"[Lou Costello] came charging in the office one day and said, "My [five-year-old] daughter could write a better script than this. You're not serious about making it, are you?" But Robert Arthur and Universal were insistent on making a more contemporary version of the two Burlesque comedians smash hit "Hold that Ghost" (1941) going through as many two script outlines before settling on the writing team of Frederic I. Rinaldo and Robert Lees. The Universal monster movie was already slowly on the decline, having not made huge numbers in the box office since "The Bride of Frankenstein" in 1935!
Originally entitled "The Brain of Frankenstein," the comedy horror resurrected Bela Lugosi to his last A-list film and Lon Chaney Jr. to the role of Lawrence Talbot/The Wolf Man for the first time since 1945's "House of Frankenstein." Boris Karloff, however, did not come back as Frankenstein's Creature, but made up for it in promotion as well as being one third of "Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff" in the coming year. Glenn Strange would reprise his role as The Creature and Vincent Price made a cameo at the end in accordance with 1940's "The Invisible Man Returns."
This was all Bud and Lou's film, eventually titled the simpler "...Meet Frankenstein," and the studio was their house full of gags between scenes. Out of respect for Chaney and Strange's makeup, pie fights would never land on any of the monsters but they still would occur. "One day, Lenore Aubert, wrapped in a mink, put a leash on Strange and, accompanied by Bud, Lou, and Lon in full make-up, took the Monster out for a stroll on the lot just in time for the studio tour tram." ("Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) - Articles - TCM.com") Regular costar Bobby Barker would randomly pop up in scenes or caskets surprising either of the duo and the cast. Card games and exploding cigars were often the norm. Glen Strange found himself a victim of the giggles more often than necessary.
Lugosi, however, was a staunch professional, not partaking in the tomfoolery. Suffering from addiction to painkillers due to contracting sciatica from war injuries, and finding himself more often on the stage than the well-paying screen, the great "Count Dracula" was beginning to be worn down. According to director Charles Barton, "[...] there were times I thought Bela was going to have a stroke on the set. You have to understand that working with two zanies like Abbott and Costello was not the normal Hollywood set. They never went by the script and at least once a day, there would be a pie fight." Lugosi would later explain to The New York Times, "There is no burlesque for me. All I have to do is frighten the boys, a perfectly appropriate activity. My trademark will be unblemished."
"...Meet Frankenstein" was an immediate hit with audiences and critics alike, earning $2,250,000 in 1948 and would land at 51 in the "Top Grossers of 1948" in Variety. (Variety (January 1949)) Unfortunately, The New York Times would bemoan "most of the comic invention in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" is embraced in the idea and the laugh. The notion of having these two clowns run afoul of the famous screen monster is a good laugh in itself. But take this gentle warning: get the most out of that one laugh while you can, because the picture [...] does not contain many more." "The comedy team battles it out with the studio's roster of bogeyman in a rambunctious fracas that is funny and, at the same time, spine-tingling" reviewed Variety. The Hollywood Reporter considered the film as "a crazy, giddy show that combines chills and laughs in one zany sequence after the other." "Nobody excels Costello as strangulated, speechless terror. Nobody can top Abbott at failing to see the cause for it. No one can beat Frankenstein, Dracula, The Monster, and Dr. Moray at engendering it separately and together behind Abbott's back, but always in Costello's full view" congratulated the New York Star. Regardless, one of the final major Universal horror films would usher in a new era courtesy of Hammer Productions.
Bela was the gentleman Dracula with the cape and slow phonetically spoken English, Max Schreck the pure image of evil and the plague, Carlos Villarias the suave and debonair Dracula pre-Gary Oldman, but where does Christopher Lee belong in the continuum? He is capable of fantastic and debonair movement yet when the bloodshot eyes are in attack mode, he is the pure image of evil, Lee is a lusty sort of Dracula, his seduction skills carefully orchestrated full of a melancholy yet a more physically violent type that Lugosi could never be.
This is the thing about Lee as Dracula, he barely has to speak to come across as commanding. Perhaps it is his 6'5" height (which got him the job in 1957's "The Curse of Frankenstein"), posture and body language of a nobleman, shoulders forward in an intimacy with Jonathan Harker in the first movie and an extraordinary sadness and melancholy in his eyes during all of "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave" (1968). But with what little dialogue he is given, it is spoken with a great command. In his first scene, Lee's musically trained intonation is both quick and hurried, almost as if one is meant to pay more attention to his rather deadened yet strangely intimate gaze. Even a flash in his eyes towards Jon Van Eyssen's Harker immediately gives away not just attraction, but the weakness for Mina's bare skin.
