Frankenstein Goes to Hollywood A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss


Frankenstein Goes to Hollywood

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How do you do?

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Mr Mark Gatiss feels that it would be unkind to present

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this programme without just a word of friendly warning.

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We are about to unfold the story of horror films,

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of the men and women of the motion picture community

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who sought to create monsters, without reckoning upon God.

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I think it will inform you,

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it will entertain you,

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it might even horrify you.

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So if any of you feel that you do not wish to subject your nerves to such excitement,

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now's the time to...

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Well, we warned you.

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The cinema was made for horror movies.

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No other kind of film offers that same mysterious anticipation

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as you head into a darkened auditorium.

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It's alive! It's alive! It's alive!

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No other makes such powerful use of sound and image.

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The cinema is where we come to share a collective dream, and horror films

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are the most dreamlike of all, perhaps because they engage with our nightmares.

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I hear something. Stop! Stop!

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CHAINSAW SOUNDS

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In this series, I'm going to revisit

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the three greatest eras of horror pictures

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and explore what made their finest films so special.

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I'll venture onto the locations of unforgettable horror moments,

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and invite leading actors, writers and directors to share their stories.

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There's a little shrine to me here.

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This should be an eternal flame.

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Or a huge knife! So whether you're a dyed in the blood horror fan

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or a nervous newcomer,

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I bid you welcome.

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Of all the things that have inspired me as a writer and actor, horror films have been the most important.

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I still have very vivid and very happy memories

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of staying up late in the 1970s to watch double bills of Hammer films and old Universal films.

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I was always, as my mam used to say, a very morbid child, and I was totally crackers about horror films.

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I even used to watch Pro-Celebrity Golf

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just in case Christopher Lee used to pop up, as he occasionally did.

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I think what always appealed to me most

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was just the sense of going into a different realm, a realm of shadows and suggestion and spookiness.

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Because horror is such a personal passion of mine, this series will be unashamedly selective.

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I'm going to build my account around my favourite films and periods.

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And I'd like to start with the era when I believe horror cinema

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really came into its own - the first great age of Hollywood horror.

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An age which begins with this moment from 1925's silent Phantom of the Opera.

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The Phantom, played by Lon Chaney, has warned Mary Philbin's character never to look beneath his mask.

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It's a classic, shocking reveal.

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And it captures the essence of being a horror movie fan.

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It's about knowing you shouldn't look but wanting to see.

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And then maybe getting more than you bargained for.

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Horror cinema is replete with pioneering film-makers.

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Few more so than the man beneath the Phantom's make-up, Lon Chaney, the godfather of horror actors.

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Chaney was one of the giants of 1920s Hollywood,

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and among his few surviving contemporaries

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is a fellow cast member from the Phantom, Carla Laemmle.

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The niece of the founder of Universal studios, she's now a spry centenarian.

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I can only say he was a genius.

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Whatever part that he played,

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he was that part.

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There's a story that Mary Philbin fainted when she took off his mask.

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It could have been true because it was enough to make anybody faint!

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Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces,

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played a succession of maimed and monstrous characters

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during the silent era,

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in films like The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and London After Midnight.

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His self-taught make-up skills drew on his background in travelling vaudeville and theatre.

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Chaney described his talent as "extraordinary characterisation."

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He did all his own make-up and it was pretty horrible.

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-Yes, all that!

-I don't know

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how he did it himself, but he did.

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Exactly how Chaney achieved his make-up effects has always intrigued me.

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Fortunately, just as the Phantom lurked below the Paris Opera, the relics of Chaney can be found

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in the bowels of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum,

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under the custodianship of Beth Werling.

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So Beth, what treasures do you have for us here?

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We have Lon Chaney's make-up kit.

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There he is, Lon F Chaney, Hollywood, California.

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Wow, it's extraordinary.

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Holy relics.

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-What's in here?

-This is one of the glass eyes

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that Chaney had especially made.

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It's particularly gruesome in its own little box, isn't it?

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-Mm-hmm!

-When I was a kid, I kind of grew up with the stories of the lengths he went to

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to create these things. He put himself through an unbelievable amount of pain.

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And that's an example of that.

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To wear something that thick, covering over almost your entire eye, couldn't have been comfortable.

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-It's not exactly a permeable lens, is it!

-No, definitely not.

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It's like putting a billiard ball in your eye.

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It's now believed that Chaney achieved the Phantom's famous missing nose effect

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using thin wire to pull his own nose back, creating that truncated, snout-like look.

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Remarkably, he did much of this working on his own,

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but it turns out he had something to practise on.

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Wow...

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This is a life cast that Chaney had made of his own face,

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with glass eyes inserted.

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He used this to practise some of his make-up techniques.

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He would take a look, see if he needed a little more here, a little less there.

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If he didn't like the look entirely, it was much easier to scrub it off

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and to decide, looking at yourself in a mirror, so to speak,

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than to actually apply it on his own face.

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It's quite fitting that someone so obsessed with bodily dismemberment

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ends up with his own head in a box!

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THEY LAUGH

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According to Hollywood legend,

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Chaney's ghost still haunts the Paris Opera set at Universal Studios,

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which, remarkably, has survived as a grand monument to the silent age.

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It's also a reminder that for all Chaney's astonishing transformation,

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The Phantom of the Opera is as much an exercise in epic spectacle as it is a claustrophobic horror picture.

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That's probably because Universal's founder, Carl Laemmle,

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was no fan of horrific material.

