a gaggle of cringing, benighted villagers come
up the hill. They're like literally kind of like hunched
over and looking up in terror as if like, you know,
dragon's gonna come out of the sky at any moment
they're they're bringing a wooden cart piled with sticks with
them up the hill. And then two of the villagers
are young boys. They're full of mischief and bravado, and

(38:16):
one of them is like, are you afraid? And the
other one says, of old Igor nah. And then they're
gonna chuck a rock through the window, But as soon
as they look up and see Igor peering down at them,
they just scream and run away. Soon after, on a
dark night, with rain pouring down, we joined the proceedings
of a town council of some kind. There is a
guy who looks like a judge sitting at a raised bench.

(38:39):
I think this guy might be the character called the
Burgomeister sort of. I think that means basically like the mayor,
you know, the master of the burg. Then you've got
several old men wearing ceremonial hats, a police inspector with
a monocle. This is Lionel atwell, and a handful of
assorted hrumphy codgers puffing on pipes.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yeah, some of these guys were in previous Frankenstein films.
But yeah, the number of great, great looking character actors
in here. A lot of big heads and elongated heads.
It's a fun crowd, a lot of I never yeah, yes.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
So the situation of this meeting is that the old
Baron Henry Frankenstein has died of natural causes, it seems,
and left everything to his adult son, the now baron
Wolf von Frankenstein, who is abroad in America. So Wolf
has inherited the dank and miserable castle looming over the Burg.

(39:37):
But also it seems a lot of paperwork, and the
burgomeister says there's a chest of documents that he has
to deliver to the surviving Frankenstein upon his arrival. And
the so Wolf von Frankenstein and his family are currently
bound for this little hamlet by train. He's traveling with
his wife Elsa and his son Peter. Now, quick, quick background.

(40:00):
I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. But they are
supposed to be originally coming from America, right, did you
get that?

Speaker 1 (40:05):
That was my impression?

Speaker 3 (40:07):
Yes? Yeah. So let's see what else do we learn
from this town meeting scene. Well, we learned that a
lot of these old guys are not happy to have
another Frankenstein coming to town. They blame the elder Frankenstein
for the ruin of their village, which I think is
called Frankenstein by the way, So I think it's the
Baron Frankenstein, the Frankenstein Castle, and the Frankenstein village or town.

(40:32):
And so they say that his family is the reason
that a traveler never wants to stop by. I don't know,
maybe they tried and failed to get a little tourism
industry going, but this place is just considered cursed.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, it was spelled the end of the Frankenstein Frankfest.
Nobody wants to come here now.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
And this is all because, of course, Henry Frankenstein created
a monster in the devil's own image, which is not
what you want. So they all subscribe to the idea
that like the sins of the father, should be held
against the son. And we also learned that the Frankenstein
Castle is a blight. They believe it to be cursed
as well. And the only person in the village who

(41:10):
will stay there is quote that crazy Egor with his
broken neck, and this is Beila Legosi. There's also some
acknowledgment that they've had this conversation a million times before,
so it seems like they just sit around every Saturday
night with a pipe and some cordials complaining about the
Frankenstein family. Recreational complaining not an uncommon activity. Yes, anyway,

(41:35):
they resolve they're going to deliver the younger Frankenstein his
inheritance as prescribed by law, but they will show him
no hospitality. The family is going to get no warm
reception from them. So then we cut to a train
where we meet the Frankenstein family in the flesh. Here
again we've got Basil Rathbone as Wolf, Josephine Hutchinson as Elsa,

(41:55):
and Donnie Dunnaghan as their young son Peter. Now from Wolf,
here we cut right into Frankenstein apologetics. Elsa tucks Peter
into bed, comes into the next train compartment, and Wolf
is like, you know, it wasn't my father's fault that
his half witted assistant, Fritz retrieved a criminal's brain when
he was supposed to just get a normal brain, So

(42:18):
we can kind of see where his head's at. Immediately.
Also in the scene, Elsa looks out the window and comments.
She says, what a strange looking country, which I thought
was funny because the scene that is passing outside the
train window looks more than strange. It looks like an
illustration from Scary Stories to Tell in the dark. It's
just gloom and gnarl to infinity, dead black, leafless trees

(42:43):
that look like giant witch fingers curling out of the ground.
It's not nice. No, But then Wolf is like, it's
so exciting, isn't it. I guess he likes this kind
of thing. He's clearly thrilled to have quit his university job.
He's gloating about no more students, no more faculty meetings, Hurrah.

