Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Bride of Frankenstein

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this is Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you
an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This one originally
published October twentieth, twenty twenty three. This was our Halloween
season Weird House on the Bride of Frankenstein, directed by
James Whale.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yeah, this is one of the all time greats. So
this is definitely one of those episodes where it's going
to be a lot of us talking about just how
truly awesome this movie is. And it is truly awesome.
If you haven't seen it, or you haven't seen it
in a while, it's the perfect time to watch or
rewatch Bride of Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
The best of the universal monster movies.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
All right, let's dive right in.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. This is Rob Lamp.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
in honor of the Halloween season, we are going to
be talking about the nineteen thirty five universal horror classic
Bride of Frankenstein. Directed by James Whale, the first sequel
to the original Universal Frankenstein, also directed by Whale, which

(01:22):
was released four years earlier in nineteen thirty one. So
I know we're going to talk a lot more about
the specifics of our appreciation for this movie as we
go along, but I wanted to just start off by saying,
in my opinion, Bride of Frankenstein is about as good
as it gets. It is. I think shocking how great

(01:45):
this movie is, how good it looks, how weird it is,
how beautiful and funny and full of genuine feeling, and
how fresh it feels. Something about it is the exact
opposite of a relic from the past. It feels so
exciting and new.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
I think the word that I would use for Brida Frankenstein,
without even a hint of irony or parity or humor,
is it is just truly transcendent. It transcends its genre,
it transcends its time period. It is just a masterpiece.
And yeah, I second way you said, if you're the
type of film viewer who's like, I don't know if

(02:26):
I need or want to see a film from the
nineteen thirties, I mean, fair enough, watch what you want
to watch. But films like this, films like Mad Love,
which we previously discussed on the show, these really stand out.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
And I love the other Universal monster movies, you know.
I love Todd Browning's Dracula, I love Wales First Frank,
I love the Invisible Man, Creature from a Black Lagoon.
I mean, really enjoy all of those core monster frolics.
But even though all of those are excellent, there are
individually things in them that kind of drag Dracula. For example,

(02:59):
I love Todd Browning's Dracula, but it gets markedly less
interesting when Bella Legosi has been off screen for too long.
You know, there are some there's some kind of slow
moving talkie segments with the not terribly interesting human characters, which,
to be fair, are trying to be faithful to the
plot of the novel, but in some ways I think

(03:21):
end up kind of holding the movie back from what
it could have been. All of the other Universal Monster
frolics have their their stuffy interludes, but for me, Bride
does not. My opinion is that it is just wall
to wall horror, profound weirdness, hilarity and powerful emotion. So
I think not only is Bride of Frankenstein the best

(03:43):
of all the Universal Monster movies. It's the best by
a mile. It's the best by an astronomical unit. It
leaves these other great movies in the dust. And I
guess we can as we go on, we can talk
about some of the reasons why I feel that way.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
It is kind of funny that in leading up to
this episode, we were talking about maybe doing Son of
Frankenstein or House of Frankenstein, a couple of the later
movies in the Universal Frankenstein cycle, and then we were like, well,
why are we denying ourselves, Like staring at the bar,
there is the top shelf Frankenstein right there. Let's just
do that one.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah. So I was realizing before we started recording that
one way this movie will fit into the Weird House
Cinema cannon is that we sort of have a show
tradition of covering sequels without covering the original that they're
following up, and we haven't done an episode on the
original Universal Frankenstein, though I think it has come up
a lot when discussing other movies. I think it might

(04:39):
be fruitful to begin today's episode by thinking about Bride
of Frankenstein as a sequel, And what can we learn
about sequels from a sequel that works this well. I
don't know exactly how the percentages break out, but I'd
say at least maybe eighty percent of the time sequels
are uninteresting derivations of the original, just sort of like

(05:02):
trying to make a quick buck off of the success
of the original. But sometimes, as we all know, there
are sequels that are not only as good as the original,
not only worthy of it, lots of people consider them
better than the original. Quick list of commonly cited examples
that I would agree with a Terminator two Star Trek,
The Wrath of Khan, the Empire strikes Back, multiple mad

(05:25):
Max sequels, I'd say, you know, Road Warrior, Fury Road,
And there are plenty of other examples you can think
of too, in even less well known franchises.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah, yeah, Like I I'll often throw Blade two in there.
Aliens comes to mind, of course, Return of the Blind
Dead to feature like a recent horror film that we
did a rerun off. I throw Chronicles of Ritick in
there as well. You know, I generally say when a
sequel works, it either is a second attempt with improved
skills and or budget at the concepts of the first

(05:58):
Or is it it's a success full expansion of the
original concept, you know, not just a sell them another
scoop of the same ice cream, but give them something
that is transformative, you know.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
I agree, and I think that's exactly what's going on
with Bride Frankenstein. James Whale's original Frankenstein is really good.
It's a solid adaptation of the novel, one of the
best universal monster movies. But Bride of frank is absolutely divine,
and so I'm wondering what exactly it does that really
has this step up quality going into the second movie

(06:32):
in this series. An interesting thing about Bride of Frankenstein
is that it is both a fulfillment of the promise
of the source material, in this case, Mary Wilston crafts
Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus, and it forges
a new path. So in the sense that it's a
fulfillment of the source material, Bride of Frankenstein includes scenes

(06:57):
and themes from Shelley's nun that were left out of
the first movie, and also when it chooses to include
totally new things from out of left field, they are
great inclusions. So to start with like things that it
brings in from the novel, I think they're typically things
that deepen our emotional understanding of the creature. So one

(07:22):
example is that in Bride of frank the monster can talk.
The monster in the novel, of course, is amazingly articulate.
In the first movie, by contrast, it's a silent performance.
And I've seen film critics and historians make the interesting
observation that Frankenstein was one of the first mega hits
of the early sound film era, and yet its principal

(07:44):
performance from Boris Karloff was a mostly silent one.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah. Yeah, In this we do see some interesting growth
in the monster. He's acquiring language, he's learning to express
himself better, and it makes Karlov's performance all the more enthralling.
There's this crackling, confused, traumatized and yet still hopeful energy
in the heart of the creature, just straining to reach
out and touch the world. Sadly, he lacks many of

(08:08):
the tools he needs, and he finds himself continually on
the other end of human violence and human manipulation. Like
you said, it's not on the same level of the
articulate monster we see in the novel who Is I
think it can is often interpreted as being almost kind
of like a fallen angel, you know, that's the kind
of energy he brings, so, you know, not quite the

(08:30):
same energy, but it moves a little closer to that
concept and does its own thing with it.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah. The articulacy of the creature in the novel, I
think is often and this is actually in the novel itself,
is compared to Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. Yeah, Karloff
in Bride is not like that. He's mostly speaking in
like short clipped statements. And apparently Karlov was wary of
the idea of having the monster speak in Bride. He

(08:56):
wasn't sure that was a good idea, but I think
it was the right move. Even though he's not giving
these these long moving speeches like he does in the book,
he has these heartbreakingly terse memorable lines, you know, like
love dead, hate living. Another thing from the novel that's
brought into to deepen the story here is the scene

(09:20):
where the monster makes friends with a blind man living
in a cabin. That is, it's not exactly the same,
but it's based on a section of the novel where
the creature observes people living in a remote cottage and
learns language from them, but is ultimately driven away when
sighted people finally catch a glimpse of him and react

(09:41):
with horror to his appearance. The scene in the book
where he realizes he is hated because he is ugly
is one of the saddest in the book, and they
explore those themes very well, and Bride I Think another
one the creature's desire for an undead mate. This is
also from the book, but left out of the first movie.