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But The Phantom's success helped his ambitious son and partner,

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Carl Laemmle Junior, to persuade him otherwise.

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Carl Laemmle Junior now set his sights

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on an even more chilling property,

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Bram Stoker's sensational vampire novel, Dracula.

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Junior envisaged another extravagant production.

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But he was about to have his wings clipped.

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1929 saw the Wall Street Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression.

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Like other Hollywood studios, Universal had cash flow problems

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which meant it had to scale down its productions.

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Fortunately, Junior came across another, more cost effective way of telling the Dracula story.

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Stoker's novel had been adapted for a modest British touring production

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which had gone on to become an unexpected hit.

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For ease of staging, this was a kind of drawing-room Dracula, set largely in a Hampstead house.

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And the play had transformed Stoker's hairy, moustached, rank-breathed old count

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into a more elegant figure who could be welcomed into London society.

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As for me, I am a stranger in a strange land.

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Yet I have grown to love this great London with its teeming millions,

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so different from my own land of Transylvania.

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After all, the walls of my castle are broken, the shadows are many,

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and the wind breathes cold through the broken battlements.

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The play ruthlessly cut back the action

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and locations of Stoker's novel and added rather a lot of talking.

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But that didn't bother Junior Laemmle.

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Dracula was going to be the first horror picture with sound.

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You're in the very first scene of Dracula.

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Oh, yes, the opening scene, and I say the first lines of dialogue.

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-Can you remember them?

-I'll try!

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"Among the rugged peaks that frown down upon the Borgo Pass

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"are found crumbling castles of a bygone age."

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Among the rugged peaks that frown down upon the Borgo Pass

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are found crumbling castles of a bygone age.

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-Hooray, I did it!

-I can't remember lines that I was supposed to learn yesterday.

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As well as basing itself on the play's script,

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the film also took on the play's Broadway lead, a Hungarian actor called Bela Lugosi.

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I am Dracula.

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A veteran of Budapest's leading theatres, Lugosi's American career

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had previously been limited by his accent.

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Listen to them.

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Children of the night.

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What music they make!

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Lugosi's somewhat drawn-out delivery

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helps render the film's many dialogue scenes rather ponderous.

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Hollywood was still getting the hang of talkies, and director Tod Browning was on surer ground

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in the film's wordless sequences.

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Here Lugosi becomes a shadowy figure who comes to get you while you sleep.

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You can see why people might have found this terrifying and in some cases, illicitly thrilling.

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Were you aware of anyone finding him

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exotically attractive in a Valentino way?

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He had a charm.

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I mean, you could call him handsome, his dark eyes and all of that.

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He had this tremendous power of

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attracting you. Almost, you couldn't resist the guy, you know?

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Lugosi's charisma aside, the film rarely rises above its stage origins.

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We never even see a drop of blood or the flash of a fang.

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That's why it's a particular treat to get a closer look at another surviving cast member.

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-Not so frightening looking now.

-I'm not so sure!

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-What's it made of?

-It's basically a wire skeleton

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or frame and over it they stretched some heavy duty cotton fabric.

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I assumed it would be rubber or something.

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No, it gave it a much more realistic look flapping in the wind

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with the fabric than it would with rubber.

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No, Master, I wasn't going to say anything.

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I told him nothing.

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I'm loyal to you, Master!

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-Do we know what this hair's made of?

-No, but I wouldn't be surprised

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if it turned out to be some kind of domesticated animal.

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One of Chaney's old hairpieces!

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For all its limitations, Dracula had the supernatural, it had sound, it had Lugosi.

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The combination was a box office smash.

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You could say Dracula was the first modern horror film. But it lacks something.

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Dracula features some atmospheric settings - dark, decaying castles and cobwebby crypts -

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but it doesn't really capture that gothic sensibility, the heightened

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atmosphere of romance and morbidity that makes the novel so thrilling.

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Now take a look at this.

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The moon's rising. We've no time to lose.

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CLANGING

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-Careful!

-Within the first minutes of Frankenstein,

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we find ourselves in one of the grimmest graveyards in cinema...

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Here he comes.

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..watching a freshly buried coffin exhumed, and caressed with necrophilic tenderness.

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He's just resting, waiting for a new life to come.

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This is a film with no inhibitions about embracing the dark and macabre.

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Frankenstein was shot only a few months after Dracula.

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But in its daring tone and stylish execution, it's a massive leap forward.

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It's alive. It's alive.

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It's alive. It's moving.

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It's alive. It's alive! It's alive!

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It's alive!

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In the name of God,

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now I know what it feels like to be God!

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THUNDER

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But exactly who was alive under all those bandages?

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Universal originally wanted Bela Lugosi to play the creature,

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even promoting the film with him in the role before it had been shot.

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But after what would now be called "creative differences", Lugosi left the project.

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The picture was handed to an up and coming English director, James Whale.

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He needed to find a monster.

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Fast.

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Sitting in the Universal canteen one day, Whale spotted a fellow diner and beckoned him over.

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"Your face", he said, "has startling possibilities."

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The owner of that face was another ex-pat Englishman,

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whose birth name was William Henry Pratt.

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Pratt's distinctive features owed something to Indian blood in his family.

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After more than two decades of theatre work and bit parts in films,

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he'd become resigned to never having a major role.

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His stage name was Boris Karloff.

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It was my father's 81st film.

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And no one had seen the first 80, essentially.

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So, after 20 years in the business,

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my father became an overnight success.