(43:04):
And together they fantasize about the cliches of Gothic horror.
They're excited about the castle. Will the castle have a moat?
Will it have a haunted room? Elsa is into this idea.
I think she's a little bit ghost curious. And anyway,
this year segues into Wolf ranting about how his father
did nothing wrong and he's been unfairly blamed for the
tragedy that unfolded.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, there's a tremendously funny bit of dialogue here from
Baron Wolf that I have to have to read because
it's like, it's kind of a metajoke and it's also
just a nice bit of comedy. So he's saying he's
continuing to rant. He says, his name has become synonymous
with horror and monsters. Why nine out of ten people
call that misshapen creature of my father's experiments. And then

(43:49):
he's interrupted by the train conductor, who says Frankenstein. And
so you know, this is of course obviously alluding to
the fact that many people call the monster Frankenstein, as
if that is the monster's name. And then this leads
other people to correct these folks and say, actually, Frankenstein

(44:10):
is the name of the doctor and not the monster,
and so forth and so forth. But I honestly had
never looked into when this exactly took hold, And clearly
the answer is, I guess during the nineteen thirties.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah, okay, Well, to be clear, just speaking for myself,
I'm aware of the distinction. I've read the book. I
know that the creature is not literally named Frankenstein, but
I just call it a Frankenstein. When you see a Frankenstein,
you could just call it a Frankenstein. That's okay, shorthand
it's okay.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yeah. But clearly there were there there were nerd battles
over this back in the day as well. I guess
they maybe a little bit hard nerds, a little bit
literary nerds that were saying, no, you're referring to the
monster incorrect.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
Yeah, okay, So there's a scene where the Frankenstein family
arrives at the train station once again. It is pouring rain,
and they receive a very cold welcome from the Burgomeister
and the leaders of the town. The Burgomeister hands Wolf

(45:16):
his things and the keys to the castle, and then
they tell him that they are not going to be friends.
Wolf tries to make a speech to the assembled crowd,
but it does not go over very well. They give
him the cold shoulder. Also. The speech again, it's defensive.
It's very I'm sorry that my father, through no fault
of his own, came to be hated by all of you,

(45:37):
which is funny. It's one of those non apology apologies,
except he's not apologizing for anything he did. It's about
his dad anyway.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, and that like the lack of quality labor in
this area, He's like yes, he's like I really, we're
mad at you, Like, couldn't you have have produced some
labor that could have gotten him a proper brain for
his creation.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Anyway, the family gets into a car. They are transported
to the castle. There's a happy reunion between little Peter
and one of the castle servants, a woman named Amelia.
Peter was asking about her earlier on the train. They're
apparently close, which is kind of strange because I understood
that understood the story to be that they'd never been
to this castle before. So maybe these are servants they

(46:18):
already knew already from somewhere, and they traveled ahead to
the castle or something.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
I guess such must be servants they brought with them.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
But once we go inside the castle again, we get
these bizarre counterintuitive angles on the shadows, activating the expressionist
geometry motif. One of my favorite things is this big
central room in the castle with the staircase and the
shadow of the stairs is just wild. And we meet
all the servants. Wolf is ecstatic about the castle. He

(46:47):
finds the dankness exhilarating, and Elsa is trying to put
on a happy face, but obviously she is not a fan.
And everybody goes about settling in in their various ways.
Wolf has a brandy in the library and grouse some
more about how his father made a miraculous discovery, and
now everybody's being so unfair to him. And then he
goes on to read a letter left to him by