(10:02):
For the most part. In the novel, after the creature
realizes that living humans will all hate him and reject him,
he thinks his only hope of finding love and companionship
is for his creator to make another like him, so
he threatens Victor Frankenstein. He threatens his loved ones to

(10:23):
coerce him to make the creature an undead bride. But
then in the book, Victor I Think abandons the project
before it's completed, and he has a kind of stroke
of conscience and he says, no, I can't do this,
and then in a rage, the creature punishes him by
killing his fiance.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
And it's in retrospect looking back on this, it's so
great that they came back and took this part of
the book and did something with it, because I remember
this being like one of the most impactful sections of
the novel, a novel that is full of fantastic ideas
and scenes. But yeah, this section of the book where

(11:03):
the doctor is forced to go back and do this
mad thing one more time and attempt to create a
mate for this monster just so it will leave him
and his loved ones alone, and then decides that for
the greater good he cannot go through.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
In it, I agree exactly. So I think the movie
is really working because it pulls in all of these
great resonant elements from the original source material that you
know didn't fit into the first the plot of the
first film. But on the other hand, there is all
kinds of other stuff that is added purely from the
original genius of the filmmakers, and I think you could

(11:42):
you could bring up a lot of things here. One
I wanted to mention is comedy. I have not read
Frankenstein in a bit, but I don't recall it really
having much humor in it at all. I think it's
a very serious book, and while Bride of Frankenstein deals
with serious themes and has many serious moments, it is
also overflowing with irony and goofiness. Sometimes it's surprisingly goofy

(12:09):
wail understood horror storytelling according I think to the Granginioal
tradition of hot and cold showers, where tales of the
macabre would be alternately play back and forth with comedy
performances and good storytellers in the space. I think understand
that comedy is a wonderful release mechanism for the building

(12:29):
tension of the story. There's something that really works when
you alternate mounting tension and horror with comedy. So and
beyond that, there are also characters in this movie that
operate on the knife edge between horror and comedy at
all times. I think the prime example being probably my

(12:51):
favorite character from this movie, doctor Septimus Pretorius, a character
who is not in the novel, invented purely for Bride
of Frankkenstein. And that brings us to the other thing
I'd mentioned about this movie, a sort of original genius
zany characters. I love the novel Frankenstein, but it does
not have an ensemble of memorable characters with interesting quirks

(13:15):
and personalities. I think the genius of the novel is
in its scenario and themes, and in the development of
the main character of the creature right of. Frank, on
the other hand, convinced this whole ensemble of delightfully jagged
weirdos to give the story flavor. There's a kind of
Cohen Brothers quality to all of the secondary players here.

(13:38):
And I think the greatest example of this is the
villain of the movie, doctor Septimus Pretorius, played by Ernest Thesiger,
a flamboyantly bizarre professor, a scientist matter than any mad
scientist you've ever seen before. I think basically every single
moment Thesager is on screen is just gold. He has

(13:59):
turned up to eleven from his very first line, and
he does not he does not stop.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
I agree, that's it's just amazing in this And.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
While doctor Pretorius is the greatest, there's room for all
kinds of just you know, goobers and creeps and buffoons
and weird personalities to weave in and out of the
story here. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, And I think the other amazing thing about this
is Okay, so the idea of horror in comedy working
together that that's nothing new, But everything just works so
smoothly in this film it can almost feel like a
surreal experience, especially given how jarring, sometimes intentionally the transaction
transition in and out of horror in comedy may be

(14:39):
in other works. There's just just in general, there's absolutely
nothing rough around the edges with this movie. You know,
there's there's much to be said again, how fresh and
exciting this nineteen thirty five film feels in terms of
its themes and performances, But even its effects are just
staggeringly effective. The monster's basic makeup does is of course iconic,

(15:01):
and you might expect that since it's iconic and you've
seen it replicated often poorly, you know, on various other
forms so many times, that it would lose some of
its punch, but it really doesn't. It just looks incredible
in every shot.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
I totally agree. Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying, Like,
you know what the Carlos Frankenstein makeup looks like. You've
seen it a million times, so how could it still
be scary and shocking? But in my opinion, when you
watch the movie, it is like seeing it actually come
to life in motion situated within the context of the plot.

(15:35):
It doesn't matter how many times you've seen this pulled
out of context on posters and stills and all that,
it's still super creepy. It looks amazing, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
At every shot. On top of that, everything, every shot
is perfectly composed. The dialogue is all tight and interesting,
and other effects are amazing as well. There's a scene
late in the movie in which a model mountain tower
collapses in on itself. We've seen similar effects that rained
from terrible to great but clearly an effect in so

(16:05):
many pictures, but this one just looks and feels real
in a way that's truly admirable. Oh yeah, So, Joe,
what's your elevator pitch for Bride of Frankenstein?

Speaker 2 (16:14):
You know it's difficult, so maybe it'd be something like
after Frankenstein, you thought you knew what it meant for
death to reign over life and for science to go mad,
But we have such sites to show you yet.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, I think that sums it up well. And of course,
to steal a line from the movie itself, have to
quote doctor Pretorius about a new world of gods and monsters.
I mean That's just one of the great lines of
the film and kind of sums up the spirit and
energy of the sequel.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Here in the scene, that line is offered as a toast,
and it is so good. But it's especially good knowing
the line which comes right before it, which is where
doctor Pretorius claims that Jin is his only weakness, and
he is clearly not correct in saying that.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
There's another point in the film where he says something
else is his only weakness. Yeah, you're just so many
wonderful little quirks that that they're able to fit into
the dialogue here. All right, Well, let's go ahead and
listen to some trailer audio.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
Oh yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Well, if you rightfully wish to go and watch Bride
of Frankenstein on your own before you continue with this episode,
well you're in luck because this is a Universal Monsters movie.
I mean, this is the shining gem of the Universal
Monsters franchise. So this one is widely available in all formats,
and I think it's streaming on Peacock right now, if

(18:37):
that is available to you. But any way you do it,
do see this movie in the best quality you can grab.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yes, I would say the same thing This is one
where it really pays off to get the highest definition,
best visual quality you can because this is a great
looking movie and you want to get at every bit
of it.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
All. Right now, getting into the connections here the people
that made this movie, we want to stress here that again,
this was a big sequel. This was a sequel to
a highly successful movie in which director James Whale got
to assemble a massively talented cast and crew. So we
are not going to be able to do justice to

(19:21):
everyone that was involved in bringing this film to life.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, there are a ton of people involved in this
movie that each have fascinating biographies, But because there are
so many of them, I think we're gonna have to
give fairly short statements on most of them. Just know
that there's a lot of people here that we will
get to kind of briefly, but they're each worth looking up.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, Yeah, and we may come back to many of
these people in the future. They're, like we were saying,
a lot of these folks are individuals who have they
came up in a smaller picture or a lesser picture.
We might spend a lot of time talking about who
they were and what their careers consisted of all right. Well,
starting at the top, of course, with the director. It's
James Whale, who lived eighteen eighty nine through nineteen fifty seven,

(20:05):
English director of film and the British stage, as well
as an occasional actor himself. He primarily came over to
the Hollywood system because with the transition to talkies, they
wanted to invest in directors who were great with dialogue,
and he had that reputation already. He's best remembered for
his horror projects, namely the two Frankenstein films. Nineteen thirty

(20:26):
three is The Invisible Man in nineteen thirty two's The
Old Dark House. His first film, nineteen thirties Journey's End,
was a war drama starring Colin Clive, and even after Frankenstein,
he continued to make non horror dramas such as nineteen
thirty threes by Candlelight, and even musicals like nineteen thirty
six's Showboat and late in his career the nineteen forty

(20:48):
adventure film Green Hell, which does have a terrific cast.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Like many of the directors we talked about who were
making great horror films in the early days of sound cinema,
I don't know if it would be right to say
that like horror was a passion of James Whale. I
think he probably wanted to focus more on dramas and such,
but you know, he did the work that he got
and he made great, great horror movies.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, it's time and time again. It's the case with
these directors, like they wanted to go up the ladder
towards bigger a list type pictures, prestige pictures that had
the cast, but also didn't deal with these lesser genres
of horror and sci fi. And that was just part
of the cinema world of the time, that was the industry.

(21:37):
And it's just kind of ironic that nowadays so many
of these individuals are best remembered, if not remembered, exclusively
for their genre entries.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
This seems to be a situation where the original Frankenstein
was a huge hit. It made incredible money for Universal,
and that earned James Whale the right to make the
sequel on his own terms. Essentially, however, he wanted very
minimal studio interference, so Bride Frankenstein is the result of
Whale getting more or less total creative freedom and almost

(22:10):
all the resources and support he needed.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
That's right, IM to understand. He had a lot of
say over the script, presented a lot of ideas for
the script. So yes, this is a film that more
accurately gives us James Whale's vision of Frankenstein. Now, I
should also note that James Whale was an openly gay
man during a time during which this was rare, So
his personal life has long been an area of interest

(22:33):
to both biographers and also just film theorists and people
analyzing his films and discussing the themes explored in them.
It's especially the case with Bride.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, I've read differing takes over the extent to which
Bride of Frankenstein should be interpreted as intentionally having gay
themes in it. Some film historians read a lot of
gay themes and to Bride. Others have said, I think
based on some comments about people who from people who
knew James Whale said that they didn't think he was

(23:07):
intending to put anything like that into the film. But
based on the sources available to us, I guess it's
impossible to know for sure, but whether it should be
interpreted as part of Wales's intention or not. Definitely, this
film has been a rich subject for a lot of
gay film historians.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Absolutely now. The source material, of course, is Mary Shelley's novel.
Mary Shelley lived seventeen ninety seven through eighteen fifty one
English writer responsible for a good seven novels and multiple
short stories, but her first novel, eighteen eighteens Frankenstein or
The Modern Prometheus, was the one that made her a legend.
To this day, it stands as a powerful, entertaining and

(23:45):
richly rewarding novel, highly influential over science fiction. She was
the wife of English poet Percy Shelley, with whom she
also worked. They, along with a friend and poet Lord Byron,
are depicted in this movie.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
I was watching a making of documentary and people were
talking about how apparently Whale insisted on having this framing
narrative in the film, because the movie doesn't start in
the narrative itself. It starts with us seeing Lord Byron,
Percy and Mary Wilson Craft Shelley sitting around a roaring
fire and talking about the idea of the novel Frankenstein.