But as the films progress, the dialogue all but diminishes and little flashes of that nobleman presence all but disappears to only reappear every so often. "All they do is write a story and try and fit [Dracula] in somewhere, which is very clear when you see the films. They gave me nothing to do! I pleaded with Hammer to let me use some of the lines that Bram Stoker had written." ("Total Film - The Total Film Interview - Christopher Lee") In his second film as the Count, Lee all but gave up on the dialogue he was given. "I read the script and the lines were literally unsayable. They were not Bram Stoker. This was a great fight I used to have over the years with Hammer, I kept on saying why don't you use Stoker's words, Stoker's dialogue, if you like. [...] So I said I'm sorry, I'm not saying these lines so that you could get a terrific laugh." ("Christopher Lee on Bela Lugosi, Dracula, and Hammer scripting - YouTube")
But what came out of classy abhorrence resulted in a stunning animalistic performance in "Dracula, Prince of Darkness" (1966) in which Lee never once spoke except for hissing noises when provoked "with teeth bared like some kind of wild, ravenous animal. His predatory behavior carries an overt sexual threat." ("Dracula, Prince of Darkness") This only makes the scene when he compels and bares his chest to Suzan Farmer's Diana Kent strangely tentatively and melancholic yet carnal all at once. Gone are all prior scenes of the overuse of widened eyes and bared teeth and here is Dracula, whether in manipulation or sincerity, with an odd terror in his eyes that was not reserved for Barbara Shelley's more willing role of Helen.
Personally, I have to believe this odd melancholy is what separates Lee from the rest of the Draculas in film history. There is almost a formula all of the movies carry and it's focused on the vampire easily feasting on the more willing victim when pining for the second. In "Horror," naturally, it's Mina for Lucy," "Prince of Darkness" Helen for Diana, "Risen From the Grave," Zena for Maria and so on. But there's something incredibly striking in the latter film. Waiting for Maria to invite him into her room for her to become fully his, Dracula steps out from the darkness, a strange shade perhaps purposefully brightens across his eyes. Usually in the other films, Hammer has made the eyes an important feat of their vampire, always keeping them at eye level if not further up to show dominance and height over a victim. But here they are as sad than when he revealed himself to Helen in "Prince of Darkness." But is it sincerity or purposeful manipulation? Either way it's beautiful and shows something quiet before Dracula's natural violence.
The eyes have been important to the art of the Dracula films, especially since Hammer Productions is specific in their visuals ranging from bright blood to their use of Eastman color in each frame. In the video "Dracula, Prince of Darkness: Behind the Scenes at Bray," Lee, over commentary, laments having to wear "contacts with salt underneath them" which are the now iconic red contact lenses only placed in for close up shots when he compels or acts out. The difference quickly turns from those sad and soulful eyes. During the hypnotic finale in "Horror" as Dracula is dragging and gripping onto van Helsing's neck, his body language is as slow and calm as his eyes when we first met him. It's as if partaking or violently taking over humans is like sipping a fine wine. His height is gloriously taken advantage of in dominance and poise as Peter Cushing's body language is erratic and angry in comparison.