(47:10):
his father, the late Baron. And this letter has some
nice phrasings in it, so I wanted to read it.
It says, my son, herein lies my faiths, my beliefs,
and my unfoldments, A complete diary of my experiments, charts
and secret formulas. In short, the sum total of my knowledge,
such as it is. Perhaps you will regard my work

(47:31):
with ridicule, or even with a distaste. If so, destroy
these records. But if you, like me, burn with the
irresistible desire to penetrate the unknown, carry on the path
is cruel and torturous. Carry on I put secret after truth.
You will be hated, blasphemed, and condemned. You have inherited

(47:52):
the fortune of the Frankensteins. I trust you will not
inherit their fate. Eaving all of the apparatus of his
work to his son, and it is up to him
if he wants to continue that work or not. Meanwhile,
we see Igor outside the window in the rain, just
looking in with this devilish grin. Now here's the scene

(48:14):
where we had Peter saying his prayers before bed. This
is one where he's like a man. He says in
the one part of the prayers is like help me
be a good little boy. Oh, I love it. Oh.
And Peter also says, I think they're trying to close
the curtains, and he's like, please don't close the curtains.
I like lightning, so let's see. Later that night, they

(48:38):
get a visit at the castle from the police inspector Krogue.
This is again Lionel Atwill. He comes out of the
rain to meet with Wolf and this is where we
learn about one of his arms being mechanical. He sort
of uses his his remaining arm to manipulate the mechanical arm,
so holding it up into a salute, for instance. And
he's very he's very proper and observed of decorum. He's

(49:01):
very mannered. And he explains his business by saying that
he wants to protect Frankenstein from the fear and wrath
of the villagers in the town below. But then he
begins to ask about the monster. He's also sort of
doing a bit of fact finding here. He's asking about
whether the monster possibly still lives because there has been

(49:21):
a there's been a string of murders sort of unexplained
murders in the years since the monster was supposedly destroyed,
and Krogue says that there that in every case the
murder had the same weird features, a bruise at the
base of the skull and an exploded heart inside the chest.
Could the creature be alive and still dangerous? Hmm, good question. Now.

(49:46):
I thought this was an interesting detail because I may
have missed it, but I don't recall him ever explaining
how exactly this exploding heart murder method works. The best
I could make of it is that, like the appearance
of the cree cure is so terrifying that when people
see him, their hearts explode.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
I was thinking that maybe it was like some sort
of weird heart punch where Punch Frankenstein punches you in
the base of the skull so hard to your heart explodes.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
That's the best thing you can come up with. It's
like a special kung Fu move.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Bodha thinker.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Yes. Anyway, After this, Wolf goes on a rant about how, yes,
my father did manage to create life from death, but
surely those stories of the monstrousness of the monster must
be greatly exaggerated. At one point he says, do you
honestly know of one crime truly committed by this creature?

(50:40):
And Krog is like, well, yeah, when I was a kid,
he ripped my arm off. Oh okay. I like the
way the scene is just a very blunt check on
Basil Rathbones sort of defensive delusions about his family legacy.
But anyway, Krog still he Krog really does not seem
to be holding this against the Frankensteins. He's not out

(51:02):
for revenge. He's offering them help. He says, when you
need help, you have but to ring the alarm bell
in the tower, and wherever I shall be, I shall
hasten to your assistance.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
He is so lawful. Good, Yeah to a fault.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
And then there's a very nice moment I thought between
Wolf and Elsa where they're looking out the window into
the stark landscape and the thunder and Elsa says, what
a dreadful storm and awful lightning, and Wolf says it's magnificent.
Nothing in nature is terrifying when one understands it. Darling,
my father drew that very lightning from heaven and forced
it for his own will to bring life to a

(51:38):
being He created with his own hands. Why should we
fear anything?

