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Extra Credit 035 - Universal Frankensteins (Patreon)

Published:
2025-05-30 16:05:07
Imported:
2025-05
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We're discussing Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939). MOVIES GOOD!!!

Here is the 1938 article from The Daily Times about a roving Frankenstein in Iowa, plus a close-up of the photo.

Here's that Frankenstein promotional poster with a giant monster and Lugosi's top billing.

Outro: She's My Bride by Pitch Black Manor

Comments

Mark Saunders

My discovery of the Universal Monsters was as a kid in the early 2000s. Our school library was mostly made up of old donated books and they had the complete set of the Crestwood Monsters series from the 70s. I read each one of those books dozens of times and then tracked down all the movies. Come to think of it, that (along with Doctor Who and my mom’s collection of Stephen King books, which I read wayyyyy too young) probably started my love of horror and sci-fi.

robert oszakiewski

It's always interesting to see Lugosi's superb performances in Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, White Zombie, and The Black Cat, as opposed to his last roles in the films of Ed Wood and wonder what his career might have been without his drug addiction and being typecast for most of his career.

King Dinosaur

The Frankenstein movies (and most of the Universal monster films) are more like macabre fairy tales than horror movies. Many of them take place in a time and place that seems almost dream-like. The weird mixture of accents, electricity but also candles and oil lamps, cars but also horse-drawn wagons. I loved them as a kid, I love them now, and I'll always love them

King Dinosaur

I'm considering dropping my patronage over some of these takes, especially the Abbott and Costello one. 😒

Steve

When it's by the neck, the past participle is hanged, not hung.

witchhousemedia

Nooo! We are flawed humans! The movies are perfect! -fifer

Karl Haikara

Im with Chad on this one i watch these movies every single year for Halloween, they mean so much to me that I can't really be too critical on any of the Universal movies I just go with all the things that are silly lol

James Barrett

There was a stage version in Shelley's lifetime, R.B. Peake's Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein. Shelley saw it and pronounced herself "much amused". The monster was played by an actor named Cooke, who also played the vampire in a stage version of Polidori's The Vampyre.

Joe Webb

I watched these movies as a kid back in the very early 1970s. They'd be on late night tv, and I'd stay up all night to watch them (until the tv station went off the air for the night - that's how long ago this was). They felt like they were on maybe twice a year, maybe? So my experience was somewhere between Chad's and his fathers - I couldn't rewatch whenever I wanted but I could see them a few times. Basically I agree with your reviews, but I thought the girl tossed in the lake was scary (I was 7), just because of the lack of music (and maybe she landed on her head, who knows?), so it still isn't particularly funny (although the way the Monster runs off, its like he broke a lamp - oops, I better get out of here!).

Rafe Ball

Chad's tale about the gimmick of the Frankenstein truck reminded me of a story my dad told me. When he was a teenager, he went with a group of friends to see a horror film (I've looked it up and from the gimmick it sounds like it was "The House on Haunted Hill"). Partway through the movie, at a particularly scary part where a skeleton rises from a vat of acid, a glowing plastic skeleton was shot down a line strung from the back of the theatre, flying just above the heads of the cinemagoers, eliciting screams of fear (including from my dad and his friends). Now, my dad and his friends did not take kindly to this trick. They decided to return to see the film again - apparently no-one noticed this group of teen boys limping oddly into the theatre. They waited for the bit where the skeleton appears, pulled out the lengths of broomstick they had hidden in their trouser legs and beat the crap out of that skeleton as it flew overhead so just the skull was left swinging on the line. Take that, fake undead!

steve stratton

great episode ! , I watch them all about once a year as well. Bride being my favorite, but that ending is baffling, oddly edited ... at the end isn't that Henry still there after he left as the lab collapses ? almost as if Wales didn't know how to end it , or said f it I'm done .

Jim Cannon

This was a lot of fun. I appreciate the amount of research you guys put into a regular episode of the show, but I honestly got a kick out of the clear fact that Chad did ZERO research for this episode. This is just stuff he knows. Love it! You should do more Universal franchises.

Jim Cannon

That movie poster for the Lugosi _Frankenstein_ reminds me of a Golden Age Batman story, from Batman #1 in fact, where Hugo Strange creates twelve foot tall monster men out of asylum inmates to commit daring crimes. That issue came out in the spring of 1940, but I can't help but think that poster made an impression on a young Bill Finger.