(24:25):
Apparently Whale thought that this framing was crucial and he
insisted that it be in And I think it does
some interesting things. Maybe we can talk about that when
we get to the plot section.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yeah, yeah, I do think it's essential. It's hard to
imagine this movie without it. But more about that when
we get into the plot, all right. In terms of
the people involved with writing the screenplay and developing the story,
they're a number of uncredited writing credits that pop up
for this film on the Internet movie database. We can't

(24:57):
go through all of them, so I'm just going to
focus on the two names that are credited in the
actual credits on the film. Adapted by and screenplay credit
goes to William Hurlbut, who lived eighteen seventy eight through
nineteen fifty seven, American writer and screenwriter, certainly best remembered
for this film, but he has forty credits on IMDb,
going back to nineteen fifteen and then stretching up till

(25:17):
the mid fifties. Other notable credits include nineteen thirties The
Cat Creeps, The Will of the Dead Man, and nineteen
thirty four's Imitation of Life. He also did additional dialogue
on Robert Flore's Daughter of Hong Kong, starring the legendary
anime Wo And then we have An adapted by credit
for John L. Balderston, who lived eighteen eighty nine through

(25:39):
nineteen fifty four, American playwrights, screenwriter, and journalist with a
nak var horror and fantasy. His work includes nineteen thirties
Dracula adapted from his own play, nineteen thirty two is
the Mummy, the nineteen thirty three time travel movie Berkeley Square,
nineteen thirty five's Mad Love, and nineteen forties The Mummy's Hand.
He was one of the Love Yeah, it's quite a pedigree.

(26:01):
He was also one of the writers on nineteen forty
four's gas Light, from which we get the term gas lighting.
All right, now getting into the cast clearly right at
the top, we have the Monster. The monster is played,
according to the opening credits, by Carloff.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
First name, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, I love this. This is of course, we're, of course,
of course talking about Boris Karloff. This is the stage
name of British actor William Henry Pratt, who lived eighteen
eighty seven through nineteen sixty nine. He's gone up on
the show a couple of times already. His credits go
back to nineteen nineteen, and he already had a long
filmography by the time with nineteen thirty one It's Frankenstein,
in which he of course plays the monster. Afterwards, some

(26:42):
of his big horror roles included nineteen thirty two is
the Mummy and the Old Dark House, nineteen thirty three
Is the Ghoul, nineteen thirty four's The Black Cat. After Bride,
he remained very active, playing the monster one more time
in nineteen thirty nine, Son of Frankenstein, but he remained
a superstar of He appeared in nineteen forty four's House
of Frankenstein, though not as the monster, and of course

(27:05):
he remained active throughout the rest of his life. All right,
So that is the monster, But of course we need
a true Frankenstein, and Frankenstein is, of course in this
movie Henry Frankenstein, the Creator, played once more by Colin Clive,
who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen thirty seven. Just a
tremendous but of course troubled and short lived British actor

(27:25):
who we previously discussed on our early Weird House Cinema
episode about nineteen thirty five's Mad Love, in which he
played Stephen Orlock. He's wonderful in that as well.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, he is and he. I think Colin Clive went
back to having worked with James Whale from the stage,
like that they had worked together before the transition to
film here.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yeah, yeah, a lot. There are a number of players
in this that had personal connections to Wale. Whale had
worked with them before, he knew their talent, and they
were hand picked. Colin Clive is, I've never seen him
outside of a genre movie. I've only seen him in
these horror films, but he is always just this live

(28:08):
wire of anxiety and terror. He's perfect for a horror movie.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Of course.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
In this he's reprising his role fro nineteen thirty one's Frankenstein.
That was only his third emotion picture. The two Frankenstein films,
along with Mad Love, constitute his only horror pictures. The
rest of his nineteen credits, including the title role in
nineteen thirty three's Christopher Strong, are all more mainstream.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah. I think I also only know him for his
horror roles. But I recall in Mad Love he is
he gives a performance of such anxiety. I think the
way I put it then was that it feels like
he is undergoing vision.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yes, in a way, you compare the two Roles. He's
actually more chill in this movie. Despite being an individual
who's gone through a horrifying and near death experience and
get and then is sucked back into that same world
once more, he still feels a little bit more chill.
I guess at least he can throw himself into his
work in a way that Stephen Orlock was no longer

(29:07):
able to do. All right. He has a love interest
in this though, and that is Elizabeth, played by Valerie Hobson,
who of nineteen seventeen through nineteen ninety eight Irish born
English actor. She takes over the role here from May Clark,
who played Henry's love interest Elizabeth in the previous film.
After this, she appeared in nineteen thirty five's were Wolf
of London and various other films through about nineteen fifty four.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
So the character here is Elizabeth, that is Henry Frankenstein's fiance,
and I think she is supposed to represent goodness and virtue,
you know. So there are like there's this forking path
in the story where Henry could just choose a good life.
He could just you know, have a life of love
and family and pursuing regular noble career. Pursuits and all that.

(29:52):
But no, you know, she's that option. Instead, he's going
to go with dangerous knowledge.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yes, of course he ends up having to choose that direction,
in part because he was manipulated, in part because she
has taken hostage.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
In the book.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Of course, this is all part of the manipulations of
the monster. But the monster as presented in that first film,
the first Frankenstein film, is of course not a master manipulator.
Like he doesn't even speak. It's a huge step up
in this movie for him to be able to speak,
and you can see where it would have been unrealistic
for suddenly Frankenstein's Monster to be able to lay out

(30:29):
some sort of a vast scheme. So you need a
different sort of enemy, a different sort of villain, and
that is, of course doctor Pretorius played by Ernest Messiger.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
The way to fight evil is with a different kind
of evil. To vote Chronicles of Britag.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
I guess so yeah. Messenger lived eighteen seventy nine through
nineteen sixty one an English actor of stage and screen,
best remembered for this brilliant and flamboyant performance as the
maddest of mad scientists and mad Science Enablers. His other
credits include thirty two is the Old Dark House, thirty
threes The Ghoul, and nineteen fifty threes The Robe, in

(31:06):
which he plays Emperor Tiberius. It's my understanding he was
not the like original studio pick for this role, but
after whoever they wanted for it was not available or
it didn't work out, Like this was clearly Whyale's pick.
Whyal you know, had a history with this actor. He

(31:26):
really looked up to his his abilities and his talent,
and so this was like the obvious choice for this role.
And clearly it's impossible to imagine anyone else breathing life
into this character the way Thatsagre does.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Unreal, just brilliant, absurd, hilarious, sneering evil. I love Messager here.
Doctor Pretorius is a great character, and I yeah, I
could not imagine this going to a different actor. This
is like he is perfect all right.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Up next, we have Elsa Lanchester playing really the title
character of the film, even though the title character, the Bride,
is just credited with question marks in the opening scroll,
you know, because it's going to be a surprise, I guess.
But she it's a dual role because She also in
the early part of the film plays Mary Shelley, so

(32:21):
she plays both female creator and feminine creation, and these
two performances kind of bookend the rest of the picture.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
I think the choice to have the same actress in
both those roles is significant. Though I don't know exactly
what it means, it feels right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
I think that's one of the beauties about the show's
treatment of some of its more serious subject matter is
that it's kind of amorphous in a way, like you
can feel the connections, but the filmmakers don't like just
hammer it home in all cases. So there's plenty of
room for interpretation. Endless room for interpretation.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Really, right, but we should not hold back in thing.
Elsa Lanchester is great. She doesn't have actually a ton
of screen time, but the few minutes she is on
the screen, Wow, does she make an impression. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
I mean she's fun in the intro and then as
the Monster's mate she's accredited or the bride she has.
She has a wonderful and very different energy. It's almost
kind of an Avian energy. It's also also kind of
like a hyper focus like, while Frankenstein's Monster has more
of a like a lantern level of understand of analysis

(33:32):
of the world, and also kind of like a lantern
level anxiety and trauma about it. Hers is more laser focused.
She has that like flashlight intensity.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yes, she has I see what you mean when you
say Avian. She has a jerky, almost bird like movements
of the head and the eyes. Once she's brought to
life as the reanimated Bride, is kind of like quick,
jerky adjustments of her attention around the room, and she
it seems like she doesn't like she's seeing.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
No, and there's not a lot to like, but we'll
get to that after a bit. Elsa Lanchester Live nineteen
oh two through nineteen eighty six, English actor of film,
stage and TV. This is probably her most iconic role.
I mean it's just a very iconic role. Everybody knows
this look. Everybody knows that hair, right, I mean, the
whole costume is wonderful. As this we'll get into. She'd