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah? Yeah, some more of that Frankensteinian optimism there, and.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
A lot of affinity for lightning, Like multiple members of
the family, the Sun and Wolf, they're looking at the
lightning and they're like, just makes me feel good. I
like it.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Yeah, there's a lot of build up with the lightning here.
I'll come back to this more as we touch on
more examples.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
All right. The next morning we see Peter again. This
is the scene where they're having breakfast and then Peter
comes up on this ledge overlooking the breakfast table. He's
got a toy shotgun with him and he's like, well hello,
and there's some general goofy dialog about how oh. He
like points to a scary head mounted on the wall

(52:25):
and he's like, what's that and they say that's a
bore and he goes like ant Fanny and they say, no, Darling, no,
not like aunt Fanny. That's a wild boar. I think
they're joking about b o r e. And then's he says,
I hope I don't have teeth like that. It would
be too hard to clean them.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Yeah, this film is intentionally comedic. There are a number
of gags. They don't all work, but a number of
them work very well.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
Yeah. So, later that day, Wolf goes investigating the ruins
of his father's laboratory, and here's where things really start
to cook. So as he's looking around, he runs into Egor.
Igor is creeping on him from above, like in a skylight,
peeking through a hole in the roof, and Wolf at

(53:10):
one point he finds a big hole in the floor,
looks down inside it far below and there is a boiling,
bubbling pit of some horrible liquid. Wolf sniffs and concludes
that it is sulfur. You know, so your new house
has a boiling sulfur pit. No big deal. And then Igor,
from the roof tries to kill Wolf by dropping a

(53:32):
boulder on him, but Wolf dodges out of the way,
and then they have a confrontation. Frankenstein trains a gun
on Egor and starts to interrogate him. He's like, why
did you try to kill me? And Igor says I
thought you came here to kill me, And Rathbone says, well,
it's all well and good for you people to hate me,
but attempted murder is another matter. So this is the

(53:55):
first scene where we really get any dialogue with Egor,
and again Bella Legosi's energy is just off the charts.
He is wonderful.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah, and it's worth noting that Igor in like just
sort of like very loose terms, becomes this kind of
horror Staple often depicted it's kind of like a hunchback,
even though Igor in this film is not a hunchback.
He has a a broken neck because he was as
we'll find out, he was previously hanged for Robin Graves

(54:28):
allegedly survived, but I think is still considered lee. He's
on the books, he's legally dead. So even though Igor
would become this kind of like Staple Hinchman and you
sort of like the Scooby dooification of universal horror at
the time, this character is a new creation based on

(54:53):
nothing from the Frankenstein novel, but I guess kind of
an evolution of the concept we see with the character Fritz,
who he alluded to earlier, played by Dwight Fry in
the first Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
Film, who's also not in the novel. I mean, in fact,
the victor Frankenstein's work in the novel is specifically portrayed
as very lonely and solitary work. He is working by
himself and consulting with no one. I think that's almost
sort of the point of that part of the story
is that he's just in his own head. He has

(55:25):
nobody else to relate to.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Yeah, it's lonesome work that is tearing apart his sanity
and he's having to dig all those graves and scoop
all those brains himself. But again, as I alluded to earlier,
Igor is no mere Hinchman in this, no mere cookie
character like he is, as we'll see, essentially the primary
and antagonist of the picture, a satanic tempter and manipulator.

(55:49):
And he's tremendous.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
Yeah, this introduction scene is so good. There's this moment
where he like he knocks on the bones sticking out
of his neck and he's.

Speaker 6 (55:59):
Like, oh, it's all right, it's okay, And he reveals
a secret passage in the wall and takes Wolf down.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
This leads to a crypt with two sarcopha guy it's
got his grandfather there, but also his father, Henry Frankenstein,
where someone has vandalized his epitaph on his sarcophagus. I
think it says Henry Frankenstein carved in and someone has
written in chalk Maker of Monsters. And then beyond that,

(56:30):
Igor leads Wolf to a shocking surprise, which is the
comatose body of the monster. This reveal is great in
terms of its cinematic effect, except I don't want to
be too critical, but it's just lying out in the
open in the middle of the room where Wolf already was,
and it's revealed to the audience simply by the camera

(56:52):
pulling back to like bring it into frame. So it's
kind of difficult to believe that Wolf was already in
the room but didn't see wors Karloff lying there in
full makeup until just now. But that's okay, let it slide.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Yeah, still a great moment.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
Igor reveals that the creature has been there for quite
some time now. Igor says he's my friend. He does
things for me, and then he says this place is
a place of the dead. We are all dead here,
again referring to himself having been unsuccessfully hanged and somehow