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In August 1931, James Whale began filming Frankenstein at Universal, on sets such as this very one.

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But for the first week of shooting at least, one key player

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was conspicuous by his absence - the monster himself.

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He was undergoing a fittingly gruelling process of creation.

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But the result would be one of cinema's most enduring icons.

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Here he comes. Let's turn out the light.

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APPROACHING FOOTSTEPS

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Karloff had been placed under the auspices of Universal's head of make-up, Jack Pierce,

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who spent two weeks working directly with him

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on top of the six months he had already spent researching ideas.

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Pierce's monster is surely one of the greatest make-up designs in cinema.

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Visionary, but credible.

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Thought through with a chilling logic.

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The top of the head is misshapen and stitched

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because a different brain has been placed in another man's cranium.

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It also adds to Karloff's height.

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The bolts in the neck,

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often thought of simply as screws holding the head on,

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are in fact the electrodes used to reanimate the corpse.

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This is a face which really does tell a story.

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But the heart of the film, what has made it immortal, is Karloff's performance.

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In his hands, the monster becomes so much more than just a brilliant piece of make-up.

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It understands this time.

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-It's wonderful.

-Frankenstein, Frankenstein! Where is it? Where is it?

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HE SCREAMS Quiet, you fool!

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Get away with that torch!

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Initially childlike and gentle, he's only later goaded into violence.

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Do you think he identified with the monster as society's outsider?

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I think that, probably due to his own personal experiences...

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..as a young boy in school, he experienced a lot of prejudice because of his dark colouring.

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He understood that looking different makes a difference.

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I think he brought some of his own personal experience to his interpretation of this role.

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He always said that children got it.

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They understood that the creature was the victim and not the perpetrator.

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The little girl in Frankenstein was never afraid of him in his make-up.

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Ah, yes. The little girl.

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This was where James Whale's risk-taking got a little too far ahead of the times.

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Malibou Lake is scarcely half an hour's drive from Hollywood, but it feels like a different world.

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And it was in this idyllic setting that the first truly controversial scene in horror cinema was shot.

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I can make a boat.

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See how mine floats?

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HE GRUNTS

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No! You're hurting me! No!

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Even today, the killing of a child on screen is shocking.

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Back in 1931, it was considered by many to be wholly unacceptable.

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Censors in several American states and countries, including Britain,

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insisted on cutting away before little Maria is thrown into the lake.

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Universal themselves re-edited all the prints of the film when it was reissued a few years later.

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The original scene wouldn't be restored for another 50 years.

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Frankenstein's heady content didn't stop it from storming the box office.

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With two hits in a row, horror was now well and truly established as a proper cinematic genre,

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and Lugosi's Dracula and Karloff's monster were the twin pillars upon which it had been built.

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Other Hollywood studios were quick to respond. The result was a flowering

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of imagination and innovation.

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Paramount's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde featured a dazzling,

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single shot transformation sequence,

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heightened by a subjective camera that enables us to experience it through Jekyll's own eyes.

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HE CHOKES

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The secret to the trick was a rotating filter on the camera

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which revealed layers of different coloured make-up.

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The sequence helped Fredric March win the best actor Oscar in 1932.

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Warner Brothers were best known for their gritty gangster pictures, so it's not surprising that they

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broke with the gothic tradition and set their horror films in the present day.

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Mystery Of The Wax Museum was shot in early Technicolor,

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which gives disturbing,

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lifelike flesh tones to these melting wax figures

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in the film's striking opening sequence.

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In a sensationally creepy plot which would later inspire the wonderful Carry On Screaming,

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Lionel Atwill plays a sculptor who steals corpses and embalms them in wax to exhibit in his museum.

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When Atwill decides to try his technique on Fay Wray,

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the film achieves a memorable variation on The Phantom's unmasking.

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It still makes my hair stand on end today.

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Let me go! Let me go, let me go!

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SHE SCREAMS

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Splendid films, both.

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So why aren't they as well remembered as Universal's?

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Perhaps it's because their monsters just weren't as rich and nuanced as Dracula and Frankenstein's creature.

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Universal also had another great asset, one of the most stylish directors of his time - James Whale.

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To use a much later term, I think that Whale was the first horror auteur.

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He followed up Frankenstein

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with a series of increasingly idiosyncratic films

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which reflected his own rather complex personality.

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In 1932, Whale made The Old Dark House,

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perhaps the definitive take on that classic scenario

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in which lost strangers stumble across an isolated house, and open a Pandora's box of menace.

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The road's blocked on both sides, landslides.

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HE GROANS

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Even Welsh ought not to sound like that.

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The brutal butler was played by Boris Karloff,

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once again unrecognizable under Jack Pierce's make-up.

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And the film's leading lady was Gloria Stuart.

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She remembers how, unlike many directors of the day,

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Whale exerted exceptional control over the production.

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He had said several times, "I go over the script

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"the night before the morning I shoot."

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He made it very clear to all of us that he had prepared the script.

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And it was unusual.

0:28:440:28:47

He took very special care of me and was very critical.

0:28:470:28:53

Hurt my feelings a couple of times.

0:28:530:28:56

He was very sharp.

0:28:560:28:58

What sort of things did he criticise you about?

0:28:580:29:00

Diction, approach to the speech.

0:29:010:29:04

He could stop you cold. "No, Gloria, that's not it."

0:29:040:29:12

SHE WHIMPERS

0:29:120:29:16

Whale's cultivated precision belied his origins.