(34:22):
already been acting for film for ten years by the
time of Bride, and continue to act through nineteen eighty.
Her later screen credits include forty three's Lassie Come Home,
forty six's The Spiral Staircase, forty nine is the Secret
Garden nineteen sixty four, is Mary Poppins that darn cat
in sixty five Other films of another There's fifty eight's
Bell Book and Candle, seventy three's Terror in the Wax Museum,

(34:46):
seventy six is murdered by death in nineteen eighties die Laughing.
She also appeared on such TV shows as The Magical
World of Disney and Night Gallery. I don't know why
I stressed it like that Night Gallery, not Night Gallery.
That's strange. Up next, we have to mention the character Minnie.
Minnie is another just this is just a ridiculously fun

(35:08):
character role, blatantly there for comic relief. And you know
the thing about comic relief characters in older pictures, they
don't always stand the test of time. Sometimes they don't
even stand the test of time, like ten years later,
much less with an eighty eight year old picture. But
Minnie is wonderful. This scared, nosy but also bloodthirsty old

(35:29):
maid u still delivers, still absolutely delivers.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
I love the way that she is terrified of the monster,
but she also somehow seems to be following the monster
everywhere it goes. There's one part where the creature is
captured by the authorities and put in like a dungeon,
and Minnie is there looking down through the bars and
she's like, Ooh, wouldn't he ugly, you know, I'd hate
to wake up and find him hiding underneath my bed

(35:54):
at night. But she says it in a way that
suggests she would like to find that.

Speaker 4 (35:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
She she seems kind of like what would later be
known as or maybe was known in the time period.
I forget the time frame on this is a hat
ten mary. I think it's the term. This would be
an older woman at a pro wrestling show who would
try and poke the heels on their way to the
ring with their hat pins. So there's kind of yeah,
blood the fuity to her afraid of the monster, but

(36:22):
also really wants to be there when the monster is tormented.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
But also this is a very broad comic performance, I
would say, almost cartoonish, but it works perfectly.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Yeah, And the actor here is Una O'Connor, who lived
eighteen eighty through nineteen fifty nine. She was only in
her mid fifties. Here she's played up as this old woman,
but she was not an old woman by any stretch
at this point. A tremendous Irish character actor with extensive
stage experience often cast in this sort of role. Though,
like I mean, and clearly why not, She's got it

(36:52):
nailed perfectly. Other films include The Invisible Man from thirty three,
The Informer from thirty five, and The Adventures of Robin
Hood from thirty eight.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Oh Man. Next, just to make sure we don't leave
him out, we should mention Dwight Frye, who has a
small role in this film as Carl, who is essentially
the new Egor, even though actually Egor wouldn't come until later,
is the new Fritz, and he's played by the same
actor who played Fritz in the original Frankenstein. So. Dwight

(37:22):
Frye lived eighteen ninety nine to nineteen forty three. He
was Wrinfield in Todd Browning Stracula. He apparently at first
had a more substantial part in the movie, but it
was allegedly cut down by censors.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, there's apparently like fifteen minutes or so that the
sensors cut out of this film just because they really
wanted to play it safe. A lot of it was
stuff that they thought might come off as blasphemous talking
you know, getting into the whole thesis of creating live.
I think some of it too, was Mary Shelley's dress.
They thought some angles on it were maybe a little
too risky for the time period, that sort of thing.

(37:55):
And some sort of subplot here with Carl and and
whatever he's up to outside of his grave robbing side gig.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
I think he was supposed to murder the mustache guy.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Oh, the burgermaster.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, so you mentioned that he's the egor of the film.
He was very much the egor of the film. But yeah,
the timeline of this is interesting because we were chatting
about this off of Mike earlier. There is no egor
in the novel Frankenstein. There is no egor in the
first Frankenstein movie. Instead, you have, like you said, Fritz
played by Dwight Frye, and then they bring him back

(38:32):
to play Carl, which is essentially the same sort of character.
And then it's not till nineteen thirty nine, Son of
Frankenstein that we get Igor Igor, we get this role
that is played by Bella Lagosi. But in retrospect, it's
like that that's what we think of as this position,
this sort of like deranged henchman to Doctor Frankenstein. We

(38:55):
think of it as the Egor role.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
I also think it's interesting that the actual character named
Egor was played by Bella Lagosi, So you would think
you would really remember that casting, you would associate Bella
with the character. But I very much think of Dwight
Fry when I think of Igor.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, yeah, he's good in this role. He's got some
good Hinchman energy. He'd go on to have small roles
in other Frankenstein films, various other pictures. He also pops
up in nineteen thirty one's The Maltese Falcon. All right,
real quick. The Burgo Master, who we mentioned is very fun,
a very very fun mustachio of performance. This character is
played by the actor E. E. Clive, who lived eighteen
eighty three through nineteen forty. He was also in thirty

(39:34):
three's The Invisible Man. Another one I'm going to point
out real quick in passing. Again, we don't have time
to go into all of these characters. Opi Hedge plays
the Blind Hermit, an Australian born actor. This is one
of his final roles. He lived eighteen seventy seven through
nineteen thirty six.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
Oh he brings a lot of humanity to the story
he does.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
It is a really it's a shame not to spend
more time on him, because it is. He gets a
lot of screen time, brings humanity to the role and
brings humanity out of the monster. But let us not
forget Lord Byron. He's fairly in the film, just in
that opening bit that I believe was rather cut down.
But Gavin Gordon plays Lord Byron. He lived nineteen oh

(40:13):
one through nineteen eighty three. He was a Mississippi born
American actor whose credits include nineteen thirty three's Mystery of
the Wax Museum, fifty four's White Christmas, fifty six is
the Ten Commandments, the Eldest film from fifty eight Keen Creole,
and also the nineteen fifty nine movie The Bat opposite
Vincent Price.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
I love him in this role, but I have no
idea what he's trying to do with this accent. It
is so over.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
I mean, it's a wonderful campy way to start off
this film. It kind of sets the tone. Once you've
seen Gavin Gordon's Lord Byron, I mean, where can you go?
You know you're already in the clouds it's.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Like part really like rolling the rs on the Irish accent,
but then also part English accent, part Southern accent. It
is is it's something, it's something else.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yes, now, a very small role, but one is a
lot of fun for film film fans and you know,
and horror fans certainly. There's a scene, of course, where
we're talking about the We have the hermit who's blind.
He forges this relationship with the monster, but then sighted
people show up and ruin it. The two sided people
that show up are a couple of lost hunters, one

(41:22):
of whom is played by John Carodine. Oh yeah, who's
literally in everything, it seems.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
In every movie ever made. So of course he would
be in this one too. But yeah, you wouldn't have known.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, it's it's an uncredited role, but it's also unmistakable
because he does have some lines. And also, I mean
it's just clearly John Carrodine, you know he has he
has that lean and hungry look even though he's very
young here he lived nineteen oh six through nineteen eighty eight.
We've we've discussed him on the show before. Very long career,
all manner of films he was in, he had. He

(41:57):
had already had uncredited roles in thirty three Is in
the Visible Man and thirty four's The Black Cat. He'd
go on to be a horror staple and would play
Dracula in nineteen forty four's House of Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
I don't really know exactly why he should be lost.
Wouldn't he just know to get on the night train
to Mundo fie.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
I you'd think you would, You'd think you would. All right,
just a few quick behind the scenes references. They're just
because I'm not going to go into them in depth,
but just got to mention them, just because they're part
of the alchemy here. Franz Waxman did the score. He
lived nineteen oh six through nineteen sixty seven. Two time
Oscar winner for nineteen fifty one Sunset Boulevard in fifty

(42:38):
two Is A Place in the Sun. He also scored
nineteen forties Rebecca in nineteen forty one Suspicion It is.
It is a very classic Hollywood score, but it is
also a very good score. A lot has been written
about this. It's not necessarily the kind of music I
listened to an isolation or anything, but it is.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
It is not a.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
This is no sloppy score here. This is one of
those scores where there's a lot of thought that goes
into what different musical themes match up with the characters
and so forth.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Agreed. Now, this is also an amazing looking film and
one with a superb makeup effects, so I think we
should call out those credits. That's right.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
On the makeup front, we have Jack p. Pierce credited
for the monster makeup. He lived eighteen eighty nine through
nineteen sixty eight. He also did the makeup on nineteen
forty one's The Wolfman And Yeah, the cinematographer on this
was John J. Mescal who lived eighteen ninety nine through
nineteen sixty two, also known for thirty four as the
Black Cat.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
I've watched some interviews with people talking about what it
was like to work with Jack Pierce supplying makeup. There's
a story of Elsa Lanchester talking about the painstaking, delicate
procedure that he would use to apply the makeup for
the scar running underneath the bride's jaw, which she was like,

(43:57):
ultimately was only on screen for about a second that
you could actually see, but that you know, he really
was taking a kind of religious care to make it perfect.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, I mean in that level of craftsmanship just matches
up with everything else we see on the film. All right, well,
shall we get into the plot of this baby a
bit more?