(57:27):
having this legal death status even though he is obviously
still alive. So the question is why was the monster comatose?
Igor says that he was injured by lightning while out
in a storm and Igor brought him back here and
he's been asleep ever since. And from this point, Igor

(57:48):
basically hectors Wolf into helping revive him. Maybe Wolf doesn't
need all that much encouragement, like he's curious about this himself.
But Igor is putting the pressure on.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
That's right, he's laying it on pretty THI.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
And this is the scene where Egor starts to introduce
this framework that you know, really, in a way, this
creature was your father's other son. And Wolf says, you
mean to imply that this this is my brother and
Igor is like, yes, but his mother was lightning. Ooh,

(58:22):
good line.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Yeah, it's a great line. Again, more building up of
the lightning and treatment of the lightning here.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
So Wolf commits to making his father's creation walk again again.
So at this point he doesn't have to make life
from death. The creature is already alive, but he's going
to use his medical knowledge to resuscitate him from his
coma and make him walk again. And he goes and
he amends the graffiti. He amends the vandalism of his
father's epitaph and changes it from maker of monsters to

(58:53):
maker of men. And here's a very clean Act one
break and this is clearly like here's where we are
now the the action really starts. Yeah, So Act two
we get the town council and the Bergemeister getting antsy

(59:14):
about all of the activity they're noticing around Frankenstein's lab.
People are coming and going, bringing big crates, and so
they decide they're going to get Egor to come in
and testify to them about what's going on. Now, there's
some really funny moments here. That one is like Basil
Rathbone working in the laboratory. He's hauling chains and pulleys

(59:35):
around and doing this heavy work in this busted room,
and he's still wearing his three piece suit and tie. Meanwhile,
all the work is going on in the lab, Egor
is trying hard to keep it a secret from the
other servants. So the only other servant, I think, who
really understand who knows what's going on, is Wolfe's right
hand man, Benson. So Benson is there like making notes

(59:59):
while they're making observations about the monster, saying things like, wow,
look at his blood pressure. It's three times the normal
blood pressure. Wow, he's got two bullets in his heart
and yet it still pumps blood. I've never seen blood
like that before. They say that his blood cells seem
to be battling one another as if they had a
conscious life of their own.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Second week in a row, where we have some very
puzzling anatomical details from analysis of the monster.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
Yeah, yeah, interesting. But oh, from here we go onto
the scene where the Bergomeister and associates get Egor on
the stand to testify about what's going on. So this
interrogation scene is supposed to be about what Frankenstein is
up to in his lab, but it's so funny how
it ends up being mostly about the legal loophole that

(01:00:48):
makes Egor immune to the death sentence. Yeah, and then
also just going around the room reconfirming the identities of
all the jurors who voted to hang him the first time. Yes,
this scene is so good.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Yeah, I mean he has him dead to rights here,
like you can't hang me by the neck until dead
a second time, I'm already officially dead. And yeah, there's
just a lot of fun back and forth. Bell Lugosi
gets really hammered up as Igor here of number of
funny lines and hilarious mannerisms, while also staying true to

(01:01:24):
the character being devilish and intimidating as well.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
There's a really funny moment where he coughs in one
of their faces and the guy's like, oh, he spit
on me, and Lekosi's like, I'm sorry, I cough, phone
stuck in my throat.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Great scene, great saint.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Amazing, It's so good. Then. Also in other scenes around
this time, we see Wolf, Igor and Benson trying to
get the creature revived in the lab with electricity, but
it fails. At one point, Wolf loses hope. He thinks
he will never succeed in waking him from his coma. Also,
somewhere around here, they discovered that the secret of life
is cosmic rays. Okay, now, it seems that Inspector Krogue

