# Frankenstein's Wrinkled Sky **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 18, 2008, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343 "2008-06-18T15:03:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/21 "2019-10-22T20:00:29Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I have ALL the Universal horror flicks on DVD, but am missing the cable that connects the player to the screen. Due to technical difficulties, The Invisible Man will not be seen tonight. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/22 "2019-10-22T20:06:39Z")
I’ve heard it said that he was going for a mythical/fairytale vibe, not tied to any specific time period. Supposedly, most of the scenes are indirectly lit, and whenever you see a lamp onstage, you cannot tell whether it is electric, gas, or oil. Were there any automobiles in the first two movies? The costumes had a deliberate mix of anachronistic styles. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/23 "2019-10-22T20:16:18Z")
So, in 1932, _The Mummy_ was set in 1932, and in 1940, _The Mummy’s Hand_ was set in 1940. But in 1942 and 1944, _The Mummy_ was set in 1910, and _The Mummy’s Hand_ was set in 1912. They weren’t pushing forward into the future; they were pushing the past back. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/24 "2019-10-22T20:31:05Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I know that the timeline of Bride is really screwed up\*, what with the prologue of Mary, Percy, and Lord Byron talking, all set in Switzerland in 1816 at the notorious “Haunted Summer” (although the house they’re staying in is freakin’ huge and much more impressive than Villa Deodato). Then she goes and tells a story that really _would_ be science fiction to her, because it’s evidently set circa 1931, when the first film was made. (The clothing, the styles, the ease of getting the electric equipment, and so on). But then, near the end, after The Monster kidnaps Elizabeth so that “Henry” Frankenstein will cooperate on making the Monster’s Mate, Pretorius offers to let Henry talk to Elizabeth on what is evidently a device of his own construction. It’s a weird-looking telephone. He doesn’t call it by that name, and Henry seems amazed by the device. So this puts the date of the story back to pre-Graham Bell days. Prior to 1876, that is, unless you count the circa 1860 _Reis Telephone_. In any event, well after Shelley’s time but also well before the 20th century. > What time was this supposed to be taking place? You might also have mentioned the date on the tomb that Pretorius raids to obtain the corpse that will become the Bride–1899. This is presumably very recent, since the body is intact and undecayed. Calling it an “alternate universe” may be a bit grandiose, but I think it’s obvious that Whale was primarily concerned with creating a fantastic, almost fairy tale world, and probably gave no thought at all to whether one could construct a coherent timeline of events. Questions like that, I imagine, were the last thing on his mind. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/25 "2019-10-22T20:44:37Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I have ALL the Universal horror flicks on DVD, but am missing the cable that connects the player to the screen. Come over and hook me up and I’ll cook you a _boeuf bourginonne_ with cantal dumplings and _haricots vertes_… Ummm, wouldn’t most people just _buy_ a cable? Probably cheaper than beef bourginonne for thirteen (the number of Dopers who’ll be showing up with a handful of cables and huge appetites). ETA: Forgot to mention that I watched the movie (I’ve got a cable, nyaaah, nyaaah). That sky is terrible! Maybe we can dub in a peasant saying “Wow, we get to chase a monster and watch the Northern Lights, what a perfect evening!” ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/26 "2019-10-22T21:43:15Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I plan to keep this thread alive because I want to discuss the Mummy movies timelines. The Mummy movies were my faves, after the Frankensteins. You should keep this thread alive - ALIVE!!! - at least once every decade, just to see how long the wrinkled backdrop will continue to bug people and take over their lives. I expect Roger Corman would have already been half-way to a script for ‘The Theatre Prop that ate my Brain’. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/27 "2019-10-23T00:54:29Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Ummm, wouldn’t most people just _buy_ a cable? Probably cheaper than beef bourginonne for thirteen (the number of Dopers who’ll be showing up with a handful of cables and huge appetites. Well, I like to cook. I’d enjoy hanging out over booze and a good dinner with **CalMeacham** and other Dopers who like Universal monster movies. And I hate hooking up electronics. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/28 "2019-10-23T01:06:52Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Here, this YouTube clip has the relevant chase scene. After 2:40 you get good looks at the wrinkled backdrop that is the sky, although it’s not as clear as on my TV at home: > > I'll discuss Mummy timelines with you, but not right now. I'm at work. This is a bullshit clip. In the actual movie, The Burgomeister says “You take the (something), Frankenstein, you take the mountains, I will go around the lake!” ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/29 "2019-10-23T01:20:17Z")
'What are “cantal dumplings”? The Bride of Frankenstein movie: Wikipedia says Elsa Lanchester as Mary Shelley wears a dress in an early scene embroidered with stars, butterflies, and moons and it took 17 women 12 weeks to embroider. I do wish every time this movie is on I can get a good glimpse of this awesome garment, does anyone out there know about it? ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/30 "2019-10-23T04:47:31Z")
:smack: I read this as ‘Frankenstein’s Wrinkled Sack’, and thought, _“Well, Duh!”_. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/31 "2019-10-23T11:04:04Z")