Joe Webb

And I love that opening monologue by Edward Van Sloan. You pointed out that it is that carnival barker technique - this is supposed to be scary, you're going to be scared - to reinforce your expectations. It didn't often play on the tv versions, maybe once and it was so special since I'd seen the movie a half dozen times by then, it's held a great place in my heart. It invokes the feeling of the times - horror movies weren't well known, this was like something you'd go into a tent to see at the carnival, just an hour + of your time to thrill and chill you.

Ann Knight

Many years ago I read that Universal forced James Whale to add the happy ending wedding (so to speak) to Frankenstein, when he intended for it to end with that long shot of the windmill burning. I've no idea if that's true or not, but I like to think that it is. Bride is my favorite, with the original a close second. The only thing about Son I really like is Bela.

Ann Knight

Good old William Castle!

Jeremy Impson

Abbot and Costello was my introduction to Frankenstein. Growing up in the 80s, we often rented and purchased Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and of course the Three Stooges on VHS

Jeremy Impson

Obligatory mention that the prop maker for Frankenstein's lab, Kenneth Strickfaden, was not credited by Universal. When Mel Brooks was planning Young Frankenstein, he heard (or possibly already knew) that the prop maker still had all the equipment, who was happy to rent it to Mel's production. Mel also gave him special mention in the film credits.

Jason Thompson

I consider myself a huge horror fan, but I have a confession to make: I’ve never seen many of these old (pre-1960s) horror films because man, I know they aren’t scary. 😅 I did love “Gods and Monsters” tho, and also David J Skal’s excellent book mostly about these old movies, “The Monster Show.”

Jason Thompson

Basically I’m the same age as you guys so I was born into a world where everyone at elementary school was talking about John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and I just can’t go back in time to whatever those 1930s audiences and filmmakers were thinking. Obviously it’s not like people didnt know how to be scary then, there are stories from the 1800s so scary they make my brain weep, but if they just wanted to be satirical and fun like “Gods and Monsters” suggests, just… meh

Jason Thompson

Like, “It’s a Wonderful Life” is scarier than “Frankenstein” and that’s just wrong. It’s got financial despair, injustice, dad verbally abusing the family, and the terrifying thought of what if you never existed. I stand by this statement

Mark Simmons

I suspect this will seem like blasphemy, but is it necessary for horror movies (or horror fiction generally) to be scary in order to be entertaining? Certainly there's plenty of deeply traumatizing fiction that's not in the horror genre (I'd say the Swedish sci-fi movie "Aniara" has more cosmic horror than any Cthulhu-mythos film I've seen).

lazyelvis

As someone who grew up in the 1960’s and ‘70’s I remember these films with a lot more fondness than terror. In the pre-cable days of 3 network TV channels and a handful of UHF stations we’d make every effort to watch the Universal Monster Films whenever they came on. Even to a child of the ‘60’s the films of the ‘30’s & ‘40’s seemed dated, but we enjoyed them anyway. Very little shown was truly frightening, but the concepts certainly were. When I was a teenager I read a book called “Horror” by an author using the pseudonym of ‘Douglas Drake’ which was an attempt to show the truly horrific origins of those classic Universal films by exploring the literature that influenced them both directly and indirectly. It was in this book that I first heard of Lovecraft, Huysmans, Machen, Blackwood, Summers, Dunsany, etc. It is currently out of print but can be borrowed at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/horror00doug/page/2/mode/1up (Hope that link works…) I think Chad would enjoy this much more than Chris, but the detailed explorations on folklore would probably interest both of you. BTW Reber Clark just did the score for a movie called “Mantopus!” Half man, half octopus. Manimal’s bastard child perhaps?

Gideon Falcon

I suppose you couldn't have heard of it by time of recording, but the trailers have been released for a new Netflix-made adaptation of Frankenstein, directed by none other than Guillermo Del Toro! We're all still mourning the cancellation of his Mountains of Madness movie, but this is bound to be a classic!

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

I'm with Chris -- "Son of Frankenstein" is the best of the series as a movie. I was at a classic horror convention several years ago where now elderly Donnie Dunagan (who played Wolf's son, and elsewhere Bambi) was signing autographs. A fan, gonzo filmmaker David "the Rock" Nelson, approached his table and performed one of Dunagan's scenes from "Son," aided by a curly wig and a high-pitched voice. Dunagan mouthed his own lines along with him. I think my girlfriend got some of it on video.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

BTW, the name changes "Henry Frankenstein" and "Victor Moritz" came from Peggy Webling's play, as did the use of the name "Frankenstein" for the creature—in the play, he was actually a Doppelgänger of Henry, not deformed, who killed only through ignorance. He accidentally drowns Katrine, Henry's disabled younger sister. Prof. Waldman convinces the creature to throw himself off a mountain so he can rejoin her in heaven. So, they made some changes for the movie. You can read the whole play in a recent book by Webling's great grand-niece Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum and Bruce Graver of Providence College. I could keep writing too much about the Franken-flicks. (It's my only weakness.)