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Okay, Well, we start on a dark and stormy night.
We see a retigenous castle perched up on a rocky
mountaintop in the dark, with light pouring out from one
of the windows and thundercracks, rain battering the stonework towers.
It's perfect Gothic setting. And inside the castle we get
some poets. There are three writers sitting around a roaring fireplace.

(44:49):
There's also a quick shot of a lady who looks
almost like she's being pulled by it, like sled dogs indoors.
I think she's actually just walking dogs on a leash,
and she has a you know, one of those large
wide skirts, so you don't see her legs moving much.
But yeah, she's like walking dogs indoors. For some reason,
she's quickly out of frame. And then we get to

(45:09):
this prologue, this framing idea, with the characters of Percy Biss,
Shelley Lord Byron, and Mary Wolstoncraft. Shelley, who again is
the author of the novel Frankenstein. Oh and by the way,
if you don't know the backstory Frankenstein, the novel began
as a spooky story that Mary Shelley dreamed up for
a sort of contest. I think when these three and

(45:31):
at least one other writers, you know, some group of them,
were staying at a mansion near Lake Geneva one year. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
This would go on to be sort of the germ
for the nineteen eighty six film Gothic, in which Gabriel
Byrne plays Byron, Julian Sands plays Shelley, and Natasha Richardson
plays Mary as a kin Russell film.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
By the way, Oh really, I haven't seen that one.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
It's been a while. I don't remember much about it.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Is there somebody playing John Pauladorian?

Speaker 3 (45:57):
Know?

Speaker 2 (45:57):
That was the at least one other there was John Paulodori,
who ended up turning a story from this summer get
together into a novel or novella called The Vampire.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yes, and he is played by the always excellent Timothy Spall.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Oh. Okay, now, as we mentioned, the guy playing Lord
Byron really gets into his part. In fact, I decided
to type out his opening monologue here because he's he's
looking out the window at the storm, and he says,
how beautifully dramatic, the crudest, savage exhibition of nature at
her worst without and we three, we elegant three within.

(46:35):
I should like to think that an irated Jehovah was
pointing those arrows of lightning directly at my head, the
unbowed head of George Gordon, Lord Byron, England's greatest sinner.
But then he says, but I cannot flatter myself to
that extent. Possibly those thunders are for our dear Shelley,

(46:56):
referring to Percy Heaven's applause for England's greatest poet. But
then Percy says, well, what about my Mary? And Byron says, oh,
she is an angel? And Mary looks up from her
embroidery with this flashing smile and says, you think so ooh,
And I love that because her smile is a little
bit creepy.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, yeah, because as they're about to allude to here,
you know, they're talking about how great they are, these
two male poets. But they have to acknowledge that Mary,
even though they're kind of treating her like this very
fragile thing that she has already created something that is
terrifying to everyone there, and then they're already at least

(47:37):
a bit in awe of her creative powers.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
That's right. I've read that at some point James Whale
said to someone that with this opening scene and in
the movie in general, he wanted to emphasize that quote,
pretty people can harbor the most twisted imaginations. So we
have Byron here chattering somewhat condescendingly about how, oh Mary

(48:00):
you are, this delicate, beautiful, angelic creature, and yet she
has written a story so dreadful it curdled my blood. Meanwhile,
she's just blasting out this creepy smile with gleaming eyes
and giggling, and she says, why shouldn't I write monsters?
And there's something in this that suggests, buddy, you ain't
seen nothing yet.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
They're also kind of toying with the prestige of Lord
Byron and Percy Shelley here, his famous and influential writers,
while of course Mary's work I think ultimately casts a
far greater shadow over the following centuries, you know, far
greater than both of them combined. I don't know, my
fellow English majors may respectfully disagree on the matter.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Oh no, I would totally agree, and I think it'd
be kind of hard to argue with that. So not
to knock either Percy Shelley or Lord Byron. I enjoy
them both. I think they're both necessary reading if you
want to understand the Romantic movement in English literature, and
that each wrote some poetry that's still wonderful to read today,
I think especially. But it could be argued that Mary

(49:04):
essentially is the founder of modern science fiction, and I
think that's like hugely more significant in the long run,
and especially in the way that she established themes like
the themes of Frankenstein are themes that are still explored
in science fiction and science fiction horror to this day,

(49:24):
especially ideas about the dark side of the power unleashed
by advances in science and technology. You know, Frankenstein. It
was a story about how not all increase of human
power is good, and sometimes in blithely plowing ahead with
newly acquired scientific and technological powers, if you don't think

(49:46):
through the consequences, you make monsters, or you make a
monster out of yourself. It's one of the most enduring
themes of modern storytelling and it still finds new ways
of being entertaining, frightening, and socially insightful. You'll encounter hundreds
of novels and movies and all kinds of interesting stories
coming out this year that are still hashing through themes

(50:09):
that Mary Shelley raised in Frankenstein.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Yeah. Yeah, and each time it's retold, you can do
it in a way that reflects modern anxieties and modern s.
It's abilities all right. But the other part of this
whole intro is that basically we get a previously on Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yes, I love that. So the framing narrative with Mary
Shelley serves as a way to remind us what happened
in the previous movie. It's sort of narrated by Byron's
like he's basically like a kid explaining the plot of
his favorite movie, except he's explaining the plot of the
movie Frankenstein to the author of Frankenstein.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Perfect though, it's perfect for what they're putting together here. Yes,
this was before man'splaining was the thing. I mean, well,
obviously it was a thing already, but before it was
a term. It's what we have here.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
So the broad strokes go like this Frankenstein. The man
Henry in the movie, even though he's named Victor in
the book, creates a monster out of corpses. He uses
science to bring this dead man to life. There is
an unfortunate series of events. The monster escapes the laboratory
and roams the country. He is at first a gentle

(51:16):
and childlike, but he accidentally kills a young girl without
realizing what he is doing, and this raises an angry mob,
which pursues the creature. The creature flees to a windmill
with the unconscious Henry, carrying Henry with him, and then
the creature is seemingly killed in the blaze after the
angry mob sets the windmill on fire. So like Byron

(51:37):
goes back through all that, and then Elsa Ancester is like,
oh for real, though that's not the end of the story.
Would you like to know what happened next? And yes, yes, Elsa,
we would.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
And so it's time to Halloween too. This baby right
to just go pick up right where the last one
left off and start the new journey.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
I love that no time passes in between. Yeah, it's
just right there. The mill is still burning. So the
action begins with the mill burning down, presumably having killed
the monster. Henry Frankenstein lies unconscious at the foot of
the Flaming Tower, having been thrown nearly to his death
by his own creation. Henry's friends and servants load him

(52:15):
into a wagon to be taken back to his family estate.
I think they believe he is dead at this point,
but he's not. Meanwhile, the angry villagers cheer and they
shake their torches and pitchforks at the demise of the
hated Boris Karloff, and we get zoom ins on several
characters in the crowd. Here. There is, as we mentioned earlier,
Henry's talkative housekeeper Mini, wearing this what would you call

(52:39):
this piece of headwear that she has on?

Speaker 1 (52:42):
I don't know. I was trying to figure it out.
Is it like some sort of a cultural thing that
I'm supposed to pick up on or it's something historic?
But yeah, it threw me for a curve trying to
figure out, like what it's supposed to tell us the
viewer about her role.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
I do not know what it is that makes her
head look like a venus fly trap. H She is
discussing how happy she is to know the monster is
roasting in the inferno there as she also explains with
apparent glee, how the insides of a body are the
last part to burn in a fire. That's just science.