But not everyone appreciates this incarnation of the famous vampire. 1958 critic A.H. Weiler of the New York Times describes Lee's performance as "grim but not nearly so chilling as Bela Lugosi in the title role." Thankfully, in the trade journals from 1958, Lee "is a real fright as that royal fiend" and time has made fans out of many within the cult of Hammer. "One moment he is a perfect gentleman with manners and courtesy, the next moment he is transformed into an almost-rabid monster, displays raw, animalistic instincts like never before. He possesses a more sexual, sinister element..." ("Retro Review: Horror of Dracula - Daily Dead") Six days after Lee's death in 2015, Tim Stanley of the Telegraph perfectly memorialized that "no other actors [...] have captured the ambiguity of Dracula like Lee did. Through association he is, like the vampire, immortal." Films Available Online
Monster movies, or what Karloff once called "monster clambakes," were officially on the decline in the wake of Universal's "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948), but almost a decade later in England, horror was only reawakening. When Eliot Hyman, head of Associated Artists Productions in America, was handed a newly adapted script of "Frankenstein" by two unknown writers he immediately handed it over to the British company. Contributor Michael Carreras had plenty to say about the original script that it was "badly presented" and "the number of setups scripted is quite out of proportion to the length of the screenplay." (Michael Carreras's letter to Max Rosenberg, May 10, 1956)
Revised by Jimmy Sangster and now titled "The Curse of Frankenstein," the film went into production without the BBFC's suggested revisions, exceeding the new X rating. Filming began November 19, 1956 at Bray Studios when Frankenstein would cut down his first body from an abandoned gallows. Christopher Lee was cast as the creature solely on his height (6'5") and TV star Peter Cushing was sought after as the mad Doctor. In this incarnation, a teenaged Baron von Frankenstein employs Paul Krempe as a tutor to teach him all of the ways of science and this friendship results in the creature as well as a rift leading the mad Doctor all the way to the guillotine. "Curse..." would also be the first horror film to have shown blood in an explicit way and with Eastman color,
Terrence Fisher's adaptation opened on May 2, 1957 at the London Pavillon and to mixed reviews. To Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, "...this routine horror picture, which makes no particular attempt to do anything more important than scare you with corpses and blood, the most famous monster of screen fiction comes to life and goes clomping round again..." "Peter Cushing gets every inch of drama from the leading role, making almost believable the ambitious urge and diabolical accomplishment," praised Variety, "The British version of the [...] classic shocker emphasizes not so much the uncontrollable blood lust of the created monster as the clinical details whereby the crazy scientist accumulates the odd organs with which to assemble the creature."
"Psycho" was an unwanted surprise to Paramount Pictures in 1959, expecting out of Alfred Hitchcock the Audrey Hepburn vehicle "No Bail for the Judge." With the star pregnant and Hitchcock's assistant introducing him to the Robert Bloch novel "Psycho," it was clear what Hitch wanted to put on screen next despite Paramount's wishes. When the book was distributed to studios that same year, Paramount script reader William Pinckard deemed it "too repulsive for films, and rather shocking," but Hitch still wanted to make it. (Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, 1990) Acquiring the book rights for $9,500, the studio continued to put the kibosh on his plans. His usual budget was gone which led to the decision to shoot black and white and with his television crew from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Even this was rejected, the sound stages having been reportedly booked. So Hitch would finance the film himself as long as Paramount would simply distribute the adapted film.
Shot in the same studio of his television show, "Psycho" was shot from November 11, 1959-February 1, 1960 with a budget of $807,000. ""He wanted the camera, being the eyes of the audience all the time, to let them [view the action] as if they were seeing it with their own eyes," script supervisor Marshall Schlom explained. Again, Hitchcock reinforced the sensation of voyeurism -- of "cruel eyes studying you,"as Norman Bates puts it -- that permeates the entire film." (Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, 1990) This voyeurism even worked in favor of the occasional improvisation which Hitchcock would have otherwise never allowed on set. But Anthony Perkins was inspired by an oral fixation in allowing his Norman Bates to eat candy during scenes as well as the heightened erratic nature of his interaction on the porch with Martin Balsam (P.I. Arbogast).
But for all the surprising flexibility, the famous shower scene remains one of the greatest moments in film history although one of the most meticulous. "The shower scene [...] required 78 shot set-ups and took seven days to film. The set was built so that any of the walls could be removed, allowing the camera to get in close from every angle. Although other scenes were shot with more than one camera, this one only used one cameraman. The shower scene was originally written to see only the knife-wielding hand of the murderer. Hitchcock suggested to Saul Bass [...] a number of angles that would capture screenwriter Joseph Stefano's description of "an impression of a knife slashing, as if tearing at the very screen, ripping the film." ("Behind the Camera - Psycho")
The reception was mixed, even with Hitchcock's creative marketing ploy in turning away latecomers. "The consequence in [Hitchcock's] denouement falls quite flat for us. But the acting is fair," wrote Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, "There is not an abundance of subtlety or the lately familiar Hitchcock bent toward significant and colorful scenery in this obviously low-budget job." Variety was kinder in prescribing "The 'Psycho' diagnosis, commercially, is this: an unusual, good entertainment, indelibly Hitchcock, and on the right kind of boxoffice beam" and praising Anthony Perkins's performance as a "remarkably effective in-a-dream kind of performance." "Psycho" would gross 32 million by the end of its run in theaters, and earned over $12 million for Paramount on release and $15 million by the end of 1960.