(01:02:09):
just keeps visiting the castle at various times, Like there's
a scene of him having tea with Elsa and Wolf
joins them, and Krogue here learns that Wolf has been
up to his ears and experiments in the old laboratory,
which the villagers call the Monster's home, And they say, oh,
don't the sulfur fumes bother you? And Rathbone's like no, no, no,

(01:02:30):
not at all. They say that this place used to
be a used to be an ancient Roman health spa,
but then the sulfur got more intense, and I believe
the inspector says, even the stoutest Roman couldn't venture into
that today without being par boiled to the bones. And
then Rathbone says to the inspector, I'll have you come
there sometime and par boil you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Not very good, not very good.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
No, no, here we get some more wonderful. Peter comments
where he comes in. He's like saying, I'm a soldier,
I'm a hunting all day long. And then Peter goes
into a story about how in the middle of his
nap a giant woke him up, but Peter gave the
giant a picture book and he went away, bum bum bum.

(01:03:17):
This clearly is significant to Wolf. He's like, oh, what's
going on, But it's also significant to Krogue. So Wolf
is trying to hide this from Krogue, but he becomes
convinced that the creature has awakened and actually went into
Peter's room, so he rushes off to his lab and
he finds igor In the creature both missing, so he

(01:03:38):
is in the middle of arming himself with a knife
and mixing up some concoction. I don't know if he's
trying to make a drug or something. But then the
creature comes up behind him. This is the first time
we see the creature walking in the film, and they
meet face to face. And so this is the scene
we were talking about earlier where we at least I
feel like Karloff is trying to add some thing here.

(01:04:00):
The creature doesn't speak, doesn't say anything. I don't think
he ever speaks in this film. Does he ever say anything.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
If he does, it's so little, Like at one point,
I think a previous version of the script had considerable
well I don't know about considerable, but it certainly had
dialogue from the monster, and at some point they cut
all or most of it out. So yeah, we don't
really get anything from the monster here. At one point
they also considered doing this in color, but apparently they

(01:04:29):
didn't really like the way that the monster makeup looked
when shot in color, And I think, yeah, you don't
want to see this film in color, like it's so
beautiful in black and white.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
Yeah, So this seems in keeping with the sort of
reduction of the monster's consciousness and humanity from where he
was in Bride, because in Bride he learns to speak.
Remember that's like a big part of the story. He
doesn't speak a lot, but he says some things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
In a way, it's like the monster in this film
is here to serve purely as the metaphor for technology,
which is valid. I mean that's a key part of
the original novel as well. But it's kind of like,
once technology is created, once there's been some advancement, you
can't abandon it. You can abandon it. But then but

(01:05:13):
other people are going to take that technology up, and
do you trust them? Because the people who who take
up that technology may be the likes of Igor here,
and he is not going to use it for the
betterment of man. He's going to use this technology to
get revenge on his enemies, to murder his way through
his enemies list, which is exactly what Igor has been

(01:05:34):
doing and plans to do again if he gets this
monster up and running, which now he has.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
That's right. So when when Basil Rathbone and the Monster
first meet face to face, the monster seems to maybe
be used to reacting with violence when it meets people,
So he reaches his hands up as if maybe he's
going to choke him, but then sort of decides against it,
and so it's an interesting psychological little moment. Then Igor returns,

(01:06:01):
and Igor seems to have control over the monster. It
obeys his commands. I think because they've been together for
so long they are friends. So who you know? They talk?
Now a Basil, Rathbone, and Bela Lugosi talk. Who knows
the monster is awake? Igor says, only you and Benson Man,

(01:06:22):
and Wrathbone's like, well, Benson will never tell, and Igor says, no,
he will never tell. Now Here Wolf says, well, we
may have made the creature physically well, but he's not
well in the mind. Yet. We need to keep working
on him to heal him up, to make him well
in the mind. And Igor says he's well enough for me. So,

(01:06:46):
of course, here the monster murder missions resume. I was
gonna say begin, but it seems they've been ongoing for
some time before the film started. Now there's a scene
of revenge against a character named Neimula, one of the
jurors who convicted Igor. There's like a murder shown on
a He's out on a horse drawn wagon, out going