(53:19):
There's also this old, blustery guy with a big mustache,
the Burgomaster. He's wandering around telling everyone that it's time
for them to go to bed now, and I'll just
love for this guy to do a buddy cop team
up with Christopher Lee from the Devil rides out and
they can tell everyone to go to bed. He's like,
go home, go to bed also. Though, then amidst these

(53:40):
funny characters, we have tragic characters, the parents of the
girl who was killed accidentally by the monster in the
previous movie. As the crowd gets bored wanders away from
the wreckage of the mill, the girl's father, Hans, decides
that he will not be satisfied until he's the creature's

(54:01):
charred bones, so he starts picking his way down. He
climbs into the rubble, but then slips and tumbles down
into the cellar of the burning mill, which is now
flooded with water and oh, in a beautifully unsettling series
of shots, we see in the dark with water falling
all around. A pale hand reach out across the stone

(54:23):
work of the wall, and then from behind a corner
emerges carl Off. The creature is burned but still alive,
and then the light of the fire reflects off of
the flowing water and projects shimmering patterns on the monster's face.
All over this great makeup and the creature you can

(54:44):
see it. He no longer has the innocent and childlike
nature that he had in the movie before. Now the
creature just immediately descends on Hans and murders him. He
pushes his head under the waters of the flood. He's
full of rage. And then Hans's wife comes to help her,
but the hand that reaches up from the cellar is
not the hand she expects. It's the monster coming out,

(55:06):
and the monster throws her down to her death in
the rubble below.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
This is a great way to re establish the monster,
because again we all know what everyone going into this
film knew what the monster would look like. Retroactively watching
this film, you know, decades later, we know what the
monster looks like. But the monster is so perfectly reintroduced
here in this dark, shadowy, submerged world, and then proceeds

(55:32):
to just brutally murder these two sympathetic characters, Like when
he throws the old woman back down, like it was
obviously one of these you know stunts where they have
a dummy that is standing in for the body of
the woman, but she like lands head first on the
water wheel and the mill and then tumbles down. It's brutal.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
I totally agree. And I've always found something so profoundly
dark about this opening. The set design is a about
as dank and heavy as one could possibly achieve. Like
we begin in this flooded basement underneath the ruins of
a burning building. It is as close as it could
be to meeting the creature again in hell. And the

(56:15):
creature was supposed to be the ugliest thing imaginable before,
a monster just scrabbled together out of dead flesh. And
now somehow he is even worse. His hair is singed
off by the fire, his skin has been melted and
torn open, He's got all these scars. He murders the
grieving parents of the child that he never meant to

(56:36):
harm in the first place, and then he staggers out
under a sky that is so gray and dismal it's
like the sun has never existed. This is such a
strong opening, absolutely, but then in a reversal that will
presage that the tone of the film going forward, and
a lot of whales other works as well. It goes
straight from the sorest gloom ever committed to film to

(57:00):
a comedy bit. So, the monster staggers up to Minnie,
who is still wandering around on the hillside, apparently looking
for somebody whose business she can get up into, and
she sees the monster and she starts making Looney Tunes
noises for what feels like a solid minute before running away.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Yeah, it does just goes so Looney Tunes. It's wonderful.
And yet again everything feels balanced, it doesn't feel jarring somehow,
And part of that may be that we started out
so campy, we started out so broad, and we're already
weaving in and out smoothly between the comedy and the horror.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Yeah, and you said the word camp. I think that's important.
A lot of critics and film historians have pointed to
the importance of the camp sensibility within the rich Tonal
architecture of Bride Frankenstein. Camp is core to what this
movie is. I think, especially once Ernest Thesiger arrives and

(57:59):
in the role of doctor Preetorious. But anyway, so to
come back to the plot, Henry Frankenstein is carried unconscious
and apparently dead back to his family estate, where he
is greeted by his good hearted fiance Elizabeth. And I
should add also that this is true for pretty much
the whole movie. But the sets here are tremendous. The
Frankenstein home is full of arches and firelight and all

(58:22):
kinds of gothic flare. It's photographed beautifully, so you can
just see in every moment that Universal like really opened
up the purse to allow Whale to make the best
movie he could. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Absolutely, just beautiful, beautiful sets.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
Somewhere in the sequence, Many comes back and reports that
the monster is still alive, that she saw him, and
of course she is ignored. I think it's the head
butler who tells her to shut up and then says,
we don't believe in ghosts around here. So they initially
think that Henry is dead, but then he moves suddenly
in the presence of Elizabeth, and so she's like, oh,

(58:58):
he's still alive, and she nursed Henry back to health.
All the casting is good, but I wanted to call
out the casting of Elizabeth as also quite good. You know,
it's a it's a little bit more thankless of a
role than a lot of the other roles in the film,
where actors really get to ham it up. Elizabeth doesn't
quite get to do that. But I think Hobson is

(59:20):
selected because she comes off as a beacon of undiluted
love and kindness in the middle of this wretched setting.
I mentioned this earlier, but I think she represents the
other life, the life of virtue and bliss that Henry
could have had if he had just been content rather
than questing into these domains of unknown knowledge and power.

(59:41):
Like Elizabeth is as good as gold, and they could
have been happy and had that golden life together. But
he wanted more. He had that faustian temptation. He wanted,
He wanted more than it is healthy for a person
to want.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
She's like the girlfriend on the second season of The
Bear For you TV viewers, I don't know the Bear well,
same role, like saying you don't maybe you could. We
could have a life together and you don't have to
go through this painful experience of opening this restaurant or
reopening it, which is kind of the same thing. It's like,
we have a reopening of a destructive project in this

(01:00:16):
in this personally destructive project in this film, just like
in that show.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
And we yeah, and we see some remorse. Like while recovering,
Henry wonders if he is being punished for his experiments
in creating the monster. He says, perhaps death is sacred
and I've profaned it. But his remorse is only half
the picture. It's kind of fleeting because he also still thinks,
you know, in piecing together a superhuman strangling machine out

(01:00:42):
of the mangled odds and ends of dead bodies, I
might have really been onto something. He says, quote, I
dreamed of giving to the world the secret that God
is so jealous of, the formula for life. So Henry
has not completely abandoned his ambitions.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Yeah, there's at least there's some embers still hot in there.
Of course, it's left for us to wonder, well, does
he actually have the wherewithal to do this again? Is
he just sort of idly dreaming? And maybe that's the case.
Maybe he wouldn't have the courage and the strength to
go through with that nightmare again. As long as nobody

(01:01:21):
comes along and encourages him to pick it up again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Right, that's right, And here things really start cooking. Into
the picture comes Doctor Septimus Pretorious. What can we say
of Doctor Septimus Pretorious, The look, the attitude, the scowl,
he's so ernest Messager is this tall, gaunt man with
light colored, frizzy, curly hair, and he he puts on

(01:01:47):
this amazing scowl, this resting stink face that throughout pretty
much the whole movie. And from his very first line,
he is committed to being a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Yes he is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
He is a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
He is so much the I mean the most, the
most entertaining character in this film. Among so many other
entertaining characters, he has to stand out as one of
the most the most entertaining characters in just cinema in general. Like,
it's everything we see from him is golden here, it's
it's it's almost a shame that we don't get to

(01:02:24):
experience this same actor in this same role in other pictures.
But and again that's kind of what makes it special.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
That's right. So he arrives at the door of the
Frankenstein estate. He says he must see Henry tonight. On
a secret matter of grave importance, and I guess it's
many who lets him in, Like, okay, grave importance. So
we learned. Doctor Pretorius is a professor, a former mentor
of Henry's, but has recently been ejected from the academy

(01:02:53):
for reasons that are only vaguely alluded to with summaries,
such as for knowing too much. But once doctor Pretorius
has gotten Elizabeth out of Henry's bedroom, he goes to
Henry's bedside and says that he knows of Henry's experiments,
he knows about the monster, and he says, we've got
to work together. He wants their experimentation to go on,

(01:03:17):
no longer as master and pupil, but as fellow scientists.
In fact, he says, in Henry's absence, he has continued
his own forbidden studies in secret and managed to create
life of a sort on his own. So Henry initially
tries to resist doctor Pretorius's recruitment. He's like, no, no,
I have to get married to Elizabeth. But when he

(01:03:40):
hears that his former teacher has also found the formula
for life, he says he must see what he has accomplished.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
And you know you might expect that doctor Pretorius has
created something more or less like the monster, but maybe
not as good, you know, like it's it's it's less
powerful thing imperfect about it. And I think this is
a this is a this would be a good guess,

(01:04:07):
but this film is not going to align with the
easy guesswork you might have in Blaze here like this, Well,
what he has been working on is tremendous.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
That's right. So they go back to Pretorius's lab to
see what he has done, and here we come to
the famous homuncular scene. First at his lab, Pretorious, this
is the part where he offers a toast to a
new world of gods and monsters, and then he gets
out this huge black box to show Henry what's inside,
talking the whole time about how enthralling it is to

(01:04:38):
create life. He says, my experiments went in a different
direction than yours, But science, like love, is always full
of surprises. Why does he say that? Like love? There
seems to be something really inherently sensual about doctor Pretorius's
idea of science.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Yeah, I mean it is all consuming, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
So he unveiled Pretorious unveils these glass jars with tiny
living people inside them, and I should just say that
the effects here are spectacular. He has created homunculi, and
he explains that he first created a woman who was
so lovely that he had to make her a queen.