He would have an enormous schwanstucker. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/32 "2019-10-23T11:50:49Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > 'What are “cantal dumplings”? > > The Bride of Frankenstein movie: Wikipedia says Elsa Lanchester as Mary Shelley wears a dress in an early scene embroidered with stars, butterflies, and moons and it took 17 women 12 weeks to embroider. I do wish every time this movie is on I can get a good glimpse of this awesome garment, does anyone out there know about it? According to the Wikipedia page on the film, that information comes by way of hearsay from Lanchester, and is reported on page 80 of this book: Vieira, Mark A. (2003). Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic. New York, Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-4535-5. She apparently wrote about it in her autobiography (which is probably where Vieira got his information: > [@](#): > > Mary Shelly’s dress was the most fairy-like creation that I have ever seen before or since in a film. It had a low neck, tiny puffed sleeves and a bodice that continued in a long line to the floor and onto a train about seven feet long. The entire white net dress was embroidered with iridescent sequins–butterflies, stars and moons. It took seventeen Mexican ladies twelve weeks to make it. The dress traveled around the country and appeared in the foyers of all the big openings of Bride of Frankenstein." The neckline was so shockingly low, that close-ups were limited under the strictures of the Production Code that said no cleavage and no breast movement was permitted. Her costume as the Bride was another story. Wrapped in bandages by the studio nurse, her head was modeled on that of Nefertiti. Her frizzy auburn hair was brushed over a wired horsehair cage with two white streaks added on either side, and Lanchester lurched into film history. The Bride’s hisses and shrieks were inspired by the angry swans in London’s Regent Park. [http://www.moviediva.com/MD\_root/reviewpages/MDBrideofFrankenstein.htm](http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/reviewpages/MDBrideofFrankenstein.htm) There’s a picture of Lanchester in the dress just below that quote, but I can’t see any of the details of the dress. Here’s a hand-tinted lobby card of the same image: > **[Bride of Frankenstein (1935)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026138/mediaviewer/rm2783713024)** > > Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Elsa Lanchester, Gavin Gordon, and Douglas Walton in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/33 "2019-10-23T12:23:02Z")
Here’s the prologue (featuring that dress) on YouTube. I can’t make out any of the details in the dress myself. I’ve never sen a picture of the dress, and have no idea where it is now. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/o2yKqa4VSRE/hqdefault.jpg "Bride of Frankenstein - The Prologue") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2yKqa4VSRE) ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/34 "2019-10-23T13:25:09Z")
> [@Just\_Some\_Guy](#): > > Throwing out a wild guess I’d say they missed it initially and back then you couldn’t fix it in post. > > Alternatively, it may have been the best take but the backdrop was wrinkled and they had to choose to go with the technically better version or the one where the acting was better. I agree with Just Some Guy. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/35 "2019-10-23T13:46:04Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Hmm. First I’ve heard of an “Alternate Universe”. I’d like to hear that interview. He may have been simply waving away questions about anachronisms. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/36 "2019-10-24T02:43:11Z")
I rewatched _Bride_ tonight. As **mbh** observes, most of the lighting is from candles or fires, or is indirect, or from sources which could be electric or could be oil lamps. Not all, however. It’s hard to believe that the lights in the laboratory aren’t electric – they don’t look like any oil fixtures I’ve ever seen. In any event, the indicator lights on the lab equipment are indisputably little incandescent lights. As **Mr Atoz** observed, the date on the young woman’s tomb is 1899. The body might be relatively fresh (although we don’t really see it), but I notice that Karl (Dwight FRye) still had to forcibly clean the dirt off it. I don’t think it was that recent\*. And then, of course, there are the other anachronisms. – the previously mentioned Pretorius-built telephone (which he calls a “machine”, and has to explain the use of to Frankenstein), the framing story set in 1816. I note that Henry Frankenstein’s and Elizabeth’s clothes are definitely 1930s modern, even if everyone else seems to be dressed in sorta dateless German traditional. I notice that none of this appeared in the first _Frankenstein_ – it seemed to be set in 1931, no question about it. _Bride_ is just a weird, out-of-its-time film. The later ones were other cases of the weird Universal lack-of-continuity. _Son of Frankenstein_ seems to be set in the year it was made, 1939. But the setting is completely different – now the town of “Frankenstein”, and with a laboratory set right behind the house (and above a convenient sulfur pit). How did Wolf von Frankenstein get so grown up so fast? (and where did that “von” come from?) [I[ Ghost of Frankenstein\* is definitely set in 1942, with yet another son of Frankenstein, Ludwig, who seems far too old for the date. (Also, his house/hospital seems to be frighteningly equipped with convenient sleeping gas dispensers. I want one of those.) Then _Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman_, set only four years latere, gives us a grown-up Baroness Elsa Frankenstein, who is supposed to be Ludwig’s daughter, and therefore Henry’s grand-daughter. The film came out only 12 years after the original, and I’d think that there wasn’t any way for Frankenstein to have an adult grand-daughter in that time. It’s the Universal Time Warp. \*Why the hell was Pretorius in the tomb? He wasn’t using sewn-together bodies to build his homunculi, and he said he grew the brain from “seeds”. Maybe he just wanted to eat a dinner in eerie surroundings. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/37 "2019-10-24T03:57:55Z")
Pretorius said the had to “work together” and “combine their methods.” My assumption was that Pretorius was going to provide a nice tidy reasonable brain, developed by his organic work, but that the body would by stitched together via the Frankenstein design. They had to order take-out for a fresh heart, as you recall. ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/38 "2019-10-24T05:09:30Z")
If you liked _ **Frankenstein** _’s wrinkled sky, you’re going to love _ **Dracula** _’s impromptu cardboard light shade: [Cardboard in DRACULA – Vampires](https://www.vampires.com/cardboard-in-dracula/) ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/39 "2019-10-24T06:00:59Z")
> [@Rocketeer](#): > > If you liked _ **Frankenstein** _’s wrinkled sky, you’re going to love _ **Dracula** _’s impromptu cardboard light shade: [Cardboard in DRACULA – Vampires](https://www.vampires.com/cardboard-in-dracula/) And also here, apparently on a different lamp this time: [![](https://i.redd.it/6n3h1n765ds01.jpg) ](https://i.redd.it/6n3h1n765ds01.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343/40 "2019-10-24T12:00:25Z")
Yeah I’ve seen notices about this before, but somehow I never noticed it when watching the movie itself. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/frankensteins-wrinkled-sky/453343.md?page=3)