0:29:180:29:22

He'd been born into a working-class family

0:29:220:29:24

in the black country town of Dudley, and he carefully concealed his background behind a sardonic manner.

0:29:240:29:30

He was also gay, and this may have further encouraged his arch and rebellious sense of humour.

0:29:300:29:36

As a result, The Old Dark House is both menacing and blackly comic.

0:29:360:29:43

You're wicked, too. Young and handsome, silly and wicked.

0:29:430:29:47

You think of nothing but your long, straight legs and your white body and how to please your man.

0:29:470:29:53

You revel in the joys of fleshly love, don't you?

0:29:530:29:58

That's fine stuff. But it'll rot.

0:29:580:30:00

That's finer stuff still, but it'll rot too, in time.

0:30:000:30:03

Don't! How dare you?

0:30:030:30:06

I think Whale was pioneering what we now think of as camp -

0:30:060:30:10

a knowing excess which is as much about humour as shock.

0:30:100:30:14

Maybe somewhat off-putting if you're just expecting a straightforward horror film,

0:30:140:30:18

but it may also explain why Whale's films have aged so well compared with those of his contemporaries.

0:30:180:30:23

THUNDER

0:30:230:30:25

Mr Penderel! Miss DuCane!

0:30:250:30:28

Mr Penderel! Miss DuCane!

0:30:330:30:36

SHE SCREAMS

0:30:420:30:44

This is a very famous scene in which Boris menaces you.

0:30:440:30:49

How was it to actually make that scene with Boris Karloff?

0:30:490:30:53

How do you get grabbed by Karloff and look happy?

0:30:530:30:58

HE LAUGHS

0:30:580:31:01

You don't look happy. You look like you've been grabbed and you're scared.

0:31:010:31:05

-I wouldn't know how to do it any other way.

-It's acting.

0:31:050:31:10

SHE LAUGHS

0:31:100:31:11

-Did you feel frightened by being approached by him?

-Boris?

0:31:180:31:23

He was a pussycat. Come on!

0:31:230:31:26

No, I didn't feel frightened at all.

0:31:280:31:31

He was always very gentlemanly.

0:31:310:31:35

Carl Laemmle Junior now pleaded with Whale to make a follow-up to their most successful collaboration.

0:31:370:31:44

But Whale laid down a key condition.

0:31:440:31:47

January 1935 saw James Whale back on the Universal lot,

0:31:470:31:51

making another Frankenstein movie.

0:31:510:31:53

He'd been tempted back by the promise

0:31:530:31:55

of complete creative control.

0:31:550:31:57

It's hard to believe the studio knew what they were letting themselves in for.

0:31:570:32:01

Whale wasn't interested in simply repeating himself.

0:32:010:32:04

The film he had in mind was highly personal, eccentric and quite extraordinary.

0:32:040:32:09

In Bride Of Frankenstein, Whale makes the monster

0:32:150:32:19

an even more sympathetic victim of a brutal society,

0:32:190:32:22

at one point bringing this home with a scene that's almost blasphemous in its blatant symbolism.

0:32:220:32:28

But Whale's main focus of interest in the film

0:32:330:32:35

seems to be neither the monster nor Frankenstein,

0:32:350:32:38

but a new character - a masterly camp creation.

0:32:380:32:43

He's a very queer looking old gentleman, sir.

0:32:450:32:47

"I must see you, on a secret grave matter", he said.

0:32:470:32:51

"Tonight. Alone."

0:32:510:32:53

-Bring him in.

-Henry, who is this man?

0:32:530:32:57

Dr Pretorius.

0:32:570:32:58

Baron Frankenstein now, I believe?

0:33:020:33:05

Pretorius was played by Ernest Thesiger, an old friend of Whale's from his theatre days in England.

0:33:060:33:13

Between takes on set, Thesiger practised needlepoint, at which he was highly accomplished.

0:33:130:33:19

Alone, you have created a man.

0:33:190:33:22

Now, together, we will create his mate.

0:33:220:33:26

You mean...?

0:33:260:33:29

Yes. A woman.

0:33:290:33:31

That should be really interesting.

0:33:330:33:36

Pretorius is one of the most subversive figures in 1930s cinema,

0:33:360:33:41

a quite obviously homosexual character

0:33:410:33:43

pursuing a grotesque substitute for heterosexual reproduction and loving every minute of it.

0:33:430:33:49

To a new world of gods and monsters.

0:33:500:33:54

The film builds to the climactic unveiling of the bride,

0:33:560:33:59

heralded by Pretorius with a suitably queenly flourish.

0:33:590:34:03

Resplendent in Jack Pierce's Nefertiti-inspired make-up,

0:34:030:34:07

she's a perverse idea of womanhood.

0:34:070:34:10

The Bride of Frankenstein.

0:34:100:34:13

A stitched together combination

0:34:200:34:22

of daughter and mate,

0:34:220:34:24

the bride is beautiful -

0:34:240:34:25

in a wholly insane way.

0:34:250:34:27

Bride Of Frankenstein was Whale's greatest achievement as a director.

0:34:270:34:31

It was also his last horror picture.

0:34:310:34:34

Having pushed the genre as far as he wanted, Whale was perhaps happy to let it symbolically collapse.

0:34:340:34:42

And Hollywood horror really was in an increasingly unstable position.

0:34:440:34:49

In the early 1930s, America had nothing approaching effective censorship

0:34:520:34:57

and some films were pushing well beyond the camp and the gothic

0:34:570:35:03

into remarkably twisted, sadistic territory.