(01:05:21):
So she's here in this regal gown on a throne.
And he says next, since he had a queen, he
had to make a king, and the king is apparently
obsessed with getting out of his jar and getting to
the queen. Then he says he made another tiny man
quote who looked so disapprovingly at the other two that
they made him an archbishop. Now I guess this somehow

(01:05:44):
got past the Hayes Code prohibition and gets making fun
of the clergy or I don't know, to be fair,
I'm not sure exactly how the Hayes Code affected this movie,
but this was left in for some reason.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Yeah, I mean it's like, likewise, there are some other
lines we've already touched on that feel like if you
were gonna be picky about blasphemous statements, it might have
been picked on.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
But I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
It's like, I'm not sure offhand what they cut compared
to what they kept, And maybe they let this slide too,
because it's like, it's not as much about the clergy
being dumb as it is about like, just look how
awful this king is. He's like, this clergy member is
just done with them. But to be clear, these are
little people wearing full costumes. They're like a miniature king

(01:06:26):
and queen, a miniature archbishop or whatever it's it is.
This is so comedically weird.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Yes. Oh and the fourth homunculus, by the way, is
a devil. It's the devil. Messenger says, there's a resemblance
to me, don't you think. And Doctor Pretorius then muses
that wouldn't life be simpler if we were all devils?
No nonsense about angels and being good.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
He's really laying it out out there. He's like, look,
there's no good, there's no bad. There's just the work
at hand. And we've got a team up again, because
I've got my ideas, you've got your ideas. Together, we
can really make the perfect being.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
Oh. Also he made a ballerina and a mermaid.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Yeah, I'd forgotten that there were so many additional creature
being some unculi that he had made. Because this scene
goes on a while and a lot of effort went
into into making each of these Homunculi tubes. It's very impressive.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
So Henry is appalled by this. I'm not quite sure
exactly why Henry is so appalled by the Homunculi compared
to the monster he made. But he says, this isn't science,
it's more like black magic. And doctor Pretorius says, you
think I'm mad. Perhaps I am, but listen to Henry Frankenstein.
While you were digging in your graves piecing together dead tissues, I,

(01:07:48):
my dear pupil, went for my materials to the source
of life. I grew my creatures like cultures, grew them
as nature does from seed. Yeah, and I think that
means exactly what it sounds like. I think Pretorius here
is operating on the basis of the ideology of spermist preformationism.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
I believe we discussed in some past episodes of Stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
To Blow your Mind, the idea that, like the human body,
it's sort of an alternative to cell theory, is that,
like the human body is fully formed, just very tiny
in the sex cells, and the spermists thought that they
were that the human bodies were in the sperm, not
in the eggs.

Speaker 4 (01:08:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
So, I mean already they're laying out a really cool
idea and one that the film will will fulfill. The
idea that on one hand, doctor Pretorius is all about
growing new life, Frankenstein is about assembling new life and
instilling energy in it. And if you bring these two
disciplines together, well then there's no there's no limit to

(01:08:54):
what you can create.

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
That's right. Soretorius beckons Henry to join him. He says,
together they can discover all all the secrets of creating life.
He says, leave your Charnel house and follow the lead
of nature or of God if you like your Bible stories.
So doctor Pretorius wants to not only create life from
non life, but together with Henry, he thinks that they

(01:09:18):
can make two living beings that can join in sexual
union and reproduce with one another, giving rise to a
whole new line of created creatures. Henry is horrified. He
claims he won't do it, but Pretorius is mighty persuasive.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Yeah, he doesn't even really have to get heavy handed
at this point. He's just like like, do it, do it,
You're doing it. Come on, you're doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
And he's like, okay, now meanwhile, so we leave that
scene for a while and we revisit the creature. So
the creature, having escaped to the burning mill, wanders through
a forest, which is an absolutely gorgeous bucolic indoor forest set,

(01:10:04):
you know, I love those. It's got a canopy of
slanted pine trees and a rushing waterfall, and the creature
drinks from a stream, but he sees his face reflected
in the water and then strikes out at it in anger.
He hates his own image.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
And again, I just want to drive home that while
there's so much about Carlos Frankenstein's Monster that has become
a stereotype of the horror genre, that has become kind
of cliche, when you see the actual performance, there is
so much more nuance to it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:34):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
It's easy to think of it as just you know,
like firebag, you know, and sort of think of the
like the Phil Hartman Saturday Night Live version of the thing,
But yeah, there's just so many additional levels to it,
Like there is this real authentic feeling of this being
that cannot communicate properly about the world around him, but

(01:10:55):
has like intense emotions and trauma and even a little
bit of hope still remain about how he connects to
it all.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
I totally agree that the Frankenstein creature is so much
more complex than the impression you would get from the parodies.
And as I said earlier, that does go straight back
to the novel. The creature is an extremely complex and
thoughtful and emotional being in the novel. So in the
scene there's a shepherdess leading some lambs through the forest.

(01:11:22):
The shepherdess sees the creature and she screams in terror
and falls into the water, and the creature actually goes
and saves her from drowning. And you know, I think
something interesting is going on here where Just in the
scene before, a character fell into the water with the creature,
and the creature drowned that character on purpose. He was
so filled with rage. Here somebody falls into the water

(01:11:45):
and he tries to save their life. So I think
this is also supposed to communicate something about the creature
just being so filled with churning emotions and contradictions. It
doesn't know what it is. The creature doesn't know if
he is if he is good or evil, and doesn't
know which path to embrace. He's just sort of flying

(01:12:10):
back and forth from one to the other. Yeah, but anyway,
so the woman falls in the water. He saves her,
but then she is of course terrified of him. She
starts to scream, and the creature is frightened by this.
He tries to stop her screaming by covering her mouth,
which just makes it worse. And then men with guns
come and start shooting at the creature. They wound him,

(01:12:31):
but he escapes into the wild and the townspeople raise
a mob to chase the monster once again. This is
another chased by the crowd scene. And one thing I
wanted to point out is how the forest set changes
from the previous scene to this one. So when the
monster is wandering alone before the mob attacks him, before

(01:12:53):
he has been seen and hated again by humanity, the
forest is lush and lovely and alive, and now that
he is again being hunted and despised, the trees are
all these straight, bare trunks without leaves or branches, and
it's set against a dark sky and these crooked rocks.
And I think the film uses set and setting to

(01:13:14):
infuse the scenes with emotion.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
I'm glad you mentioned this because this is something that
I don't think I actually I didn't think about it
as I was watching. I was so caught up in
the action of it all. But I think you're absolutely right.
Like they're they're manipulating their their tightly controlled set world
here to uh to imbue the scene with just the
right amount of just the right emotion and just the
right energy.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
So this all has a momentum of its own that
the creature is caught by the mob, bound up like
tied to a pole, taken to town, thrown into a dungeon,
chained up to this heavy wooden chair that looks like
some kind of torture device. All throughout the creature is
groaning in pain and misery. This is the scene where
Many is looking down the window at the dungeon and

(01:13:58):
is like, ooh ooh, she's just getting too excited about this.
But of course, first chance he gets Karloff, snaps the chains,
breaks out of prison, kicks down the heavy wooden doors. Meanwhile,
that mustachioed character, the Burgomaster from the guy from earlier
who was telling everybody to go to bed, there's a
really funny part where he's trying to clear the crowd.

(01:14:20):
He's saying, nothing to worry about just an escaped lunatic,
quite harmless, while the monster is kicking down the door
of the prison in the background.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
Yes, yeah, this is great because, yeah, this part is funny,
and yet at the same time, the daytime rampage is
still terrifying, and I think it's more terrifying because it
is in the daylight.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
I agree. So there's this rampage. The monster harms people
in the process of escaping the town, but eventually gets
out into the woods. And so eventually this leads up
to the part where the monster is drawn to the cabin.
The cabin in the woods where the old hermit lives.
He's drawn by the sound of music. So this old
blind man lives alone in a cottage and he's playing

(01:15:02):
ave Maria on the violin. The creature likes the music,
and so he comes to the door of the cabin,
and unlike everyone else who fears and rejects the monster,
the blind man welcomes the creature into his house. He
offers him hospitality, and he offers him friendship, gives the
creature food, he cares for his wounds, and he shows

(01:15:24):
him kindness. When the creature is unable to speak, the
old man says, perhaps you are afflicted too. I cannot
see and you cannot speak. But he says, I've prayed
many times for God to send me a friend. God
has taken pity on my loneliness, and we can be
friends to each other. And so this turns into a
really beautiful short story in the middle of the movie. Here,

(01:15:46):
you know, the blind man does not even understand how
uncommon the friendship he's offering is to the person he's
offering it to, and so the creature seems he accepts
the hospitality, and the creature goes on to live with
this blind man for some unspecified length of time, during
which he learns to speak. The old man teaches him words,

(01:16:09):
teaches him about bread, wine, and cigars, and oh boy,
when you know what he's learning about cigars, at first
fire bad. So the creature doesn't like that, but he
figures out pretty soon that he likes smoking cigars.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Yes, these things are hilarious, but also very poignant as well.
He's because the monster is learning to enjoy life for
the first time, and the blind man is sharing the
enjoyments of life with him.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
After gaining a vocabulary, the creature learns to express his
feelings in words, and he says things like alone, bad, friend, good.
But this happy interlude is broken when two hunters, including
John Kerroty and come to the cabin asking for directions,
and uh oh, they see the monster, you know exactly what.
A fight breaks out, the cabin catches fire, and everyone

(01:17:00):
runs off in their separate directions. So the creature's chance
here and having a good life is thwarted. And the
creature wanders at night through a desolate cemetery in a rage.
And this graveyard set is fantastic. It's like the graveyard
at the end of the world. High contrasts, dead trees
reaching like ghostly fingers. There's mist rising from the consecrated earth.