By chance, William Castle that same year had a new gimmick for Colombia studio execs. "During the last two minutes... I'll stop the picture. Then my voice will go over the sound track. I'll say something like, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you're too frightened to see the last two minutes of "Homicidal," please go to the box office and get your full admission price refunded. You must leave immediately. You have only sixty seconds to get your money back."" (Homicidal (1961) - Articles - TCM.com) The "Fright Break" almost blew up in Castle's face when finding moviegoers staying for the first viewing to only going back to the box office during their second viewing. It was immediately fixed by insisting theater owners to clear the theater after each viewing as well as creating the "coward's corner" where a nurse would attend to those humiliated.
**spoiler alert** But the plot itself has surprising weight against Castle's usual gimmicks. Inspired by the fascination with the first American to undergo gender reassignment surgery and also a little on the sudden timeliness of Robert Bloch's cross dressing psychopath (although Castle himself admitted his aspirations to create Hitchcock-like films), this film launched the career of Joan Marshall. Castle described when meeting Marshall through talent agent Jerry Lauren. ""We shook hands. Her grip was firm."It's a difficult part to cast, Miss Marshall. A known face would be easily recognizable to the audience, and the whole success of the picture depends on making audiences believe there are two people - a man and a woman." "Will you let me read the script, Mr. Castle?" "Her voice was low-pitched and husky. Intrigued, I gave her the script of Homicidal." Castle was finally convinced to cast her after makeup artist Ben Lane convincingly transformed her into a man. "Two hours later, Joan Marshall came back to my office. My secretary, not recognizing her, asked the man his name. The transformation was indeed astonishing."" The choice to bill her as Jean Arless was a neutral one, "it could have been either male or female."
With or without gimmick, Time Magazine dubbed "Homicidal" as "surpass[ing] [Psycho] in structure, suspense and sheer nervous drive" and naming it one of the top ten films of 1961.
"Why She Wouldn't Harm a Fly" to "If You Don't Leave This House In the Next Minute, I will Kill You"
Norman Bates. The very name offers up chills to everyone who has ever watched "Psycho," is both fascinating and terrifying, being the second greatest villain according to A.F.I.'s "Top 100 Heroes and Villains." As the only son of an emotionally abusive mother, Norman did not have an easy life with Norma. Explaining to Marion Crane in the office's parlor, he admits that he believes "we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever climb out. We scratch and claw ... but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch." His own personal trap includes his mother's hypocritical beliefs that all sex was sinful and all women (except for Norma herself) were whores.
Whether it was these beliefs or an incestuous jealous rage (delved into in the novel) that propelled him to kill Norma and her fiancee, Norman was immediately hospitalized for shock. But during his stay at the hospital both in guilt for killing her and pretending away his awareness that the death had even happened, he immediately developed the then-named Disassociative Identity Disorder (now Multiple Personality Disorder). Within this untreated diagnosis, Norman began to "keep alive the illusion of his mother being alive" as explained by the psychiatrist at the end of the film, "and whenever reality came too close, when danger or desire threatened that illusion, he'd dress up, even into a cheap wig he bought, and he'd walk about the house, sit in her chair, speak in her voice" even going as far as to dig up his mother's corpse and using his taxidermy expertise on the body as if to atone for his guilt.
After the Mother personality, in the illusion of repressive abuse and protection towards Norman's personality, kills both the empathetic Marion Crane and the P.I. Arbogast, she is convinced that "she did nothing, that Norman committed all the murders just to keep her from being discovered. [...] Of course, she feels badly about it... but also somewhat relieved to be, as she put it, free of Norman, at last." All of this happens while the body of Norman is staring into nothingness, knowing even if the Mother personality, now the dominating identity, would compel his shell to kill the fly buzzing around him, Norma would never be suspected of ever being a murderer. This is probably the greatest horror, or rather tragedy, of "Psycho" of a man losing control of himself not necessarily to a woman, but to a psychosis greater than him.
