Watching Frankenstein

[moon_custafer]

I've this so many times, but this viewing is making me snarkier than usual:

Victor Henry Frankenstein: (points at gallows): Climb up and get it.

Fritz: Aargh!

Henry Frankenstein: What? It can't hurt you!

Well, yeah, but he's a tiny hunchbacked guy with a cane and you're a big strapping mad scientist. Why can't you do the climbing? Nonetheless, Fritz cuts the body down.

Henry Frankenstein: Damn it, the neck's broken!

Really?! Hanged criminal and you're surprised by this?

Elizabeth: (with a letter from Victor) I've tried reading it over and over but it's just *words*.


What is this, State-the-Obvious Theatre?

ETA: And again!

Pounding on the front door.
Fritz: There's somebody there!

Henry Frankenstein: (To Elizabeth, Fritz, Frankenstein's ex-teacher, and the random other guy Elizabeth brought along) Quite a scene, isn't it?! One man CAH-RAZY; three VERY SANE spectators.

Wait, so is Fritz neutral in this?



The Monster's just entered though. That will never not be a beautiful make-up job and performance.


I'd forgotten that when the Monster kills Fritz, (though it's arguably self-defense) he does so by *hanging* him. Some sort of leftover memory in his brain of having been executed by the same method?

Comments

[leave-harmony.livejournal.com]

*head in hands* It always makes me think of Ed Wood, now, with Landau as Lugosi. And how he kept calling Karloff a cocksucker.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

We've got Dracula too. We've most, and probably all, of the Universal monster movies.

There's a weird Dracula sequel (no Lugosi -- instead the Count is played by Lon Chaney Jr., of all people) which plays out like Twilight meets Double Indemnity.

Come to think of it, this needs to be remade, stat.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

So I'm not the only one who's ever noticed the Twilight parallels with Son Of Dracula! Lon Chaney Jr. was kind of a laugh in that one, but I love it because the creep factor comes from the human woman doing exactly what Bella Swan does: perving on a vampire and pressuring him to turn her.

Which leads to the unspoken question "Does this girl only want me for my contagious monstrousness, or does she really love me for myself?" The answer for the heroine in Son Of... was emphatically the former, which has always made me think of Bella going the same route.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

I laugh at Fritz too, I laugh at the overwrought stagey moments and the way Colin Clive behaves like a petulant man-child.

No way I'll ever laugh at the Monster, though. Karloff owns my heart. Also, I know that this scene is madly melodramatic, but I've always held that no one is ever allowed to parody or laugh at the blind hermit's making friends with the monster. That's sacred, everything else is fair game. (I had to skip through the parody scene in "Young Frankenstein.")