(01:17:23):
And then in his anger and despair, the creature is
literally toppling monuments and grave markers. He hates every work
of man, but he decides to hide out. The creature
tries to hide from the angry mob by climbing down
into a subterranean crypt. And what's this. Down in the
crypt he sees three figures coming carrying lanterns, descending into

(01:17:43):
the catacomb, and one of them is our old friend,
doctor Septimus Pretorious.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
Yes, now, before even encountering him. Though this is already
so perfect because the monster earlier in the film emerges
from the underworld, has all these encounters, seems to find
a new a new way to look at life, and
now he is forced to descend back into the underworld.
You know, it's it's like all his attempts have failed.

(01:18:09):
But sometimes in the underworld you do run into the
devil and enter yet doctor Pretorius and his guns.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
Two Oh my god, she's accompanied by these two cursed
waxen goons, one of them played by Dwight Fry. The
characters are named Karl and Ludwig. They're here to do
the heavy lifting for this midnight grave robbing mission. They're
supposed to be criminals of some sort of Pretorious threatens
to send them back to the gallows where they belong
if they don't get on with the body removal, so

(01:18:40):
they select a grave. They steal the woman's body from
the grave. Looking on, Pretorius says, I hope her bones
are firm, but eventually so they get the body. The
grave robbers leave, but Pretorius stays and then this is
probably my favorite scene in the movie, where he Pretorious
is just like I rather like this place I shall
stay here for a bit, and just has himself a

(01:19:01):
cackling picnic in the middle of the catacomb, wine cheese, skeletons.
He won't stop laughing. He's having a great time.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
I think he has her bones, that the woman's bones
like piled up there in the middle of his little
pic neck.

Speaker 2 (01:19:17):
Right, Oh, is that what it is? Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
If not her bones, someone else's bones. Either way, it's
a gothic delight. I should I should also point out
like he's already like he's shown that he's such a
you can't trust anything, he says, because this whole thing
to Frankenstein was like, we're done with with dead bodies,
old boy. Yes, the next thing we see from him
is he's down there grave robbin with a couple of goods.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
That's right, Okay, I think you're right. Actually, I was
thinking about the that the goons still took the body
with them, but I think they got these bones out
and he's like just hanging out with the bones. I
think that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
But yes, tremendous saint just cackling in the crypt.

Speaker 2 (01:19:55):
But the monster comes out of hiding and meets doctor Pretorius.
Pretorius says oh, I thought I was a And then
he shares his food, wine, and cigars. But the creature
much like the old man did in the Cottage in
the Woods, except whereas that was wholesome and friendly, there's
a different subtext here. Instead, it feels more like he's
being enticed into a deal with the devil here. Yes, yes,

(01:20:19):
So they sort of get to know each other, and
then Pretorius explains his plans to the monster. He says
that he promises that he will make the monster a friend,
a woman like him to be his wife. So this
takes us into the last act of the movie. Henry
and Elizabeth are married again by the time we meet them,
and I'm going to skip more lightly over the plot now,

(01:20:42):
but basically, Pretorius comes to Henry and Elizabeth's home and
he confronts Henry for help about making the bride. He's like,
I've got to make this undead woman. You're gonna help me.
Henry tries to refuse, but he's got an ace up
his sleeve. He has the monster kidnap Elizabeth as a hostage.
Henry will have no choice but to help him do

(01:21:02):
unholy science. That's right, that's right. So together they work
on bringing this dead woman to life, and there's one
hilarious part where they're trying to get a heart that
will be appropriate, and the heart they have doesn't work.
Henry says he needs a better one. So Pretorius calls
up Carl, that's Dwight Fry, and he's like, Carl, go

(01:21:23):
to the accident hospital. We need a fresh heart from
a young woman. And you know where this is going, yeah, exactly.
So Carl just like goes and murders someone and then
he shows up with a heart and Henry's like, wow,
this is a really fresh heart. Good job, and Carl's
like it was a police case. But anyway, So they

(01:21:50):
do all their unholy science and the bride is brought
to life during an electrical storm, wrapped up like a
mummy in these bandages, and eventually the bandages are peeled
back and the reveal this is the bride of Frankenstein.
It's Elsa Lanchester. Uh what what would you say to
describe her here?

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Rob oh Well, I already mentioned the Avian energy, and
certainly everybody knows the look, the hair, but god like,
initially she's still wrapped in bandages. You don't know what
you're gonna see. You know, there's there elements of a
mummy to the way she's wrapped up, and then when
we start taking them off, yeah, you begin to see
that she is this one they've they've really managed to

(01:22:29):
look for the bride. That is this uncanny place between
otherworldly beauty and and and and really the grave.

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
That's right, and tragically so they so the monster comes
out after his bride has been created, and the monster
hopefully approaches her, saying friend, friend. But here's where the
real tragedy comes in. Even she from beyond the grave
rejects Karlof rejects the monster. She she screams, she finds

(01:22:59):
him to terrifying and ugly.

Speaker 1 (01:23:01):
And she kind of does this hiss thing eventually too.
Maybe that's towards the end, but I really like that
moment as well because it also sort of served to
underline the fact that like she is, she is monster
as well, like she's not I mean, in the same
way that that Karlov's monster is also a victim. Yes,
she is also a victim. She did not ask to

(01:23:22):
be brought into this world, but she is also not
human in the same way that the monster.

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
Is not human. That's right. She immediately seems to recognize
the wrongness of her own existence, like you know, love dead,
hate living, and she hisses, and that that hiss signals
almost that like she doesn't want to exist. The hiss
apparently was Elsa Lanchester's idea, and she got the idea

(01:23:48):
from observing geese. You know, geese hiss. Yeah, so she
was trying to do like a goose's threatening hiss.

Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
Oh, very good, excellent addition.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
So in the very end, the cree sure just defeated
by uh by this rejection. He allows Henry and Elizabeth
to escape the castle. He tells them to live. But
as for himself, the bride and doctor Pretorius, he says,
we belong dead and flips this lever that had been established.
Would would reduce the h I think Pretorius said it

(01:24:21):
would reduce their castle to atoms. It doesn't quite do that,
but it does cause a great destruction.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
Yes, again, this is the beautiful discruction scene that I
was talking about at the top of the episode. Just oh,
it's so beautiful everything I mean in the film, certainly,
but this this last stretch, this last third of the picture,
I mean, the the laboratory looks amazing, the lightning effects,
the kites they send up, the the the resurrection or

(01:24:48):
or or energizing of the bride is so wonderful. Everything
is just pitch perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
I totally agree. And I guess that's got to be
the end, right, that's Bride of Frankenstein. I will just
say again, I love this movie. I think it's like
top tier weird horror, just unbeatable.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
Yeah, and solid ending too. We cut to the Frankenstein's
not the monsters, Henry and Elizabeth, you know, reunited and
it's a nice little moment. Kind of serves as a
nice cap, but it doesn't feel kind of like unearned
and tact on like the happy moment at the end
of the first Frankenstein film, Like this one feels like it.

(01:25:28):
It honestly got to that feel good moment at the
end where everything's put right.

Speaker 4 (01:25:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
Like Joe said, it's a beautiful movie. Go see it
if you haven't seen it, And if you've seen it before,
even a few times, go watch it again because you
know you love it. Just a reminder out there that
Stuffed to Blow your Mind is primarily a science podcast
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays
we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema. If you

(01:25:56):
want to see a list of all the movies we've
covered over the years here, you can go to U.
We can go to letterbox dot com. It's l E
T T E R B O x D dot com.
That's a site where people create accounts and review movies
and make lists of movies. Well, we have a username
on there, it's weird House, and you can see a
wonderful visual list of all the movies we've covered thus far,

(01:26:19):
and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next.
I also blog about these films at some mutomusic dot
com Huge Things.

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
As always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. 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 3 (01:26:47):
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,

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