Warren Webster is another story. Born a female, the true biology a secret only among his mother, the county clerk (who would become a justice of the peace), and Helga the housekeeper, her life would surely be in jeopardy under a ruthless and misogynistic father intent on having a boy. Helga even took Warren to Denmark where there might have been a sex change operation. But growing up in this gender still did not change the relationship between his father and himself, having been physically beaten and even being emotionally damaged after Father Webster's death. His older half-sister Miriam is to inherit the Webster estate if Warren dies before marrying and unable to produce a son. But his 21st birthday is nearing, and the estate is almost his. When Helga has a stroke in Denmark, they are forced to return to the states and Warren, or "Emily" on the other side of the ocean, back into the gender he was thrust into.
Unfortunately, Miriam is in love and engaged to pharmacy owner Karl Anderson, which is clearly a threat to receiving the inheritance. It also does not help that two out of the three people who knows Warren's true biology is still alive, although at the beginning of the film, the county clerk was taken care of. Warren still doubles as "Emily," now his "wife" and a nurse for Helga now mute and an invalid in her old age. Although unable to verbally attest to Warren's biology, Helga is still alive, which would still ruin his chances of receiving something close to atonement for that awful childhood.
As "Emily" and as if in his true extension, Warren is able to be truly awful to Miriam and Helga, going as far as to flirt with Karl and verbally threaten his childhood nanny with ideas of how to kill her. To get to the justice of the peace, "Emily" even ropes a hotel bellboy in pretending to marry her. "Emily" proves to be far more crazier than Warren after attempting to ask Karl out on a date. When he refuses, she immediately trashes Miriam's flower shop. Although the film paints a picture of "Emily" as a "homicidal maniac," as the sheriff describes Warren, this character study could bear closer inspection and even possibly a more intimate remake if someone was interested (and with a better wig)!
Death Match Round
Unfortunately, William Castle was never without his gimmicks and while some of them do indeed work (the electrical "Percepto!" in "The Tingler" (1959), "Illusion-O" in "13 Ghosts" (1959)) "Homicidal"'s gimmick relied on fear rather than something more sensory which made the previous two film's ploys. "Yellow stripes appeared on sidewalks near the curb, leading past the theaters - and stenciled on the stripe: "Cowards, keep walking." Inside, large yellow footsteps were stenciled on the floor from the seats back to the box office - and over the box office there hung a sign: "Coward's Corner." A blood-pressure outfit sat on a table nearby, attended by a nurse who offered free tests to cowards. A yellow light bathed Coward's Corner, and a recorded message kept repeating, "These cowards are too frightened to see the end of Homicidal. Watch them shiver in the Coward's Corner. Coward...coward...coward." Castle describes in his autobiography Step Right Up! I'mGonna Scare the Pants off America.
As if the "Fright Break" was bad enough, "Homicidal" had something rather unique at its core and this was the conversation of biology versus gender with or without psychosis. There is something to remember about older films with out-of-date tropes such as what Edward J. Ingebretzen calls "the popular link between homicide and gender-deviancy" (At Stake: Monsters and the Rhetoric of Fear in Public Culture, 2001) and that is There. Is. Still. The. Conversation. There is still the conversation with or without psychosis, with or without popular media studies on sociology or vice versa. Many people watch films for the characters and the reverse. If a person is able to look at Warren as a tragic figure or as a homicidal maniac, there is an interesting conversation to be had and the fact that this conversation was brought up in 1961 (albeit in a horror film), that is still advancement to some degree!
Norman Bates is a fascinating psychopath (or tragedy, however you want to look at it) and only amplified nowadays with the critically acclaimed A&E television show "Bates Motel." What the original film does so well is studying the aspect of the visceral, especially in the shower scene. Kjetil Rodje best explains this in Images of Blood in American Cinema: The Tingler to the Wild Bunch, "During the acts of violence the editing is very swift, and physical harm towards the body is not shown. The blood ensures there is no confusion regarding the actual outcome of the scene and provides audiences with information to fill in any gaps after the sudden displays of violence." The timing is made up for in the following scenes, feeling that previous horror still coarse through the audience member's body watching the all too patient Norman slowly cleaning up his other personality's mess.