0:35:030:35:05

There was Mad Love, in which a shaven-headed Peter Lorre

0:35:060:35:10

grafted the hands of a murderer onto a mutilated concert pianist.

0:35:100:35:14

In Island Of Lost Souls, Charles Laughton experimented on animals

0:35:190:35:24

to create a race of half-human creatures.

0:35:240:35:27

And then there was The Black Cat, which climaxed with Bela Lugosi flaying Boris Karloff alive.

0:35:270:35:34

We only see it in silhouette, but nevertheless...

0:35:350:35:39

However, one film above all others from the era remains notorious to this day.

0:35:390:35:44

When I was about eight, I got the best Christmas present I had ever received.

0:35:460:35:49

In fact, it's the only Christmas I can remember where all my other presents lay unopened

0:35:490:35:54

because I was given this wonderful book.

0:35:540:35:56

Alan G Frank's The Movie Treasury Of Horror Movies, which for many years became my absolute bible.

0:35:560:36:01

And there was a time when I knew every single page and every single picture.

0:36:010:36:05

But there was one photograph that I used to hurry past. In fact, I can remember

0:36:050:36:10

paperclipping two pages together in order to avoid looking at it.

0:36:100:36:13

And it's no wonder. It was a still from the 1932 film, Freaks.

0:36:130:36:19

Freaks is a lurid but wholly original saga

0:36:200:36:23

of sexual manipulation and revenge, set in a travelling sideshow.

0:36:230:36:28

It was made by Tod Browning, the director of Dracula,

0:36:280:36:31

who boldly decided to use actual carnival performers in the film.

0:36:310:36:36

It was that blurring of fantasy and reality that made the picture in the book so disturbing for me.

0:36:370:36:42

This isn't a brilliant Jack Pierce make-up job.

0:36:420:36:45

These are real people.

0:36:450:36:47

An early bad omen for the film's reception came when the novelist and screenwriter F Scott Fitzgerald

0:36:500:36:55

walked into the MGM canteen, saw a pair of Siamese twins

0:36:550:36:59

having their lunch, and ran outside to throw up his own.

0:36:590:37:03

For much of the film, Browning presents the carnival characters sympathetically.

0:37:040:37:09

But he also establishes an uncomfortable sexual tension

0:37:090:37:12

with the passion of the midget, Hans,

0:37:120:37:14

for the statuesque trapeze artist, Cleopatra.

0:37:140:37:17

She strings him along and poisons him so she can inherit his fortune.

0:37:170:37:22

When they discover Cleopatra's deception,

0:37:260:37:28

the other performers exact a terrible revenge

0:37:280:37:31

in a vividly staged sequence that's like a primal, oozing nightmare.

0:37:310:37:36

Characters who were earlier portrayed with sensitivity

0:37:370:37:40

and are now depicted as crawling, squirming and menacing.

0:37:400:37:44

It's a shameless case of double standards from Browning.

0:37:440:37:47

SHE SCREAMS

0:37:490:37:50

But it can't be denied that Freaks has one of the most

0:37:500:37:52

memorable pay-offs in horror cinema,

0:37:520:37:55

when we find out the true nature of the revenge exacted on Cleopatra.

0:37:550:37:59

It plays as both a grotesque reveal and as the punchline to the blackest of jokes.

0:37:590:38:05

Believe it or not, there she is.

0:38:050:38:08

SHE SQUAWKS

0:38:080:38:11

How can you fail to warm to a film in which somebody is turned into a giant chicken woman?

0:38:110:38:16

Well, ask the 1932 audience.

0:38:160:38:20

Browning's film bombed at the box office and MGM

0:38:200:38:23

plucked it from the movie theatres within a month of its release.

0:38:230:38:27

Following costly controversies like Freaks,

0:38:300:38:32

backlashes from morality campaigners

0:38:320:38:34

and actual bans in lucrative foreign territories like Britain,

0:38:340:38:38

Hollywood's enthusiasm for horror began to wane almost as quickly as it had arisen.

0:38:380:38:45

But seeking to earn extra cash from its two original horror hits,

0:38:460:38:50

Universal re-released Dracula and Frankenstein as a double bill

0:38:500:38:54

and was astonished by their popularity.

0:38:540:38:57

Even if the studios were losing their appetite for horror,

0:38:570:39:01

the public was hungry for more.

0:39:010:39:03

The result was a second wind for horror at the end of the '30s.

0:39:080:39:13

Universal took the lead with Son Of Frankenstein.

0:39:130:39:16

Boris Karloff returned with a remarkable cast,

0:39:160:39:19

but James Whale's high gothic camp was replaced

0:39:190:39:23

by a more family-friendly, swashbuckling approach.

0:39:230:39:26

The film also introduced a new face -

0:39:280:39:30

four-year-old Donnie Dunagan, who played Basil Rathbone's son.

0:39:300:39:34

The grandson of Frankenstein, if you will.

0:39:340:39:37

-Well, hello!

-Good morning, son.

0:39:420:39:46

-Did you have a nice sleep?

-Yes.

0:39:460:39:48

So, Donnie, great pleasure to meet you.

0:39:480:39:51

I think I really should just say, "Well, hello!"

0:39:510:39:54

Well, hello!

0:39:540:39:55

THEY LAUGH

0:39:550:39:56

Right on.

0:39:560:39:58

Donnie's biggest claim to fame is that he would later be the voice of Disney's Bambi,

0:39:580:40:03

but for me, the thrill lies in meeting someone

0:40:030:40:05

who can give a first hand account of working with perhaps

0:40:050:40:09

the greatest cast of any classic horror film.