(01:07:08):
out along the cliffs. He's riding between the rocks, and
then the monster reaches out from behind a rock and
grabs him and then stages the murder to look like
a wagon accident.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
This is the true crime portion of the picture here.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
Yeah. So after this, we're at the castle. The Frankenstein's
are having dinner with an incredibly suspicious looking krogue and
they are interrupted by news of the death of Neimuler. Also,
Benson disappears somewhere around here. Everybody's asking where he is,
and nobody knows. There are more monster revenge murders on

(01:07:41):
Egor's command. We see Egor going around like marking doors
in town with an ex to show the monster who
to get. There's also the recurring scene we get here
of Igor playing his instrument in the gatehouse window. At
first I thought it was maybe to summon the monster home,
but I later interpreted this as he he's like playing

(01:08:01):
music out in public view so that he can never
be blamed for the murders.

Speaker 5 (01:08:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
Yeah. And then also there's a sense too that it's
almost like he's like the pied piper or something. You know,
It's like he's pulling the strings.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
If you will, yeah. Yeah, So you know, you can't
have a Frankenstein movie without a pitchfork mob. So pitchfork mob.
Mob gathers in the town square because of the murders,
they lay siege to the castle. It isn't safe to leave.
Inspector Krogue is in the castle with the family, claiming
that he's there to guarantee their protection, and at one point,

(01:08:35):
Peter the son he shows Inspector Kroge a gift that
his friend the Giant gave him. It's a watch, and
krog looks at it. It's a pocket watch with an
engraving that says like two Benson. Yeah, so obviously something
is going wrong here. Later, there's a confrontation in the
lab between Wolf and Egor over the monster. Wolf tries

(01:08:58):
to banish Egor from his lab, and Igor confesses to
ordering all the murders of the jurors who convicted him.
When he says he will not leave, he says, the
monster belongs to me, not to you. Now in between here,
it's funny that, like the stakes are coming up. You know,
we have the mob who are ready to attack the castle.

(01:09:18):
We have Igor and the monster doing murderers. We have
the inspector on the case, and yet we get these
little scenes where Wolf and the inspector are just like
playing darts and having brandy while they're I don't know,
biding their time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
Oh man. So there's so much brandy drinking in this picture,
to the point that on the IMDb parental page someone
decided to put a warning in there. It's like, warning,
adults drink brandy this characters. Yeah, there's a lot of
region for the brandy here, and then a lot of
dart throwing, and it gets it gets pretty furious the

(01:09:51):
dart throwing here. Frankenstein's really working out some issues regarding
his legacy and the legacy of his here via darts.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
Yeah, historical brandy use.

Speaker 5 (01:10:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
But in these scenes it comes out that Krogue suspects
the monster is once again alive and a foot and
he wants to know the truth, and of course Frankenstein
is you know, he's very offended by this. He's like, so,
I suppose I whipped him up as a cook whips
up an omelet, and Wolf tries to put suspicion onto

(01:10:26):
Egor instead of himself, but krog says it can't be
Igor who did the monsters because he was being watched
during all the murders. This is what I was talking
about with the window. So eventually there is a confrontation
between Egor and Wolf in the laboratory. Egor he had
that bloody hammer. He tries to get Wolf with a hammer,
but Wolf shoots him, and there is the discovery by

(01:10:50):
the inspector of a secret passageway in the wall where
he finds Benson's body. Meanwhile, in the lab the monster
finds Igor's body, and Igor remember was his only end.
So this leads to monster rage, and we get a
number of scenes of monster rage where he's just smashing things,
busting everything up, throwing it all into the sulfur pit. Now,

(01:11:11):
eventually the monster, in his rage, decides to kidnap Peter,
and so he takes Peter away to the laboratory and
all of the good characters give Chase, Elsa, Amelia, Wolf
and Krogue. They all pursue the monster into the laboratory
for the final showdown, and here we do get to
the swashbuckling finally.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Yeah, there's of course the expected payoff with the prosthetic arm.
It gets ripped off in a fight there between the
inspector and the monster, and then the inspector shooting at
the monster, and I think the monster is kind of
deflecting the shots with the prosthetic by accident. And then yeah,
here comes Basil rathbone buckling some swash swinging on that

(01:11:51):
rope and doing a rope assisted kick to the monster,
sends the monster flying off the edge down into that
boiling sulfur That boiling sulfur pit that we knew from
the very moment it was introduced was going to eat
up a monster or some other character. You know, somebody's
going into that sulfur pit.