"Psycho" is beautiful, artistic in the use of Janet Leigh's dead stare to the angles of the dead birds in Norman's parlor to my favorite scene in Arbogast's death. Though the pacing is not always up to the right speed in some parts which mostly involve exhibition and the backstory, the editing from wide shot to singles flimsy and awkward compared to the fantastic cutting of the shower scene. But Hitch was always better at action sequences than the storytelling. Even the reveal of Norman's psychosis from the psychiatrist is woefully wooden and rather needless, but nothing can equal up to how the film should have ended with that fantastic last minute superimposed skull over Norman's face, then fading out, forever condemning Norman with his mother or the remnants of her in his now dominated mind.
Both films are perfect within their own merits, no matter how much "Homicidal" was influenced by "Psycho." Warren Webster and Norman Bates are fascinating character studies whether it is the question of gender with or without psychosis on Webster's part or who killed who in Norman's mind. In all of Castle's unfortunate schlock and Hitchcock's meticulousness against the occasional cinematic lethargy, I can't choose between the two.
"Imagine yourself standing by the wreckage of the mill. The fire is dying down. Soon the bare skeleton of the building will be visible, the gaunt rafters against the sky" explains Elsa Lanchester's Mary Shelley, setting the scene for one of the few most successful sequels, "The Bride of Frankenstein." Shot in 46 days at $400,000 and by 1943, earning $2 million in the box office, the sequel proves to be just as impactful, if not more, in the Universal horror franchise and as a stand-alone film.
Ironically enough, director James Whale used the possibility of a sequel to his advantage. Persuading Universal to let him direct 1934's "One More River" in return for a second "Frankenstein," Whale was not enthusiastic to make the film. "According to a studio publicist, Whale and Universal's studio psychiatrist decided "the Monster would have the mental age of a ten-year old boy and the emotional age of a lad of fifteen" ("The Bride of Frankenstein | Project Gutenberg Central - eBooks") even as script writer John L. Balderston attempted to create a continuation of Mary Shelley's iconic novel in film form. The only thing that remains from this script is the prologue based on the fated weekend at Lake Geneva between Lord Byron and the Shelleys.
There are clear differences in the four year gap of recreating that same night when The Creature goes down in flames with The Windmill laboratory. With the decision to make the monster speak, the bridgework in Karloff's mouth to give his cheeks a sunken appearance was taken out, allowing his face to look much rounder than in the 1931 film. Even makeup artist Jack Pierce purposefully attended to the details of displaying healing scars from the fire. The very thought of having to speak dialogue disappointed the English actor, which would eventually lead to what he called a "monster clambake," believing the combinations of Universal horror characters "ridiculous and said so" according to an interview with Louis Berg of the LA Times (1946). In the 1935 film, the still relatively "young" creature discovers friendship as his creator still wages war with God, creating a bride not out of demand (like in the novel), but in being manipulated by the magnificent Ernest Thesiger ("The Old Dark House," ""The Robe") as Dr. Pretorius.
"If the first one was about the essential loneliness of a man, a Miltonian episode about being thrust into a world that you didn't create and didn't understand, then the second one is the absolute compulsion for company, the need not to be alone," Guillermo del Toro best explained the bones of Whale's finest work at an LA screening in 2012. Whether this choice is autobiographical for the well-known genius and tragedy that is the English director, no one could act this torment better than Karloff whose eyes say far more when there is no dialogue to be spoken. That "emotional age of a lad of fifteen" could not be more apparent in the now better known as a parody scene with O.P. Heggie as the blind hermit. It is difficult to separate the innocent beauty of the sequence from one of Mel Brooks (and Gene Hackman)'s best moments. But as his scars heal and evolve, so does The Creature until those final moments walking towards his "bride" with an earnest "friend" on his lips, but that, as most horror films go, does not go well as The Female Creature is now in her "first film" stage of "being thrust into a world."
Elsa Lanchester is magnificent in her movement, with much thanks to consistent homework of hissing like swans and jerking her head back and forth according to camera angle, much in the similar vein of Brigitte Helm as the Robot Maria in the Weimar classic "Metropolis" (1927). But with little to do and with the film titled in her (and the recasted Elizabeth in Valerie Hobson) favor, the women of "The Bride of Frankenstein" have something greater against all the feminist critics and that is as the symbolism of genderless companionship and human connection even for the most loneliest and remorseful scientist and the frightened and affection starved creature who gives us the cold hard truth in his final words, "We [the antagonists] belong dead."