0:40:090:40:12

The first time I met Boris Karloff, the first thing he did was bought me ice-cream.

0:40:130:40:18

Now how can you possibly be afraid of somebody who bought you ice-cream, right?

0:40:180:40:22

The first time I saw him then, in costume,

0:40:220:40:24

and I shouldn't have done this cos it disrupted things,

0:40:240:40:27

I busted out laughing. "Cut. Take four." "Donnie, quit laughing."

0:40:270:40:32

"Cut. Take six."

0:40:320:40:34

This playfulness on the set is reflected in the film,

0:40:380:40:41

which has sparkle and humour,

0:40:410:40:43

particularly in the form of Bela Lugosi, who,

0:40:430:40:47

as the bodysnatcher Ygor, slides nimbly between menace and mischief.

0:40:470:40:52

I think it's the best performance he ever gave.

0:40:520:40:56

He's alive!

0:40:560:40:57

How long has he been here?

0:41:030:41:05

Long time.

0:41:050:41:07

It's my friend.

0:41:070:41:10

He...he does things for me.

0:41:100:41:16

Has he always been here?

0:41:160:41:19

Nearly always. This is place of the dead.

0:41:190:41:24

We're all dead here.

0:41:240:41:27

Some of the crew would applaud him.

0:41:270:41:30

I don't remember getting applauded. They laughed at me, you know?

0:41:300:41:34

When he was around, people paid keen attention.

0:41:340:41:37

And I was at least aware enough to know,

0:41:370:41:40

boy, this is a real performance.

0:41:400:41:43

Quiet. That'll be all, Ygor.

0:41:430:41:46

Go back to Castle Frankenstein and be careful.

0:41:460:41:48

HE COUGHS

0:41:480:41:52

Hey! You spit on me!

0:41:550:41:58

I'm sorry, I cough. You see, bone get stuck in my throat.

0:41:580:42:03

HE COUGHS

0:42:030:42:06

While Karloff had gone from strength to strength since his breakthrough,

0:42:080:42:12

Lugosi's fortunes had been mixed.

0:42:120:42:14

So much so that Universal were able to secure his services at a knock-down rate.

0:42:140:42:19

They tried to hire him cheaper cos they heard that he was having economic difficulty.

0:42:200:42:25

And Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff stood up against the studio on that,

0:42:250:42:31

and ensured that he had a more responsible salary.

0:42:310:42:35

And apparently, he responded to all that help, because his performance was magnificent.

0:42:350:42:41

-There's a real twinkle in his eye, isn't there?

-Yeah, yeah.

0:42:410:42:44

This is a film that seeks to entertain rather than horrify,

0:42:470:42:51

and Lugosi's gleeful malevolence is balanced by a warmth between Donnie's character and the monster.

0:42:510:42:57

Whereas Little Maria was thrown in the lake in the first film,

0:42:570:43:01

the monster refuses to harm the boy despite being sent to kidnap him by the vengeful Ygor.

0:43:010:43:06

-Did you feel that there was a sort of connection between the child and the monster?

-I know there was.

0:43:090:43:14

And I think holding me like this, as opposed to some other more violent thing, I think that was his idea.

0:43:140:43:21

They had him hold me like this for two takes, and he dropped me.

0:43:210:43:26

I bounced off of the floor. That was a hard deck down there.

0:43:260:43:29

And then they decided to wire me to him.

0:43:290:43:33

If everybody would look carefully,

0:43:330:43:35

you'll see it's an artificial hand.

0:43:350:43:37

It's a little phoney,

0:43:370:43:38

so he couldn't drop me.

0:43:380:43:40

The thought occurred to me, I've got to be the only guy

0:43:400:43:43

still sucking air in this world that can say, "I was wired to Frankenstein!"

0:43:430:43:47

MARK LAUGHS

0:43:470:43:48

Daddy, Daddy!

0:43:500:43:52

THE MONSTER SCREAMS

0:43:540:43:58

Of course, by now, the audience knew that it would take more than

0:43:580:44:01

plunging into a pit of sulphur to finish off the monster for good.

0:44:010:44:05

But as far as Karloff's portrayal was concerned,

0:44:050:44:08

this really was the final curtain.

0:44:080:44:10

He was grateful, really grateful to that role.

0:44:110:44:17

And he sometimes referred to the creature in interviews as his best friend.

0:44:170:44:21

But he felt that the films and the role had gone as far as it could

0:44:210:44:28

or should without the creature becoming the brunt of bad scripts,

0:44:280:44:33

bad jokes, and he didn't want to be any part of that.

0:44:330:44:38

He could see a downward trend

0:44:410:44:44

and he didn't want to take his friend down that path.

0:44:440:44:48

Few of Universal's horror productions now had the quality of Son Of Frankenstein.

0:44:500:44:55

By the 1940s, the studio was increasingly busy making sequels.

0:44:550:44:59

Not just to Frankenstein, but also to its own original properties.

0:44:590:45:04

These included The Mummy and The Wolf Man, both of whom were played by

0:45:040:45:09

Lon Chaney's son, Lon Chaney Junior, something of a sequels regular.

0:45:090:45:15

This production-line approach showed how Universal's monsters

0:45:150:45:18

had gone from being terrifying bogeymen

0:45:180:45:20

to familiar favourites.

