At one point, the monster was supposed to be blind, it was filmed but it was cut. So you have a scene with the monster walking through the terrified village holding his arms out ('cause he’s blind). That look became iconic.
Yes. They originally hadn’t planned on a third film, and it was many years later. It’s always bothered me that they did a virtual reboot (and that they were actually able to get Karloff back for a last turn as the Creature). Notice that it isn’t even the same town anymore, not Ingolstadt, but now the town of Frankenstein. The EXTREMELY Germanic expressionistic sets (A dining room with TWO fireplaces? Two? All those weird angles and high relief shadows? And all those rooms so bare with No Dirt on the floors? )
Kinda appropriate that this thread is now a Zombie.
Is it “Bride of Frankenstein” that has the creepy little homunculi in the bottles? (With one horny little rascal trying to get into the next bottle over, which holds a female homunculus?) Weird scene.
Also astonishing how very brief Elsa Lanchester’s appearance is as the Bride. She gets a couple of minutes, not more. All that build-up (all that make-up!) and she’s just a bit of dramatic throw-away.
(She’s so much better used in my favorite movie, “Murder by Death.”)
EL is also in the beginning prologue playing Mary Shelley.
That’s the one. There’s one homunculus that’s almost completely cut from the movie – a Baby in a High Chair. You can still see it from behind in one shot, but its “glory shot” has been cut.
That whole sequence was something of a tour de force of special effects back then – not at all easy to pull off.
It’s hard, by the way, not to see that “creepy little rascal”, who is supposed to be a king, as Henry VIII. Henry VIII had been famously portrayed by Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII two years before Bridge of Frankenstein was made. And Laughton was married to Elsa Lanchester, who played the Bride (and Mary Shelley, as noted above). It all looks like an intentional in-joke.
I always thought it was a shame that Lugosi was typecast as Dracula. He did such an incredible job as Ygor.
Some of that was deliberate. You may also notice a lot of anachronisms in the clothing, architecture, and technology. (There are no telephones, for example.) The filmmakers were trying to create a “mythic” or “fairytale” atmosphere, not tied to any particular time period. The cloth backdrops may be part of that.
I seriously doubt that. The painted sky wasn’t merely painted, it was wrinkled – you could see the waviness because it wasn’t taut – something that could’ve been fixed in a short time with some rope and sandbags, as I say above.
(If it was to suggest a “fairytale” astmosphere – something the rest of the film wasn’t tryin g to do – it suggests low-rent fairyland.)
The book has the monster learning to speak by listening to a peasant in a small home be read aloud to (from Plutarch and Constantin-François de Volney’s Ruins of Empires) by a renegade female Turkish aristocrat who is hiding from some Sultan.
It’s debatable which is more preposterous - the reading material from which the monster learned to speak or the Turkish aristocrat’s story.
Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt in England in 1887. The name change reflects how his family felt about having an actor in the family.
A mild mannered man who spoke with a slight lisp his hobby was growing roses.
He received no onscreen credit for his role nor was he invited to the debut screening.
I’m pretty sure he is credited in the end credits.
According to his daughter, Sara, the monster was credited with a question mark. At that time he was unknown to film audiences.
www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2011/10/five-things-you-might-not-have-known-about-boris-
The Monster is credited with a question mark in the opening credits. In the closing credits, Boris Karloff is fourth billed with his name.
Let’s also not forget his starring role in the Alice Cooper song.
Sounds like Sara Karloff has a poor memory.
The DeLacey family were dispossessed Parisians in exile for helping Safie’s father escape prison. She is fleeing from his attempts to take her back to Turkey with him.