Thomas Paynter

I am not familiar with these movies other than via Young Frankenstein and the moments that have seeped into popular consciousness--"It's alive!", throwing the girl into the water, the outraged townsfolk with torches and the monster afraid of fire. I do wonder what is scary about Frankenstein's monster as one of the big three classic horror monsters (along with Dracula and the wolfman) that show up in Halloween decorations and so forth. (I remember a scary Halloween record that a friend had when I was kid, that was about a secret underworld where the monsters had teamed up and were preparing to overwhelm the everyday world.) Undead European aristocrat who wants to drink your blood--ok. Man who turns into a wolfman and will tear you apart--ok. Frankenstein's monster...what's scary about him? His strength and his unpredictable rage? The whole castle ambiance with the lightning and the weird lab? Here's a question that might shed light: is the monster undead? D&D treats him as not undead. He's a flesh golem, a construct made out of body parts, but not undead. But come on. He's made out of the bodies of the dead, restored to unnatural life. Sounds pretty undead to me. Treating him as some other variety of thing is slicing too fine. Why is Frankenstein's monster scary? Why is he still part of our Halloween decorations? Why do children who have never seen these movies find him scary, like I did listening to that Halloween record?

Jerome Tracy

When Universal leased these movies to television, I got see them in the late 50s and early 60s. "Bride" made the biggest impression on little me, but all of them fed my imagination as I squinted at our snowy (old TV term) black and white television. I still love them today. And the bizarre, almost surreal time periods - electricity? cars? horse-drawn carriages? telephones? - keep them fresh (I wonder if the writers on Archer got some of their mixed-up time ideas here). Also, I know opinions vary, but it always hurts my heart when someone doesn't like "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein." It's one of my go-to movies every Halloween, and I'll never stop loving it.

Dan Doody

As with so many other commenters here, I grew up on the Universal Horror films and, like Chad, revisit them regularly. There's A LOT that I could add to the conversation but will limit myself to just two observations about Bride of Frankenstein, which is my favorite movie of all time— 1. Henry was supposed to die at the end of the film, but, again, got a reprieve. in fact, you can still see him in one of the shots where debris is falling down. However, the studio didn't want a completely downbeat ending, so Henry and Elizabeth both survive. Of course. this also left open the possibility for further sequels, which Universal would deliver upon. 2. As for the Pretorious name bit, allow me to quote from Alberto Magnuel's BFI monograph on the film: “Thesinger's entrance, as Dr. Pretorious, is formidable, mirroring the ‘figure of death’ of Elizabeth’s hallucinations. In the next shot, his angular face dominates the screen wickedly menacing. Minnie repeats his name over and over again as if she hadn't heard it correctly or as if she were not able to retain it. ‘There's no such name,’ she mutters to herself. Seven times the name Pretorius is spoken in the course of the next few seconds. There exists a tradition from the late Middle Ages that in order for the devil to remain in human company, his name must be repeated at least three times (as in Goethe’s Faust); this triple call will stand as an invitation.… [T]he devil's name… must be pronounced out loud both to retain him and to order him to go. The devilish Pretorius has now been introduced by name to the world of sinners, and in their worlds he will remain.… Pretorius, in Thesinger’s unsettling incarnation, is a nineteenth-century Mephistopheles.”

Ben Gilbert

I've ben reading Brittle Innings by science fiction writer Michael Bishop which manage to combine Frankenstein's creature and 1940s minor league baseball. A good story by one of SF's more literary writers.

Mike Healey

I was thinking Turing must have dashed off a proof that each universal Frankenstein is equivalent to every other universal Frankenstein.

David Halstead

I remember the last time I watched the 1st Frankenstein movie I noticed how many shots included doorways windows or some opening framing the shot. It's a lot. My guess is it had to do with the idea of the coffin/grave opening, crossing boundaries, or maybe just visually nodding to Nosferatu.

David Halstead

The scene with the little girl I believe is a reference to the German silent film The Golem.

James Anthony

I was looking for this comment. Seeing as it was covered on the show tge February before last I'd expected them to comment on it.