0:45:200:45:22

But surprisingly, it was a rival studio's attempt

0:45:280:45:30

to create its own monster parade that would take horror cinema back into the shadows where it belonged,

0:45:300:45:37

and exert an influence on film-makers that continues to this day.

0:45:370:45:41

CAR ENGINE STARTS UP

0:45:470:45:49

GROWLING

0:46:010:46:03

No studio looked more enviously at Universal's money-spinning menagerie of monsters than RKO.

0:46:200:46:27

Yes, the same RKO which made Citizen Kane

0:46:270:46:30

and needed to make quick cash following that magnificent flop.

0:46:300:46:35

Across the centuries comes this exciting story of a modern girl

0:46:350:46:40

cursed by an ancient legend.

0:46:400:46:42

The legend of the Cat People.

0:46:420:46:43

During the early 1940s,

0:46:460:46:47

RKO released a string of

0:46:470:46:49

sensationally-titled horror pictures.

0:46:490:46:53

But the actual films showed a subtle mastery of the psychology of horror

0:46:530:46:57

that was quite revolutionary.

0:46:570:47:00

All were produced by Val Lewton, who was appointed Head of the RKO Horror Unit in 1942.

0:47:040:47:10

Lewton's budgets were tight, and his bosses' policy was to choose

0:47:130:47:17

a commercial-sounding title first

0:47:170:47:19

and then commission a screenplay to fit.

0:47:190:47:22

But within these limits, Lewton was given a free creative hand.

0:47:220:47:26

And he played it very cleverly.

0:47:260:47:29

Lewton's first horror picture was Cat People,

0:47:300:47:33

the story of a woman who turns into a panther

0:47:330:47:36

when caught in the throes of passion or jealousy.

0:47:360:47:38

The film's most celebrated set pieces show her love rival being stalked.

0:47:480:47:53

Lewton realised that his restricted budgets weren't a disadvantage,

0:48:030:48:07

because in horror, less could be more.

0:48:070:48:10

Monsters didn't have to be seen, just suggested.

0:48:100:48:14

He also understood that a good shock

0:48:220:48:24

didn't have to be caused by something explicit or even intrinsically frightening.

0:48:240:48:28

SCREECHING BRAKES

0:48:400:48:42

That technique of a slow build-up followed by a sudden but unthreatening jolt

0:48:420:48:47

has become known, appropriately enough, as a Lewton bus.

0:48:470:48:52

You can spot Lewton buses in much more recent and famous films.

0:48:520:48:56

This scene from The Exorcist plays as pure Lewton.

0:48:560:49:00

Director William Friedkin uses the shadows in the attic

0:49:000:49:03

to keep our nerves on a hair trigger.

0:49:030:49:05

CLATTERING

0:49:050:49:07

SHE SCREAMS

0:49:170:49:18

-INDISTINGUISHABLE VOICE

-Oh, Carl.

0:49:180:49:21

Jesus Christ, Carl, don't do that.

0:49:210:49:24

But not everyone is so impressed by Lewton.

0:49:240:49:26

I just think he's so overrated.

0:49:260:49:31

Everybody worships Val Lewton for a couple of scenes.

0:49:310:49:34

The swimming pool scene. What?

0:49:350:49:38

SCREECHING AND SCREAMING

0:49:380:49:41

There's nothing in the frame near her.

0:49:430:49:46

It's just lighting. The pool's lit.

0:49:460:49:48

She's in the middle of the pool.

0:49:480:49:51

Nothing's going to get her. When it's frightening is when there's something around you.

0:49:510:49:56

There is an argument, a very strong argument, I think,

0:49:560:49:59

that you can do it and do it and do it and then if you then don't deliver, you're cheating.

0:49:590:50:03

I totally agree with that.

0:50:030:50:05

But if you can, and if you have a monster or a thing that looks pretty good, show it.

0:50:050:50:10

Show it. I mean, Jurassic Park done by Val Lewton would be nothing.

0:50:100:50:14

But there are many reasons to enjoy Lewton's work.

0:50:150:50:18

He gave Boris Karloff some of the finest roles of his career, in films like The Body Snatcher,

0:50:220:50:27

which showcased the range of his acting ability.

0:50:270:50:30

There, Master Ferris.

0:50:300:50:32

Sooner than we thought. A stroke of luck, you might say.

0:50:320:50:35

Good.

0:50:350:50:37

Why, that's the street singer.

0:50:380:50:41

I know her, I tell you. She was alive and hearty only this evening.

0:50:410:50:44

It's impossible she can be dead.

0:50:440:50:47

You could not have gotten this body fairly.

0:50:470:50:50

You're entirely mistaken.

0:50:500:50:53

You'd better give me my money and make the proper entry.

0:50:550:50:58

In this film, Karloff once again plays alongside Bela Lugosi.

0:51:000:51:04

But Lugosi is relegated to a secondary role, quite literally overpowered by Karloff.

0:51:040:51:10

No, put your hand down.

0:51:100:51:14

How can I show you, man?

0:51:140:51:17

This is how they did it.

0:51:170:51:18

There's something very resonant about the different fates of these two men,

0:51:290:51:33

who both played such a crucial role in establishing horror cinema.

0:51:330:51:37

Lugosi, who always felt he was cut out for something better,

0:51:410:51:45

and Karloff, grateful to horror for his unexpected and late success.

0:51:450:51:50

-Wow.

-Doesn't everybody have a room like this?

0:51:540:51:59

I would like a bathroom like this.

0:51:590:52:02

Wow.