Speaker 3 (01:12:10):
So yeah, so there's payoff there. But you know what
there's never payoff on is Wolfe's threat to par boil
the inspector and nothing happens there. They're friends at the end.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
It was just like a terrible joke. I guess it's
like we wouldn't get enough sleep. They're not all going
to be zingers, especially if you don't have enough sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
Yeah, now we get a actually quite happy ending. I
don't know if it's really earned this happy of an ending,
but it's like it's all going to be okay.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Yeah, the baron and family signed the castle and the
lab over to the locals and take the first train
out of town. So all is forgiven. I don't know.
Maybe all of the townspeople that were killed off by
the monster recently were all crooked and corrupt.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
Maybe essentially Igor cleansed the town of corruption. I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (01:13:00):
Also, the last time we see Igor's body, after he
has supposedly been shot and killed, he is obviously breathing.
You can see his chest like rising and falling up
and down. And I don't know if that's a goof
or if that's to lay the groundwork that Igor could
come back in another sequel.

Speaker 1 (01:13:17):
Igor will return, and he does.

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
He does, to be clear. So are we gonna do
House of Frankenstein.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
I think we may have to. That one is very
interesting as well, has an interesting cast, so I.

Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
Think not supposed to be quite as good as The
Son of Frank But amusing I've read.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
I would continue the journey. Oh, one more comment on this.
We had we have so much great stuff with the lightning,
you know, his mother was lightning the fierce lightning storms
in the region. You know, as if Zeus is just
constantly lashing out against the countryside and then this is
something my wife pointed out. When the monsters actually revived,

(01:14:01):
are they they're using some sort of generator or something.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
They're not.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
They're not doing what you think they're gonna do, which is,
let's capture the lightning like Frankenstein's senior did. Instead, it's
some other means. And I don't know if that's intentional,
if that's supposed to be, you know, some commentary on
like the mode of interaction with the technology that is
taking place in this next generation. It's less heaven sent
and more technology speaking to technology, I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
Interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, that's a
good point.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Yeah, I might be overthinking it there, But that's what
I love about a film like this, you know, you
get to enjoy it on so many different levels. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:38):
So once again, I had a fantastic time with Son
of Frankenstein. This movie greatly exceeded my expectations, highly entertaining.
So yeah, great pick. And I couldn't recommend this one enough.
Really really fun.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Absolutely, yeah, this one. This one was a lot of fun.
All right, Well, we're going to go ahead and close
out this episode of Weird House Cinema. As always, We
would love to hear from everyone out there. If you have,
you know, experiences with this film, thoughts on this film,
on other Frankenstein pictures, write in and you know we
will try and include some of those on a future

(01:15:12):
installment of listener Mail, which comes out do you know
me about once a month these days. Stuff to Blow
your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we
set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
weird film here on weird House Cinema. If you want
to see a complete list of all the movies we've
watched over the year as well, you can go over
to the letterbox dot com. That's L E T T

(01:15:33):
E R B o x d dot com. Our username
is weird House and we have a nice list of
all the films we've covered. Sometimes there's a hint at
what's coming up next, and let's see. If you're on Instagram,
st b ym podcast is our handle there, you can
follow us there. It's got some good links as well,
including links to our t shirt shop where Hey, if
you need a sticker or a T shirt with the

(01:15:55):
Stuff to Blow your Mind logo on it, or perhaps
the Weird House Cinema logo will, so that's where you
can get it. And I'm not sure we might end
up having We had a Halloween shirt come out last year,
and we might have something else come out this year,
so I don't know. Keep an eye on that space
in case there's a new design that drops and that's
what you're looking for.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.