0:52:020:52:04

Karloff went on to enjoy regular work in film and television for the rest of his career,

0:52:040:52:09

and lived long enough to enjoy some of the respect

0:52:090:52:11

that eventually came to him

0:52:110:52:13

as a pivotal figure in 20th century popular culture.

0:52:130:52:17

These are the stamps from 1997, the classic movie monster stamps.

0:52:170:52:25

My father was on two of them, one for Frankenstein and one for The Mummy.

0:52:250:52:30

And then later, in 2003, there was a set of ten stamps

0:52:300:52:37

that depicted the various disciplines of film-making.

0:52:370:52:41

And my father's face was selected for the discipline of make-up.

0:52:410:52:45

So I've been told by stamp collectors that my father was

0:52:450:52:50

the only person other than a President

0:52:500:52:53

who has been on more than two stamps.

0:52:530:52:56

So he's been on three stamps, really quite an honour.

0:52:560:52:59

Karloff never strayed too far from the horror genre, but he never seemed too worried by that.

0:52:590:53:04

Bela Lugosi, however, seemed trapped on the treadmill of horror sequels.

0:53:060:53:11

Lugosi had tried to avoid being typecast in Dracula-like roles,

0:53:120:53:16

and had not actually played the Count since his debut.

0:53:160:53:19

But struggling with his finances and his health, he was finally forced to

0:53:190:53:23

re-embrace the role that had defined him in the public imagination.

0:53:230:53:27

In 1948, he took up Dracula's cape once again

0:53:270:53:31

in an Abbott and Costello movie.

0:53:310:53:33

It could have been the final humiliation,

0:53:350:53:37

but Lugosi brings a dignity and a knowing humour to the role.

0:53:370:53:42

I think this second performance as the Count now stands up better than the first.

0:53:420:53:47

I must say, my dear, I approve very highly of your choice.

0:53:470:53:53

What we need today is young blood.

0:53:530:53:56

And brains.

0:53:560:53:59

What's surprising about Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein

0:53:590:54:02

is that amongst the comedy, it boasts some striking horror sequences.

0:54:020:54:07

SCREAMING

0:54:070:54:08

Look at what happens to the woman in this scene.

0:54:080:54:12

-Chick, do you believe me now?

-Yes.

0:54:120:54:14

Against all the odds, the film is a fine, final flourish

0:54:190:54:22

of the Universal horror cycle.

0:54:220:54:24

But Lugosi's own horror career had an unexpected last act that took it full circle.

0:54:370:54:43

In 1951, he was invited to Britain to star in a revival

0:54:480:54:52

of the Dracula stage play.

0:54:520:54:54

Lugosi now found himself performing in towns like Eastbourne,

0:54:550:54:59

in the sort of regional theatres where the play had first been seen a quarter of a century before.

0:54:590:55:04

It must have felt a long way from Hollywood.

0:55:040:55:06

The tour seemed to test not only Lugosi's drawing power, but that of the Count himself.

0:55:060:55:12

The producers hoped for a West End run

0:55:170:55:21

but no-one would take them on until the production had first proved its profitability outside of London.

0:55:210:55:27

Lugosi's leading lady on the tour was the English actress Sheila Wynn, who played the role of Lucy Seward.

0:55:300:55:37

Why do you think Lugosi took on the tour?

0:55:370:55:42

I think he felt his career was sinking.

0:55:420:55:46

He was becoming less well known and less important.

0:55:460:55:50

And I think he had a great hope that to come to England

0:55:500:55:54

and play in the West End would bring his prestige right up again.

0:55:540:56:00

And when the management sent the tour out, I don't think they realised

0:56:020:56:08

that the audiences had become

0:56:080:56:11

much more sophisticated, and they were inclined to giggle every night.

0:56:110:56:16

They didn't at Brighton, I don't think,

0:56:160:56:18

and they certainly didn't in Belfast, where they screamed,

0:56:180:56:23

but there was a bit of giggling in Golders Green and also in Manchester.

0:56:230:56:29

And I think this distressed Bela very much indeed.

0:56:290:56:35

He once said to me, "You know,

0:56:350:56:38

"Dracula is Hamlet to me."

0:56:380:56:42

Regional theatres were as far as the Dracula revival got.

0:56:450:56:48

Lugosi never achieved the comeback he sought.

0:56:510:56:53

He died five years later and, perhaps having finally come to terms

0:56:560:57:00

with the role he could never escape, was buried in his Dracula cape.

0:57:000:57:05

Why did audiences which had once thrilled at horror now laugh at it?

0:57:140:57:19

Lugosi's tour showed how little horror had really moved on since its heyday in the 1930s.

0:57:190:57:24

Meanwhile, the world had entered an atomic age.

0:57:270:57:30

Hollywood responded with a new set of terrors -

0:57:310:57:34

science fiction monsters

0:57:340:57:35

that would be defeated by scientists and soldiers, not with a stake or a silver bullet.

0:57:350:57:40

SHE SCREAMS

0:57:400:57:43

By the early 1950s, horror cinema was pretty much extinct, after barely two decades.

0:57:450:57:51

But of course, it's just when you think the monster's dead that it comes back. Stronger.

0:57:580:58:04

Next time, full colour vampire lust

0:58:080:58:11

and gushing gore...

0:58:110:58:13

GUNSHOT

0:58:130:58:15

..as Britain's Hammer Films conquer the world.

0:58:150:58:18

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:230:58:26

E-mail [email protected]

0:58:260:58:29

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